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MARX AND TECHNOLOGY

Joseph I. Fernando

Assumption University of Thailand

Karl Marx had spent more than three decades (1849-1883) in
England, the land of the Industrial Revolution. Steeped in philosophy
and political economy, Marx became more and more aware of the
exploitative nature of capitalism. He was committed to the discovery of
an alternative to capitalism which would be in keeping with the worth
and dignity of human persons. Marx’s attention was drawn to technology
as technology in the hands of capitalists led to greater exploitation of
workers. Marx was certainly a pioneer in the philosophy of technology.
His painstaking analysis of the relation between the machinery and the
worker and a host of other revelations concerning the use of machinery
in the capitalist system are impressive. This article is an attempt to
understand Marx’s philosophy of technology.

1.  The Development of Machinery

Marx begins his analysis of machinery and modern industry1 by
quoting John Stuart Mill who says in his Principles of Political Economy:
“It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened
the day’s toil of any human being.”2 That is not the aim of the capitalist
application of machinery. Machinery is intended to cheapen commodities
by lengthening that portion of the working day, which the labourer gives,
without an equivalent, to the capitalist. It is a means for producing surplus
value. In manufacture or cottage-industry, the revolution in the mode of
production begins with the labour power, whereas in modern industry it
begins with the instruments of labour. Marx’s first enquiry is, what is the
difference between a machine and the tools of handicraft?

Some call a tool a simple machine, and a machine a complex
tool. They do not see an essential difference between the two and give
the name of machine to the lever, the screw, the wedge and so on. In fact,
every machine is a combination of these simple powers. For Marx, from
the economic standpoint this explanation is worthless because it lacks
the historical element. Another explanation of the difference between tool

Prajñâ Vihâra, Volume 4, Number 2, July-December, 2003, 1-17
© 2000 by Assumption University Press



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and machine is that man is the motive power of a tool and in the case of
a machine the motive power is something different from man; such as an
animal, water, wind and so on. According to this explanation, a plough
drawn by oxen would be a machine, while a circular loom, which worked
by a single labourer, weaved 96,000 picks per minute (at the time of
Marx in England) would be a mere tool. This loom, though worked by
hand, would be a machine if worked by steam.

Marx goes on to say that fully developed machinery consists of
three essentially different parts: the motor mechanism, the transforming
mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor
mechanism puts the whole in motion. It either generates its own motive
power like the steam engine or it receives its impulse from some already
existing natural force like the windmill from wind. The transmitting
mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, pullies, gears and so on
regulates the motion, changes its form where necessary and divides and
distributes it among the working machines. The motor mechanism and
the transmitting mechanism put the working machines in motion. The
working machines as such is that part of the machinery with which the
Industrial Revolution of the 18th century began.

We find the working machine proper under altered forms, the
tools used by the handicraftsman or manufacturing worker. Instead of
being human implements, they are mechanical implements. The entire
machine is either only an altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft
tool, as for example, the power-loom or the working parts fitted in the
frame of the machine are old acquaintances like saws in sawing machine
and knives in a chopping machine. The machine, which is the starting
point of the Industrial Revolution, supersedes the worker, who handles a
single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools,
and set in motion by a single motive power.

2.  The Effects of Machinery on the Labourer

A. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital

The machinery does not require muscular power. It becomes a
means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength and those with
incomplete bodily development, but whose limbs are supple. The labour
of women and children is the first thing needed by capitalists who use

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machinery. Machinery, the mighty substitute for labour and labourers
became a means for increasing the number of wage labourers by enrolling
every member of the worker’s family without distinction of age or sex.
Compulsory work for the capitalist robbed children of their play and the
worker of his free labour at home within moderate limits for the support
of the family. “The value of labour-power was determined, not only by
the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but
also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing
every member of that family on to the labour market, spreads the value
of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his
labour-power. To purchase the labour power of a family of four workers
may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour power
of the head of the family, but in return four days labour takes the place of
one, and their price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour
of four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live,
four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the
capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human
material that forms the principle object of capital’s exploiting power, at
the same time raises the degree of exploitation.”3

Machinery also changes completely the contract between the
labourer and the capitalists, which formally fixes their mutual relations.
Taking the exchange of commodities as basis, Marx’s first assumption
was that capitalist and labourer meet as free persons, as independent
owners of commodities, one with money and means of production, the
other labour-power. But now the capitalist buys children and youth under
age. Previously, the worker sold his own labour-power as a free agent.
Now he sells his wife and children; he has become a slave-dealer. The
capitalist’s greed for exploitation is the cause of employment of children.
In spite of legislation in Great Britain children sold to act as live chimney-
sweeping machines exceeded 2000 when Marx was in England.

Children and women faced physical deterioration as machinery
subjected them to the exploitation of the capital. The mortality rate of
the children of the workers was enormous during the first few years of
their life. The cause of the death-rates was principally due to the
employment of the mothers away from their homes, and to the neglect
and maltreatment consequent on her absence. There arose natural

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estrangement between mother and children, as a consequence intentional
starving and poisoning of the children. The revolution in the mode of
cultivation had led to the introduction of the industrial system. Immorality
was on the rise as women were away from their home; children were left
pining at home. Marx says that the moral degradation caused by the
capitalistic exploitation of women and children has been thoroughly
depicted by F. Engels in his Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse England. By
the excessive addition of women and children to the ranks of the workers,
machinery at last breaks down the resistance which male operatives in
the manufacturing period continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.

B. Prolongation of the Working Day

If machinery increases the productiveness of labour i.e. shortens
the working-time required in the productiveness of a commodity, it
becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means for lengthening
the working day beyond human endurance. In the form of machinery,
the tools of labour become automatic, moving and working independent
of the worker. The automaton, as capital in the person of the capitalist is
endowed with intelligence and will. It is animated by the longing to reduce
to a minimum the resistance offered by man. This resistance is lessened
by the apparent lightness of machine work, and by the more docile
character of the women and children employed on it. The productiveness
of machinery is inversely proportional to the value transferred by it to
the product.  The longer the life of the machine, the greater is the quantity
of the products over which the value transmitted by the machine is spread,
and less is the portion of that value added to each single commodity The
active lifetime of a machine is dependent on the length of the working-
day or on the duration of the labour process multiplied by the number of
days for which the process is carried on.

In the lengthening the working day the exploitation of double
the number of workers demands, not only a doubling of the constant
capital which is invested in machinery and buildings, but also of that
which is invested in raw material. The lengthening of the working day
allows production on a large scale without any change in the amount of
capital invested in machinery and buildings. There is not only an increase
in surplus value, but the outlay to obtain it diminishes. This takes place
with every lengthening of the working day. On the one hand, the

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development of the factory system fixed a constantly increasing portion
of the capital in a form in which its value is capable of continual self-
expansion. On the other hand, it loses both use-value and exchange-value
whenever it loses contact with living labour. Marx quotes a cotton magnate
in support of his view: “When a labourer lays down his spade, he renders
useless, for that period, a capital worth eighteen pence. When one of our
people leaves the mill, he renders useless a capital that has cost
£100,000.”4 Thus the increased use of machinery makes a constant
increase in lengthening the working day desirable.

Machinery produces relative surplus value not only by directly
depreciating the labour- power, and by indirectly cheapening the same
through cheapening the goods that enter into its reproduction; but also
by converting the labour employed by the owner of that machinery into
a labour of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the social
value of the article produced above its individual value. This enables the
capitalist to replace the value of a day’s labour power by a smaller portion
of the value of a day’s product. When the use of machinery is a monopoly,
the profits are exceptional, and the capitalist, by prolonging the working
day increases the magnitude of profit. A remarkable phenomenon in the
history of modern industry is that machinery sweeps away every moral
and natural restriction on the length of the working day. “Hence, too the
economic paradox that the most powerful instrument for shortening
labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment
of the labourer’s time and that of his family, at the disposal of the capitalist
for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.”5

C. Intensification of Labour

In production as the use of machinery spreads and the number of
workers habituated to machinery rises, the rapidity and the intensity of
labour increase as a natural consequence. So lengthening of the working
day went hand in hand with increasing intensity of factory labour. Where
labour was repeated day after day with unvarying uniformity and
lengthening of the working day became compatible with a lower degree
of intensity. The shortening of the working day increased the degree of
intensity of labour. When the workers revolted against the lengthening
of the working day the English Parliament was compelled to shorten the
working day. Consequently the capitalist lost the production of surplus

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value he was used to getting by the prolongation of the working day. But
the capitalist engaged himself in the production of relative surplus value
by hastening on the further improvement of machinery. At the same time
there was a change in the nature of relative surplus value. Generally, the
mode of producing relative surplus value consists in raising the productive
power of the worker, in order to enable him to produce more in a given
time with the same expenditure of labour, “Labour time continues to
transmit as before the same value to the total product, but this unchanged
amount of exchange value of each single commodity sinks. Otherwise
however, so soon as the compulsory shortening of the hours of labours
takes place.”6

Thus great impetus is given to the development of productive
power and to economy in the means of production. This imposes on the
workers increased expenditure of labour in a given time, heightens tension
of labour power and condensation of labour to a degree that is attainable
within the limits of the shortened working day. The condensation of a
greater mass of labour into a given period is really greater quantity of
labour. In addition to measure of extension, labour now acquires a
measure of its intensity. “The denser hour of the ten hours working day
contains more labour, i.e. expended labour power than the porous hour
of the twelve hours’ working day.”7

Marx is interested in the question: How is the labour intensified?
The first effect of shortening the working day is due to the law that the
efficiency of labour power is inversely proportionate to the duration of
its expenditure. What is lost by shortening the duration is gained by the
increasing tension of labour power. The mere shortening of the working
day increases to a great degree the regularity, uniformity, order, continuity
and energy of labour. The shortening of the hours of labour creates the
subjective conditions for the condensation of labour by enabling the
worker to exert more strength in a given time. With the shortening of the
working day, machinery becomes in the hands of capital the objective
means, systematically employed for squeezing out more labour in a given
time. This is done in two ways, by increasing the speed of the machinery
and by giving the workers more machinery to tend. The shortening of the
hours of labour called forth such an intensification of the labour as is
injurious to the health of the worker and to his capacity for work.

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3. The Factory

The body of the factory is machinery organized into a system.
Machinery by annexing the labour of women and children augments the
number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic
exploitation. It confiscates the whole of the worker’s disposable time by
immoderate extension of the hours of labour and its progress, which allows
for enormous increase of production in shorter periods, serves as a means
of systematically getting more work done in a shorter time, of exploiting
labour power more intensely. In the automatic factory, the collective
labourer or social body of labour appears as the dominant subject, and
the mechanical automaton as the object. In reality, the automaton itself
is the subject, and the workers are merely conscious organs, coordinate
with the unconscious organs of the automaton and together with them,
subordinated to the central moving power. The central machine from
which the motion comes can be described not only as an automaton, but
as an autocrat.

Along with the tool, the skill of the worker in handling it passes
to the machine. In the factory, there is a tendency to reduce to one and the
same level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the
machines. Though the old system of division of labour is thrown
overboard by machinery, it is remoulded and established in a more hideous
form of capital as a means of exploiting labour power. The life-long
specialty of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long
specialty of serving one and the same machine. “Machinery is put to a
wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman from his very
childhood, into a part of a detail machine. In this way, not only are the
expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time
his helpless dependence upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. In
handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool; in the
factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the
instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the
machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a
living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism
independent of the workmen who become its mere living appendage.
The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same
mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour

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of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back
on the worn-out labourer.”8

Factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost. It
does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and snatches away
every bit of freedom on bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening
of labour becomes a sort of torture since the machine does not free the
labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. It is no more
the worker who employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments
of labour employ the worker. “The separation of the intellectual powers
of production from the manual labour and the conversion of those powers
into the might of capital over labour is finally completed by modern
industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skills of
each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal
quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of
labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with
that mechanism, constitute the power of the master.”9

The material conditions under which factory labour is carried on
are detrimental to the workers. All the sense organs are injured in an
equal degree by the artificial rise in the temperature, by the dust-laden
atmosphere, by the deafening noise. There is danger to life and limb among
the thickly crowded machinery. Marx accuses the factory system in the
hands of the capitalist of robbery: “Economy of the social means of
production, matured and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is
turned in the hands of capital, into systematic robbery of what is necessary
for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery of space, light,
air and of protection to his person against the dangerous and unwholesome
accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery
of appliances for the comfort of the workman.”10

4. The Conflict between Worker and Machine

The conflict between the capitalist and the wage labourer goes
back to the very origin of capital. With the introduction of machinery the
worker fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material
enbodiment of capital. He revolted against this particular form of the
means of production, as it is the material basis of the capitalist mode of
production. It took very long for the workers to learn to distinguish

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between machinery and its employment by capital, and to fight not against
the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which
they are used. When the instrument of labour takes the form of a machine,
it becomes a competitor to the worker. The self-expansion of capital
through machinery is directly proportional to the number of the worker
whose means of livelihood are destroyed by that machinery. The entire
system of capitalistic production is based on the fact that the worker sells
his labour-power as a commodity. Division of labour specializes this
labour power by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool. As soon
as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine, the exchange
value along with the use-value of the worker’s labour power disappear
making the worker unsaleable. That section of the working-class rendered
superfluous by machinery floods the labour market and reduces the price
of labour power below its value.

“When the machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it
produces chronic misery among the operatives who compete with it.
Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great masses.
History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of
the English hand-loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several
decades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation,
many with families vegetated for a long time on 2½ d. a day. On the
other hand the English cotton machinery produced an acute effect in India.
The Governor General reported in 1834-35: ‘The misery hardly finds a
parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are
bleaching the plains of India.’”11  Machinery is continually introduced in
new fields of production. So the character of independence and
estrangement, which the capitalist mode of production as a whole gives
to the instruments of labour and to the product as against the worker, is
destroyed by the means of machinery into an antagonism. Thus, with the
advent of machinery the worker for the first time violently revolts against
the instrument of labour. The instrument of labour strikes down the
worker. This direct antagonism between the machinery and the worker
comes out most strongly, whenever newly introduced machinery competes
with handicrafts or manufacturers. But even in modern industry the
constant improvement of machinery and the development of the automatic
system has analogous effect.

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Machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better of
the worker, but always makes him superfluous. It is also a power
antagonistic to him, and as such capital makes use of it. It is the most
powerful weapon for repressing strikes and revolts of the workers against
the autocracy of capital. The steam engine was from the very first an
antagonist of human power; it enabled the capitalist to turn a deaf ear to
the growing claims of the workers who threatened the nascent factory
system with a crisis. Marx quotes Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam
hammer who gave the following evidence before the Trades Union
Commission, with regard to the improvements made by him in machinery
and introduced in consequence of the widespread long strikes of the
engineers in 1851: “The characteristic feature of our modern mechanical
improvements is the introduction of self-acting tool machinery. What
every mechanical worker has now to do, and what every boy can do, is
not to work himself but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine,
the whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill, is now
done away.  Formerly, I employed four boys to every machine. Thanks
to these new mechanical combinations I have reduced the number of
grown-up men from 1500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase
in my profits.”12

5. Lack of Compensation for the Workers Displaced by Machinery

Marx observes that bourgeois political economists like James
Mill, John Stuart Mill and others insist that all machinery that displaces
workers, necessarily and at the same time, sets free an amount of capital
sufficient to employ the same displaced workers. Marx argues to the
contrary as follows: “Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at
30 a year each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually laid out
amounts, therefore to £3,000. Suppose, also, that he discharges 50 of his
workmen, and employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him
£1,500. To simplify matters, we take no account of building, coal, &c.
Further suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs £3,000
both before and after the change. Is any capital set free by this
metamorphosis? Before the change, the total sum of £6,000 consisted
half of constant, and half of variable capital. After the change it consists
of £4,500 constant (£3,000 raw material and £1,500 machinery) and

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£1,500 variable capital. The variable capital instead of being one half, is
only one quarter, of the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of
the capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be exchanged
against labour power: variable has been changed into constant capital.
Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of £6,000, can in future
employ no more than 50 men. With each improvement in the machinery,
it will employ fewer.”13

He makes it clear that it is not machinery as such, but machinery
in the service of capital is to blame for displacing the workers. “It is an
undoubted fact machinery as such, is not responsible for setting free the
workmen from the means of subsistence… Machinery, considered alone,
shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the service of capital lengthens
them; … in itself it lightens labour, but when employed by capital,
heightens the intensity of labour; … in itself it is a victory of man over
the force of Nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of
those forces; … in itself it increases the wealth of the producers but in the
hands of capital, makes them paupers.”14 For the bourgeois economist
any employment of machinery, except by capital, is an impossibility. With
him, exploitation of the worker by the machine is identical with
exploitation of the machine by the worker.

6. The Impact of Modern Industry on Manufacture, Handicraft

and Domestic Industry

A. Removal of Cooperation Based on Handicraft and on the

Division of Labour

Machinery does away with cooperation based on handicrafts and
with manufacturer based on the division of handicraft labour. “An
example of the first sort is the mowing machine; it replaces cooperation
between mowers. A striking example of the second kind is the needle-
making machine. According to Adam Smith, 10 men, in his day, made in
cooperation, over 48,000 needles a day. On the other hand a single needle-
machine makes 145,000 needles in a working day of 11 hours. One
woman or one girl superintends four such machines, and so produces
near upon 600,000 needles in a day, and upwards of 3,000,000 in a
week.”15

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B. Adverse Impact of the Factory on Manufacture and

Domestic Industries

The development of the factory system changes the character of
production in all the other branches of industry. The principle of the factory
system is of analyzing the process of production into its constituent phases,
and of problem solving by application of mechanics, chemistry and other
sciences. This principle of the factory becomes the determining principle
everywhere. Machinery finds its way into the manufacturing industries.
The organization of the manufacturing industries based on the old division
of labour is destroyed and constant changes are made. Unlike in the
manufacturing period, the division of labour is based on the cheap labour
of women, children and unskilled labours. Cheap labour is found not
only in the factories, but also in domestic industry which is converted
into an outside department of the factory. Marx laments that the
exploitation of cheap labour process is carried out flagrantly in modern
manufacture than in the factory. It is because the technical foundation of
the factory system which is the substitution of machines for muscular
power, and the light character of the labour are absent in manufacture.
Moreover women and children are exposed to poisonous and injurious
substances.

7. Modern Industry and Agriculture

Marx draws our attention to the changes in agriculture affected
by modern industry. Agricultural machines replace labourers. Modern
industry in the field of agriculture annihilate the peasant, the bulwark of
the old society and replaces him by the wage labourer. As a result, the
desire for social changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the
same level in the villages as in the towns. The old-fashioned methods of
agriculture are replaced by scientific ones. Capitalist production
completely destroys the bond of union, which held together agriculture
and manufacture. In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation
of production under the control of capital means destruction of the
producers. The instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving,
exploiting and impoverishing the labourer. The social organization of
labour process is turned into an organized mode of crushing the worker’s
individual vitality and freedom. The dispersion of the rural labourers

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over large areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration
increases that of the urban operatives. All progress in capitalist agriculture
not only robs the labourer, but robs the soil as well. All progress in
increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress toward
ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. “The more a country starts its
development on the foundations of modern industry, like the United States,
for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist
production develops technology, and the combining together of various
processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all
wealth — the soil and the labourer.”16

To sum up, in Marx’s perception, the following are the effects of
machinery on the labourer: appropriation of supplementary labour-power,
prolongation of the working-day, intensification of labour, the inhuman
conditions in the factory, the conflict between the worker and the machine,
lack of compensation for the workers displaced by machinery, removal
of cooperation based on handicraft and on the division of labour, adverse
impact of the factory on manufacture and domestic industries and finally
the negative impact of modern industry on agriculture especially robbing
the soil of its fertility.

Marx’s critique of technology is a part of his critique of capitalism.
The key to his critique of capitalism is his theory of surplus value that
explains how capital grows by consuming living labour. Labour-power
produces surplus value. The exploitation of the surplus value is the basis
of capitalism. Labour power is provided by living human beings who
have their own needs and aspiration. Capitalism separates labour and
the satisfaction of human aspiration. For Marx, labour is the most essential
characteristic of human life. Labour is physical commerce with nature.
It is in labour man creates himself and nature which is the object of his
activity. Marx depicts how alienation and dehumanization takes place in
capitalism. Alienation means the subjugation of man by his own works.
Alienation is the process in which man deprives himself of what he really
is, of his own humanity. The worker’s own labour and its products become
alien to him. Labour is treated as commodity, which means the worker
himself has become a commodity. He is forced to sell himself at the market
price. Paradoxically, the more wealth the worker produces, the poorer he
gets. It is not only the product of the labour that is alienated from the

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worker, but labour itself is alienated as it is not a means of self-
determination but of dehumanization. He works for the sake of keeping
himself and his family alive. Labour is no more a specifically human
activity through which he realizes his essence as a human being, but a
means to satisfy his biological needs. He is alienated from other human
beings as well and social existence is impossible.

The commodification of the worker means that he is turned into
a thing, deprived of a free and human existence. The capitalist is reduced
to an abstract money-power. Marx writes in his Economic and
Philosophical Manuscript “My power is as great as the power of money.
The attributes and essential strength of money are those of myself, its
owner. It is not my own personality, which decides what I am and what I
can afford. I may be ugly, but I can buy the prettiest woman alive;
consequently I am not ugly, since money destroys the repellent power of
ugliness. I may be lame, but with money I can have a coach and six;
therefore I am not lame. I may be bad, dishonest, ruthless and narrow-
minded, but money ensures respect for itself and the possessor. Money is
the supreme good, and a man who has it must be good also.”17 Alienation
of labour paralyses man’s personal life, species life and community life.
Capitalism, which breeds alienation, is interested exclusively in surplus
value. “Capital cares nothing for the length of the life of labour-power.
All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power
that can be rendered fluent in a working day. It attains this end by
shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches
increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.”18 Being
forced to sell his labour-power the worker hardly has time to develop
himself as a human being. He faces the tragic reality of technology, which
is at the service of the capitalist.

“The fulfillment of humanity is not, in Marx’s view, a matter of
attaining some final imagined perfection, but of freeing man forever from
conditions that hamper his growth and make him the slave of his own
works.”19 Marx envisioned the cessation of alienation in socialism. “The
working class has conquered nature; now it must conquer man” (Marx
in the People’s Paper, 18 March 1854.)20 To conquer man is to create
conditions wherein men control their labour forces and the results of
their actions cannot turn against them. Socialism does not mean essentially

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abolition of material poverty or the luxurious consumption of the
bourgeoisie, but the abolition of alienation by doing away with the division
of labour. The liberation of humanity does not mean simply the satisfaction
of material needs but achieving a full and multifaceted life for all. Marx
stood for the abolition of the division of labour, which not only crippled
human beings physically and spiritually but also condemned them to a
lifeless monotony and one-sidedness. The cardinal task of socialism is to
enable everyone to develop their abilities to the fullest in the social context.
For Marx, the essential difference between capitalism and socialism is
that in the former human beings are degraded into things and in the latter
they recover their subjectivity.

In the capitalist division of labour one is forced to do a particular
activity from which there is hardly an escape. One is a hunter, a fisherman,
a shepherd or a critic and must remain so for the sake of livelihood.
Whereas in the socialist society none has a particular sphere of activity
and one can specialize in what one wishes. As Marx would say, it is
possible for one to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in
the morning, to fish in the afternoon, to rear cattle in the evening, to
criticize after supper without becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or
critic. This sounds utopian. We do not find such a thing happening in
socialist countries.

On the one hand, the credit goes to Marx, a pioneer, for
undertaking a study of the relationship between capitalism and technology
and of the dehumanizing effects of capitalist technology. His analysis
exposes the inhuman nature of capitalist technology. We are drawn to
appreciate Marx’s concern for fellow human beings, especially the
working class whose labour-power was bought by the capitalist to increase
the surplus value toward accumulation of wealth. On the other hand, we
may ask ourselves how valid would be Marx’s expectation that in the
socialist societies dehumanization of labour created by capitalism would
cease to exist. There is hardly any evidence that the socialist societies
have solved the problems of alienation of labour. With state ownership
of the means of production, planning has been introduced. So the workers
are no longer at the mercy of the capitalist bosses. They may enjoy job
security, health care, education and other social benefits. But other thing
like organization of labour process, technical division of labour, rigid

Joseph I. Fernando  15



16

control of management and so on are like in capitalist countries. In other
words, the basic causes of alienation, division of labour and wage-labour
exist in socialist countries. Marx was optimistic that technology would
cease to be a means of alienation in a socialist society. But this dream of
Marx remains still utopian as we know from socialist experiments.
Humankind is yet to learn how to handle technology responsibly.
Humankind is yet to learn how to share the resources of the world
equitably. Humankind is yet to learn what it means to be human.

16  Prajñâ Vihâra



17

ENDNOTES

1Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1986, Chapter
XV.

2Marx writes in the footnote: “Mill should have said ‘of any human being
not fed by other people’s labour,’ for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased
the number of well-to-do idlers.”

3Capital, Vol. I, p. 373.
4Ibid., p 379.
5Ibid., p. 382.
6Ibid., p. 384.
7Ibid., p. 387.
8Ibid., p. 389.
9Ibid., p. 398.
10Ibid., pp. 398-399.
11Ibid., p. 406.
12Ibid., pp. 401-402.
13Ibid., p. 411.
14Ibid., pp. 413-414.
15Ibid., p. 415-416.
16Bastian Wielenga, Introduction to Marxism, Centre for Social Action,

New Delhi, 1977, pp. 77-78.
17Quoted from Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. I,

Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 139.
18Capital, Vol. I, p. 253.
19Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. I, p. 265
20Ibid., p. 284.

Joseph I. Fernando  17