Socialism, Technology, Power

In 'Their Morals and Ours', Trotsky declares that Socialism serves two purposes: 1. "Increasing the power of man over nature"; and 2. "Abolition of the power of man over man".  Now, it is easy to take the latter as the essential clause, since it invokes the fundamental Marxist focus on the elimination of the source of that power--Private Property.  But #1 is the decisive one of the two.  For, it is an allusion to the achievement of the stage of technological development that enables the transcending of exploitation, i. e. because machines can perform the work of the Proletariat, and can produce enough goods to satisfy the needs of all.  At the same time, it therefore jettisons one of the cardinal premises of traditional Marxism--that Socialism is a stage of the Dialectical Historical development of human society.  Rather, according to #1, it is a function of the species' relation outside of itself, to the rest of nature.  Thus, contrary to the title of the piece, Trotsky's use of the word "power" in relation to the rest of nature suggests what Nietzsche calls an "extra-moral" context.