Positivism was also held responsible for the permeation of society by the kind of instrumental reasoning that technology represented, as strictly concerned with the most efficient means of control and manipulation. Their fears were strongly influenced by those of Max Weber, who saw the rationalization and bureaucratization of society as dominating socialand economic life to such an extent as to threaten to crush all freedom and individuality, a process he referred to as the ‘iron cage of modernity’. Unlike Weber, however, the Frankfurt School saw capitalism as at the root of the process, forever extending its control of society.