A robot-automated socialist future requires abandoning capital ownership of the machines.

Evidence

There is a possible alternative, however, in which ownership and control of robots is disconnected from capital in its current form. The robots liberate most of humanity from work, and everybody benefits from the proceeds: we don’t have to work in factories or go down mines or clean toilets or drive long-distance lorries, but we can choreograph and weave and garden and tell stories and invent things and set about creating a new universe of wants. This would be the world of unlimited wants described by economics, but with a distinction between the wants satisfied by humans and the work done by our machines. It seems to me that the only way that world would work is with alternative forms of ownership. The reason, the only reason, for thinking this better world is possible is that the dystopian future of capitalism-plus-robots may prove just too grim to be politically viable. This alternative future would be the kind of world dreamed of by William Morris, full of humans engaged in meaningful and sanely remunerated labour. Except with added robots. It says a lot about the current moment that as we stand facing a future which might resemble either a hyper-capitalist dystopia or a socialist paradise, the second option doesn’t get a mention. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2012

Categorization

• SEED: Strong essay hook: the unthinkability of a robot-post-scarcity socialism versus the routine acceptance of a robot hyper-capitalist dystopia.
• XREF: Extends the William Morris vision and anticipates current AI-labor discourse. — connects to: The inevitability of hyper-capitalist automation rests on a self-contradiction — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1973; Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 197; Liberation from technological domination requires preserving the technological base — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 812 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor #corroborates (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 197
• Liberation from technological domination requires preserving the technological base #qualifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 812
• The inevitability of hyper-capitalist automation rests on a self-contradiction #expands (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1973
• Socialist transformation requires consciousness of total impossibility first #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 165