The machine process is the most effective political instrument in industrial society
Evidence
Today political power asserts itself through its power over the machine process and over the technical organization of the apparatus. The government of advanced and advancing industrial societies can maintain and secure itself only when it succeeds in mobilizing, organizing, and exploiting the technical, scientific, and mechanical productivity available to industrial civilization. And this productivity mobilizes society as a whole, above and beyond any particular individual or group interests. The brute fact that the machine’s physical (only physical?) power surpasses that of the individual, and of any particular group of individuals, makes the machine the most effective political instrument in any society whose basic organization is that of the machine process. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 110
Categorization
- XREF: The machine as ‘most effective political instrument’ extends Marx’s analysis of fixed capital and prefigures later arguments that technological infrastructure itself governs — links to the trees-as-infrastructure essay’s treatment of infrastructure as governance. — connects to: Technological rationality functions as political rationality in industrial society — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 100; Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 34; Scientific-technological ordering is inherently political — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 618
Broader Connections
- Technological rationality functions as political rationality in industrial society
#corroborates(0.95) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 100 - Scientific-technological ordering is inherently political
#corroborates(0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 618 - Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society
#expands(0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34