Complete automation of necessity labor would free time for genuine self-constitution
Evidence
Automation, once it became the process of material production, would revolutionize the whole society. The reification of human labor power, driven to perfection, would shatter the reified form by cutting the chain that ties the individual to the machinery—the mechanism through which his own labor enslaves him. Complete automation in the realm of necessity would open the dimension of free time as the one in which man’s private and societal existence would constitute itself. This would be the historical transcendence toward a new civilization. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 200
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that reification ‘driven to perfection would shatter the reified form’ is a genuinely dense dialectical claim — the site of a long-standing debate about whether Marcuse is a technological determinist or believes contradiction requires social agency.
- XREF: Resonates with Marx and later autonomist/post-work debates (e.g., Srnicek & Williams ‘Inventing the Future’) — a real cross-domain parallel worth chasing. — connects to: Automation that ends scarcity would force progress to change direction entirely; Free-market labor is unfreedom whose abolition could liberate human autonomy — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 108; Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 179 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Freedom becomes possible only once necessary labour is minimized
#corroborates(0.92) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1349 - Automation that ends scarcity would force progress to change direction entirely
#expands(0.85) - Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value
#expands(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 179 - Free-market labor is unfreedom whose abolition could liberate human autonomy
#expands(0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 108 - Automation requires active human work to organize the relinquishing of subjectivity
#qualifies(0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 650