The inevitability of hyper-capitalist automation rests on a self-contradiction

Evidence

A great deal of modern economic discourse takes it as axiomatic that economic forces are the only ones that matter. This idea has bled into politics too, at least in the Western world: economic forces have been awarded the status of inexorable truths…The scenario we’re given — the one being made to feel inevitable — is of a hyper-capitalist dystopia. There’s capital, doing better than ever; the robots, doing all the work; and the great mass of humanity, doing not much, but having fun playing with its gadgets. (Though if there’s no work, there are going to be questions about who can afford to buy the gadgets.) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1973

Categorization

• CANDY: The one-line observation that a fully automated world leaves no one to buy the gadgets is a neat, quotable takedown.
• XREF: connects to: Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 197; Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 179; AI’s employment consequences are unpredictable because they depend on capitalist competition — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 248 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Full automation is incompatible with capitalist private exploitation of labor #corroborates (0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 197
• Automation qualitatively alters dead versus living labor and surplus value #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 179
• Automation now allows zero-work full-income societies, yet capitalism preserves work scarcity and unemployment #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1628
• Technological determinism falsely credits tools alone with causing social change #qualifies (0.78) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 59
• Networked digital technologies spawned by capitalism are enabling its replacement by technofeudalism #complicates (0.76) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 116
• AI’s employment consequences are unpredictable because they depend on capitalist competition #qualifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 248
• Contradictions in industrial society do not resolve themselves automatically #qualifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 877
• The internet shattered capitalism’s evolutionary fitness rather than defeating or entrenching it #complicates (0.74) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 232