Industrial society reduces individuals to interchangeable species beings through conformist working conditions

Evidence

The capitalist has the power (though by no means arbitrary or total) to mobilize the powers of co-operation, division of labour, and machinery as powers of capital over labour. The result is an organized detail division of labour within the factory, which reduces the labourer to a fragment of a person. ‘The absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realized’ (Capital, 1 : 340). — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 634 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

While science freed nature from inherent ends and stripped matter of all but quantifiable qualities, society freed men from the “natural” hierarchy of personal dependence and related them to each other in accordance with quantifiable qualities—namely, as units of abstract labor power, calculable in units of time. “By virtue of the rationalization of the modes of labor, the elimination of qualities is transferred from the universe of science to that of daily experience.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 583 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Scientific quantification of nature parallels society’s reduction of humans to abstract labor power. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 583; Industrial capitalism operates as a machine that degrades and mechanizes colonized peoples — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 265; People are reduced to objects whether addressed as employees or consumers — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 113 (+19 more)

Broader Connections

• Factory division of labor reduces workers to fragments of persons #exemplifies (0.90) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 634
• Scientific quantification of nature parallels society’s reduction of humans to abstract labor power. #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 583
• Industrial progress destroys the conception of the person as a bearer of reason #expands (0.82)
• Industrial capitalism operates as a machine that degrades and mechanizes colonized peoples #expands (0.80) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 265
• Industrial civilization’s habits arise through coercive subjugation of instinct, not consent #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1108
• Capitalism’s socialized labor is experienced by individuals as alien market relations #expands (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 889
• People are reduced to objects whether addressed as employees or consumers #exemplifies (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 113
• Industrialized society eliminates floating street populations by absorbing people into organized work #complicates (0.75) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 382
• Utopian engineering reduces people to decorative elements rather than actors. #exemplifies (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 179
• Individual diversity can be conceived as a division of labor among unique beings #contradicts (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 691
• Avoiding plurality produces social monoculture that destroys existing dynamism #expands (0.72) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 476