Marx and Social Power - The Effect of Mechanization

In The Grundrisse, once again, Marx continues to describe how the labourer becomes less and less a human being in the industrial setting, as he delineates the psychological and social impact of machinery in the workplace. The labourer's social power has inexorably diminished as machinery has taken over not just physical aspects of each job, but most cognitive aspects, thereby distancing the worker from the final product. I must submit that this is a process that I can accurately label a "degradation" process, in which the worker's contribution is virtually destroyed or of such minusculer importance that, of course, the worker can be readily replaced without production interruption. The workers' social power continues to decrease as objectification increases; the worker and her/his counterparts' psyche die; the machinery lives; and the work and product is that of the machinery now, and not the living human being. Marx now defines the worker as an accessory of the machinery; devoid of any social function or power in its life-activity. The capacity to think, to develop, and to process information becomes inconsequential as technological advancements subsume living labours' social needs.