Capitalism without workers?

[Blanquist]

If capitalism exists 50 years from now you have to imagine that the need for much of the classic 'proletariat' will be gone.

With advances in technology and production the possibility is very real.

I don't imagine planes needing human pilots in 50 years, would factories still need workers?

This would be a major qualitative change in capitalism that would require a re-working of theory.

Thoughts? Ideas? I hope to discuss this burning topic.

[Rooster]

If there's no workers, then who's going to buy anything? :confused:

[Comrade Samuel]

Begin to preach Marxism to robots, overthrow the bourgeois humans!

[pluckedflowers]

A lot of people talk as though the classic proletariat is already gone. We're living in the "information age," after all. The workers at Foxconn and various sweatshops around the world don't seem to have gotten the memo.

[Bostana]

Machines may replace some workers, but I don't that it will come to a point will there is no people at all.

[pluckedflowers]

Begin to preach Marxism to robots, overthrow the bourgeois humans!

Actually, I'm picturing it more like Terminator with capitalists instead of Skynet.

[Delenda Carthago]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/revolutionary-analysis-automation-t169109/index.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/revolutionary-analysis-automation-t169109/index.html?t=169109&highlight=automation)

[Caj]

Capitalism without workers is a contradiction.

[Ostrinski]

Well, wouldn't mutualism technically be capitalism without workers*? It does away with the capitalist property relations but keeps the capitalist value relations thus retaining the capitalist mode of production.

edit: *capitalism without a proletariat at least

[Astarte]

Capitalism can reduce labor hours and the need for labor power, and has done so in the past - see the industrial revolution - the problem is that when technological advance is made under the capitalist mode it means a further disenfranchisement of the working class and an even more precarious existence for them, ie the term "Precariat".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat

[Caj]

Well, wouldn't mutualism technically be capitalism without workers*? It does away with the capitalist property relations but keeps the capitalist value relations thus retaining the capitalist mode of production.

edit: *capitalism without a proletariat at least

As Marx said, capital presupposes wage-labour and wage-labour capital.

[Book O'Dead]

As Marx said, capital presupposes wage-labour and wage-labour capital.

So true.

Moreover, the notion that the working class & the class struggle can be abolished without having first to put an end to capitalism is pure nonsense; it is ahistorical.

I think that it is part of the myth of technology that capitalism promotes, that is, the belief that social evils can be remedied if only the right technological solutions are applied.

[Raúl Duke]

If capitalism exists 50 years from now you have to imagine that the need for much of the classic 'proletariat' will be gone.

With advances in technology and production the possibility is very real.

I don't imagine planes needing human pilots in 50 years, would factories still need workers?

This would be a major qualitative change in capitalism that would require a re-working of theory.

Thoughts? Ideas? I hope to discuss this burning topic.

To some extent, the idea of the "industrial proletariat" is for the most part gone in many modern nations. However, there are still workers within the service industry, retail, and the myriad of "paper-pushing" occupations.

Assuming that there's no workers for even more labor roles due to robots would rise certain problems; also I feel that capitalism may in fact not be able to raise, in a widespread fashion, our productive forces to such a level, at least without facing contradictions.

Because it would mean that many more people may end up being chronically unemployed and perhaps completely unable to get a job since many of the jobs they qualify for are now automatized. Unless something, like the state, within society takes steps to remediate this issue it will cause a lot of unrest.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

70% of humanity still produces our material wealth, are in large part paesant land workers, or still industrial proletariat. Having Capitalism without workers is as stated here before, a contradiction, because capital relies on live human labor for its existence. The "Rate of Profit" is now at an all time historical low of 2% while in 1850 it was still 50%. What does this tell us? It tells us that capitalists have slowly and steadily increased the productive forces, used machines to replace industrial workers, and that it is not as profitable for capitalists to invest into the production process than into banking. I recommend reading the new book of Andrew Kliman that just came out in 2012, called "The Failure of Capitalist Production", also if it is in English, a book of a personal comrade of mine Norbert Nelte "Rosa Luxemburg und Die Grenzen des Marktes, Todeszuckungen des Kapitalismus". Capitalism is about to collapse due to unprofitability of investion into the (material) production process. It always has collapsed due to this, but the rate of profit has never been this low.

This said: Capitalism without workers is an impossibility because capital, making more money out of money, is impossible without workers' surplus. If there are no more industrial proletarians that get paid less value than they produce in surplus value, capitalism collapses due to the unprofitablility of investion into the production process. "Communism Will Win"!

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Also i would like to make mention of the fact that the capitalist states of the post WW2 period, especially the USA, have invested tons of social wealth into the increase of "the productive forces" or rather technology through its "pentagon system" which has funded such institutions as MIT, APPLE, GE etc. to precisely take the role that the socialist states have been designated to. "The Capitalists will make us the rope with which we will hang them"

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

If there's no workers, then who's going to buy anything? :confused:

Or, if there is no workers and everything is ran by machines, why would we need capitalism or the market?

[Raúl Duke]

Or, if there is no workers and everything is ran by machines, why would we need capitalism or the market?

Exactly, that's why I doubt capitalism will ever take us to that definite point (even though it seems that "we are headed there").

If it did it would precipitate some sort of revolution or, if not, something; the unemployment caused by widespread automation of industries even including service and retail would cause unrest/instability.

The question is tied up to notions of "teleological progress" and there are many examples of capitalism being a factor in stopping certain kinds of progress, which has become more prevalent in this modern age. Widespread full automation would probably be one of those things that would be hindered by capitalism to occur at some level.

[Stadtsmasher]

The left will always be with the masses of the people, whether or not they are workers.

Maoism is basically non-Prole Marxism. Just as Maoism developed as a leftist response to conditions that were different from those of Marx's time, in the future if the need for workers disappears there will still be dispossession and inequality, and that is where the left will look.

[Strannik]

Capitalism is about exploitation. My theory is that the factor that makes human exploitation rate greater than that of machines is in the final analysis the creativity. When you cut human worker's pay by half they try to find another way to stay alive. When you cut a machine's electrical input by half, machine stops. Machines are designed to do something; workers design themselves to do anything.

Automatization of production simply relocates the focus of exploitation. From exploitation of body the capitalism refocuses to exploitation of mind. This is already happening: in high-tech industries, in order to succeed you have to subjugate your creative thought process in its entirety to company interests.

If someone would design a machine that really can redesign itself, its mode of behaviour as well as a worker, well, I think that machine should be considered alive and sentient - and its exploitation would be equally immoral.

[Yugo45]

Such change wouldn't work in a capitalist system, and would eventually lead to an economic disaster. I mean, like the people above said, who would buy anything if 80% of world's population are unemployed? It just wouldn't work with capitalism.

Such change would be quite good in a communist society, I reckon.

[NotTooOldEither]

"In a socialist society, the industrialist with his whip ceases to exist. The workers are free and equal human beings, who work for their own well-being and benefit."

If my needs are taken care of by a machine what happened to the whip?