Benjamin blamed positivism for a defective reception of nineteenth-century technology

Evidence

The crisis of the present day consisted, for Benjamin, in the destructive consequences of a defective reception of technology' which was characteristic of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century's reception of technology ignored the fact that technology serves this society solely for the production of commodities’. Positivism saw `in the development of technology … only the progress of science, not the retrogression of society … It also escaped the positivists among the theoreticians of Social Democracy that the development of technology made it more and more difficult for the proletariat to take possession of itan act that was seen to be more and more necessary.’ The image of technology among the bourgeoisie, and among the positivists who formed a majority of the Social Democrats, came from Die Gartenlaube. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 827

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘technology serves commodity production’ claim prefigures critical-theory debates later taken up by Adorno and Marcuse. — connects to: Positivists mistook technology’s social regression for scientific progress — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 827; Benjamin framed technology as either mass salvation or catastrophic regression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 826; Positivist philosophy imposes an empirical a priori that cannot be transcended — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 671 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Die Gartenlaube as emblem of bourgeois-technological consciousness — worth chasing the significance of that specific magazine reference.

Broader Connections

• Positivist philosophy imposes an empirical a priori that cannot be transcended #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 671