Gazing upon the walls filled with images of auto assembly lines and workers dwarfed by machinery, I realized that capitalists and communists of the era shared a devotion to mechanization and to industrialization as phenomena that would allow human beings to transcend the limits of nature. While they disagreed about the ideal structure of society, they agreed about humanity’s destiny in crucial respects. That belief in science and technology as means to dominate the natural world and the misplaced confidence that those in charge would deploy those forces wisely were crucial to modernism.
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Gazing upon the walls filled with images of auto assembly lines and workers dwarfed by machinery, I realized that capitalists and communists of the era shared a devotion to mechanization and to industrialization as phenomena that would allow human beings to transcend the limits of nature. While they disagreed about the ideal structure of society, they agreed about humanity’s destiny in crucial respects. That belief in science and technology as means to dominate the natural world and the misplaced confidence that those in charge would deploy those forces wisely were crucial to modernism. Avant-garde artists, communists, technicians, and capitalists of the era shared a vision that looked forward to a shining future. Looking back it seems like hubris and dangerous delusion.
