We haven't had a solid Yang Gang post in a while, so let's hop to it.
171 years ago, in 1848, Karl Marx accurately predicted our modern era of automation, artificial intelligence, and the solutions as prescribed by our beloved Democratic hopeful Andrew Yang.
Marx was no opponent of automation. In fact, he accurately describes it as a necessary stage in capitalist development on the road toward communism. He didn't care for folklore tales like John Henry; Marx was rooting for the steam drill.
Below are excerpts from 'The Fragment on Machines' which can be read in full here:
http://thenewobjectivity.com/pdf/marx.pdfQuote
Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the… automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.
This is still a bit ahead of its time even today, as all workers haven't completely transitioned into mere "conscious linkages" assisting the AI run machines.
Quote
Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal or oil just as the worker consumes food to keep up its perpetual motion.
Marx extols the replacement of the worker in the capital system by machines.
Quote
Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself… As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure.
Capitalism thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.
Marx admits here that the labor theory of value ends when the automated future arrives.
Quote
Capital itself is the moving contradiction... it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth.
And we see this happening all around us today. Hours and benefits are being cut wherever possible by those who currently control capital in order to maximize their accumulation of capital, but as demand drives economic production and demand relies wholly on labor being compensated for time, the economy is grinding to a halt at the bottom even as economic indicators at the top indicate extreme health. Eventually the entire system will end itself. Automation is an accelerant.
Marx does lay out a utopian view of how this all ends,
Quote
...the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.
How we arrive there is a choice that our current generation will likely have to make. Either violent revolution and mass social upheaval will occur as the capital system grinds to a halt, or we embrace the end point as soon as possible and start paying out a Universal Basic Income that gradually increases until the machines have supplanted labor in its entirety.
My family stands by the immediate objectives of candidate Yang. Where does yours stand?
This post was edited by inkanddagger on Oct 22 2019 07:40pm