This article examines how modern capitalism is shaped not only by economic structures but also by the way modern societies perceive and relate to material objects. It argues that post-Enlightenment thought tends to treat technology as inherently powerful, self-contained, and progressive. This perception is not neutral: it plays a crucial role in sustaining capitalist ideology. While Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism offers an important critique of this tendency, it remains underdeveloped in relation to technology itself. At the same time, although Bruno Latour’s work helps overcome the strict separation between nature and society, it fails to fully address how technological systems are embedded in global relations of inequality and exploitation.

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1. Introduction: Technology and the Invisible Assumptions of Modernity

One of the least questioned assumptions in modern thought is that technology is defined by its internal properties—its efficiency, innovation, and capacity for progress. From everyday discourse to academic analysis, technological objects are typically described as if they contain agency within themselves. Machines “do things,” algorithms “decide,” and infrastructures “enable” social life.

This way of speaking reflects a deeper intellectual tradition rooted in post-Enlightenment philosophy, particularly the Cartesian separation between mind and matter. Within this framework, material objects belong to a world of physical causality, while social relations, values, and meanings belong to a separate human sphere. As a result, technology is often treated as something external to society rather than as something socially produced and politically embedded.

This division has had lasting consequences for how capitalism is understood. It has encouraged both mainstream economics and critical theory to treat technological development as a largely autonomous process driven by innovation, rather than as a field shaped by power, inequality, and historical struggle.

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2. Marx and the Limits of Fetishism

Karl Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism remains one of the most influential attempts to challenge this perspective. For Marx, capitalism obscures the social relations behind commodities, making them appear as if they possess value and power in themselves. In this sense, social relations between people are misrecognized as relations between things.

However, Marx’s analysis tends to focus primarily on commodities and exchange value, rather than on technology as such. Machines, tools, and infrastructures are often treated as neutral instruments of production rather than as objects that also participate in fetishistic processes.

This limitation has had long-term effects. In much of Marxist thought, technology is either seen as a productive force that accelerates historical development or as a tool that can be repurposed under different political systems. What remains underexplored is how technological systems themselves shape perception—how they become culturally “fetishized” as autonomous sources of progress and authority.

In this sense, technology is not only embedded in capitalist relations; it also helps reproduce them by appearing as natural, inevitable, and self-moving.

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3. The Persistence of the Cartesian Paradigm

Both mainstream economic thought and much critical theory remain influenced by a Cartesian separation between the material and the social. Even when they disagree politically, they often share a common assumption: that technology belongs to the domain of things, while society belongs to the domain of humans.

This separation makes it difficult to fully grasp the political role of technology. It encourages the idea that technological systems evolve according to their own internal logic, while social relations merely adapt to them. In such a framework, capitalism appears as something that uses technology, rather than something that is co-produced through technological arrangements.

As a result, the cultural dimension of technology—its role in shaping beliefs, desires, and forms of social coordination—remains under-theorized.

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4. Latour and the Post-Cartesian Turn

Bruno Latour offers a powerful alternative to this tradition. His actor-network theory challenges the distinction between subjects and objects, arguing that agency is distributed across networks of humans and non-humans. In this view, technological objects are not passive tools but active participants in social processes.

Latour’s work helps dismantle the idea that technology is separate from society. It shows how artifacts, infrastructures, and technical systems are deeply entangled with political and cultural practices. From this perspective, modernity is not defined by the separation of nature and society, but by the constant production of hybrid networks that combine both.

This post-Cartesian approach is particularly useful for understanding how technologies shape social order without reducing them to mere instruments of human intention.

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5. The Blind Spot: Inequality and Exploitation

However, Latour’s framework has its own limitations. By focusing on networks of relations, it often brackets questions of structural inequality and economic exploitation. Technological systems are described in terms of connections and mediations, but less attention is given to how these systems are embedded in global capitalism.

In particular, Latour tends to avoid analyzing how technological infrastructures are shaped by asymmetries of power—between the Global North and South, between capital and labor, and between centers and peripheries of production.

This omission is significant. While Latour successfully dissolves the nature/society divide, he does not fully replace it with a theory of political economy. As a result, technology becomes socially distributed but not necessarily politically contested.

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6. Toward a Combined Perspective

A more complete understanding of technology requires combining Marx’s critique of fetishism with Latour’s relational ontology. From Marx, we gain insight into how social relations are obscured and naturalized through material forms. From Latour, we gain tools for understanding how agency is distributed across networks of humans and non-humans.

Together, these perspectives allow us to see technology not as a neutral set of tools, nor as autonomous forces of progress, but as culturally embedded systems that participate in the reproduction of capitalism.

Crucially, this also means recognizing that technological objects are not just economically functional—they are ideologically active. They shape how people imagine power, progress, and possibility.

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Conclusion

The difficulty of analyzing technology within capitalism stems from deeply rooted philosophical assumptions about the separation of material objects and social relations. While Marx’s concept of fetishism reveals how social relations are hidden within commodities, it does not fully extend to technology itself. Conversely, Latour’s post-Cartesian framework helps overcome the subject/object divide but tends to underplay structural inequality and exploitation.

A more adequate theory of technology must therefore move beyond both positions. It must account for the ways technological systems are both materially embedded and socially constructed, while also recognizing their role in sustaining global capitalist hierarchies.

Only then can we fully understand technology not as a neutral force of progress, but as a central component of the cultural and political architecture of capitalism.