Técnica y fetichismo. Apuntes sobre el primer libro de El Capital

Abstract

This article shows how technology adopts a fetish nature in the capitalist society, in accordance with the argument presented by Marx in the first book of Capital. We pretend to answer the following issue: is the technology of capital neutral? In our view, this argument extends itself to the following elements that appear in capitalism: money, capital, and technology. Base upon the exposition of the fetish argument, we pretend to show the way technology not only enables the labor value law but also becomes its material form. Thus, in contrast to previous techniques, the technology of capital is not neutral, but, as a mediator between capital and labor, it becomes the material form of value, the technical law of value. In capitalism, following the analysis of Marx and Harry Braverman, technology doesn’t precede social relations, it doesn’t develop itself independently from capitalism, but, on the contrary, emerges as a consequence and it is always limited by the needs of capitalism.