Marx's critique of technological alienation is most fully expressed in his description of the role of machines in modern industrial life. But Marx's account of technological alienation, even at its most mature, is not without lines of tension. In fact, Marx's description of technology is vexed, and this vexation corresponds to an ambiguity in the social uses of science and technology in nineteenth-century capitalist society. On the one hand, Marx supports the scientific and technological revolution in the means of production that is expressed in machine usage. In this revolution, Marx sees the opportunity for machines to fulfill their promise to liberate human beings from drudgery, to shorten labor time and intensity, and to leave more time for self-cultivation, that is, to overcome or eliminate alienation. In this, he follows the Utopian socialists of whom he is otherwise so critical, and he stays within the parameters of the Enlightenment attitude toward technology.