ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of technological transition as an existentially charged faith in salvation from the contradictions of industrial capitalism. It reflects on the fact that some varieties of socialist thought on technology are almost indistinguishable from mainstream ecomodernism. It observes that debates on technologies for harnessing renewable energies tend to generate a polarised, binary arena, in which sceptics are automatically denounced as defenders of fossil energy. It is thus politically difficult to voice concerns about the comparatively low power density or net energy of such technologies, even for people who are genuinely worried about climate change. The chapter critically discusses approaches to solar power technologies among three Marxists with a strong trust in technological progress. Their positions raise important questions about the ambiguous and theoretically underdeveloped role of technology in historical materialism, and about how capital, once converted into the material form of technology, becomes exempt from political critique.
