WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Part One of “The Automation Ruse” aired on February 9th and featured author Jason E. Smith whose new book, Smart Machines and Service Work, is subtitled “Automation in an Age of Stagnation,” and it’s that crisis of stagnation that propels us into today’s conversation with Aaron Benanav, a researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin and an economic historian whose new book is Automation and the Future of Work, published by Verso.
Benanav centers his work first on the slowing of growth and productivity and challenges what seems a universal assertion by economists – it’s the machines, stupid. To this Benanav says, nope, it’s a predictable scenario of global capitalist production – a glut of industrial capacity.
So, not the machines…and not likely to be the machines in the future either – tech advances when the economy is flush and capitalists will invest money in those innovations – in order to be able to fire labor when the economy slows down again. The capitalist economy is nothing if not a consistent cyclical abuser of the worker.
What, then, are the automation gurus on about? Well, the reality is that while machines aren’t pushing humans to the side it is still true that there is no work, or less work, more unemployment, and much more underemployment. The automation theorist thus scents opportunity. No work can be a good thing if our basic needs and services are met. Heck, maybe you will actually want to work without the economic coercion of starvation or exposure!
How can you eat well and be protected from the elements under a roof if you’re not working for a wage? The answer from all parties on the Right, Center, and Left appears to have one common element – a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. However, the details of a UBI are very different depending on which think tank fellow is leading your TED Talk.
Lucky for us, Aaron Benanav will help us identify the pitfalls of all of the above while also pointing the way to a future that has quite a bit to do with the utopian thinking of the past.
We begin today with why it’s important to challenge the economic narrative that the jobless present is the result of employing robots to do human work.
GUEST
Aaron Benanav, a researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin and economic historian. His new book is Automation and the Future of Work, published by Verso (2020).
RELATED
The Automation Ruse, Part One: Jason E. Smith on Economic Stagnation
Automation and the Future of Work – I (New Left Review)
Automation and the Future of Work – II (New Left Review)
A Low Demand For Labor by Aaron Benanav
Automation isn’t wiping out jobs. It’s that our engine of growth is winding down by Aaron Benanav
Revisiting the Meidner Plan by Peter Gowan and Mio Tastas Viktorsson
MUSIC
GoGo Penguin – Man Made Object (2016)
“All Res”
“Smarra”
“Weird Cat”
“Protest”
ID – “Initiate”
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young
