Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 12:56:34 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: M-TH: Technotheology per Jacques Ellul


G'day comrades,

Not long ago I unloaded at Carrol for bringing up the notion of purely
technical questions.  A tiff ensued, but that had more to do with the
abortion question than the epistemological issue I'd clumsily tried to
introduce.

Not long ago Oz had a science minister of social-democrat persuasion,
arguably idealist tendencies, and substantial intellect.  His name is Barry
Jones - and in 1982 he wrote a clever (but problematic) book called
*Sleepers, Wake!*.  It was at that time, and in this book, I first came
across Jacques Ellul and his 1964 classic *The Technological Society*.

Rakesh implies my admiration for Ellul may be contentious here (or at least
that's what I infer).  Why?

Ellul starts with the observation that:

'there has been a disappearance of political ideologies and a proliferation
of substitution ideologies ... Increasing material power goes hand in hand
with decreasing ideological power.'

All rather reminiscent of Neil Postman's notion of 'technopoly', eh?  And,
as far as it goes, demonstrably true.  Mainstream discourse today is to do
with how to do the things we do more quickly and in more quantity.  What it
is we're actually doing at bottom is here the province of the discursively
marginalised ideologue.  Let's go with that for the moment ...

The point is that our deliberations are tuned to one narrow frequency: *la
technique*, or 'the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having
absolute efficiency (for a given state of development) in every field of
human activity'.

So:

'Technical Man is fascinated by results, by the immediate consequences of
setting standardised devices into motion ... committed to the never-ending
search for 'the one best way' to achieve any designated object.'

The clinical symptomology of a society thus inflicted includes:

- unproblematised ends;

- means are judged exclusively in terms of those ends;

- both means and ends are implicitly defined so that they may be quantified;

- the redefinition/dissolution of politics as adjunct to the quest for ever
more perfect efficiencies;

- a recognition that humanity is not perfect insofar as automation is
equated with superior technique, but a failure to recognise that this
imperfect humanity
has authored the ends toward which the new technologies are dedicated;

- as humanity's ultimately determinant role is lost to the eye, humanity's
irksome capacity to threaten any given process's optimal efficiency is
highlighted; and an ascendant technological determinism ensues; and

- an uncritical imposition and acceptance of these premises over time and
space.

Dr Ellul follows his diagnosis with his prescription (his implicit
prognosis is not good, but there is a fighting chance, it seems):

'Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize
continually to be won.  The moment man stops and resigns himself, he
becomes subject to determinism.  He is most enslaved when he thinks he is
comfortably settled in freedom ... The first act of freedom is to become
aware of necessity.  The very fact that man can see, measure, and analyse
the determinisms that press on him means that he can face them and, by so
doing, act as a free man ... by grasping the real nature of the
technological phenomenon, and the extent to which it is robbing him of
freedom, he confronts the blind mechanisms as a conscious being ... '

Now, is it just me, or is this vaguely familiar thinking in the context of
our particular congeregation?

Capitalism as technology?
The liberal citizen as the slave 'comfortably settled in freedom'?
*Capital* as a liberating recognition of 'the real nature of the
technological phenomenon'?
The socialist as confronting 'the blind mechanisms as a conscious being'?

Waddya reckon?

Cheers,
Rob.







>A KARL CARLILE POSTING:
>
>
>KARL: As this  debate unfolds it is transpiring that it is tending
>towards a debate over materialism and idealism.
>
>JAMES: On your earlier points my disagreements are only semantic.
>
>KARL: "Only semantic." Semantics has to do with meaning. And meaning
>has all to do with arguments. Of course our disagreements are semantic:
>the semantics of what it is to be a revolutionary communist
>
>JAMES: As I said earlier Marx treats the technological development of
>the forces of production abstractly - the ever-present, nature imposed
>necessity of an interchange between wo/man and nature. That does not
>mean that he is ignorant of the real history of technological
>development, only that questions that are *specific to technology* play
>no part in his theory of Capital. So on the opening page of Capital, he
>excludes the particular elements of usefulness from the investigation:
>
>KARL: Incorrect James. It is rather a socially mediated "nature imposed
>necessity of an interchange between (wo/)man and nature." Brackets
>mine. Here is a clear case in which you present actual reality as a
>bifurcation social and natural relations.
>It is not possible to abstract the social relations from the material
>action of wo/man on nature. These two aspects of social being are
>inseparable. In so far as there exists a separation it is a conceptual
>or analytical separation constructed for purposes of inquiry. However
>to substitute a conceptual or epistemological distinction for a
>socio-ontological distinction is nothing less than idealism. It has not
>been the first time in this current interesting and challenging
>exchange that I have made this criticism. You mistake the inquiry for
>the subject of the inquiry. You mistake the thought for the thing
>thought. Idealism!
>
>Anyway as to the claim "that questions that are *specific to
>technology* play no part in his theory of Capital": From the standpoint
>of the materialist conception of history, which entails a more
>overarching conception than that of political economy, there can be no
>question of focusing on questions that are merely specific to
>technology. Nor did I commit such a transgression. I don't understand
>why you persist in attempting to paint me into corners that I just
>don't occupy  -an awful waste of paint.
>
>The concern of the materialist conception of history with social
>relations of production is a concern with social being. It is thereby a
>concern with the nature of wo/man's relation to nature. If the
>materialist conception was not concerned with the former it would make
>no sense to concern itself with the latter: bread and butter questions.
>The social relations only exist in relation to humanity's ontological
>relation to nature. From the standpoint of revolutionary communism it
>would make little sense to examine the social relations of production
>independently of their necessary connection with humanity's
>ontological relation to nature. To study social relations emancipated
>from considerations as to whether and to what degree wo/man have the
>ability (and to what degree) to produce food, clothes shelter etc.
>would make no sense. Surely in any study of capitalism as a social
>system the concern is living standards, health, access to products
>-material issues. These matters are located well within the
>materialistically productive relationship between wo/man and nature.
>Surely the materialist conception is concerned with social relations in
>relation to their adequacy as facilitating forms for the maintenance
>and development of the human productive relation to the natural
>environment -the relations by which food, clothes shelter are produced
>and the degree to which they are produced. If the materialist
>conception of history is not concerned with social relations in the
>context of this materialist relation then it is not concerned with
>wo/man's capacity to reproduce her/himself. The social relations of
>production are grounded in materialist relations: the relation between
>wo/man and nature involving the materialist activity of labour. Social
>relations of production are grounded in matter: the "natural" relation
>between wo/man and nature expressed as material activity in the form of
>the activity of labour. Marx was a materialist. Indeed the conflict
>between us is, at bottom, inclining towards a conflict between
>materialism and idealism.
>
>In order to ascertain the specific character of the relation between
>the forces of production and the social relations of production it is
>necessary that one examine the character of these forces. If one
>concludes that the specific system of social relations is retarding the
>development of the productive forces then this presupposes a study by
>revolutionary communism of these forces. Without such an investigation
>is not possible to justifiably draw the above conclusion. The concern
>of  communists is a concern over the character and future development
>of the forces of production and thereby technology. The continued
>limited, stunted and contradictory development of the forces of
>production is a central concern of communism. It is this that explains
>why communism  focuses on the historical need to radically
>revolutionise the social relations of production since the latter are
>the means by which the forces of production and thereby technology can
>be emancipated from their current contradictory and stunted character.
>In that humanity is correspondingly emancipated from unhealthy food,
>dirty air, hunger and wars.
>
>JAMES: What Marx is saying is that he is not interested in use-value as
>such. That is no part of the investigation of the specific laws of
>Capital.What interests him is the role that use value plays in
>capitalist social relations, ie as a material repository of the social
>substance, exchange value.
>
>KARL: You make a gigantic mistake here. You attempt to collapse the
>thought of Marx into Capital. Marx's thought transcends the covers of
>Capital. You cannot, here, reduce Marx's thought to political economy
>without lapsing into a narrow reductionism.
>
>But having said this I question your interpretation  of Capital
>concerning the relationship between the forces of production, which
>entails technology, and value relations and specifically value
>relations in the  form of capital.
>
>You make the claim that what "interests him is the role that use value
>plays in capitalist social relations, ie as a material repository of
>the social substance, exchange value."
>
>No! The reverse is the case: What interests Marx is the role that value
>form plays in relation to the expanded reproduction of use values. A
>materialist matter! The Marx of Capital is saying that capital, as a
>social form, is an increasingly limited and contradictory form by which
>use values and thereby technology is reproduced. He is saying that the
>extended reproduction of use values is limited and even endangered by
>the capital relation. He is saying that if the reproduction of  use
>values, technology, the human race is to stand any chance of being
>guaranteed continued existence then humanity, through the agency of the
>working class, must replace the capital relation by the directly
>communal relation. The struggle to replace capital with communion is a
>life and death struggle for both the continued existence of  humanity
>and its development. To say, as in effect you do, that revolutionary
>communism's concern is not with human beings and by implication use
>values such as technology, clothes, shelter and food but with these use
>values merely "as a material repository of the social substance,
>exchange value" is metaphysics at its most blatantly crude. It is akin
>to a Christianity that is concerned with souls and their salvation but
>not with their profane bodies. Spirituality, "value", is what matters
>not the use value consuming bodies. These are merely forms by which
>God's souls manifest themselves: carnal matters. Bodies are mere
>limited forms by which the immortal soul manifests itself temporally
>and thereby imperfectly.  Who cares about bodies! It is the progress of
>the Geist that matters. Hegelian Protestantism! The Reformation is
>dead! Long live the Reformation! Yes, value fetishism is alive and
>well.
>
>JAMES: What did interest him was the singular abstraction that the
>application of technology abbreviates the labour process.
>
>KARL: Again, as I have already said, you are making a monumental
>mistake here James. As I already intimated you reductionistically
>confine Marx to the covers of Capital. Even if your observations,
>within the comparatively restricted subject of inquiry  of Capital,
>above are true  it does not mean that this was Marx's overall
>socio-ontological position on technology. In his limited capacity as
>political economist this may or may not be true. As pioneer of the
>materialist conception of history this is certainly not true. The
>materialist conception of history transcends and embraces the more
>limited scope of the unfinished Capital. Marxism cannot be validly
>reduced to political economy or its critique.
>
>JAMES: Karl is quite right to say that the real history of technology
>is discontinuous, in a way that is not captured in Marx's abstraction
>'forces of production' - but then Marx never intended to write a
>history of technology, but of social relations.
>
>KARL: But you don't have to be engaged in the writing of a history of
>technology to draw this conclusion. Your view that Marx intended to
>write a history of social relations is questionable. The facts are that
>he never did write such a history.
>
>JAMES: But the real theoretical expression of technological development
>is to be found in the natural sciences, and it would be quite wrong to
>reduce the history of technology to the history of economics, or
>capital formation.
>
>KARL: But James why say this when I never suggested anything like this?
>A straw argument=85
>
>JAMES: My point is that it is wrong to say that there is 'capitalist'
>technology or there will be 'communist' technology. Technology
>considered in its own right is without class or political allegiance.
>
>KARL: The above being so  technology today as  a constituent part of
>the forces of production is not, then, essentially capitalist
>technology? The bourgeoisie, then, don't own this technology and it is
>thereby not capitalist technology? The logic, then, of this false
>position is that the production process is not a capitalist production
>process either. This false perspective is nothing less than an apology
>for capitalism.
>
>JAMES: Now against this line of argument there is a considerable body
>of literature, some of it that purports to be Marxist and some of it
>that does not, that theorises society in technological terms. It
>includes technology critics like Adorno, Marcuse, Heidegger, Max Weber,
>but also technology boosters, Lewis Mumford, Barrington Moore, Talcott
>Parsons, Max Eastman and so on=85...
>
>KARL: Zzzzzz=85.You are name dropping again James. I don't see what the
>above  opinion has to do with my argument. Introducing this into
>discussion at this stage serves no useful purpose except as distracting
>tactic.
>
>I'll leave it at that for the time.
>
>
>Greetings,
>Karl
>
>
>
>
>
>
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************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
=46ax:    02-6201 5119

************************************************************************

'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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