Marx is at his most persuasive when he shows that technology is not an autonomous thing one can be for or against, but that technological design is relative to political forces which depend in turn on social interests. Thus, technology is an ambivalent dimension of the social process and, like education, law, the military, and the corporate structure, it is involved in social struggles which determine what it is and will become. This position implies the necessity of a democratic technical politics, contrary to the prevailing practice of the existing communist and socialist societies which treat technology as a sociopolitical invariant.
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