One of the problems of much of traditional Marxism has been an effort to glorify the life of the worker, and suggest that this is the ideal form of existence. If only we can get rid of the exploitative bourgeoisie, the proletariat will have it made. Well, as any one who has been a real worker knows, being a worker sucks. (Workers, who have suffered greatly to create wealth, deserve a great deal of respect and gratitude. Working is often unpleasant and dangerous.) Being coerced to work, whether it be the capitalist system of the fear of poverty, or the Stalinist system of state coercion, is slavery. Marx himself described the end goal of communism being a worker's paradise in which the workers spent only a minimal amount of time at labor, and most of their time at recreations, such as art and sport. (Marx was partial to fencing himself.) It is only a small jump to go from minimal labor, to no labor at all. Let the robots do it. When we do have a truly socialist system, where we can all share in the wealth generated by the economy, we will have no reason to work in jobs that can be otherwise automated. The end goal of cybernetic socialism is not to reduce all to the level of the proletariat, but to raise all to the level of comfort and freedom of the bourgeoisie, with out having to exploit any one. If we are ever going to convince the mainstream of America, (who let's face it are mostly selfish and self-centered,) to accept socialism, it will be much better accepted as a ìeveryone wins the lotteryî prospect rather than ìeveryone gets to be a factory worker.î But doesn't Marx suggest that technology is inherently alienating? Many Marxists have for this reason been understandably suspicious of technology, particularly of automation, when it often alienates workers all they way to unemployment.
Let's examine this more closely. Alienation is a problem under capitalism in comparison to the economic systems that came before. When a craftsman, who had previously bought his own raw materials, performed his labor at his own discretion, and sold his own product, keeping all his profits, is then made a cog in a factory, selling his labor for wages, and not keeping any of the profit, this is indeed technologically induced alienation. However, Marx said that capitalism is not all evil, but is instead a necessary step through which society must progress in order to achieve communism. Many of the social and economic developments of capitalism, such as the end of feudal class, the development of the proletariat, etc. are necessary for socialism to rise. To this we would add technological developments, such as robotics, as well.
Marx was also writing under conditions not of his own making. Thus, he could not foresee the full potential of automation, that is its ultimate ability to liberate all workers.
(Oh, and by the way, I am intentionally writing this in layman's terms, and am using terms such as socialism and communism as relatively interchangeable. So for all you Marxist nudniks out there, don't bother in trying to argue terms with me. Yeah, I read Das Kapital in college, too. )