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​Inventing the Future:

Post-capitalism and a world without work (2015)

by Nick Srniceck and Alex William

In this book, the two academic researchers Nick Srniceck and Alex Williams, develop the thesis they first put forward in #ACCELERATE: Manifesto for an accelerationist politic (2013). Drawing from the conclusions that neoliberalism has "won" as an economical system and that the casualties (poverty, precarity) of today's work scheme are greater and greater, they imagine what could be life after capitalism and call for the left to unite around a central project involving a post-work society, made possible through automation and universal revenue.

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> Thesis

 

The two main chapters of the book that directly treat the question of the future of work are chapter 5: The Future isn’t Working and chapter 6: Post-work Imaginaries.

 

In chapter 5, the authors start by diagnosing why there is a need for a new “future” and how the actual system is becoming more problematic, creating more and more inequality, in particular with what they call “surplus population”, or people unable to find waged work. They identify a certain trend towards a larger and larger surplus population and argue that the causes for this are multiple:

  • technological changes (automation and productivity enhancements);

  • globalization and the acceleration of primitive accumulation (the transformation of pre-capitalist subsistence economies into capitalist economies which leads to a vast new global labor force)

  • active exclusion of a particular population from wage labor (with free labor such as home chores and unpaid labor such as internships)

 

The authors argue that neoliberalism requires this cheap, docile, pliable surplus population in order to produce competitive subjects constantly undergoing self-improvement processes to remain ‘employable’ and that this surplus population is being controlled through violence and coercion with techniques of profiling, racism, and mass incarceration.

 

In Chapter 6, the authors make a radical proposition, at the antithesis of traditional left discourse. Instead of glorifying work (especially manual work) and the working class and demanding full employment, they argue for the abolition of work and de facto (according to them) the abolition of social classes by demanding full unemployment. They believe that this "utopia" could be possible through automation and technology. It is the way forward that is the way out. Their vision is therefore also in contradiction with a leftist de-growth discourse that has become trendy. However, the authors stress that in order to achieve this "utopia", it is necessary to follow a meticulous strategy that should be taken up by a centralized left.

 

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> Main recommendations

 

The authors' strategy could also be seen as recommendations, for the left, to demand and act towards the following:

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1) Higher global wages: in order to achieve full automation, it is necessary to encourage companies to use machines and invest towards enhancing the current technology. It should not be cheaper to employ ‘cheap’ labor than to buy machines.

 

2) Reduction of the length of the working week: the benefits of a reduction of the working week would be: reduction in energy consumption and consumption of unnecessary goods, reduction in stress, anxiety and mental health problems, stronger labor movement with more time to organize.

 

N.B: The authors convincingly demystify the idea that the current working week is a given. Indeed, the five-day eight-hour a day week was not a given before the 70’s. At one point, during the great depression for example, the working week was even reduced. Today, the amount of time spent for or towards work is increasing instead of decreasing: progressive elimination of the work-life distinction; proliferation of shadow work (ATM, self check-outs, etc.); hidden labor required to retain a job (skills training, community time), etc.

 

3) Provide people with a universal basic income that should be sufficient to live on, unconditional, and should be a supplement to the welfare state (and not as a replacement for social benefits).

 

4) Work towards a paradigm shift vis a vis the value given to wage work: today, the unemployed is seen as a deficient individual and is often stigmatized. There is a cultural effort celebrating the competitive subject, and the values of self-realization through work as well as propagating the idea that remuneration requires work and suffering. The authors argue for a counter-hegemonic approach to work by making precarity and joblessness more visible and by working towards building the conditions to the reproduction of life outside of work.

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> Strengths and weaknesses of the book

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+  The book is very well-structured and the authors deliver a good vision of the possible work future they imagine and how to get there.

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– The book is based on Frey and Osborn diagnosis that 47% of jobs in the US are at risk of automation in the near future (in contradiction to the OECDE numbers of 4 to 15%).

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– The authors are sometimes quick to jump to conclusions, using leftist rhetorics, extrapolations and parallelism (for example, the assumption that the end of labor would necessarily mean the end of social classes). The book thus reads more as a manifesto than as a proper analysis of the current forces in the work economy.

 

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> Importance of the book to the larger debate

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> The future of labor is not a neutral question and should not be depoliticized

 

Even though (and maybe because), the book has a clear leftist agenda, it makes us understand that the debate and problematics around the future of labor are not neutral.

Indeed and to say the least the future of labor raises a number of questions in particular in terms of gender-equality, ecology, redistribution and globalisation.  

 

Today and most of the time, the question of the future of labor is coupled with the question of the future of the welfare state and whether or not it is still a sustainable model. It is a good starting point however, this question should also be treated in relation to what labor and thus capital produce in terms of ethics, gender equality, re-distribution, ecology, well-being, health, etc. It is in fact a debate around what place labor (or waged work) should have in our society and what this place would entitle.

 

Taking the example of gender in regards to labor, we will notice that inequalities are still legion even in western countries (wage-gap, higher percentage of women occupying part-time jobs, etc.) Some would argue that these inequalities are due to the slow transition from a male breadwinner model to a universal breadwinner model. After all these years, we are still wondering how long this transition would take and if it would truly manage to achieve equality, what would be lost in the way, and if there are no other alternatives. As such, Nancy Fraser proposes instead to transition into a universal care-giver model where both parents are able to focus on their care work rather than only their waged work This would allow for a true shift of paradigm. In order to do so she also pushes for a universal revenue (Nancy Fraser, in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997).  

 

> The place of imagination

 

Even though the book might come as too “utopist", it is a good exercise in rigorous imagination of other possible futures. Research (in economy, sociology, etc.) is still too much enclosed with traditional methods of social science and even if it provide us with useful insights and data, it also limits our capacity to foster other systems of thoughts and to come up with ground-breaking ideas and paradigm shifts.

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> The authors

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  • Alex Williams

    • Visiting lecturer in sociology at City University London

 

  • Nick Srnicek

    • PhD at the London School of Economics on Representing complexity: the material construction of world politics.

    • Lecturer at the Digital Humanities Department of King's College of London

    • His work attempts to analyse both the threats and opportunities that are emerging from our new digital landscape, and to outline potential ways forward for radical politics

 

> Other Resources

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© Future of Labor Crew, Sciences Po, DTPP2017

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