Automation now allows zero-work full-income societies, yet capitalism preserves work scarcity and unemployment

Evidence

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, 1628

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to earlier silenced-chatter passages on information overload and to the idea that some economic arrangements persist out of interest, not necessity — paralleling Fisher’s diagnosis of capitalist work discipline. — connects to: Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 197; Capitalist growth advances through labor-saving technology that destroys jobs — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 245; Capitalism can preserve ‘irrational’ features like unfree labor rather than abolish them — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 590 (+7 more)
• SEED: The gap between technological possibility (automation making zero-work realizable) and ideological attachment to work-as-virtue would make a strong essay angle.

Broader Connections

• Capitalist growth advances through labor-saving technology that destroys jobs #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 245
• A reserve army of unemployed workers structurally disciplines labor under capitalism #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 150
• Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 150
• Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor #complicates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 197
• Capitalism preserving unfree labor is a deviant historical case #contradicts (0.75)
• Capitalism can preserve ‘irrational’ features like unfree labor rather than abolish them #complicates (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 590
• Each robot per thousand workers measurably cuts employment and wages #exemplifies (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 859
• Mass automation forces states to tighten social controls on the unemployed #expands (0.70) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 241
• Racial labor regimes can sustain a capitalist system without free mobile labor #complicates (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 602