Information society theory is a doctrine of 'autonomous technology,' (Winner 1977) presenting information technologies as the prime movers propelling the economics, culture, and politics of the future.
If certain Marxisms have difficulty contesting such determinism this is surely because of a partial complicity in its premises. 'Scientific socialists' who perceive the forces of production as a motor of history relentlessly smashing through anachronistic social relations are ill-equipped to answer a counter-theory which appropriates their own logic and turns it against them, depicting socialism itself as a fetter on the machine-made march of progress.
It is no coincidence that several postindustrial gurus are past students of historical materialism who have learnt only too well from Marx's (1963, 109) aphorism that 'The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill with the industrial capitalist' - and do not hesitate to extrapolate a new epoch based on the microcomputer and communications satellite.
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