Productive Forces and The Reification of Technology
Other interpretations, sometimes influenced by postmodernism and the concept of commodity fetishism have by contrast emphasized the reification of the powers of technology, said to occur by the separation of technique from the producers, and by falsely imputing human powers to technology as autonomous force, the effect being a perspective of inevitable and unstoppable technological progress operating beyond any human control, and impervious to human choices.
In turn, this is said to have the effect of naturalising and legitimating social arrangements produced by people, by asserting that they are technically inevitable. The error here seems to be that that social relations between people are confused and conflated with technical relations between people and things, and object relations between things; but this error is said to be a spontaneous result of the operation of a universal market and the process of commercialization.
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Famous quotes containing the words productive, forces and/or technology:
“Youth is disagreeable time, for it is neither possible then nor prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The next thing his Lordship does, after clearing of the coast, is the dividing of his forces, as he calls them, into two squadrons, one of places of Scriptures, the other of reasons....
All that I have to say touching this, is that I observe a great part of those his forces do look and march another way, and some of them fight amongst themselves.”
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“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)