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The Ambivalence of TechnologyAuthor(s): Andrew FeenbergSource: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 33, No. 1, Critical Theory (Spring, 1990), pp. 35-50Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1388976 .

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Sociological Perspectives Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 35-50 Copyright ? 1990 Pacific Sociological Association ISSN 0731-1214

THE AMBIVALENCE OF TECHNOLOGY ANDREW FEENBERG

San Diego State University

ABSTRACT: Marx is at his most persuasive when he shows that technology is not an autonomous thing one can be for or against, but that technological design is relative to political forces which depend in turn on social interests. Thus, technology is an ambivalent dimension of the social process and, like education, law, the military, and the corporate structure, it is involved in social struggles wphich determine what it is and will become. This position implies the necessity of a democratic technical politics, contrary to the prevailing practice of the existing commu(nist and socialist societies which treat technology as a sociopolitical invlariant.

THREE CRITIQUES OF TECHNOLOGY

Must human beings submit to the harsh logic of machinery, or can technology be fundamentally redesigned to better serve its creators? This is the ultimate question on which the future of industrial civilization depends. Marxism addresses this question in a powerful and cogent analysis of the ills of industrialism. A great deal can still be learned from the Marxist approach, but only if its many ambiguities and problems are first resolved. That is the purpose of this article,' which offers a preliminary sketch of a critical theory of technology based on a critique of Marxist premises.

Marx was neither a naive technological enthusiast nor was he a romantic critic of technical progress. He carefully limited his criticism to the "bad use" of machinery. But the middle position is difficult to defend, as theorists of technology have found down to the present day; there is a risk that even the most modest challenge to the virtues of progress may be seen as evidence of a disposition to machine breaking. Anticipating such reactions, Marx com- plained in advance about the critic who "implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid enough to contend against, not the capitalistic employment of machinery, but machinery itself" (Marx 1906:1, 482).

It is easy to understand why Marx did not wish to be tarred with the same brush as the infamous Nedd Ludd, but the distinction between "employment" Direct all correspondence to: Andrew Feenberg, Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182



36 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 33, Number 1, 1990

and technology "in itself" is not very helpful in clarifying his position. Indeed, every significant dimension of technology can be considered a "use" of some sort. For example, we consider such different things as war, electric lighting, and the assembly line to be "uses" of technology in different senses. Furthermore, terms such as "technology" and "machinery" are ambiguous and may refer either to particular technologies used for this or that substan- tive end, or to technology as a general field containing various possibilities, each of which may be considered a "use."

To say that technology is "badly employed" may refer to problems as different as what purpose particular technologies are employed to accomplish, how they are employed whatever the purpose, or the way in which technical principles are employed in putting them together in the first place. A critique of the uses to which technology is put may thus mean at least the following three things, none of which is mutually exclusive:

1. technology is used for bad ends, such as killing people; 2. it is applied without reasonable precaution despite the hazards it repre-

sents for those affected by its operation; 3. its design is not optimal from the standpoint of protecting or furthering

the values of workers, consumers, or other affected groups.

It is not easy to know which view Marx actually held because he seems to have believed elements of all three without ever clearly distinguishing between them. Thus, by omitting references, which are sometimes obscure in any case, one easily arrives at the Marx one wishes to find. I briefly review these various positions as they appear in Marx's work or are attributed to him. However, my purpose is less to produce an account of Marx's views than to arrive at a persuasive formulation of a critical position on technology. Such a position must take into account what we have learned in the past seventy years from observing the communist world, as well as the lessons of recent environmental movements.

According to a widespread view of Marx, he intended the first and only the first of the three positions outlined above. Marx's critique would then be a banal objection to the wastefulness of employing technology for private purposes rather than to serve human needs in general. Marx would have attacked the ends technology serves under capitalism, while suspending judgment on the means. This is a theory of the "innocence" of technology which, as an ensemble of tools available for any use whatsoever, cannot be blamed for the particular uses to which it is put.

This neutrality theory of technology has many applications I have discussed elsewhere, only one of which is relevant here (Feenberg 1987). I will call this application the product critique of technology because it focuses exclusively on the worth of the products for which technology is used and regards



THE AMBIVALENCE OF TECHOLOGY 37

technology "in itself" as unsullied by its role in producing them. Here is a plausible formulation of this critique with which Marx was undoubtedly in agreement:

1. Although the advance of technology has the potential to serve the human race as a whole, under capitalism its contribution to human welfare is largely squandered on the production of luxuries and war.

Because support for this view can be found in Marx, certain parties and theorists argue that he endorsed the neutrality theory as a whole. One also hears from the same sources that only such a critique of technology is compatible with Marxist materialism, according to which technology is an element of the base and not relative to class interests as are the superstructures. Yet this is certainly not a full account of Marx's position, for it leaves out his theory of the shaping of technology and the division of labor by the requirements of capitalist control (Thompson 1983). The claim or charge that Marx was an uncritical enthusiast of technology thus rests on a highly selective reading of the texts, and will not be considered further here.

There is plenty of evidence that, in addition to criticizing the products capitalists choose to make, Marx also believed that the application of technology is fundamentally flawed under capitalism. The widespread abuses resulting from "the capitalistic employment of machinery" include such things as harming the soil to extract maximum agricultural yields, and failing to safeguard the health and welfare of workers in the factories.

According to this view, the problems caused by capitalist technology are due to factors such as the length of the workday, the pace of work, the provision of inadequate safety equipment and training, and so on. These problems are so very significant because the production process is not merely a means to an end, but shapes the mental and physical activity of workers and constitutes an environment for a significant portion of the population during much of the day. Subserved to the requirements of class power, this environment becomes a menace to those who must live within it. Here is a brief statement of this process critique of technology:

2. Under capitalism, technology is applied in ways that are destructive of man and nature because the pursuit of maximum profit and the mainte- nance of capitalist power on the workplace are incompatible with the protection of the workers and the environment from the hazards of industrial production.

This theory represents a second dimension of Marx's critique of technology. While compatible with the product critique, the process critique does not describe technology as "innocent" but asserts, on the contrary, that industrial tools are a constant source of dangers that must be avoided through




scientific study and humane and rational planning unbiased by the drive for power and profit. This theory combined with the first adds up to a product and process critique, which is truer to Marx's approach to technology than the first theory taken alone.

This view is exemplified by the traditional Marxist theory of the transition to socialism, which calls for relatively simple technical modifications in the foreseeable future, and preaches resignation to many of the inevitable evils of machine industry until the distant "higher phase" in which fundamental design changes will finally occur. For example, Kautsky's The Class Struggle ([1892] 1971) discusses the capitalist division of labor and authoritarian management under the general heading of the consequences of technological advance, and promises workers a reduction in labor time under socialism, but no reform in their condition as workers (Kautsky [1892] 1971:155-160). Similarly, Bebel's classic Woman Under Socialism (1904) treats the reforms required to avoid wasteful, unpleasant, and hazardous production in consid- erable detail, but when it comes to discussing technological innovation we are promised advances such as the automation of stone breaking and the artificial production of food rather than fundamental changes in the design of production technology and the labor process (Bebel 1904:283-298).

Thus, despite the presence of a critical appreciation of technology, this second formulation of Marxism, like the first view taken alone, is often associated with the "technicist" or "productivist" belief that the main flaw in capitalism is the obstacles it places in the path of the growth of the productive forces. Whether these obstacles are a wasteful choice of ends or a wasteful application of means, the technology developed under capitalism is seen here as immediately available without major transformation for a different and more humane application.

There is yet a third critique of technology in Marx. While he never states this third theory explicitly, it is a plausible implication of several strands of his argument concerning the organization of labor and innovation. Accord- ing to this design critique, the very construction of capitalist technology is distorted by the hierarchical organization of capitalist production (Gorz 1978; Slater 1980). This is a much more difficult position to explain than the product and process critiques discussed above. To begin, I show briefly how I relate this theory of technological design to more familiar aspects of Marx's views, such as his critique of the capitalist control of economic life.

According to Marx, capitalist management is based on two defining "moments," a technical moment, concerned with efficiency, and a social moment related to the reproduction of capitalist power. For Marx, capitalist control of the labor process crosses the line between these two moments. On the one hand, it has a clear technical necessity, demanded by the conditions for the successful cooperation of large numbers of people: this is the work of supervision inseparable from large-scale production. On the other hand, this same system of control is designed to produce an income for the capitalist, a




goal that flows from no technical necessity and that is not served voluntarily by the workers.3 This conceptual distinction underlies Marx 's demonstra- tion that some of the worst aspects of capitalism, such as its dehumanizing division of labor, depend not on the efficiency criterion alone, but on the requirements of system reproduction.4

The relation between these distinct social and technical functions is not entirely clear. If they are related only externally, then Marx's complaint would be that capitalists meddle in technical affairs, violating technical norms in pursuit of power and wealth. On these terms, the product and process critique of technology would ultimately suffice to incorporate this new aspect of Marx's theory. But there is some evidence that Marx did not conceive the social and technical dimensions of production as two "things" standing in conflict under capitalism. Rather, they are condensed in the imperative criteria of capitalist development. These criteria can be explained sociologically in terms of the capitalist's position in the economy.

Capitalists and their managerial representatives possess an unusual degree of operational autonomy in the control of production as compared with political and economic leaders of earlier societies, and they use that freedom to manage and mechanize the workplace in such a way as to extract profits from the firm. The preservation and enlargement of the capitalist's operational autonomy, as the very essence of his social position, is the invariant requirement of all successful activity undertaken from that position in the social system. So powerful and self-evident is the pressure to reproduce the capitalist's operational autonomy that it becomes a constant factor in the construction of technologies, work rules, job descriptions, accounting systems, and, indeed, it is eventually incorporated into the standard procedures in every domain, prejudging the solution to every practical problem in terms of certain types of technical responses.

As Marcuse writes in his critique of Weber, the "technological rationality" of capitalism presupposes

the separation of the workers from the means of production ... (as) a technical necessity requiring the individual and private direction and control of the means of production. . . The highly material, historical fact of the private- capitalist enterprise thus becomes ... a formal structural element of capitalism and of rational economic activity itself (Marcuse 1968:212).

In sum, the very principles underlying technical decisions embody the social assumptions of the capitalist system.

This technological rationality can be shown to consist in a specific code which governs the construction and interpretation of technical systems and languages. I follow here Guillaume's definition of social codes "as the ensemble of associations between signifiers (objects, services, acts . . .) and that which they signify in society, associations created or controlled by organiza-




tions as a basis of their existence and if possible their development" (Guil- laume 1975:64).

On these terms,the condensation of capitalist social and technical requirements Marcuse describes could be called the technical code of capitalism. This code presides over the destruction of all the traditional contexts of labor and gives the capitalist control of work organization and innovation, insuring that the firm will operate to maximize his power over the labor force. It is this technical code which is the underlying basis of the social technology of capitalism.

This interpretation of Marx's distinction between the social and technical dimensions of production explains his claim that innovation under capitalism is responsive to class interests in the pursuit of increased power over the labor force and not just to the generic interest in the pursuit of increased power over nature. Progress is governed simultaneously by at least these two criteria, both of which must be satisfied if an innovation is to be introduced.

Thus, Marx says of science that it "is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital" (Marx 1906:1, 475). And he claims that "it would be possible to write quite a history of inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class" (Marx 1906:1, 476).5 Technology is shaped in its design and development by the social purposes of capital, particularly by the need to maintain and further a division of labor that keeps the labor force safely under control.

To summarize, this design critique argues that:

3. Technological progress achieves advances of general utility, but the form in which these advances are realized is through and through determined by the social power under which they are made and insures that they also serve the interests of that power.

According to this view, technology is a dependent variable in the social system, shaped to a purpose by the dominant class, and subject to reshaping to new purposes under a new power.6

Marx believed that the possession and exercise of class power determines the general course of technological advance over long periods. An undemo- cratic class power (that of the capitalist class, Marx would argue), eliminates technologies that threaten its interests, while a democratic power would similarly emphasize developments favorable to it. Since, under socialism, workers would control not only day-to-day production but also the long- term reproduction of society, they could use that control to change the very nature of technology and work which, for the first time in history, would concern a ruling class with a motive to alter them. The application of these




new social criteria of development would eventually yield an alternative industrial system, adapted to different class interests and based on a different culture.

TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSITION Each of these interpretations of Marx's position has its advocates. The product and process critique is routinely attributed to Marx by "orthodox" communist interpretations of Marxism and by much of recent critical theory. It is the basis, for example, of the Soviet "theory of the scientific and technological revolution." Wellmer, representing critical theory, would agree, although he expresses the point negatively when he accuses Marx of "latent positiv- ism," which becomes the dominant trend in later orthodox Marxism (Wellmer 1974:chap. 2). Reduced to its lowest common denominator, this "positivist" Marxism derives historical development from the technologically determined sequence of modes of production. On the other hand, labor process theory implies a design critique, according to which the very form of technological development depends on social as well as technical factors.

I do not wish to contribute a chapter to this debate about Marx's views, especially since I doubt if he ever distinguished the various theories in question clearly enough in his own mind to notice their very different political implications. The more important problem that concerns us here is to address the different implications of the various theories. If the product and process critique is correct, the abolition of the capitalist form of property would suffice to resolve the social problems caused by technology. But the design critique implies the need for significant changes to adapt technology to a new social power.

Following the former approach, the victorious Russian revolutionaries assumed that the industrial apparatus inherited from capitalism could be operated unchanged by a workers' state. Thus, when they found that early experiments in workers' control reduced efficiency, they did not consider attempting to adapt the conditions of production to new social requirements but rather quickly reintroduced one-man management and the most rigor- ous control from above (Azrael 1966; Bailes 1978; Gvishiani 1972).

No doubt these measures were motivated originally by an emergency situation. But soon the leading German theoretician of social ownership, Eduard Heimann, could write that "The introduction of factory councils has conceptually nothing to do with socialization" (Kellner 1971:132; Rusconi 1975). Communist leaders believed in the imperative requirements of the existing technology and division of labor, which they judged to be neutral as between social systems. If, as the "base" of modern production, the technology created under capitalism is common to all industrial societies, then democracy must in fact remain behind at the factory gate just as the capitalists had always claimed.




The product and process critique is compatible with this conclusion, and also with the traditional theory of the transition to socialism. But the design critique also suggests that the transfer of power over the apparatus will pose much more complex problems than those communist revolutionaries generally believed themselves to be facing. The technical inheritance of capitalism is peculiarly adapted to hierarchical organization, whether or not it is operated by capitalist owners. This hierarchical structure, rooted in the technical code of capitalism, is available in any social system as a basis for an alienated power. The democratization of industrial society would not therefore be a merely formal matter of changing the form of ownership and the procedures for recruiting and selecting those in charge. In addition, it would be necessary to identify and to transform aspects of capitalist technology and the related division of labor which conflict with the principle of democratic control.

The design critique thus leads to the conclusion that the classical distinction between base and superstructure offers no guidance to transitional policy, and that after a socialist revolution technology would have to be recon- structed much like the state, law, and other institutions inherited from capitalist society. Correspondingly, if the establishment of a workers' power requires fundamental technological change, then perhaps the failure of the existing communist societies to engage in such a reconstructive technical politics may be one of the reasons for the powerlessness of workers in those societies.

This reconstructive task would be extremely difficult. We cannot know in advance exactly what technical changes would be required to create a suitable environment for building socialism. That must be learned from experi- ment and struggle. Nor can poor socialist countries buy "appropriate" technology from rich capitalist ones. Despite these difficulties, the idea of socialism is more plausible in this conception than in the traditional one, according to which the "assembled producers" need only seize the state through their representatives to transform society.

At least here, the claim that socialism can organize a real transfer of power rests on an understanding of the obstacles presented by the high level of systemic integration between such different aspects of capitalist society as the design of technology, the division of labor and the distribution of social power. Overcoming these obstacles will require a more radical "deep democratization" of capitalist society, extending down to its technological basis, to transform its inheritance into a suitable foundation for a freer society (Fleron 1977; Feenberg 1979).

THE AMBIVALENT HERITAGE

The design critique of technology is incompatible with some of the most important implications of the neutrality theory, including the view that technology developed under capitalism is immediately available as the basis of a




socialist society. Indeed, on Marx's account, capitalist technology is intrin- sically political; an alienated apparatus designed to be operated by a dis- qualified labor force under the control of an autocratic management. But is socialism possible at all on these terms? In Marxist theory, the transformation of technology and work are not preconditions for workers organizing themselves as a ruling class, but rather results of working class rule. And yet technology is through and through marked by its origins and function in the political strategies of capitalism: the very existence of capitalist technology thus appears to threaten the achievement of the socialist society it is also supposed to make possible.

One strand of Marx's theory of the transition can be interpreted as an attempt to solve this problem by identifying a heritage of mediations between capitalism and socialism that would supply elements of continuity in change. Interestingly, Marx does not treat these mediating elements as neutral, which would have been one way of explaining the possibility of using them to make the transition. Instead, he works from an original position for which he never develops adequate concepts, the ambivalence of means with respect to civilizational projects.

Marx's conception of the transition to socialism is intended to avoid both conventional political realism and utopianism by identifying among the inheritances of capitalism the ambivalent raw materials needed to create a socialist society. Like Archimedes, the revolutionary class can move the world if only it has a place to stand. This "place" is the institutional and technological base which socialism takes over from the capitalist society it replaces. Here are the most important examples of ambivalent inheritances:

1. Fundamental political institutions such as voting would be taken over from capitalist democracy and developed as the basis for a still more democratic socialist state. This socialist state is not an end in itself but merely a means to the end of abolishing the state altogether.

2. Similarly, even such a basic capitalist institution as the wage system would be reformed and retained during the transition, as a step toward the socialist goal of distribution according to need.

3. Capitalist management, subordinated to the will of the "assembled producers," is available to run industry during the transition to a new type of industrial society that transcends the division of mental and man- ual labor.

4. The technology of alienation taken over from capitalism would be neither accepted nor abolished but used as a means for the production of a different technological apparatus, a technology of liberation in which work becomes "life's prime want."

This Marxist conception of transition might be called noninoral because of its realistic treatment of the problem of means and ends. Bukharin expresses




this position very abstractly in writing that "the functional oppositionality of formally similar phenomena is totally determined by a functional oppositionality of systems of organization, by their opposed class character" (Bukharin 1971:118). Thus,the payment of wages as a permanent and essential feature of capitalism can be distinguished from the temporary employment of wages to motivate work in the transition to socialism. Similarly, capitalist technology designed to deskill the labor force can be used temporarily under socialism to build a new generation of production technology better adapted to the reskilled labor force of an advanced socialist society.

The initiation of the process leading to socialism depends on the inherent possibility of using the existing technology in the framework of different civilizational projects. Socialism would be the result of technological reproduction under a new class power. This conception differs from the idea of "neutrality" of the means with respect to the various possible goals that fall under the goal-horizon the means is designed to serve. The thesis of ambivalence on which this concept of the transition to socialism is based is far broader in scope and refers to the possibility of transforming the goal-horizon itself, that is to say, generating a framework for the realization of new types of purposes not supported by the existing means in their present form. It can be summed up in the following three propositions:

1. In the short run, workers can and indeed must use many inherited (or transferred) elements while consolidating their power.

2. Workers can transform these elements in the course of using them over an extended period, until finally they have built a radically different social and technological base, one adjusted to their needs as a class.

3. What ultimately determines which of the ambivalent potentialities of the heritage is developed most completely is the class power under which the system operates and which sets the standards and goals of progress for society.

This realistic approach serves as a defense against charges of impracti- cability, but it involves a "pact with the devil" that exposes it to attack from another quarter. Both liberal and anarchist critics of Marxism criticize the reliance on forms of organization and repressive means chosen for their "realistic" usefulness rather than for their conformity with the "ideal" of socialism. If, as these critics argue, the end is "contained" in the means, then indeed Marxism is fatally flawed because it is based on the contrary proposi- tion, according to which the future is born of the dialectic of means and ends in history.

This approach seems to involve Marxism in ominous conflicts of methods and goals. Marx's critics see the evolution of the Soviet Union as proof that these conflicts are fatal to the Marxist theory. Certainly the theory of ambiva-




lence has been reduced to Orwellian "Newspeak" where activities such as forced labor are evaluated as either "building socialism" or as "capitalist exploitation" depending on whether they take place in a socialist or a capitalist society. The state which supposedly grants a socialist significance to massive abuses as inhumane as anything known under capitalism consists essentially of these very abuses, and cannot claim to transcend them and to designate them as being in the service of a higher goal.

In light of this history, it is necessary to insist that insofar as something like the theory of ambivalence can be attributed to Marx, it is concerned with building on the flawed but very real achievements of capitalism and not with justifying horrible means in the present by reference to admirable but still imaginary future goals. The aim of the theory is not apologetic but strategic and consists in guiding the application of institutions, equipment, and tech- niques developed under capitalism through an evolution toward the corres- ponding socialist ones. This is an empirically verifiable process, the reality of which needs to be judged by appropriate criteria, not a ritual affirmation.

As far as technology is concerned, it is difficult to imagine an alternative to an ambivalent process of change. A whole new technology cannot spring pure from the sweaty brow of the proletariat as Athena did from Zeus's forehead. Against the liberal thesis of the identity of means and ends, the theory of ambivalence asserts the possibility of bootstrapping from capitalism to socialism. The reshaping of the inherited technology is a process in which machines developed under capitalism would not simply be put to new uses in a different social context, but, more importantly, would be employed to produce new technological means, fully adapted to the culture of socialism. This developmental approach is quite different from the notion that the same neutral means can be used for a variety of ends. It suggests the further relationship: not what different ends technology may directly serve, but what new technological means it may produce, in a technically and culturally feasible sequence leading from one type of industrial society to a quite different type.

TECHNICAL POLITICS The traditional Marxist theory of the transition admits the social determination of "product" and "process" only, and treats the design of technology "in itself" as neutral. Yet Marx's own critique of the capitalist division of labor reveals the power interests that hide behind the mask of technical neutrality, interests which we would identify today with both the possessors of material and cultural capital.7 These interests do not merely distort the choice of goals for production or the application of technology but, as we have seen, are installed in the very code on the basis of which technology is designed. The ambivalence of technology thus reflects the ambiguity of a design process which condenses both social and technical goals.




This critique of technology explains the limitations of the technological and administrative inheritances of capitalism. Since they derive originally from the structure of the capitalist collective laborer, they are designed to establish the broadest operational autonomy of leadership functions. Even after the disappearance of the class in the interests of which this constella- tion first arose, its administrative forms and technological achievements char- acterize a type of civilization which can continue under bureaucratic surrogates for capitalism. Socialism must approach these forms and technologies as ambivalent points of passage toward a new society by systematically reduc- ing the operational autonomy they support, and introducing new forms of control from below and technological innovations adapted to these new forms.

This strategy is subtly different from the one implied in Engels' famous description of socialism as a system the goal of which is "to restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable" (Engels 1959:484). It is easy to approve generally of this principle of restricted authority, but Engels fails to explain how the limits to which he refers are to be determined. The "conditions of production" are ambiguous, subject to rational ordering under two different technical codes, a capitalist and a socialist code. These codes are distinguished precisely by their answer to the question of where the limits of technical authority lie. Thus, from the standpoint of organizational dynamics, who defines the boundary between technique and the rest will have a great deal to do with where the boundary is drawn. If it is up to the technical experts themselves, predictably they will set virtually no limits on their authority at all (Larson 1984).

Lenin suspected that things were more complicated than Engels' simple formula. His remarks on bureaucracy show that he was aware that experts extend their power beyond the technical domain they master on the basis of their specialized knowledge, and that, therefore, drawing the lines between the technical and social aspects of institutional processes is a political and not a technical affair.

Had Lenin understood the design critique of technology, he might have grasped the necessity of technical politics as a dimension of a social revolution affecting the deepest foundations of capitalist civilization. But, because he shared the widespread belief in the neutrality of technology, he was never able to work out the theoretical implications of this organizational problem, and tended to attribute it to the class origins of the individual experts. As a result, Lenin and the other Bolsheviks came to expect miracles from the substitution of managers of proletarian origin for the inherited personnel of the old regime.

The transition to socialism, according to traditional Marxism, is a two- phase process, characterized by an early phase of deep changes in non- technical matters such as state policy, law, and ownership of productive




means, and a later phase of technical change. In practice, this two-phase conception has less to do with predictions about the distant future than with political styles in the present, where it serves to normalize Marxism's apparently contradictory reliance both on political mobilization and on technical expertise. It thus justifies treating politico-administrative work differ- ently from technical work, in order to quickly transform the one while sheltering the other from interference (Lenin 1943:II, 344). But Marxist theory shows, that as far as the state is concerned, it is not enough to change the leading personnel, but that the operational autonomy of the bureaucracies must be reduced by changing the codes, rules, procedures, and practices under which they work. Why are these principles not applied in some form, however modest, to technology as well?

The widespread assumption that the technical limits of rational political action are self-evident obstructs clear thinking about the status of technology and expertise under socialism. Social change is undoubtedly limited by technical considerations; to that extent, the two-phase conception of the transition is realistic in suggesting the need to assess what is and what is not technically feasible at different stages. But the real technical limitations are much less confining than Marxists have generally assumed and lie deep within the technical sphere, which therefore cannot be distinguished insti- tutionally as a "realm of necessity" from a sociopolitical domain to which action is confined.8

Because social interests play a role in the most basic technical decisions, the boundary of technique is never clear, and the struggle for and against alienated power therefore takes place through the very definition of the technical sphere. The discovery of this boundary is extraordinarily difficult since the ultimate ideological appeal of hierarchical power in industrial society consists in masking social requirements as technical imperatives. Just because this confusion is routine, opposition to established power inevitably transgresses supposedly technical limits in unmasking the interests they protect, and mistakes are likely to be made in the probing struggle to discover the real technical limits on change.

In ignoring the ambiguous realities of modern technical politics, the classical theory of the transition legitimates the existing technological apparatus and associated management practices at least in the first phase of the transition. In the conception of the transition proposed here, the gradual abolition of the operational autonomy of leadership in the political organization of society and the division of labor would not occur in sequenced phases but would go hand in hand and would quickly have an impact on technological developments. Traditional Marxism always dismissed this approach as utopian, but the realities of industrial societies have finally refuted the critique by banalizing technical struggle itself.




In fact, democratic struggles for technical change have become routine in all types of contemporary industrial societies. Few important problems arise in either the political or economic domain without raising technical issues and requiring the expertise of highly trained personnel. But it is rare that the issues come packaged in such a way that political and technical considerations are clearly distinct; most social problems point to a multitude of possible technical solutions, and the choice between available alternatives has undeniable political implications. Generally, where there are important political stakes, the experts themselves are unable to achieve consensus on technical grounds but can only employ their knowledge to inform public discussion or use their authority to suppress it. The intermingling of political and technical issues characteristic of the public process of industrial societies appears clearly in such struggles (Winner 1972).

Today these struggles are confined to particular issues, such as problems of work design, pollution, urban growth, or nuclear hazards, but in a democratic socialist society, as a byproduct of accomplishing such concrete ends, technical politics could work toward the general reconstruction of technology and administration. Under these new circumstances, technical development would move on a very different path from that followed by industrial societies today. New social criteria of innovation responding to the interests of the underlying population would prevail over capitalist values embodied in inherited technology, providing the basis for fundamental civilizational change.

In sum, I would argue for abandoning the traditional Marxist emphasis on the state as economic planner, and instead emphasize the role that public participation in technical decisions can potentially play in social change. "Capitalism" and "socialism" are not mutually exclusive "modes of production," but, rather, they are ideal-types lying at the extremes of a contin- uum of changes in the technical codes of advanced societies and the related social organization. Thus, they are constantly at issue in social struggles over such problems as labor organization, education, and ecology. This position offers a way of understanding the continuing struggle for socialism in a world that no longer believes system changes can be legislated, or geo- graphically localized in this or that country or block.

That a "higher phase" of socialism might grow out of the struggles of the "lower phase" remains an interesting hypothesis, but it acquires a rather different significance in view of this approach to technical politics. The actual technical limits of change discovered in the course of struggle appear as the other side of the coin of technical politics. These limits comprehend blocked potentialities which might eventually motivate a process of innovation driven by new social demands. The concrete significance of the notion of disalienation is to be found here, and not in a general plan for humanity's future.




Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Frederick Fleron Jr. and Gerald Doppelt for their help in de- veloping the ideas presented here.

NOTES

1. This article is drawn from my forth- coming book entitled The Critical Theory of Technology. 2.. Does anyone actually hold such an interpretation of Marx? The answer is "yes." Consider, for example, Hans Jonas's choice of the following significant subtitle for a discussion of Marx: "'Reconstruction of the Planet Earth' Through Untrammeled Technology" (Jonas 1984:186; Cf. Baudril- lard 1975). 3. "The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at the same time, a function of the exploitation of a social labour-process, and is conse- quently rooted in the unavoidable antag- onism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits" (Marx 1906:J, 363). 4. For an application of this distinction between social and technical determinants of technology in another domain, see Wil- liams (1975). 5. It is interesting to find Marx's view on capitalist innovation echoed a century later by Robert K. Merton. For his evalu- ation of this position, see Merton (1968:619 ff). 6. This view contrasts with that of critics of technology such as Jacques Ellul, who believe that the essence of technology in itself is the source of the problems treated by Marxists as socially relative. For a Marx- ist response to Ellul and others who share his view, see McMurtry (1978:222-239). 7. One of the advantages of the framework introduced here is that it makes possible a unified account of the way in

which material and cultural capital are organized against workers and other sub- ordinate members of society through technical codes that maximize operational autonomy (cf. Gouldner 1979). 8. The role of technical politics in the workplace is illustrated by two recent stud- ies: Shaiken (1984), and Rosner and Mark- owitz, (1987). The participation of members of the middle strata in revising the technical codes of their professions under the impact of a revolutionary crisis is docu- mented in Feenberg (1978).

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