Automation made the autonomist zero-work dream materially possible yet unrealised.
Evidence
We are very far from the “society of leisure” that was confidently predicted in the 1970s. Contrary to the hopes raised at that time, technology has not liberated us from work. … In the current age of machines […] humans finally have the possibility of devolving most productive processes to technological apparatus, while retaining all outcomes for themselves. In other words, the (first) world currently hosts all the necessary pre-conditions for the realisation of the old autonomist slogan “zero work/full income/all production/to automation”. Despite all this, twenty-first-century Western societies are still torn by the dusty, capitalist dichotomy which opposes a tragically overworked section of population against an equally tragically unemployed one. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1627
Categorization
- SEED: An essay contrasting the actual fulfilment of the 1970s leisure-society prophecy’s technical preconditions with its political non-realisation — automation delivered, liberation withheld, and what that gap says about capitalism’s ideological stranglehold.
- XREF: Ties to the autonomist-Marxist themes already running through the book (ch86 on capital’s dependence on human cooperation, the zero-work slogan versus work’s universal colonisation). — connects to: Automation that ends scarcity would force progress to change direction entirely