Automated production shifts wealth creation from labor time to scientific knowledge

Evidence

As large-scale industry advances, the creation of real wealth depends less on the labor time and the quantity of labor expended than on the power of the instrumentalities (Agentien) set in motion during the labor time. These instrumentalities, and their powerful effectiveness, are in no proportion to the immediate labor time which their production requires; their effectiveness rather depends on the attained level of science and technological progress; in other words, on the application of this science to production.… Human labor then no longer appears as enclosed in the process of production—man rather relates himself to the process of production as supervisor and regulator (Wächter und Regulator).… He stands outside of the process of production instead of being the principal agent in the process of production.… In this transformation, the great pillar of production and wealth is no longer the immediate labor performed by man himself, nor his labor time, but the appropriation of his own universal productivity (Produktivkraft), i.e., his knowledge and his mastery of nature through his societal existence—in one word: the development of the societal individual (des gesellschaftlichen Individuums). — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 198

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s attention/consumption economics bridge: as labor time stops being the measure of wealth, the surplus value of attention and cognitive labor becomes the new axis of exploitation. — connects to: Profit motivated technology’s growth before science did — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 338; Knowledge under computerization would circulate like money, split into payment and investment categories — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 118; Automation makes individual output measurement and surplus-value theory obsolete. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 179 (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Marcuse here imports Marx’s Grundrisse fragment on the ‘Fragment on Machines’ — worth flagging as a key primary source for the general intellect thesis.

Broader Connections

• Profit motivated technology’s growth before science did #complicates (0.85) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 338
• Knowledge under computerization would circulate like money, split into payment and investment categories #expands (0.78) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 118