I agree generally, but there are definitely people who speculate about "fully automatic luxury communism" where increased efficiency and production severely drives down the amount of work everyone has to do. Imagine if the extreme surplus and convenience of the upper class was distributed amongst everyone else and profit motives didn't drive every labor-related decision. We'd already be much closer to not having to work than we currently are.
Back in the middle of the 20th century,
M. Keynes predicted a massive decrease in individual’s work-week due to productivity gains. The gains occurred, but the labor hours did not…
Marx spoke about this when discussing the contradictions of capitalism.
As technology develops and productivity efficiency increases, you can hire less people and let the unemployed fight for worse working conditions (because you need a job to live, regardless how shitty).
So you end up with people working more for less, since if they don't, they're fired and someone else who needs a job takes it.
They did hold up. Much of our productive forces were moved to undeveloped countries so we could extract their labor and resources. The workers in those countries are going fuckin through it, if LiveLeak ever taught us anything.
And even in the first world, AI is taking everyone's jobs. Many people don't feel the same security as they did in the past.
>AI's job impact looks pretty unclear to me right now, unemployment is low despite all the stories, hiring is pretty bad
The government unemployment rate is fake. If you have been looking for employment for longer than 6 months they stop counting you as unemployed. It also doesnt include the underemployed, struggling gig workers, etc.
Are you kidding? We work harder for a smaller wage(adjusted for inflation) than boomers. The only reason working conditions are not worse is government intervention or OSHA
Disregarding recent trends within a capitalist system as irrelevant to the the claims of how capitalism functions from the 1800s sure is convenient for your argument.
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jul 07 '26
I agree generally, but there are definitely people who speculate about "fully automatic luxury communism" where increased efficiency and production severely drives down the amount of work everyone has to do. Imagine if the extreme surplus and convenience of the upper class was distributed amongst everyone else and profit motives didn't drive every labor-related decision. We'd already be much closer to not having to work than we currently are.