칼 맑스(K. Marx) 신체 유물론과 기술의 정치경제학

Abstract

The objective of this study is to introspect on and take a view of today’s technological era, where there is a lot of praise for the technological revolution and development, from Marx’s perspective. The understanding of technology and its utilization is assumed to be the basis of the understanding of practical human activity from the perspective of Marx who regarded the outcome of technological development as the outcome of human practical activity. According to Marx, human is practical and proactive, and continually exchanges materials with nature through their five senses above everything else. These practical and proactive human activities are deemed sensuous human activities, not rational, conscious, and thinking activities that idealists emphasize. Marx named this human activity “sensuous human activity, practice” while saying that “history of the industry is the open book of human essential forces and human psychology turned into sensuous” in which the industry is the integrity of technological development. In other words, the integrity of technological outcomes around people should be understood as the integrity of self-objectified forces formed through sensuous human activities. Therefore, according to how the technology is being prepared and utilized, technology and human or human body might stand against each other or might coexist and have a symbiotic relationship. Marx is neither a technophilia who dehistoricizes the technological outcomes, thus highly praises for technological advances nor a technological determinist who claims the technology determines entire mode of production in society. Technology and its outcomes are not irrelevant to socio-historical context, indicating that they are closely related to the mode of production in a specific era where the technology is being developed and utilized. Liberating potential inherent in the technological revolution and development is not free from socio-economic context where technology is placed. This paper starts from an associative relation of human existence acting as sensuous existence of technology and its outcomes. Through this, this paper examines how human senses and body are broken and fragmentized by capitalist technology and its utilization based on Marx’s analysis on technological dynamics of the industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. During this process, this paper follows Marx’s description and analysis on the Labor Day, manufacturer and division of labor, and machinery and large-scale industry included in Chapter 1 of Capital to claim that the capitalist technology utilization attributed to the maximum efficiency and profit would result in the malformation of human senses and body. This paper adopted Marx’s theory on technology, which implies Marx’s criticism of technology utilization in capitalism and Marx’s view of liberating potential of technology, as the main perspective because they are still valid today where the digital world is privatized to control labor and the workforce are privatized by capital.