Il contributo di Marx a una critica del determinismo tecnologico. Premesse per una ontologia critica dell’innovazione

Abstract

Despite the criticism of being a technological determinist, Marx provides deep ontological foundations for a critique of technological determinism. The essay elaborates on this thesis with three interrelated arguments. The first one refers to the three elements of Marx's analysis that can contribute to a critical ontology, which allows us to think of social reality as constructed by human activity as such: the notion of work as social praxis; the meaning of fetishism of commodities and its implications; the relationship between quantity, quality and transformation processes. The second argument aims at showing how changes in the characteristics and functions of the division of labour, and the transition itself to the capitalist mode of production, are not reducible, in Marx, to an adaptation to new technological conditions. The third argument draws attention to the need for a critical ontology of innovation as emerging from human activity as such. Grounded on Marx's analysis, the paper concludes on how the notion of work as social praxis, the relationship between quantity and quality and the critical perspective of the fetishism of commodities refer to a complex, and ontologically endogenous, theory of the processes of change.