If you would go out of your way to argue how easy it is for capital to automate away jobs when labor costs become too high, then you should probably know that youâre giving all kinds of credibility to those of us who advocate fully-automated luxury communism. I mean, think about it: youâre arguing that so much of human labor ISNâT NECESSARY because said jobs can be done by machines, and yet you STILL want the bulk of humanity to pointlessly scrape by laboring for the capitalist class, receiving meager wages to buy the shit they helped generate in the first place. The above billboard is a THREAT. Letâs not mince words â that billboard is bourgeois propaganda designed to turn the working class against each other and against the broader goals of resource democratization. âIf you fight for a basic livable wage, just know that youâre easily replaceable, peon!â
This is what leftists mean when they say that capitalism is an economic system filled to the brim with tensions and contradictions; itâs also what they mean when they say that capitalism inevitably produces its own gravediggers. Automation is one of those gravediggers, and itâs a major one at that. As more and more jobs become automated in the coming decades, the working class will face widespread dispossession, ramping up revolutionary class consciousness in the process. At that point, capitalism will either focus on generating more superfluous jobs for people to work or set about instituting a universal basic income â regardless, the point is to keep enough scraps flowing downward so that people donât call for a broader system change. In this way, capitalismâs ruling class can maintain control over the wealth-producing means of production and imperialist capital accumulation can continue unrestrained.
For these reasons, âmore jobsâ and universal basic incomes are not enough. We need to democratize the broader social infrastructure and eliminate the profit system. If you recognize how possible it is to automate away human labor, then you should defenestrate yourself out of the Overton Window and use some political imagination â cut out the unnecessary jobs, automate all the labor you can, produce for human need rather than elite profit, and you end up with drastically reduced working hours and bountiful leisure time. This is the essence of fully-automated luxury communism â the natural conclusion of the conditions that capitalism set in motion.
Be wary of automation in the present climate, but always trace it back to the class struggle. Robots taking our jobs SHOULD be cause for celebration; why should we treat these potential liberators as harbingers of dispossession? Technological advancements are pushing us exponentially towards a de facto post-scarcity world, where everyoneâs needs can be comfortably met alongside their desires for community and leisure and entertainment, and yet weâre held back by Empireâs insistence on keeping the means of production hoarded under the command of a superfluous ruling class. As long as we are divided into capitalists and workers, humanity will never know full liberation.
pixelskylines
2087
amandla
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
prguitarman
