Maximum productive efficiency can serve the perpetuation, not abolition, of necessary labor

Evidence

To be sure, labor must precede the reduction of labor, and industrialization must precede the development of human needs and satisfactions. But as all freedom depends on the conquest of alien necessity, the realization of freedom depends on the techniques of this conquest. The highest productivity of labor can be used for the perpetuation of labor, and the most efficient industrialization can serve the restriction and manipulation of needs. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 147

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive core of Marcuse: productive power itself, the supposed tool of liberation, becomes the instrument of domination. Dense and paradigm-shifting enough to sit with.
• XREF: connects to: Freedom becomes possible only once necessary labour is minimized — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1349; Industrial work rationalization requires reshaping workers’ entire mode of living, not just their labor — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1117; Efficiency is treated as uncontestable truth rather than a contestable value — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 121 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom becomes possible only once necessary labour is minimized #complicates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1349
• Only socialist overthrow can turn productivity gains into working-day abolition #qualifies (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 480
• The Bedaux system quantified and ranked worker efficiency to speed production #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1712
• Industrial work rationalization requires reshaping workers’ entire mode of living, not just their labor #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1117
• Efficiency is treated as uncontestable truth rather than a contestable value #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 121