In the middle of the nineteenth century the situation changed. Karl Marx rehabilitated technique in the eyes of the workers. He preached that technique can be liberating. Those who exploited it enslaved the workers, but that was the fault of the masters and not of technique itself. Marx was perhaps not the first to have said this, but he was the first to convince the masses of it. The working class would not be liberated by a struggle against technique but, on the contrary, by technical progress itself, which would automatically bring about the collapse of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism.
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