that quote is from the _Poverty of Philosophy_. A good book in many ways, it was also a bit hasty. Marx said memorable stuff like "The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist." It's a great epigram, but it's hardly an analysis of the sort that Marx produced later. Its technological determinism doesn't fit with Marx's historical materialism. The book is better at devastating Proudhon than presenting an alternative.
Comment Of course the handbill gives you a society with the feudal lord and the steam mill a society with industrial capitalist. Hell . . . one hundred and fifty years later it is easy to say this is not exhaustive. The statement is obviously summation and not meant to be exhaustive. Many things or there are many aspects to the rise of the bourgeois mode of production as the industrial system. One of extreme consequence is the transformation in the primary form of wealth from landed property to what Engels called movable property or gold. The modern computer is giving us an even new society, but this does not mean the computer by itself. Rather, what is meant is the entire evolution of the technological regime - including energy source, that gives society the hand mill, the steam engine, the gasoline powered engine, the semiconductor and say the Internet, which is still in its infancy. Marx was writing to the audience of his time not us today. Melvin P.
