Labor opposition to automation can itself reactivate class conflict by weakening capital
Evidence
At the present stage of advanced capitalism, organized labor rightly opposes automation without compensating employment. It insists on the extensive utilization of human labor power in material production, and thus opposes technical progress. However, in doing so, it also opposes the more efficient utilization of capital; it hampers intensified efforts to raise the productivity of labor. In other words, continued arrest of automation may weaken the competitive national and international position of capital, cause a long-range depression, and consequently reactivate the conflict of class interests. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 201
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: AI threatens to devalue labor itself, not just displace workers — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 693; Oppositional workers’ organizations mirror capitalist structure and thereby absorb class struggle; Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 179
Broader Connections
- AI threatens to devalue labor itself, not just displace workers
#qualifies(0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 693 - Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value
#expands(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 179 - Oppositional workers’ organizations mirror capitalist structure and thereby absorb class struggle
#complicates(0.75)