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Record W2025413442 · doi:10.1177/0896920510378765

Machine Systems and the Unique Nature of Industrial Capitalism

2010· article· en· W2025413442 on OpenAlexaff
Kenneth L. Fish

Bibliographic record

VenueCritical Sociology · 2010
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicPolitical Economy and Marxism
Canadian institutionsSimon Fraser University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsCapitalismOpposition (politics)DualismTransformative learningNeoclassical economicsIndustrialisationSociologyNatural (archaeology)PoliticsRelation (database)Economic systemValue (mathematics)Environmental ethicsEpistemologyEconomicsPolitical scienceMarket economyLawPhilosophyBiologyComputer science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The notion that industrialization occurs in opposition to nature has deep roots in environmental thought. Drawing on Marx’s analysis of machine systems, this paper highlights a unique characteristic of industrial capitalism that is obscured by this technology/nature dualism. It argues that machinery is unique — not simply in its relation to nature — but in the way that it is nature. Where pre-industrial technologies are simply natural materials modified to meet human needs, machine systems constitute a force of nature whose ‘metabolism’ becomes increasingly central to the movement of nature as a whole. The productive force of industrial capitalism, then, is premised not on a technological foundation that is other than, or opposed to, what is natural; on the contrary, it is premised on a unique humanization of nature. The paper concludes by suggesting the value of this conceptual framework for understanding contemporary environmental problems and developing a transformative environmental politics.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.006
Threshold uncertainty score0.035

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.032
Scholarly communication0.0060.006
Open science0.0000.004
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.021
GPT teacher head0.327
Teacher spread0.307 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2010
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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