New Criticals


Capitalism and the factory restricted space, extended (a workers) effectiveness, concentrated the means of production in one fixed territory, and developed and employed powerful machine-tools to assist in the labor process. Machines both augment man’s capabilities and supplement them. Reduced to the how, then, “the object the worker directly takes possession of is not the object of labor but its instrument…thus nature [ed. and technology] becomes one of the organs of his activity, which he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself.”  Technology has always supplemented; integration has always been an obstacle.