Technology as capital : Challenging the illusion of the green machine

Summary, in English

Debates on technologies for harnessing renewable energies tend to generate a polarized arena in which critical voices are automatically denounced as defenders of fossil energy. This has created a difficult situation for activists and scholars voicing concerns about the comparatively low power density, low net energy, and environmental justice concerns of such technologies. In this paper, we highlight the contradictions and ambivalences underlying Promethean arguments for solar power, which are currently dividing the political left. Through a critical reading of three proponents of classical Marxism, we address the structural coherence and paradoxes of the discourses within which the faith in such “green” technology is mobilized. We illustrate how Promethean visions of solar power tend to suffer from a pervasive ontological separation of human ingenuity and global social metabolism. This raises important questions about the ambiguous and theoretically underdeveloped role of technology in historical materialism, and about how capital, once converted into the material form of technology, becomes exempt from political critique. Rather than accepting such an immaterial and ultimately depoliticized position on technology, we argue that Marxist scholarship should concede that Promethean approaches must be abandoned if we are to effectively address climate change and other challenges of the Anthropocene.

• Author: Andreas Roos; Alf Hornborg
• Department/s: Human Ecology
• Publishing year: 2024
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2024.2332218
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Routledge
• Topic: Human Geography
• Status: Epub
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1548-3290