Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

wrote a number of notebooks on the history of technology which so far remain unpublished in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. Their whereabouts were for a long time unknown but in the past they were read and discussed by Marxist researchers.

History

Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
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Marx directly refers to the notebooks in his letter to Engels of January 28, 1863 where he says

… I have re-read my notebooks (extracts) on technology, and am attending a practical (only experimental) course for workers on the same by Professor Willis (in Jermyn Street, the Institute for Geology, where Huxley also gave his lectures)… While re-reading the technological-historical excerpts, I came to the conclusion that , apart from the invention of gun-powder, the compass and printing - these necessary pre-requisites for bourgeois development - from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries, i.e. the period of the development of manufacture from craftsmanship until really large-scale industry, the two material foundations on which were based the preparations for mechanised industry within manufacturing were the ''clock'' and the mill …

Across his writing Marx makes frequent reference to his interest in technological developments, and these mentions are complemented by generic statements such as the need for a critical history of technology in the major footnote at the beginning of the chapter on "Machinery and Large Scale Industry" in ''

Capital, Volume I ''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is the first of three treatises that ma ...

''. “A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which, he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.” (MECW Vol 35.375)

Commentary and sources

György Lukács György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesth ...

studied these notebooks while they existed in the archives in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, and appears to refer to them in a 1925 article later published in English translation in the ''

New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960. History Background As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on m ...

'' criticizing what he saw as Bukharin's undue technicism. Lukács added a commentary on the methodological importance of this critique to the preface to the new edition (1967) of the English Merlin 1971 translation of ''History and Class Consciousness''. Excerpts of Marx's notebooks are held in the

International Institute of Social History The International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) is one of the largest archives of labor and social history in the world. Located in Amsterdam, its one million volumes and 2,300 archival collections include the papers of major figu ...

Nathan Rosenberg Nathan Rosenberg (November 22, 1927 – August 24, 2015) was an American economist specializing in the history of technology. Biography Rosenberg earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University (1955–195 ...

published an essay on "Marx as a student of technology" in his ''Inside the Black Box''; Donald MacKenzie wrote "Marx and the Machine" in ''Technology and Culture'', which can also be found in a book of essays he edited called 'Knowing Machines' (1998); and Amy E. Wendling published a book on the notebooks entitled ''Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation'' (2009). Lucia Pradella in her study of Marx's London Notebooks cites Hans-Peter Müller's transcribed edition in German.Marx, Karl

981 Year 981 ( CMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events Births * Abu'l-Qasim al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Maghribi, Arab statesman (d. 1027) * Giovanni Orseolo, Venetian ...

''Die technologisch-historischen Exzerpte transcribed and ed. Hans-Peter Müller, intro. Lawrence Krader, Frankfurt/M: Verlag Ullstein

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marx's Notebooks On The History Of Technology Marxism History of technology Marxist theory Books by Karl Marx