Chapter Friedrich Pollock e l’era dell’automazione

Abstract

In Friedrich Pollock's thinking, the analysis of the impact of technological transformations on the world of work plays a central role. From the essays of the late 1920s that led to the development of the concept of State capitalism, to the 1955 book Automation. A Study of its Economics and social Consequences, he was increasingly confronted with the tendency to create 'deserted factories' to 'replace the labour force with fully automatic processes' . It is then in reflecting on the social, cultural and political, as well as economic, effects of automation and cybernetics that Pollock's prognosis of late modern society as a 'totally administered society’. Pollock's role as mentor, as well as close collaborator and inseparable friend, of Max Horkheimer and the other authors of the Frankfurt School cannot be underestimated.