Automatic Systems after Marx

ABSTRACT

This article foregrounds the relevance of Marx’s analysis of machines beyond 19th century industrial technology. Can a Marxian analysis shed light on the historical implications of contemporary digital technology and automation? The article proposes that “automatic systems,” an expression from volume 1 of Capital, could serve as the guiding conceptual tool for envisaging possible answers to this question. A close reading of mainly volume 1 of Capital, in addition to Marx’s preparatory notes for Capital, is presented in the second and main section of this article. The overarching argument is that contrary to claims otherwise, the foundation laid out in Capital provides us with a structural analysis that neither is technologically determinist nor denies the social significance of technological shifts as the material condition for class struggle. This argument will be preceded by a detailed and critical discussion of an ongoing debate in Marxist theory today, notably literature inspired by authors such as A. Negri and P. Virno. The article concludes with the relationship between knowledge and capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Marx
• technology
• automatic systems
• fragment on machines
• value-form

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dariush M. Doust

Dariush M. Doust is Professor of Philosophy and the Director for the Center for Research in Continental Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Shanxi University. He has been working as a professor of art theory at the Academy of Arts in Sweden and a research fellow at Uppsala University and a docent affiliated with the Department of History of Ideas, University of Goteborg, Sweden. In China, he has been Professor in philosophy at the School of Philosophy and Sociology in Beijing Normal University. He has written extensively on diverse topics in radical philosophy, critical theories, contemporary art theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Most recently, he has published the work “Dix thèses sur anti-philosophie (Ten Theses on Anti-philosophy)” in the volume Acte révolutionnaire, acte analytique (Revolutionary Act, Analytical Act) (Paris, France).