‘Automation and the Future of Work’ by Aaron Benanav reviewed by Görkem Giray


Automation and the Future of Work

Verso, London, 2020. 160 pp., £12.99 hb
ISBN 9781839761294

Reviewed by Görkem Giray

About the reviewer

Görkem Giray is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Studies at İstanbul Technical …

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Recent developments in information technologies, such as machine learning, neural networks, environments with smart devices, and robotics, have given rise to scenarios for a future in which these technological innovations will be widely applied in production. Indeed, ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ was one of the headlines of the World Economic Forum in 2016. Let alone traditional capital investment, even universities are shaping their curricula according to these emerging technologies. In many aspects, it might seem that a world with robots is close at hand: a world in which automated machines are going to render most existing jobs obsolete in the near future. In fact, there occasionally prevails a discourse that is reiterative of machines leaving the masses unemployed and unrestrained technological change destroying jobs; according to this discourse, we have finally come to the end of the world of work and workers as we know it.

Aaron Benanav’s book is an important attempt to invalidate this discourse. Despite the fact that ‘there are simply too few jobs for too many people,’ the book argues against the resurgent automation discourse and sets on to falsify the claim that the unrestrained technological change is destroying jobs (4). To achieve this task, Benanav calls our attention to the automation discourse (Chapter 1) and immediately outlines the four principal propositions upon which this discourse rests: (i) workers are already replaced by machines and this results in rising levels of ‘technological unemployment,’ (ii) this unemployment heralds a largely automated society, (iii) a dream-like scenario of automation may turn into a nightmare because people will still have to work in order to make a living, and (iv) instituting universal basic income (UBI) is the only way to avoid the nightmare of a mass unemployment catastrophe (11).

In reaction to these propositions, Benanav argues that we might expect a rise in productivity with the implementation of high-tech production methods. However, both productivity and economic growth have in fact been decelerating globally for decades, resulting in lower demand for labour. Therefore, what periodically summons this discourse is not rapid technological change that might render the masses unemployed and destroy jobs but rather ‘a deep anxiety about the functioning of the labour market’ (18).

Benanav examines the history of the world economy over the past fifty years in order to clear the air about what has really happened in thelabour market. In the aftermath of the WWII, the US shared its technological advancements with countries such as Germany and Japan to counter the so-called threat of communist expansion and thereby helped prosper manufacturing capacity across the globe, which in turn resulted in industrial goods’ domination of the world market. Beginning with the early 1970s, however, the generation of overcapacity through this rapid increase in productive and technological capacities ‘issuing in a “long downturn” in manufacturing growth rates’ (34-35) led to deindustrialization (Chapter 2) and industrial stagnation (Chapter 3). Although industrial overcapacity caused a shift of labour force and employment from industry to services, the stagnation of industrial production was accompanied with low rates of GDP growth – which, in fact, suggests that industrial production still remains the driving engine of the overall economy and that financialization cannot offer an alternative to manufacturing in this respect (46, 48). Another result of the overcapacity accompanied by a slackening pace of overall economic growth was the declining labour demand in the labour market (Chapter 4). Unlike automation theorists, Benanav nevertheless argues that ‘labour underdemand expresses itself [… not as] unemployment [… but as] underemployment’ (59). In other words, the precarization of labour appeared to capital as the best way to survive under conditions of stagnation that began in the 1970s.

Benanav concentrates on two solutions to stagnation and labour underdemand, proposed by different parties (Chapter 5). He brings under scrutiny Radical Keynesians’ solution of socializing investment and shortening working days on the one hand, and automation theorists’ solution of UBI on the other. He discards the former as an inapplicable plan due to the threat of capital strike. Benanav then quite eloquently discusses and criticizes UBI proposals from both the right-wing (Hayek, Friedman, Murray) and the left-wing (van Parijs & Vanderborght, Srnicek & Williams) proponents of the idea. His overall conclusion for both of these accounts is that UBI is not an anti-capitalist proposal and it solely provides ‘people more autonomy in the fulfilment of their “animal functions”’ (93).

After arguing that automation theorists are mistaken and that advanced technology does not automatically bring us to a post-scarcity world in a technologically determinist way, Benanav refers to a number of theorists of post-scarcity, namely, Marx, More, Cabet, and Kropotkin, and their conceptualization of social life as two separate yet interrelated spheres of necessity and freedom (Chapter 6; 96). In this context, Benanav puts forth the principal aim of his own post-scarcity project as the growth of the realm of freedom as opposed to that of necessity; his proposition is to share the necessary work among people in order to make sure that everyone has the right and power to decide what to do with their time (100-101, 107-108), even without the presence of advanced technologies. In his view, this would also resolve the issues of unemployment and overwork, and liberate people from any future anxiety about how to make a living. To accomplish this goal, Benanav defends fighting for ‘the reorganization of social life to reduce the role of necessary labour’ (106) through taking over the economy from the asset owners.

The postscript of the book deals with the question of the agents of this radical change. Arguing that the labour movement ‘has been thoroughly defeated’ (109), Benanav sees the agents of this change as the masses participating in recent social struggles worldwide. Even though he does not name any of them specifically, we see that these protests are popular insurgencies of all kinds, spanning from the Arab Spring and Occupy Movement to the yellow vests protests in France, from WhatsApp tax protests in Lebanon to anti-government demonstrations in Algeria, Bolivia, Poland, and China. Benanav frames contesting parties to these social movements as the masses protesting against low labour demand, rising inequality, insecure jobs, political corruption, austerity measures, price hikes, and racial groups suffering from lack of social recognition (110).

The underlying logic of economic relations and market failures that Benanav describes is in parallel with Marxist theories of crisis, although he does not use Marxist economic terms at all. Overall, I consider it very stimulating that Benanav places the accent on a future project constructed through political action, rather than opting for a technologically determinist and passive position of looking forward with admiration to upcoming technological innovations under the circumstances of capital’s appropriation and the employment of sciences and technologies. Another important aspect of the book is its emphasis on a vision of a radically different world, which can also be called a ‘socialist utopia,’ with an eye-opening perspective for a convincing and encouraging political project.

On the other hand, there exist a few very important points of controversy. Although economic developments since the end of WWII are clearly and correctly expressed by Benanav, the underlying class struggles are almost completely absent in this overall picture drawn with the tools of macroeconomics and public finance. For example, while high growth rates created the material base of welfare state policies in the post-war period, the distribution of wealth within Western European countries was also shaped by the existence of the Soviet Union and the powerful class-struggles in those countries. Nonetheless, Benanav tends to tell his narrative by using only the macroeconomic mechanisms of capital movements, without adding class struggles to the equation.

The omission of class struggles brings about a further problem concerning the agents of change. It can be argued that the groups seen by the author as the agents of radical change are those suffering from the symptoms of neoliberalism’s crisis and ensuing market failures, not from capitalism in general. However, since the 2008 crisis, even IMF has started to question neoliberalism (cf. Ostry, Loungani and Furceri 2016). Marx says, as soon as capital ‘begins to feel that’ it becomes a barrier to its own development, ‘it takes refuge in forms which, while apparently completing the dominance of capital by curbing free competition, simultaneously proclaim the dissolution of capital and of the mode of production based upon it’ (1987, 39). As such, policymakers place fighting against the crisis of neoliberalism on the agenda even if that contradicts with the short-term interests of capitalism and economic policies may shift towards monetary easing and public investment instead of austerity and free market competition – which may be interpreted as a ‘pullback’ – in order to preserve the long-term stability of capital.

Given all the aforementioned, the problems that the agents of that radical change are suffering from may dissolve through the resolution of the problems of low labour demand, rising inequality, insecure jobs, etc., even though capitalism continues to exist. In spite of that, the socialization of asset ownership and the means of production, in other words the dissolution of private property as a requirement of Benanav’s socialist project, requires overcoming capitalism. To the extent that such a plan requires agents whose interests lie in attacking the very foundations of capitalism, there is a discord between Benanav’s socialist project and the desires of his proposed agents. It seems Benanav retreats from class politics owing to the claim that the labour movement has been thoroughly defeated and his erroneous understanding of the working-class – or the proletariat – as composed of only industrial workers (111), whereas ‘the “new social movements” will remain on the margins of the existing social order, at best able to generate periodic and momentary displays of popular support but destined to leave the capitalist order intact, together with all its defences against human emancipation and the realization of “universal human goods”’ as long as class politics does not become the force that unifies all emancipatory struggles (Wood 1998, 199).

16 January 2022

References

  • Marx, Karl 1987 Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58 Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3 New York: International Publishers
  • Ostry, Jonathan D., Loungani, Prakash and Furceri, Davide 2016 Neoliberalism: Oversold? Finance & Development Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 38-41.
  • Wood, Ellen Meiksins 1998 The Retreat from Class London: Verso.

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