Regarding the meaning of alienation of science and technology, Professor Wang Bolu's view is the most representative among China scholars. In his view, the so-called alienation of science and technology refers to "the tendency that people's technological activities and their technological systems are transformed into a foreign, alien and hostile force, which harms society and reacts on human beings, distorting or malforming the development of human nature".
Marx lived in an era of great industrial development, and mechanization became a trend in this era. The development of science and technology has obvious performance in the use of machines. With the rapid development of science and technology, the machine of capitalist communism is becoming more and more advanced, and technical intervention is not needed.
Because of this, the rule of machines over people is becoming more and more serious. Under normal circumstances, machines are operated by people, and these machines are also produced by people, but in the era of capitalist industrialization, machines control people and workers become slaves of machines. As Marx said: "In the actual situation of the national economy, the reality of labor is the unreality of workers, and the objectification is the loss of things and the slavery of things." ?
In such an environment, workers have gradually developed a kind of resistance and hostility to scientific and technological achievements such as machines, so that they have also developed resistance to factories. At this time, the workers' labor is not voluntary, but forced, as Marx said when discussing alienated labor: "As long as the physical compulsion or other compulsion stops, people will avoid labor like the plague."
Marx believes that the root of the alienation of science and technology is the capitalist mode of production. In Marx's view, the alienation of science and technology is caused by the application of science and technology in capitalism. Under capitalist production conditions, capital is for proliferation, and everything else must be attached with this condition. Capitalists use new machines not from the perspective of workers, nor from the perspective of developing new technologies for society, but only from the perspective of making profits in competition.
Therefore, workers operate machines, which used to be accessories of workers, that is, machines that used to serve workers, but now they are used by capitalists, firmly tying workers to a fixed job, and workers have become vassals and slaves. Therefore, under the capitalist mode of production, "alienation of science and technology" will be the inevitable result.