The aim of this Master's thesis is first, to outline the technological dynamics of capitalism through a discussion of the capitalist process of production. By drawing on Heinrich and Marx, the thesis foregrounds the key role of technology, or machines, in the methods of increasing surplus value – the increasing of surplus value that is determined by competition through the introduction of machines into production, linked to the processes of formal and real subsumption of labour under capital, qualitatively transforms production according to the process of capital valorization. In order to study the nature of this technological and organizational transformation, we first discuss Marx’s intellectual gesture in his discussion of machinery and large-scale industry of comparing biological and technological evolution, as well as tools and organs. We then turn to André Leroi-Gourhan’s theoretical project, in which this gesture plays a key role. Besides certain parallels between both theoretical projects, we also discuss Gourhan’s process of so-called operational liberation, which is, according to the author, an important condition for human technicality in general, at the same time providing the conceptual apparatus with which we may begin to grasp the transition that was already indicated above in relation to Marx: the transition from tool to machine. In the last part of the thesis, we draw on an article by Krašovec to point out some broader consequences of the formation of capitalism and of the process of real subsumption within it, which we, following the author’s example, extend to include the real subsumption of labor-power – here we yet again refer to Gourhan’s contribution on the specifically human outcome of evolution, that is, the generic character of his body.
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