Only socialist overthrow can turn productivity gains into working-day abolition

Evidence

The enormous expansion of human productive powers which has taken place under capitalism makes possible a drastic reduction in the working day, and in that sense an abolition of the ‘work-based society’. But that possibility could only become a reality as a result of the overthrow of capitalist social relations, which still depend on the exploitation of wage-labour. And even the socialist society which emerged from such a transformation would still rest on what Marx called ‘the kingdom of necessity’, upon the material production of the physical use-values without which human existence would cease. It is a measure of current intellectual disarray that as cogent a thinker as Habermas should lose sight of such fundamental realities. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 480

Categorization

• DEFINE: Marx’s ‘kingdom of necessity’ concept deployed as the counterweight to any post-work utopianism.
• XREF: Connects to Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and his later writings on the realm of necessity vs. freedom. — connects to: Maximum productive efficiency can serve the perpetuation, not abolition, of necessary labor — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 147
• ADDENDUM: Provides the class-reductionist counter to postmodernist claims that work-based society is ending — relevant to how the immodesty/sacrifice pieces treat the material base of cultural practice.