Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Views of technical progress
- 1 The historiography of technical progress
- 2 Marx as a student of technology
- Part II Some significant characteristics of technologies
- Part III Market determinants of technological innovation
- Part IV Technology transfer and leadership: the international context
- Index
2 - Marx as a student of technology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Views of technical progress
- 1 The historiography of technical progress
- 2 Marx as a student of technology
- Part II Some significant characteristics of technologies
- Part III Market determinants of technological innovation
- Part IV Technology transfer and leadership: the international context
- Index
Summary
This paper will attempt to demonstrate that a major reason for the fruitfulness of Marx's framework for the analysis of social change was that Marx was, himself, a careful student of technology. By this I mean not only that he was fully aware of, and insisted upon, the historical importance and the social consequences of technology. That much is obvious. Marx additionally devoted much time and effort to explicating the distinctive characteristics of technologies, and to attempting to unravel and examine the inner logic of individual technologies. He insisted that technologies constitute an interesting subject, not only to technologists but to students of society and social pathology as well, and he was very explicit in the introduction of technological variables into his arguments.
I will argue that, quite independently of whether Marx was right or wrong in his characterization of the future course of technological change and its social and economic ramifications, his formulation of the problem still deserves to be a starting point for any serious investigation of technology and its ramifications. Indeed, the following statement by Marx, amazingly fresh over a century later, reads like a prolegomenon to a history of technology that still remains to be written:
A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the eighteenth century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Inside the Black BoxTechnology and Economics, pp. 34 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983
- 1
- Cited by