Mechanization is erasing the physiological basis of Marx’s proletarian concept
Evidence
Mechanization is increasingly reducing the quantity and intensity of physical energy expended in labor. This evolution is of great bearing on the Marxian concept of the worker (proletarian). To Marx, the proletarian is primarily the manual laborer who expends and exhausts his physical energy in the work process, even if he works with machines. The purchase and use of this physical energy, under subhuman conditions, for the private appropriation of surplus-value entailed the revolting inhuman aspects of exploitation; the Marxian notion denounces the physical pain and misery of labor. This is the material, tangible element in wage slavery and alienation—the physiological and biological dimension of classical capitalism. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 167
Categorization
- XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s critical-theory project and bridges to later claims about the disappearance of the revolutionary subject in advanced industrial society. — connects to: Marx overemphasized economics while neglecting power and technical detail — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2847; The universal-proletariat claim persisted as non-empirical doctrine in Marxism; Neoliberal capitalism exploits the psyche rather than the body as its central productive force — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 63 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- The universal-proletariat claim persisted as non-empirical doctrine in Marxism
#corroborates(0.80) - Marx overemphasized economics while neglecting power and technical detail
#qualifies(0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2847 - Marx and Engels saw labor, speech, and brain development as mutually reinforcing evolution
#contradicts(0.75) - Neoliberal capitalism exploits the psyche rather than the body as its central productive force
#complicates(0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 63 - From Marx to McLuhan technology is theorized as an extension of the body
#corroborates(0.72) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 362 - Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self
#complicates(0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421