“I Am Not Advocating A Romantic Regression Behind Technology”

Philosopher Herbert Marcuse imagined technology untangled from capitalism, but it’s difficult to see how that’s possible in the foreseeable future. Not if we want cheap tools delivered to masses of people. Though perhaps we’ll all end up doing genetic engineering. From “The End of Utopia“:

“In the form of a social productive force, these new vital needs would make possible a total technical reorganization of the concrete world of human life, and I believe that new human relations, new relations between men, would be possible only in such a reorganized world. When I say technical reorganization I again speak with reference to the capitalist countries that are most highly developed, where such a restructuring would mean the abolition of the terrors of capitalist industrialization and commercialization, the total reconstruction of the cities and the restoration of nature after the horror of capitalist industrialization have been done away with. I hope that when I speak of doing away with the horrors of capitalist industrialization it is clear I am not advocating a romantic regression behind technology. On the contrary, I believe that the potential liberating blessings of technology and industrialization will not even begin to be real and visible until capitalist industrialization and capitalist technology have been done away with.”

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