298 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Prometheus Bound: The Mythic Structure ofKarl Marx’s Scientific Thinking. By Leonard P. Wessell, Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Pp. xii + 312; notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $32.50. Marx’s heavy-going writing has not been widely read, but few doubt its influence. J. K. Galbraith, simply in choosing to treat The New In dustrial State, accepted Marx’s claim about the advent of a separable condition given by modern industry. Marx’s conception contained the idea that technical change within the “new” was due to using natural science, and Max Weber produced a parallel characterization claiming capitalism’s rise was linked with that of “rational technology,” “rational accounting,” and even “rational harmonious music.” So, just as Marx thought his work was wissenschaftlich (writing in German, this was his conception) whereas opponents wrote “mere ‘ideology’ ” (p. 3), some would say that Leonard Wessell, the brave author of another heavy going work, has scalded the cat to argue that Marx was an “economic dramatist” (p. 198) whose “root metaphor” was a “categorical analysis of Promethean [human] striving” (pp. 75—76). “Mythos” was Marx’s unifying force, expressing a “story” that was “ ‘the soul’ of drama because it is that which transforms a series of occurrences, images, actions, and words into a ‘dramatic’ whole” (pp. 14—15). So Marx composed an eschatological account of “the divine telos” for Homo (p. 12). “Ultimately, a poetic imperative informs Marx’s work” (p. 60), in which “the proletariat is a mythic entity, a dramatic mask for a sal vational ‘story’ ” (p. 187). If this is correct, many of our fondest notions about our own times appear suspect, including that underpinning Wessell’s choice of the title for his first chapter, “A Theory of Myth in a Scientific Age.” Wessell seems broadly to accept that, in “a society where science is supreme, no ‘system of illusions’ can be acceptable unless it wears a scientific livery . . .” (p. 4). So it seems that scholars may have been too much obsessed with modernity’s clothing, too little concerned with its identity . . . even as “a scientific age.” PrometheusBound comprises two unequal parts. First, various sources are cited to help generate a universal theory of myth. This is too elaborate, with its treatment of Aristotle’s Poetics and classical Greek tragedies. Even a dictionary serves to distinguish Wessell’s mythos from his Logos. Mythoi, like Logoi, are articulations that help to provide order to disparate items; and those who do not accept that there is enough evidence to support a story as Logos will tend to call it “mythic.” Wessell is quite right, however, to argue simply that Marx, as a would-be Wissenschaftler, was in order to look to myths as a source for his “world hypothesis” (pp. 52—53). But dealing with Aeschylus has served to barb Wessell’s main point; and, having covered stage drama, he unfortunately did not cover its two key components, mi mesis and pathos. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 299 The second half of the book, on Marx’s salvation “story” told using an underlying organic metaphor, is better handled—though I believe the machine metaphor was never far away, as shown by Wessell’s constant reference to “structure,” “base,” and cause regarding Marx. The same mythic insight seems to have influenced Weber, again pro posing a theory of enablement. Ifonly Marx’s “workmen” would throw over the bosses’ yolk, if only everyone would act “rationally,” a New Jerusalem would appear on earth. . . . Or so the “theory” indicates. Wessell has missed a trick over the ancient Greeks to fail to note that two others of his principal topics are related. By going back to basics (Greek: supporting foundations), not only can mythos and Logos be seen to be alike in ways, so can “theory” and “theater”: each stems from the Greek theasthai, to view. Thus Aeschylus may have used poetry (something made) and mimesis to tell his “stories,” and he may have tried to grasp the sym-“pathy” of playgoers, whereas scholars use other devices to articulate their themes. But—all produce scripts; all put on a type of show for others; all try to...
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Jan 1, 1992
Kelly Bulkley 
