Industrialized labor destroys manual skill and familiarity with things

Evidence

Industrialized labour, further and further removed from the object being manufactured, is destroying manual skill, the intelligence of the hand', and allowing familiarity with raw materials to shrink to a statistically demonstrable minimum. Similarly, it is increasingly distancing mass consumption from the goods being consumed. The goodness’ of these products, their quality, is perceived less and less, since one is able to linger in contact with the things themselves only more and more tenuously and briefly, and one’s perception of their essence grows more vague, their proximity more unreal … Those who are no longer familiar with things, who do not experience them because they no longer handle them independently and can no longer linger with them, do not know where things belong. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2307

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘intelligence of the hand’ and ‘do not know where things belong’ formulations are memorable, shareable bits.
• XREF: Recalls Adorno’s and Marcuse’s themes of rationalization destroying the subject (ch76-79). — connects to: AI reduces job quality by devaluing human labor. — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 126; The worker’s alienation from his labor becomes the source of his cognitive strength — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 4319; Taylorism deliberately breaks up skilled workers’ psycho-physical nexus (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Taylorism deliberately breaks up skilled workers’ psycho-physical nexus #exemplifies (0.95)
• Modern wage labor strips the craftsmanship that once gave bakers self-esteem #exemplifies (0.95) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 237
• Mechanized work frees the worker’s brain rather than mummifying it #contradicts (0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1139
• War mechanization broke skilled work into stages manageable by unskilled labor #exemplifies (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 168
• AI reduces job quality by devaluing human labor. #corroborates (0.82) — Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, The AI Con- How to Fight Big Tech’s…, 126
• The worker’s alienation from his labor becomes the source of his cognitive strength #contradicts (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 4319