Modernity or Capitalism? Technology in Heidegger and Marx

Modernity or Capitalism? explores a parallelism that can be found in the work of Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx. The two share a similar ontology of labour that forms the basis of their distinct understandings of the technological world. I first outline the respective critiques of technology by Heidegger and Marx, then argue that the global system comprises both modern techno-scientific representation and capitalism. Everything must fall within the system’s self-enclosed logic. Abstraction, thus, becomes the structuring force. I argue that the system cannot account for the concrete character of human labour. Through a close reading of Heidegger and Marx I explore the possibility of concrete practical activity as a potential structuring force of the system.