Marx and the Machine

As an aside in a discussion of the status of the concepts of economics, Karl Marx wrote handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.' The aphorism has stuck; as a succinct precis of technological determinism it has few rivals. Apt and memorable (even if historically inaccurate)2 as it is, it is nevertheless misleading. There is much in Marx's writings on that cannot be captured by any simple technological determinism. Indeed, his major discussion of the subject-occupying a large part of volume 1 of Capital-suggests a quite different perspective. Marx argued that in the most significant complex of technical changes of his time, the coming of large-scale mechanized production, social relations molded technology, rather than vice versa. His account is not without its shortcomings, both empirical and theoretical. Yet interest in it is beginning to revive, and deservedly so. It resonates excitingly with some of the best modern work in the history of technology. Even where these studies force us to revise some of Marx's conclusions, they show the continuing historical relevance of his account of the machine. Its possible political relevance is shown by an interesting connection between the practice of the alternative technology movement and an important way of studying the social shaping of technology.