Marx, Machines, and Skill

of technology on skill requirements.' Marx's name figures prominently in this research as a theorist and prophet of the dehumanization and deskilling of work under capitalism. Indeed, it is now considered almost obvious that Marx, rightly or wrongly, saw capitalist development and use of machinery as tending to--and at least to some extent designed to--reduce skill requirements.2 This article argues that distinguishing more carefully between theory and polemic in Marx's writing and between short-term processes and long-term trends in Marx's theory reveals the possibility of a quite different reading. Apart from its exegetical merits, this new reading offers a theoretically provocative and surprisingly optimistic perspective on the longer-term trend in skill requirements under capitalist conditions.