Nationalization alone cannot alter technology’s embodied rationality

Evidence

In advanced capitalism, technical rationality is embodied, in spite of its irrational use, in the productive apparatus. This applies not only to mechanized plants, tools, and exploitation of resources, but also to the mode of labor as adaptation to and handling of the machine process, as arranged by “scientific management.” Neither nationalization nor socialization alter by themselves this physical embodiment of technological rationality; on the contrary, the latter remains a precondition for the socialist development of all productive forces. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 164

Categorization

• QUESTION: Marcuse claims even socialism inherits the machine’s technical rationality — a direct challenge to Soviet Marxism that remains live in debates over platform cooperatives today.
• XREF: connects to: Technology carries no inherent politics; usage determines its effects; Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 410; Buying technology does not make a society technologically advanced — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1628 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Political change becomes social change only through redirecting technology #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 801
• Technology carries no inherent politics; usage determines its effects #qualifies (0.82)
• Buying technology does not make a society technologically advanced #expands (0.80) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1628
• No technology is neutral; each reproduces or contests power #corroborates (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 2421
• Technology’s political neutrality collapses when it becomes the universal form of production #corroborates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 572
• Colonized peoples accept technology once it serves their own revolution #corroborates (0.78)
• Technology becomes accepted only when it serves revolutionary interests #corroborates (0.77)
• Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically #complicates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410