The masters of industrial society are themselves trapped by the machinery they administer

Evidence

Conversely, as reification tends to become totalitarian by virtue of its technological form, the organizers and administrators themselves become increasingly dependent on the machinery which they organize and administer. And this mutual dependence is no longer the dialectical relationship between Master and Servant, which has been broken in the struggle for mutual recognition, but rather a vicious circle which encloses both the Master and the Servant. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 188

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the Hegelian Master-Servant dialectic — both poles lose agency to the apparatus, mirroring how algorithm designers are themselves captive to platform logics. — connects to: Industrial society reduces individuals to interchangeable species beings through conformist working conditions; Machine mastery perpetuates rather than ends enslavement — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 635
• ADDENDUM: Echoes the graft/trees article’s infrastructure argument: the arbiter of a system is also bound within it, though Marcuse gives the point a darker political edge.

Broader Connections

• Machine mastery perpetuates rather than ends enslavement #corroborates (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 635
• Industrial society reduces individuals to interchangeable species beings through conformist working conditions #expands (0.75)