Marx and Technological Determinism - Quote needed

[Mick]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a quote that I'm quite sure I read some time ago in (I think) the later economic work of Marx (maybe Grundrisse or onwards) that seems to contradict the view of Marx as a technological determinist. I think it went something like: the development of the means of production is not good in and of itself, but rather serves to fulfill (latently, and with future production-relations) human needs and promote human freedom. Obviously he thought capitalism also effectively enslaves the working class, but as is understood in the so-called obstetric metaphor, it also will ultimately result (he thought) in their emancipation. But, as I say, I'm looking for one very particular quote in which he says to understand historical materialism only in terms of the development of the means of production is to miss the point, but I've lost it and would like to know what I'm thinking of! Sorry if this is too much of a 'homework' question.

I'd also be interested if anyone has any recommended reading on Marx and the question of technological determinism. I've read G A Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History which takes a broadly technological-determinist interpretation of Marx, but that's about it.

Many thanks in advance,
Mick

[xxxxxx666666]

Do you mean:"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"[?] it's from Karl Marx's 1878 Critique of the Gotha Program. The name "Gotha" itself is from a town in German (which still exists) and it was where a German Social Democratic party, which hold socialsit views, was to hold congress for the time.

[Mick]

No. It explicitly addresses the historical development of the means of production and how it is not an 'end in itself' but instead (again, latently) serves human interests.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

No luck finding exactly what you're looking for yet - I'll keep digging.

In the meantime, the third of the Theses on Feuerbach seems to point in the direction you're suggesting:


The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.


As does this paragraph from Vol. 1 of Capital:


Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering power and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.

[Dave B]

is it this one; the realm of freedom quotation?



In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

there is another one from Grundrisse where he says that acquired scientific and technological know-how will become more important in the creation of 'wealth' or useful things than the brute effort of physical labour.

I suppose computer generated products might be an example?



Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development. Machines etc.


The exchange of living labour for objectified labour – i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour – is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting on value. Its presupposition is – and remains – the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. (The development of this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter, is itself in turn related to the development of material production.) Agriculture, e.g., becomes............
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm

[Hit The North]

This article (http://sss.sagepub.com/content/20/2/333.abstract) might help you.

Also, a reading of chapter 15 in Capital, where he discusses the impact of machine production on the worker, will show that Marx did not see technology developing independently but as a consequence of the relations of production.