Da crítica da economia política à economia política da tecnologia: a dialética da ciência e da técnica em Marx

Abstract

Karl Marx’s work, due to its richness and wideness of reach, is the subject of different approaches that seek to reflect on particular aspects of his thought. Apparently, in doing só we replace the analysis of totality with that of the particular aspects and abandon the perspective of the dialectic of totality of the material world, an essential form of investigation and exposure of the capitalist mode of production which Marx presented. However, we understand that the analysis of some specific elements can shed light on controversial topics in Marxian theory. This seems to be the case concerning the issue of science and technology in Marx’s thought. One of the most common controversies around this issue is that of technological determinism supposedly present in Marx’s work. Thus, the work presented here is the result of a research that intends to approach some aspects on the issue of science and technology in Karl Marx’s works that fall within the sphere of what is called “the young Marx”. More specifically, our aim is to apprehend the development of the categories of science and technology within the development of Marx’s critique of political economy, that is, as a part of the development process of his thought, of the critique of the bourgeois economic categories and of capitalist mode of production itself. What we propose as a thesis is that, as categories of Marx’s thought, science and technology cannot be understood isolated from the development of his thought. This is equivalent to saying that these categories derive, unfold, from the theoretical need for a successive search for the concrete determinations that structure capital. For the same reason, from the standpoint of the totality of capitalist mode of production, science and technology cannot be understood without the proper analysis and reference as a determined and developed form of the means of production that underwent a qualitative transformation as a form adequate to the capital, which act as a form of capital, that is, as fixed capital. With these statements, we hope to clarify at least two points: first, that any statements regarding the “determinism of technology” in Marx neglect the dialectical character of his analysis, as well as the dialectic of the historical development of science and technology as a historic need for capital and determined by it; and, second, that many academic formulations result in the fetishism of science and technology – including those that propose democratic control of these material dimensions – because they disregard capitalist determinations that drive them.