机器意识形态与工厂精神:重评拜比吉和尤尔

The Ideology of the Machine and the Spirit of the Factory:Remarx on Babbage and Ure

不同于古典政治经济学家主要关注谷物的生产和分配问题,拜比吉和尤尔对于资本主义的理解主要是围绕机器大生产展开的。他们通过将工厂设定为政治经济学的中心议题而彻底实现政治经济学的现代转向,进而建构起一种基于机器的政治经济学和机械本体论,即人和整个宇宙皆具有似机器性和可计算性,世界本身就是一个自动机器。这种机械本体论意味着自然和历史的终结,因为历史只不过是由技术主导的技术系统的演进。于是,工人不仅被排除在历史主体之外,而且在技术教育的权力一知识模式下被转化为被征服的生产性的身体。马克思深刻揭示出,这种“机械敌托邦”在根本上正是资本主义生产关系之意识形态神秘化的产物。因此,拜比吉和尤尔的机械本体论的根基不是机器本身,而是资本主义生产关系及其内在矛盾。重新考察这一思想史脉络,将有助于我们深刻理解资本主义机器大生产的本质和辩证唯物主义意识形态批判的当代意义。

Unlikee classical political economists,who were mainly concerned with the production and distribution of grain,Babbage's and Ure's understanding of capitalism revolved mainly around machinofacture.They completely realized the modern turn of political economy by setting the factory as the central issue of political economy,and then constructed a machine-based political economy and mechanical ontology,that is,both human and the entire universe are machine-like and calculable,the world itself is an automatic machine.This mechanical ontology means the end of nature and history,since history is nothing but the evolution of technological systems dominated by technology.Thus,the worker is not only excluded from the historical subject,but transformed into a subjugated productive body under the powerknowledge scheme of technical education.Marx profoundly revealed that this"mechanized dystopiai"si fundamentally the product of the ideological mystification of capitalist relations of production.Therefore,the basis of Babbage's and Ure's mechanical ontology is not the machine itself,but the capitalist relations of production and their inherent contradictions.To Re-examine this intellectual history will help us deeply understand the essence of capitalist machinofacture and the contemporary significance of the dialectical materialist ideology critique.