Not only that, but they are really telling on themselves and their lack of understanding of industrial history (not that we are actually taught any of that at any point).
Automation has been a thing since literally the 1780’s when Oliver Evans created the first completely automated flour mill. The principles of automation on smaller levels of have been understood for even longer that.
Marx didn’t even need to predict it, it was already something that existed and therefore needed to be accounted for as a possibly technological progression for his theory. If anything, part of his theory was explaining why it wasn’t more prevalent!
Exactly. That’s why I’m constantly yelling at people that Marx isn’t doing some kind of esoteric theological analysis. Don’t mystify it! He’s logically looking at the dominant mode of production, identifying the internal contradictions, and critiquing it.
He does do some level of discussion of that around the transformation of value to price. But what he is basically talking about is how the capitalist mystifies the process of that transformation, and thereby makes it appear natural, and in doing so, cuts himself a profit. In the same way, he also discusses the idea of fetishization of commodities and the commoditization of people.
In doing so though, he is not discussing esoteric processes. These are everyday processes that occur all the time.
Not only that, but they are really telling on themselves and their lack of understanding of industrial history (not that we are actually taught any of that at any point).
Automation has been a thing since literally the 1780’s when Oliver Evans created the first completely automated flour mill. The principles of automation on smaller levels of have been understood for even longer that.
Marx didn’t even need to predict it, it was already something that existed and therefore needed to be accounted for as a possibly technological progression for his theory. If anything, part of his theory was explaining why it wasn’t more prevalent!
Exactly. That’s why I’m constantly yelling at people
that Marx isn’t doing some kind of esoteric theological analysis. Don’t mystify it! He’s logically looking at the dominant mode of production, identifying the internal contradictions, and critiquing it.
He does do some level of discussion of that around the transformation of value to price. But what he is basically talking about is how the capitalist mystifies the process of that transformation, and thereby makes it appear natural, and in doing so, cuts himself a profit. In the same way, he also discusses the idea of fetishization of commodities and the commoditization of people.
In doing so though, he is not discussing esoteric processes. These are everyday processes that occur all the time.