Bringing together ideas from the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason and technocratic legitimation with Boltanski and Chiapello’s recent revival of a critical economic sociology, I argue that the legitimation of capitalism and its transformations are closely intertwined with the critique of capitalism in general and technology in particular. That is, that the shift from a Fordist to post-Fordist society has also entailed a shift in the legitimation discourse of technology. During Fordism, technology served to legitimate a regime of accumulation that favored a response to the social critique of capitalism while downplaying, and even ignoring, the humanist critique of capitalism. Industrial technology, the assembly line, the bureaucratic corporation, the statist regulation of the economy, and the provision of welfare were all conceived in technology discourse during Fordism as techniques and technologies that respond to concerns put forth by the social critique, such as social security, stability, and equality—that is, those geared toward mitigating exploitation.
Hence the critique of Fordism targeted precisely the oppressive nature of the administered state and the bureaucratic corporation, the loss of personal authenticity, and the de-eroticization of the productive process, that is, the harmful ramifications of Fordism and industrial machines and techniques in terms of alienation. One of the brilliant articulations of that type of critique of industrial capitalism appears in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). The poor tramp finds it hard to keep up with the pace of work, which is dictated by the assembly line, gets hit by a feeding machine, which is supposed to make his work more efficient by cutting out his lunch breaks, and is ultimately swallowed up by the machine and gets integrated into the clockwork that propels the industry. According to this prominent critique, the rationalization of society by technological means may have oiled the wheels of capitalism, but that came at the price of hindering personal freedom and creativity, alienating workers, and, more generally, creating a centralized, bureaucratized society.
Technology Discourse and Capitalist Legitimation
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