Full automation

[Pingers]

I've been wanting to post about this for a while, and this seems as good a time as any, a better time than any in fact. The usual rules of capitalism (you sell your labour or you don't get money) are currently suspended and suddenly the notion of capitalist realism looks in tatters. It has been revealed that should we choose to, we can decide that what matters is making ventilators, or face masks, or scrubs, and that people with 3D printers or sewing machines can make some of these things at home for no profit, while others need factories. If we can do that, then it's obvious that we can do anything - we could build enough homes for everyone, provide everyone with enough food, source all of our energy from renewables, whatever we chose within our technological limits, which expand daily. The only thing between our present and that future is capitalism, demanding that the resources available only accrue to the few, while the rest of us have to work in their service to be allowed to survive. So far, so anarchist communist.

But to go one step further, we could have the future we want while largely removing the necessity of work. Not only is capitalism facing the crises of coronavirus and anthropogenic climate change, but also of automation. Each business acts in its own interests against those of its competitors. Each business has an interest in automating as far as possible - over time, machines are cheaper, more reliable and more compliant than human labour units, and the ability of machines grows exponentially - literally, due to Moore's Law holding for decades. And so business will automate, and is automating. Even during the pre-lock down panic buying, my local Tesco didn't put any more humans on the tills; if you want that toilet roll that badly you will queue at the self-service checkouts, prole. But of course, the more work that is automated the fewer people there are with wages to buy the goods and services produced by machines, while every business puts its faith in an imaginary land where they automate and their competitors don't. It can't be sustained.

Most of the Left see this as a threat - jobs, peace and socialism has been a slogan for a long time. But now machines can do so many things, I don't believe we need jobs in a post-capitalist society, at least not in the way we did in say 1917. Of course some work still needs to be done by people; you need humans to programme, monitor and repair the machines, you need humans to do mental health work and care work, you need humans for a number of things. But work as a necessity for 5 days a week?

There are people in the UK right now who are not able to do any work and yet are provided with enough food and have a home to live in, and have plenty to keep them occupied. I know that some people are enjoying that quite a lot. It's entirely within our reach to make that the new normal, except not being stuck at home. Maybe each of us would have to work a day or two a week, the rest of the time we could do as we pleased - spend more time with family, read, provide support to the people in our communities as we are doing now, paint, make music - play. It's time to sack work off and play.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Lovely words

[touchingcloth]

Seconded.

[Better Midlands]

Good post, I've been thinking this way for a few years, when you look at the power of Google and the wealth of Bezos then something has to give. The other path is almost too dark to imagine.

I hope the current situation has a lasting impact on people regarding this.

[Urinal Cake]

Good post, I've been thinking this way for a few years, when you look at the power of Google and the wealth of Bezos then something has to give. The other path is almost too dark to imagine.

I hope the current situation has a lasting impact on people regarding this.

With everything that's going on, I think the other path is more probable.

[Blumf]

I think there should be a stronger drive to reduce the working week. We don't need to work 5 day/40 hour weeks any more, just like we stopped needing to work 6 day and 6.5 day weeks.

[Better Midlands]

With everything that's going on, I think the other path is more probable.

I agree, I think things will have to get pretty fucking terrible before the levee breaks unfortunately.

[bgmnts]

I think there should be a stronger drive to reduce the working week. We don't need to work 5 day/40 hour weeks any more, just like we stopped needing to work 6 day and 6.5 day weeks.

People just wouldnt be able to comprehend it though. For most people work is their life, its where you derive most of your self esteem and drive and reason to get up in the morning.

Look how mental people are going just a week inside, people just can't fill the time.

[Abnormal Palm]

Had a lengthy conversation with my best mate tonight on this very topic. Almost word for word in parts.

And sure enough, the resistance begins already: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-universal-basic-income-economic-crisis-recession-unemployment-a9437116.html

There will be opportunity following this colossal tragedy and the kind of thinking and sharing of ideas in the OP can't begin soon enough. The next steps forward need to be exactly that.

Great post.

[touchingcloth]

I think there should be a stronger drive to reduce the working week. We don't need to work 5 day/40 hour weeks any more, just like we stopped needing to work 6 day and 6.5 day weeks.

I've been meaning to post something along these lines for a while. It's been over 150 years since the first serious moves to reduce the working day to 8 hours, so it's kind of incredible that our working days have been static since then - have increased, in fact - when by rights the state of automation ought to mean a huge reduction in the amount of labour required of each person.

Surely the massive amounts of money which have been poured into this will make Marxists of everyone? The idea that austerity would be taken lightly after the lie of capitalism has been so neatly and swiftly exposed is insane. I'm sure that's what will actually happen, but it's still insane.

[Urinal Cake]

People just wouldnt be able to comprehend it though. For most people work is their life, its where you derive most of your self esteem and drive and reason to get up in the morning.

Look how mental people are going just a week inside, people just can't fill the time.

I think a lot of people would learn to live with it. There'll be more side hustles to keep busy-  self-published books, artisan food producers etc but we'll live.

But as we've seen for a lot of wealthy people the idea of people 'not working hard' and still being entitled to a decent standard of living really is an anathema to their sense of self and society. And they've got the biggest say in government and society so far.

Really need a general strike.

[Pijlstaart]

Certain things can only be done by big business, not by the likes of us. Take for example the goliath leap from Coco Pops to Coco Pops Crunchers: Can you handle the crunch? That's not trivial. Certainly those at Novara Media will have you believe otherwise, that we could do this through collective action, but did you ever stop to think that maybe they couldn't handle the crunch. We know the sort of collective action cereal Novara Media would approve of would be marketed around taste, nutrition, sustainable farming, maybe a carbon neutral supply chain. But wait a minute, what about crunch....hang on a minute...why wasn't the cereal marketed around crunch... wait...taste and nutrition, but all the focus groups said crunch? 

Certainly we know what Novara Media would say if they rocked up in Kellogg's Pioneering R&D lab, with it's wise men in it, they'd say these Coco Pops Crunchers exclude those who can't handle the crunch, and we can't have that! Indeed the marketing strategy of our inclusive collective action cereal should highlight the adversity faced by those who couldn't handle the crunch, rather than have an animated monkey belittle them and laugh at their pain. Even if the focus groups, all of whom could handle the crunch, loved the animated monkey and egged him on to increasing acts of callousness, the cereals borne of collective action would uplift all of mankind. But wait, said the wise men, wasn't the primary reason that the roman empire fell  because it rejected it's long-held values in crunch and installed leaders who couldn't handle the crunch? This is a pivotal time in our history, and I would ask all of you to look at yourselves and ask: Coco Pops Crunchers, can you handle the crunch?

[Twit 2]

It is human nature that creates and then sustains or overwhelms any system. Capitalism can be replaced, but only by something else awful, because people are awful.*

(*On an individual level, we're not so bad. Old Widow Hamilton leaving pies on the windowsill? Lovely! Human race? Cunts of death.)

[Mr_Simnock]

......d build enough homes for everyone, provide everyone with enough food, source all of our energy from renewables, whatever we chose within our technological limits, which expand daily. The only thing between our present and that future is capitalism, demanding that the resources available only accrue to the few, while the rest of us have to work in their service to be allowed to survive. So far, so anarchist communist.

But to go one step further, we could have the future we want while largely removing the necessity of work. Not only is capitalism facing the crises of coronavirus and anthropogenic climate change, but also of automat.....

Basicaly what Paul Mason's book 'Post-capitalism' goes on about at just a bit more length and depth

[chveik]

Old Widow Hamilton leaving pies on the windowsill

nonce

[Pingers]

People just wouldnt be able to comprehend it though. For most people work is their life, its where you derive most of your self esteem and drive and reason to get up in the morning.

Look how mental people are going just a week inside, people just can't fill the time.

There are certainly people who would want to work as much as they do now, and there's no reason they shouldn't continue. It's the necessity of work we can largely eliminate, not the choice to work. If people's work is rewarding to them and feels useful then they are more likely to want to do it. So, if someone's job is coding computer games and they love computer games, or their job is making furniture and they get a lot out of it, they are more likely to want to do more than a day or two a week, but it would be their choice. That's real freedom, not the ersatz freedom of capitalism, a system that from a young age strips us of our creativity, instead pointing us at what is 'useful' to business from primary school onwards, rather than what we are capable of.

[thenoise]

People just wouldnt be able to comprehend it though. For most people work is their life, its where you derive most of your self esteem and drive and reason to get up in the morning.

Look how mental people are going just a week inside, people just can't fill the time.

Is that the lack of work though?  or the fact that we can't do anything at all, and we're all frightened of each other/the world/shopping/the post/....?

Especially because plenty of people are 'working' (logging onto the computer and going to 'meetings' etc - same as they do all day anyway), but still going nuts.

[thenoise]

Two or three day week seems fine for 99% of occupations.  It's frequent enough work that we can still keep up our skills to a sufficiently high standard, but sufficiently little that we can devote most of our waking hours to the pursuit of something else.

I certainly think there will be a huge increase in quality regarding the 'arts' if people can devote sufficient hours to creating without having to make a living from it.

It didn't take a Corona virus to make this revelation, though, and the decision can only be taken by our rulers, who find the current system to be to their liking, and the general narrative is to get things back to 'normal' as soon as possible.

[touchingcloth]

There are certainly people who would want to work as much as they do now, and there's no reason they shouldn't continue. It's the necessity of work we can largely eliminate, not the choice to work. If people's work is rewarding to them and feels useful then they are more likely to want to do it. So, if someone's job is coding computer games and they love computer games, or their job is making furniture and they get a lot out of it, they are more likely to want to do more than a day or two a week, but it would be their choice. That's real freedom, not the ersatz freedom of capitalism, a system that from a young age strips us of our creativity, instead pointing us at what is 'useful' to business from primary school onwards, rather than what we are capable of.

Those are my thoughts on my current job. Part of our cost savings to deal with the pandemic have been putting people on 85% pay but keeping their full hours, or going onto furlough at 80% pay but with zero hours of work. I was really hoping for the keeping the work rather than the furlough, and much more because of enjoying my work rather than the extra 5% pay. I'd like to think that I'd busy myself with something not dissimilar to my job if the unthinkable happened and the country switched to paying everyone a UBI which meant that they didn't need to work a job to survive.

[grassbath]

It's been obvious that this is what we need for a while now but unfortunately I think 'capitalist realism' has stood in the way of even this happening. Even in these dire straits, it still feels like too radical an idea for any government to actually set about legislating it. The progress has been much too slow.

[Johnny Yesno]

Perhaps it doesn't need pointing out but Pijlstaart's wonderful post is a nod towards Aaron Bastani's book Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

[Large Noise]

You're right Pingers that there's a lot of resistance to this on the left. Some of the arguments deployed against UBI from the left are extremely flimsy. I've read/heard loads of people on the claiming "it'll all just end up in the pockets of landlords and big businesses". I've never heard anyone say that about increasing the minimum wage or tax credits, and I don't see how it's any different in principle.

Amber A'lee Frost had an article arguing against it in Jacobin which was so poorly thought out it only convinced me further of UBI's potential. She argues that all that spare time would only make people miserable, like mid 20th C housewives. Not only is that a daft comparison, but she conspicuously fails to discuss the fact that her and her friends already live in effectively a post-work situation, making big money recording 2-3 hours worth of podcasting per week.

One thing I like about UBI is the political shift I think it would cause. 'Low information voters' could be very easily bribed by parties who promise to put the UBI up. In the same way that the right can trick people into voting for tax cuts (which is a fallacy anyway if you ask MMTers), it would be very easy for the left to whip up desire for an increase in UBI. It's quite easy to obfuscate slashing public spending, people don't know how much is spent per head on the NHS. People would know down to the penny how much their UBI was, and they'd know the name of any bastard to tried to take it off them.

But UBI comes with the risk that it'd be used to excuse the destruction of the welfare state. You'd be getting £10k a year from the government, but you'd need to spend it all on private medical insurance. That would be a catastrophe and completely counter-productive. Hence some people on the economic far right supporting it.

That's where the alternative, Universal Basic Services, is stronger. It does seem ludicrous that the scope of the welfare state has hardly expanded in 70 years, despite labour productivity growing massively. You constantly hear liberal politicians and commentators chastise the Tories for the rise in foodbank use, but they never seem to get to the logical conclusion that basic food needs should be met by the state. Either you think people should be starved into working or you don't. Mainstream liberals can't seem to decide which it is. If we had UBS taking care of food, housing, clothing, transport, broadband, etc. we'd be getting towards that post-work world you're talking about.

In terms of automation, there are 3 million people in the UK who work in retail at the moment. Another 300k HGV drivers, 300k taxi drivers (don't know if that counts uber), god knows how many couriers etc. who also drive for a living. That's 15% of the UK workforce in industries that could be largely automated away with technology we've already got, plus god knows how many other jobs that could easily go part time.

Of course the counter to this is the claim that people will just transition into other jobs. But the human animal only has so many needs and wants. We're already producing more than enough of all the necessities (or in the case of housing, choosing not to). If you start giving these out to people, either directly (UBS) or indirectly (a sufficiently large UBI) their incentives shift. Their desire to trade 'freedom from' (work) for 'freedom to' (buy things) is not unlimited. People will work 40 hours a week to feed, clothe and house themselves, with a little bit left for disposable income. But they won't work 40 hours a week purely for the sake of disposable income unless it's a job they enjoy. As society gets more productive we're employing ever more stupid and cruel methods of ensuring that people aren't allowed to make that decision.

[Twit 2]

People will never be free. If someone doesn't enslave us then we'll enslave ourselves.

[Better Midlands]

Interesting post Large Noise, food for thought.

[Urinal Cake]

Re Amber: It is pretty hard to control the means of production when robots and the bosses are doing it.

A lot of people hate the idea of people getting something for nothing. They'll accept inheritances because atleast somebody worked hard in the past. Maybe a Basic Income has to be tied into some form of social/military service or something even if it's just a facade.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

UBI can't exist in a vacuum, it has to be brought in alongside a suite of other policies in order to be effective.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'm conflicted with this. On the one hand businesses are looking to lower the labour force, but on the other I think there is a notion that people need to be working if only to stop idle hands getting up to anything subversive.

One thing's for sure, the shift from blue collar to white collar work isn't all good. It's definitely less physically destructive or dangerous, you're probably not going to be around any nasty chemicals or whatever but mentally it's a lot worse I reckon. If you work on a production line making widgets, or dig a hole there's usually an obvious reason as to why you're doing that. In big corporate structures that's far less true - lots of people are just paperwork creators for internal reporting, they're just generating information the world doesn't need. I guess the reason businesses don't bin them is because they're billable. It doesn't matter to the cunts upstairs if the work done serves no useful purpose if it's generating revenue.

It's probably why there are entire industries, both pharmaceutical and things like mindfulness that basically amount to retuning yourself into thinking the universe is ok. But it's not.

I think it's inevitable that automation will put an end to these people. Internal processes mean that people in offices are often just walking flow charts, human glue code between disparate systems and more and more systems are getting better at talking to each other without that glue.

[Twit 2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

[Pingers]

UBI is a decent idea and would undoubdetly help a lot of people, however it is ultimately only a sticking plaster for the worst aspects of capitalism. The clue is in 'basic income' - if you want a decent income, you will still have to sell your labour to someone who will make a profit from it, and it is still leaves intact a system which is ultimately destructive and has shown itself inacapable of averting global disaster. I think we need to look past this, and aim for a world where we organise ourselves in such a way that essentials are distributed to everyone, and luxuries also provided that the natural resources exist to produce these without causing unnecessary destruction. I really think we need to move away from a money-based economy to a resource-based system; we produce things based on a) what is needed and b) what is sustainable.

We are already seeing in this crisis that we have the basis of a system where goods are moved to where they are needed without anyone needing to make a profit from it, for example Borough Market in London is finding ways to ensure fresh fruit and veg are provided free of charge to those who need it. We just need to scale this up, but crucially (and this seems to be a point that Paul Mason misses) we need to unenclose the land. While a few people own and therefore control what happens on productive land, we cannot make the transition to a post-capitalist society. Commonising the land will allow the wider population to make decisions about how to organise ourselves, what to produce and how to get it to the people who need it, while ensuring we are not taking more from the planet than it can sustain.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

I'm all for not working, or working a 3-day week, I just don't think automation is the magic answer. Imagine if you went back to the time of the printing press and gave a handful of publishers photocopiers. In principle, you could argue, they can now produce what used to take them 2 weeks in 2 minutes. But human nature doesn't work like that. In practice, what they'll do is work the  same number of hours to generate more copies. They'll be super-efficient, smashing the competition. The boss will eventually retire, the workers will be made redundant and, if they've got any nous, they'll borrow to purchase a photocopier to do the exact same thing.

This is of course a very crude reduction, but it's almost exactly what's happened since the dawn of every modern technological advancement. Productivity rises, hours at work stay roughly the same. The only reason we work less hours than the Victorians is, I would argue, a mixture of government-led working directives and trade unionism. Automated machinery, in all its various guises, as far as I can tell, has never in itself led to a reduction in working hours. In fact, you could probably argue that the industrial revolution (featuring locomotive machines that partially operated themselves) created more labour rather than less.