Marx, Alienation and Techno-Capitalism

In this book, translated into English for the first time, Lelio Demichelis takes on a modern perspective of the concept/process of alienation. This concept—much more profound and widespread today than first described and denounced by Marx—has largely been forgotten and erased. Using the characters of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Prometheus, the author reinterprets and updates Marx, Nietzsche, Anders, Foucault and, in particular, critical theory and the Frankfurt School views on an administered society (where everything is automated and engineered, manifest today in algorithms, AI, machine learning and social networking) showing that, in a world where old and new forms of alienation come together, man is increasingly led to delegate (i.e. alienate) sovereignty, freedom, responsibility and the awareness of being alive.

Lelio Demichelis is Professor of Economic Sociology at Insubria University, Italy. He is the author of: Bio-Tecnica. La società nella sua “forma” tecnica (2008); Società o comunità (2010); La religione tecno-capitalista. Dalla teologia politica alla teologia tecnica (2015); Sociologia della tecnica e del capitalismo (2017); La grande alienazione. Narciso, Pigmalione, Prometeo e il tecno-capitalismo (2018); Sociologia della tecnica e del capitalismo. Ambiente, uomini e macchine nel Tecnocene (2020 - updated and integrated 2017 edition); and co-edited Biopolitiche del lavoro (2008). In 2021, with the psychoanalyst Paolo Bartolini, he co-authored: La vita lucida. Dialogo su potere, pandemia e liberazione (2021). He currently collaborates with www.economiaepolitica.it; www.agendadigitale.eu; www.naufraghi.ch