No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Mr Andrew has chosen an important topic for discussion, one which embraces some of the most significant theoretical and practical issues in contemporary society (both capitalist and socialist). His article is concerned with the concept of technological rationality, considered in the light of the attitudes of Marx and Marcuse towards the nature of work. He lists a series of points on which their attitudes differ and claims that “These differences may be seen to derive from a single source, namely, that Marx was not an adherent of technological rationality and Marcuse is.” In what follows I would like to comment briefly on his argument and to indicate the results of some other recent contributions to this discussion.
1 Andrew, Edward, “Work and Freedom in Marcuse and Marx,” this Journal, III, no. 2 (June 1970), 241–56.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 255.
3 “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology,’” Toward a Rational Society, trans. Shapiro, J. (Boston, 1970)Google Scholar; first published in German in 1968.
4 Their essays will be found in the collection Antworten auf Herbert Marcuse, ed. Habermas, J. (Frankfurt, 1968).Google Scholar Bergmann's distinction between “technical rationality” and “technological rationality” is helpful.
5 “One-Dimensionality: The Universal Semiotic of Technological Experience,” Critical Interruptions, ed. Breines, P. (New York, 1970).Google Scholar
6 Kritik der “Politischen Technologie” (Frankfurt, 1970).
7 “Industrialism and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber,” Negations (Boston, 1968), 218; One-Dimensional Man (Boston, 1964), 231. The essay on Weber is fundamental for understanding Marcuse's thought on the topics under discussion here.
8 One-Dimensional Man, 18.
9 Ibid., 237.
10 The reference (at p. 254 of the article) is to ibid., pp. 231, 237.
11 Ibid., p. 236.
12 “The Obsolescence of Marxism,” Marx and the Western World, ed. Lobkowicz, N. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1967), p. 415.Google Scholar
13 Der Begriff der Natur in der Lehre von Marx (Frankfurt, 1962).
14 Marx, penseur de la technique: de l'aliénation de l'homme à la conquête du monde (3rd ed., Paris, 1969). Fallot, Jean, Marx et le machinisme (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar criticizes Axelos and sketches Marx's views more accurately.
15 “Über die philosophischen Grundlagen des wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Arbeitsbegriffs” (1933), reprinted in Kultur und Gesellschaft 2 (Frankfurt, 1965); “Neue Quellen zur Grundlegung des historischen Materialismus” (1932), reprinted in Ideen zu einer kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1968).