About man's disposability in the industrial era

[...] in the 'Factory' chapter of Capital Karl Marx wrote about the 'technical subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour': 'In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are part of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.'

- Marx, 1867. Cited from Siegfriend Zielinski's Audiovisions, 1999, pg. 80.