The "Green New Deal" Means More Public-Private Partnerships and, Thus, More Economic and Social Destruction

By Shawgi Tell

These days there is no shortage of hype surrounding the “Green New Deal” (GND). The “Green New Deal” has become a major buzz-phrase that has ensnared many along the way.

Like so many top-down schemes, the GND is being promoted by many world leaders in unison. This alone should be worrisome. History shows that this is usually a red flag. Few pro-social things come out of movements that are not real grass-roots movements. These world leaders are the main representatives of the international financial oligarchy—a tiny ruling elite obsessed with maximizing private profit no matter the damage to society and the environment. These are the same forces responsible for tragedies such as high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inflation, debt, homelessness, hunger, racism, war, occupation, pollution, de-forestation, anxiety, despair, alienation, depression, and suicide worldwide.

The GND is being presented by the rich and their political and media representatives as something great for society and humanity; everyone is under pressure to “just embrace it.”

The GND uses the “New Deal” language of the 1930s and ostensibly addresses climate change, inequality, energy efficiency, job creation, labor rights, racial injustice, and other social aims. This includes a GND for public schools, healthcare, and housing as well.

The GND is supposed to improve conditions for humanity and help us all “build back better”—a major slogan of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Alongside this disinformation, the WEF is also promoting disinformation about “reinventing capitalism” to fool the gullible. The GND is supposedly rooted in the principles of economic justice, puts the planet ahead of profits, and provides a “blueprint for change.” It is said that Green Projects will cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Europe has its own version of the GND. “Variations of the [“Green New Deal”] proposal have been around for years,” says the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-questions-answers.html). The so-called Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was introduced more than 20 years ago, for example. In 2007, the imperialist journalist, Thomas Friedman, wrote the following in the New York Times:

If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid – moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project – much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century. (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/opinion/19friedman.html)

Pollution, inequality, and 50 other problems have worsened since this observation was made 14 years ago. The quote rejects economic science and fails to help workers, youth, students, women, and others make sense of the economy in a way that favors their interests.

GND Means More PPPs and Tragedies

“Green New Deal” goals are to be attained through “joint” public sector and private sector “investments.” The disinformation from the rich is that the public can’t achieve the lofty goals of the GND on its own and that “investors” from the so-called “efficient,” “entrepreneurial,” “innovative,” and “smart” private sector are needed to achieve these big goals. It is by working “together” that “we” will supposedly achieve what the GND sets out to do. “New Deals” are purportedly too big for either sector to pull off alone and thus some sort of “partnership” or “alliance” is “needed.”

In reality, private competing owners of capital are unwilling and often unable to pay for major infrastructure projects and want the government to guarantee them big investments and returns using the public purse. PPPs essentially guarantee risk-free profits for various monopolies and further diminish control of the economy by workers and the public. PPPs enable major owners of capital to seize more of the added-value produced by workers through “infrastructure projects” guaranteed by the state at public expense. This further enriches a handful of people, intensifies inequality, and leaves workers and the public with less wealth and less control over the economy.

This is not how “partners” work. This is how an unequal relationship works.

Terms such as “alliance” or “partnership” are designed to fool the gullible and hide the enormous financial gain made by a handful of billionaires through PPPs that purport to advance the goals of the GND. In this, way the door is nonchalantly and pragmatically opened to imposing private alien claims on the wealth produced collectively by workers. The rich are given greater access to public funds and resources that belong to the public, all in the name of “partnership.” We are to believe that without a “Public-Private-Partnership” the GND will not become reality, meaning that the GND is possible only if the ultra-rich pocket more public wealth and resources. This is cynically called a “win-win.”

“Public-Private-Partnerships” promote the illusion that the public sector and the private sector can harmonize their philosophies, interests, aims, operations, activities, and results when in fact PPPs are antisocial, antiworker, and undercut a modern nation-building project.

The public and private sectors cannot be partners; they rest on different foundations, goals, world outlooks, operations, and legal frameworks; they are different categories and phenomena with different properties and characteristics. These differences are not trivial and cannot be reconciled or harmonized. Don’t believe neoliberals and privatizers whey they self-servingly claim that the two distinct spheres can “work together.”

Public and private are antonyms; they mean the opposite of each other; they are not synonymous. Public refers to everyone, non-competition, transparency, the common good, and society as whole (e.g., public parks, beaches, and roads). The public is pro-social and human-centered. It approaches life and relations with a big modern vision. Private refers to exclusivity, for a few, not for everyone, and usually involves rivalry and hierarchy. Private is also often associated with secrecy, not transparency, especially in business. The private sector pertains to relations between private citizens, whereas the public sector has to do with relations between individuals and the state. This distinction is critical. These spheres represent two profoundly different domains. The rights belonging to each sector are different.

Blurring the critical distinction between public and private should be avoided at all costs. It is irresponsible and self-serving to treat the public and private as being synonymous and easy to harmonize without big disadvantages for the public. The public does not benefit from blurring this distinction. The public suffers when the dissimilarity between public and private is obscured and not grasped in its depth.

PPPs conceal harsh irreconcilable class differences and interests in society. They reinforce a “no-class” outlook of society and, in doing so, distort reality at the ideological level, leaving many disoriented, unclear, and confused about their interests, which makes them vulnerable to disinformation from the rich and their media. In the world of PPPs, everyone is merely a “stakeholder.” There are no workers or owners of capital. There are no antagonistic irreconcilable social class interests. There are no classes and class struggle. There are no millionaires and billionaires on one side and workers on the other side who produce all the wealth of society.

Not surprisingly, PPPs form a big part of the antisocial “Great Reset” agenda of the world’s billionaires, which has been publicly articulated by the main leaders of the World Economic Forum such as Klaus Schwab. Many prime ministers, presidents, and prominent state leaders around the world continue to parrot the same tired slogans of the “Great Reset” agenda.

In practice, PPPs use the neoliberal state to funnel more public funds than ever to the private sector under the banner of “partnerships” and “making the world better for everyone.”

This funneling of more public funds to narrow private interests will not only solve no problems, it will intensify many problems that are already serious. The existing all-sided crisis will keep deepening under such a set-up.

As a main form of privatization, the “Green New Deal” will significantly intensify inequality, increase costs for everyone, reduce efficiency and quality, lessen accountability and transparency, increase corruption, and diminish the voice and wealth of workers and the public. It will not enhance democracy or improve the environment in any way because it will further concentrate greater economic and political power in even fewer hands, if that is even possible at this point in history. Funneling more public funds, assets, and authority to competing private interests in a highly monopolized economy is a disaster for the social and natural environment. It is the claims of workers, the public, and society that must be expanded and affirmed, not the narrow claims of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing their own profits at the expense of everyone and everything else.

The “Green New Deal” will not challenge the entrenched class privilege of the rich. It will not increase the power of workers or give them greater control of the wealth they produce. It will not make the economy more pro-social, balanced, diverse, and self-reliant. Pollution and de-forestation will still persist under the GND. Experience has repeatedly borne out that capital-centered environmental plans and activities ensure that things keep going from bad to worse.

A 2016 United Nations report highlights many ways that PPPs undermine the public interest and produce more problems (https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2016/wp148_2016.pdf). Global Policy Forum states that:

PPPs are used to conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies. Private sector corporations must maximize profits if they are to survive. This is fundamentally incompatible with protecting the environment and ensuring universal access to quality public services. (https://www.globalpolicy.org/en/article/why-public-private-partnerships-dont-work)

Public and private simply do not go together. The organization In The Public Interest offers many reports, articles, and documents that expose how PPPs harm the public interest and benefit major owners of capital at the public expense (https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/). Numerous other organizations around the world have also described and explained how PPPs make things worse for the public while enriching a handful of people.

In the context of a continually failing economy, competing owners of capital have no choice but to cloak their egocentric drive to maximize private profit by seizing public funds from the state as a “win-win” for everyone, as something great for the natural and social environment. The neoliberal state is increasingly being used to divert public funds and assets to major owners of capital as they compete with each other for domination of the economy in an increasingly unstable and dangerous environment. The old ways of profit-taking are no longer as lucrative as before, so the rich have to use PPPs to seize public funds for private financial gain under the banner of “working together” to “build back better.”

As always, the rich will not brook any opposition to their narrow private interests. They will not support anything that places a greater portion of the social wealth in the hands of those who actually produce the wealth of society: workers. They will continue to act like they have a natural right to the wealth produced collectively by workers.

Major owners of capital have no human-centered interest in improving the environment or social conditions. They pragmatically strive for what will best serve their narrow private interests and class privilege without any consideration for the well-being of all sectors of the economy as a whole. Modern nation-building cannot take place in such a context. The human-centered resolution of social, economic, and environmental problems requires confronting powerful private interests and their outdated economic system if humanity is to have a bright future.

To fix the economy and to reverse social and environmental problems requires a public authority worthy of the name. There is no reason why a real public authority cannot use the wealth and resources produced by workers to improve the social and natural environment for the nation. Planned public investment for the public and for modern nation-building is not possible under the direction and influence of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing private profit. Such forces are only looking out for their narrow interests, not the needs of a balanced self-reliant crisis-free economy that consistently and responsibly raises the material and cultural well-being of all.

There is no need to involve powerful private interests in social programs, social investments, or green projects. The rich are not only the cause of many problems the GND ostensibly seeks to remedy, they also have no valid and legitimate claim to any public funds, resources, and assets. The rich mainly seize and control the wealth produced by workers; they themselves do not produce the wealth of society.

The rich are an historically superfluous and exhausted force blocking social progress. Without the rich, their entourage, and their outdated political and economic system, the social product could be wielded by people themselves for the benefit of the natural and social environment. The impact of this shift and change on time and space would be monumental.

Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.

An Internationalist Critique of the Green New Deal

[SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock]

By Tyler Okeke

In 2019, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unsat the powerful Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley and spurred a wave of progressive congressional campaigns. Soon after being sworn in, Ocasio-Cortez partnered with Senator Ed Markey to introduce House Resolution 109, popularly known as the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is an ambitious framework for environmental, economic, and racial justice in the United States. It aims for a speedy transition to net zero emissions through the use of renewable energy sources and green technology, a federal jobs guarantee, and a whole host of other social programs like paid medical and family leave, medical care for all, and expanded access to unions. Though not the first of its kind, the political movement on which the policy rides has won the Green New Deal more than a hundred co-sponsors in Congress.

The Green New Deal recognizes the gravity of global climate change and makes an effort to include domestic economic and social welfare reforms in its framework. Despite all this, the Green New Deal is largely deficient and is cause for concern for scholars, policymakers, and activists interested in an internationalist approach to climate change. An internationalist approach not only addresses inequality in the United States but challenges global inequality by reconfiguring the global economy and taking a reparative approach to generations of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the Global South. This exploitation has been largely carried out by governments, multinational corporations, and international financial institutions based in the Global North. 

The Green New Deal is also deficient and unimaginative because it forgoes thinking critically about the American people’s unsustainable relationship to energy and production. Instead, the Green New Deal seeks to move from one unsustainable energy source—fossil fuels—to another: cobalt and other minerals necessary for developing climate technology. 

Addressing climate change requires robust engagement not only with domestic contexts, but also with the global contexts that make domestic political and economic life possible.  Especially in a global empire like the United States where US monetary policy and corporate interests define the global economic landscape, policymakers, scholars, and activists have a responsibility to draft solutions where rapid, equitable climate adaptation is possible for all nations. 

The Green New Deal lacks international attention and critical engagement with the nation’s unsustainable relationship with energy and production. To be sure, this deficiency does not detract from the ways in which the Green New Deal is much more ambitious than more moderate approaches to climate change. The Green New Deal asks that the United States reach net-zero emissions in ten years, provide millions of good, high-quality union jobs, invest in green infrastructure and sustainable industry to protect lives and livelihoods, and expand social welfare to ensure a decent quality of life for every American. The Green New Deal not only addresses the domestic economics of climate change but also aims for justice and equity for Americans in its climate solution. 

However, my contention is that these benefits should be available to all people and a concerted effort must be made to ensure that they are tangible for nations in the Global South who will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change despite contributing the least to global emissions. The United States is a global hegemon that actively works against international egalitarianism through the dominance of the US dollar and Washington D.C.’s ability to write the rules of international trade and development. The American government is primarily concerned with securing profit for American and Global North multinational corporations and maintaining the core-periphery relationship between the Global North and the Global South where the economic growth of one is predicated on the underdevelopment of the other. The United States is able to secure privileges for its corporations and its goods through a heavy-handed political and military dominance of global trade and finance. US economic hegemony limits the ability of nations in the Global South to receive a fair return on their exports, make independent economic decisions, and accelerate their development or adaptation. If Americans do not pay particular attention to redistributing global economic power and thinking critically about how to ensure every nation has what they need to respond to the climate crisis, we risk a bleak future defined by social democracy in the Global North and apocalyptic crises everywhere else. 

Solutions like the Green New Deal are consistent with how imperialist nations respond to capitalism’s contradictions, in this case its ecological contradictions. Climate change is the most significant contemporary challenge to modern capitalism, but capitalism has faced significant challenges in the past, and made strategic responses to preserve itself. In the post-World War II moment when capitalism was challenged on both the domestic and international front by fiery worker’s movements in metropolitan cities in the Global North and decolonization movements in the colonies, capitalism made a strategic pivot to assuage its working masses and present the illusion of political independence in its former colonies while maintaining capitalism’s basic infrastructure domestically and globally. 

Nations in the Global North, like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, granted their workers careful concessions like social security, higher wages, better working conditions, broader access to higher education, and other improvements that were no doubt progressive reforms but maintained the basic structure of capitalism. To fund these reforms and maintain profit for multinational corporations, the colonies got cosmetic political independence but their basic core-periphery relationship to the global economy was maintained by a careful transition from national imperialism to a collective imperialism. The United States played a predominant role and newly independent nations in the Global South were entangled with international financial institutions like the World Bank and World Trade Organization which exercised broad control over their trade and economic policies. The Green New Deal, if it fails to problematize and break this relationship, is a similar reform that ensures social democracy for the core of the empire and sustained exploitation for the dependent nations of the Global South. 

A phrase that haunts the pages of the Green New Deal is “as much as technologically feasible.” This phrase follows virtually every stipulation that mandates pollution removal or greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The Green New Deal is invested in technological stop gaps to systemic problems with American energy use and production of goods. Countries, especially mass emitters like the United States, need to prioritize living within their ecological means and make serious efforts to localize production and consumption. The Green New Deal prioritizes status quo industrial productivity over a radical but necessary reimagining of how energy use and the economy should be organized. Instead of thinking about how to make energy and production relationships sustainable, the Green New Deal simply seeks another power source. 

The “green” technology that the Green New Deal ambiguously refers to references solar panels, waste and energy use tracking systems, fuel cells, and other technological units. It is dishonest to call any of these “green” or climate-friendly, as they rely on cobalt and other green minor metals which are extracted from the ground by multinational corporations and usually in the shadow of gross human rights violations. In the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, cobalt mining is connected to child labor, rape, war, environmental degradation, starvation wages, and even slavery. An early anthropologist of energy, Leslie White, posits that a society's energy source is the key to understanding and analyzing that society. In fact, the anthropological term energopower refers to the analysis of modern power through the lens of electricity and fuel. This approach is central to understanding the deficiencies of the Green New Deal and its maintenance of an unsustainable status quo.

Perhaps the Green New Deal will usher a new array of power relations under the cobalt-infused green technology energy regime. But given the resolution’s lack of attention to the global economy, it seems safe to assume that a climate future based on green metal extraction across the Global South and perhaps native land in the United States is not one to be hopeful about. It seems safe to assume that oil and natural gas exploitation across indigenous lands in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa will only be switched out for cobalt and green metal extraction in the same places and the military apparatus that protects U.S. energy security will only turn the muzzle of its gun to new sites of resource extraction and human exploitation. Without serious rethinking, this is the future the Green New Deal promises.

All US climate solutions are incomplete if they do not chart out how a nation with a global effect will relinquish its unsustainable dominance of the global economy and ensure that all nations will have access to the financing and resources they need to adapt to the demands of climate change. This doesn’t only look like reparations in the form of direct cash transfers and debt cancellation but also assurance that nations can trade at equitable prices and chart out their own development trajectory. So long as Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal seeks to tinker around the edges and leave the imperial framework from which the United States benefits untouched, it should be considered an imperial project that is ideologically opposed to the realization of international sovereignty and the right of all people to live dignified, full lives. It is the responsibility of internationalists and people interested in global equity to problematize the Green New Deal’s current framework and advocate for the solutions that this moment requires — a robust redistribution of global wealth and power as soon as possible.

Digital Capitalism Gives the Working Class a New Opportunity for Emancipation

Illustration by David Plunkert

By Jaime Caro-Morente

Mark Fisher, in his book Capitalist Realism, wondered if there was already no alternative to capitalism. This work captures the feeling of defeat that the international left has in the face of the failure of the experiments of real socialism in the Soviet world and the capitulation to the global neoliberalism that destroyed the Welfare State in the 70s.

Before this neoliberal world, which is nothing more than ultra-financed capitalism, it seemed that there was no possible alternative: the labor movement was disintegrated due to the impossibility of finding its enemies and the lack of true emancipatory examples. The 68´s Revolutions in the Western world showed that this supposed disintegration of the left, being incapable of developing a clear alternative to both capitalism and ultra-bureaucratic regimes, decided to find the emancipatory path by looking at all social constructs and bodies, which until that moment had kept quiet in their bosom under the premise of “your time will come when socialism arrives"; that is, the feminism and the anti-racist struggle, and after them the queer liberation movement, with a clear socialist surface. From the 70s to the present day, the left has advanced a lot in the field of conquering social rights for women, racialized bodies, and the LGTBQ + collective, but they have always found that there is one last impediment to achieving total emancipation: that monster that is the capitalist system.

Nowadays, the entire left knows perfectly well that none of the struggles can be carried out —that they can achieve their emancipatory objective —if they are not capable of destroying the system that oppresses them as a whole (capitalism), and afterwards creating another system free from these oppressions. But of course, the drive or strength that the labor movement had was totally overwhelmed by financial capitalism and delocalization: it seems that history repeats itself, in this case, we go back to the 30s, to the Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath. In this novel, all the inhabitants of a town found that there was a company that sent its workers to destroy their farms because “they were supposedly not productive.” Although they all had the same problem and wanted to fight against the company, when they demand to the guy who drives the tractor to see the boss to chat and negotiate — start a class struggle — he tells them that he doesn’t even know who the boss is; that the boss is someone in New York, or that he is Wall Street. They were facing a monster that they could not confront or even see; in fact, they say that if this guy continues with his work, they will shoot him. His response? That it will not matter because they will only be killing one of their own (since he was simply a worker from the town as well) and that the company will send another man to finish the job. In this world of crisis, these men were cannon fodder — they needed work to survive and no matter how much solidarity they had with their people, there was no one to fight against.

And this is how the international working class has felt since neoliberalism began in the 70s, without knowing who to fight against. It has been Wall Street, yes. It is capital. It is capitalism. But there are many Wall Streets, capital is everywhere, capitalism is all-encompassing, and everything is interwoven in a way in which you can blame the entire system while throwing punches in the air. Many people on the left have proposed a return to the Nation-States; that is, to broaden the Welfare State and attempt to wrangle the monster of neoliberalism, State by State. This solution seems practical until you realize that the United States, as a state, cannot prevent General Motors from taking production from Michigan to Mexico or Southeast Asia, in constant search of near-slave labor while leaving the industrialized and unionized working class in the dust. It has become obvious, in this late stage of capitalism, that states and their governments are totally subjugated by these industrial companies, which in turn only respond to the great neoliberal forces of capital… the objectives of financial capitalism.

At this point, we must introduce the work “No-Logo” of Naomi Klein, which shows in a fantastic way how this neoliberal financial capitalism operates in terms of production: jobs are not destroyed, but rather they migrate to other parts where the working classes are “not conscious” or have not fought for as much protection as the European or American ones. Therefore, at the end of No-Logo, there is only one possible way out: the proletarian internationalism that Marx and Engels once put as the most important “mission” of the working class. But of course, the labor movements in India and Southeast Asia have either been crushed as well, or companies have managed to once again migrate their productions to other areas where there is less class consciousness and/or greater degrees of interdependence due to colonialism and imperialism.

With the rise of digital capitalism, we find ourselves with an absolute realignment of a totally international class struggle, which allows the working class two clear advantages: 1) everything “digital” allows an interconnection and cooperation of the working classes from different parts of the world that was not possible before, and 2) digital technology (algorithms) can be used to manage the production of a new world that is not based solely on the invisible hand and the Market, in its capitalist sense. The second capability is essential as it would eliminate the need for tightly-wound bureaucracies that can stall the socialist transition to communism, while at the same time effectively coordinate where consumer goods are needed. If we apply this technological revolution to our productive capacities, we can overcome the fraudulent claims put forth by classical and neoclassical economists regarding capitalism, giving rise to an emancipation that could be classified as a sort of cybercommunism. We are on the cusp of such technology and must contemplate it for the future, while digital capitalism is giving the working class a unifying force like never before. The arrival of companies like Google, Amazon or Facebook have shown this potential. Google and Facebook are two paradigmatic cases — companies already based on the extraction of data from billions of individuals on the planet and the coordination of matching goods with these individuals anywhere in the world. Under capitalism, this potential is wasted, abused, and corrupted with the worst of intentions in its obsessive pursuit of profit. Under socialism, these models can represent forces of production and distribution that require minimal human labor. These companies have very few workers in relation with the old production chains of companies such as General Motors or General Electrics but they have the same amount of wealth or even more. A company like Google with 100,000 employees can generate the GDP of several countries in the world at the same time, just like Facebook, which with fewer employees generates the same amount of money.

The example of Amazon is even more pragmatic since it is the hybridization between the old forms of industrial capitalism with the digital one; a company that works like the digital ones, uses personalized ads to generate money, buys and sells items on its website, and even produces its own articles to distribute through a network of hundreds of millions of people. This is the perfect example of how the working class has to organize thanks to this rise of the new digital capitalism. It is useless to unionize workers in a single warehouse in the United States, but equally, it is useless to unionize all workers in Amazon in this country, since Amazon has all the resources to take production to any country in the world. In other words, to be able to twist their arms and amass genuine power, all Amazon workers — from all countries — should unionize in a single union that does not understand the distinction of nations. It would be a working-class, feminist, decolonial and anti-racist union, as the “working class” it represents. And of course, thanks to the digital technological revolution, through our mobile devices this union can perfectly coordinate all its actions around the world, to such an extent that even with different time zones it can call a strike on a global scale to bring even a goliath of capital like Amazon to its knees.

Digital capitalism is giving a golden opportunity to the world working class to organize internationally, as Marx and Engels insisted, and it is giving future tools for the total emancipation of work in an inherently decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist manner; that is to say, intersectional, where all efforts are put into the absolute emancipation of all human beings.

Automation Represents the Second — Not ‘Fourth’ — Industrial Revolution: Just as the First Necessitated Capitalism, the Second Necessitates Socialism

By Ted Reese

Republished from the author’s blog.

Humans have longed to be free from toil. The Greek poet Antipater, a contemporary of the Roman statesman Cicero, welcomed the invention of the water mill, which worked “without labour or effort”, as the foundation of a “Golden Age” and the liberator of slaves.

Now in the epoch of late-stage capitalism, after a long and painful evolutionary road, the possibility of a ‘post-work’ world — with the ongoing development of robotic machinery, artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of increasingly sophisticated automation — seems like a tangible reality. Decades of relatively small, quantitive innovations (with computing power, for example, tending to double every two years) have led up to a point now promising huge qualitative technological leaps.

At the same time, the global workforce has been increasingly ‘deindustrialised’ — moved from manufacturing to services. The proportion of manufacturing workers in the total workforce in the US fell from 26.4% in 1970 to 8.51% in 2018.[2] Even Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa have been deindustrialising in the past decade, from a much lower starting point than Asia.[3] Whereas industrialisation peaked in western European countries at income levels of around $14,000, India and many Sub-Saharan African countries appear to have reached their peak manufacturing employment at income levels of $700 (both at 1990 levels).[4]

As McKinsey Global Institute Director James Manyika said in June 2017: “Find a factory anywhere in the world [our emphasis] built in the past five years — not many people work there.”

The ‘fourth’ industrial revolution?

The bourgeois (capitalist) narrative trumpets the automation revolution as the ‘fourth’ industrial revolution.[5] Is this accurate?

The evolution of production is a process of developing man’s mastery over nature, of harnessing nature to serve our needs. New technologies give rise to new needs. For centuries — comprising the primitive communal, slave-owning and feudal systems — manual labour determined the technological basis of society. As the continual improvements and specialisations of the implements of labour reached their limits and slavery and feudalism became fetters (restraints) on the further development of the productive forces (technology and humans) as a whole, mechanisation (machine-aided production) necessarily replaced manual labour. Man was no longer the source of power which wielded the implements of labour.

Consolidating capitalist relations of production, this was the first industrial revolution — it marked a radical change in the technological mode of production, i.e. the mode of combining man and technology. Where man had controlled and wielded the inanimate elements of work, machines now dictated the inputs of man and relieved him as, in Marx’s words, “chief actor”;[6] but, in creating a division of labour, did not free him. “The hand tool makes the worker independent — posits him as proprietor. Machinery — as fixed capital — posits him as dependent, posits him as appropriated.”[7]

Dominant versions of history tell the story that — since it was the most obvious contrast between machine production and the handicrafts and ordinary manufacture of small ‘cottage industry’ workshops — the upgrade of the steam engine made by Scottish engineer James Watt around 1775 was the fundamental catalyst of the first industrial revolution. By extension, it was considered the primary factor behind the rise of British capitalism and the ensuing industrial and economic dominance of its Empire. All thanks to the supposed individual genius of Watt (or was it his ‘Britishness’?).

This is an example of idealism, the theory that man’s ideas or ever-improving rationality determine the course of history. Marx’s method of dialectical materialism — that history is driven by ongoing conflict or interaction between material and social forces — enables the understanding of history per se, rather than individual versions of it. (Indeed, it also explains man’s ever-improving rationality.) That it was Watt who made this innovation is merely a ‘historical accident’ — if he had never been born someone else would have realised this inevitable evolutionary development.

Behind this ‘accident’ lay the driving necessity to develop machinery and liberate industry from the confines imposed by nature in terms of a power source. The development of steam power removed the reliance on water power and therefore enabled industry to be moved to other locations more freely. With steam power, the primary factor became access to coal, the source of the energy needed to generate steam, which in turn enabled greater access to coal. With the development of electrical power, industry was further liberated, and has therefore invariably moved to wherever the cheapest labour can be found.

The origins of the steam engine can actually be traced back to the ancient Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria. Within a system of slavery, though, it could not be utilised. Marx therefore argues:

“The steam-engine itself, such as it was at its invention during the manufacturing period at the close of the 17th century, and such as it continued to be down to 1780, did not give rise to any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the invention of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam engines necessary. As soon as man, instead of working on the object of labour with a tool, becomes merely the motive power of a machine, it is purely accidental that the motive power happens to be clothed in the form of human muscles; wind, water or steam could just as well take man’s place.”[8]

In his 1967 book Era of Man or Robot? The Sociological Problems of the Technical Revolution, Russian Soviet philosopher Genrikh Volkov writes that what made an industrial revolution for Marx

“pivoted on finding the correct methodological approach. His examination focused on changes in the joint working mechanism and the combination of the inanimate and human elements of the process of production. Whether the machine is driven by an animal, a man or steam, Marx showed, is immaterial. The source of power, being part of the machine, only serves the system of working machines.”[9]

What is defined as the second industrial revolution by bourgeois scholars was therefore merely the ongoing development of the first. Taking place in the decades before World War I, it saw the growth of existing industries and establishment of new ones, with electric power enabling ever-greater mass production. Major technological advances included the telephone, light bulb, phonograph and the internal combustion engine.

The ongoing digital revolution — with the emergence of digital record-keeping, the personal computer, the internet, and other forms of information and communications technology — is considered to be the third industrial revolution. This is, perhaps, more arguable. The instruments described certainly amplify man’s mental capacity. But the digital revolution is a technological revolution and actually part of the automation revolution; not an industrial revolution by itself:

“Mechanisation begins with the transference to technology of basic physical working functions, while automation begins when the basic ‘mental’ functions in a technological process actually materialise into machines. This becomes possible with the appearance in production of supervising, controlling or programming cybernetical installations.”[10]

The productivity of machines is slowed down by the physiological limits of human bodies, and so automation becomes necessary; man is increasingly excluded from direct production and now works alongside fully mechanised machines, calling forth a radical change in the man-technology relationship. As Marx said of automation:

“Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself.”[11]

This therefore means that capitalism “works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production,”[12] says Marx, since capital’s exploitation of human labour is the source of profit and exchange-value (the worker keeps less value than they create, with the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist and realised as profit through commodity sales).

The point of automation, therefore, says Volkov,

“should be to remove the contradiction between the inanimate and human elements, between man and machine, to break the shackle that made man and machine a single working mechanism, to act as Hercules setting Prometheus free to perform his great deeds. Potentially, automation can enable man to become Man with a capital letter, and the machine to become Machine in the full sense of the word. Freedom for man’s development is, at the same time, freedom for technological progress.”[13]

Defining automation

In Automation and Social Progress (1956), English socialist Sam Lilley defined automation provisionally as “the introduction or use of highly automatic machinery or processes which largely eliminate human labour and detailed human control”.[14]

The term is of course applied to a very broad field ranging from semi-automatic machinery to automatic factories. These are qualitatively different notions and so must be understood carefully. Volkov writes:

“Semi-automatic technology (semi-automatic machine-tools and lines, so-called cyclic automatons) represents a transitional form from ordinary to automatic machines. In this form, ‘automation’ is usually affected by mechanical means without, as a rule, recourse to cybernetical devices. The worker is still directly included in the process, which he supplements with his nervous system, intellect and, partly, muscular energy (loading and unloading of machines). At this stage, the new technology does not yet constitute automation proper and lacks its most characteristic features. As a matter of fact, semi-automatic technology stretches to the limit the adverse aspects of mechanisation by simplifying things still more, robbing working operations of all their creative content and contributing to their further fragmentation.”[15]

Automation proper can therefore be subdivided into three stages:

1. Initial or partial automation (separate machine-tools fitted with programme control, separate cybernetically controlled automatic lines). Here, the worker has relative freedom of action. They are included in the process only in so far as their duties include the overall supervision of operations, maintenance and adjustment of the machines.

2. Developed automation, e.g., automatic factories equipped with overall electronic control of all production processes, regulation of equipment, loading and unloading, transportation of materials, semi-finished and finished products. In this stage of automation the worker takes no direct part in the production process.

3. Full automation, which ensures automatic operation of all sections of production, from planning to delivery of finished products, including choice of optimum conditions, conversion to a new type of product, and auto-planning in accordance with a set programme. The planning of production as a whole and the overall control of its operation are also to a considerable extent transferred to automatic installations. “Automation of this kind is equivalent to automatic production on the scale of the entire society,” says Volkov. “Here, not only the labour of workers, but that of technicians and, to a considerable extent, of engineers as well, is excluded from the direct technological process. This does not mean, of course, that such work disappears altogether. It is only shifted to another sphere, becomes more creative and closer related to scientific work.”[16]

Base and superstructure

Under capitalism in the first part of the 21st century, we are still a fair way from achieving a singular fully automated system of production (The production process includes the transport of commodities to the point of sale/consumption, so workers who transport commodities (such as Deliveroo and other courier drivers) and check-out/till-point workers add value to a commodity. Drones, autonomous vehicles and self-serving tills are therefore automating the last stage of production.) That does not mean we are not moving relatively rapidly towards that outcome or witnessing an industrial revolution. McKinsey and Co expects “the near-complete automation of existing job activities” somewhere between 2060 and 2100, with the “most technologically optimistic” scenario putting the date at 2045.[17]

The first industrial revolution began before and necessitated the rise of capitalism (the printing press being the first generalised example of machine-aided mass production), just as the second begins before and necessitates the rise of socialism.

Marx recognised that the technological-economic base of a society determines its political and class superstructure. (Although the two of course interact and influence each other, the former dominates.) An industrial revolution has far-reaching consequences that go beyond the framework of technology and even beyond that of material production.

The first affected the character of labour (manual to mechanised); social structure (artisan and peasant turning into worker/proletarian);[18] the correlation of economic branches (agriculture being supplanted by industry); and, finally, the political and economic field (capitalist relations superseding feudal relations). Volkov spells out the most characteristic features of the second industrial revolution.

1) The production of material wealth has a tendency to turn into fully automated production “on a society-wide scale”. The second industrial revolution therefore “marks the completion of the establishment of industry”. At first, large-scale machine industry had a relatively limited area of diffusion, having taken the place of handicrafts and ordinary manufacture. But with the second industrial revolution, “industrialisation tends to spread also to the whole of agriculture, beginning with mechanisation, followed by comprehensive mechanisation and, eventually, by automation. Industrialisation is spreading to house-building, distribution, the community services (eg public catering) and even intellectual, scientific work. In this way, industry becomes the universal form of producing material wealth.”

2) While the first industrial revolution was local in character, being limited to a few developed European countries, the second industrial revolution “tends to involve all the countries of the world” as newly industrialising countries begin by installing the most up-to-date industrial equipment involving comprehensive mechanisation and automation. “This presents features of the first and second industrial revolutions at one and the same time. Consequently, the second industrial revolution is global in character, laying the groundwork for a subsequent economic and social integration of nations.”[19] (Our emphasis .)

3) The modern industrial revolution leads to substantial structural changes in the various spheres of social activity. Because of the ever-decreasing need for manpower for material production, scientific production increases both quantitatively and qualitatively and tends to assume priority over the direct production of material wealth. “Hence, science is the helmsman of the modern industrial revolution.”[20]

4) The dominant feature of the automation revolution concerns its social implications. As we know, the first industrial revolution led to the consolidation of capitalist exploitation. Large-scale industry spelt wholesale ruin for artisans and peasants, longer working hours, intensification of labour and narrow specialisation (the breaking down of the production process into a series of repetitive, monotonous tasks). In contrast, the modern industrial revolution in the socialist nations “leads to a shortening of working hours, an easing of labour, a modification of its nature (work becoming more creative and free), and to the elimination of the essential distinctions between town and countryside, and between mental and manual labour. While yielding the industrial basis for an abundance of material wealth and to distribution according to need, it also opens up possibilities for unlimited spiritual improvement of man’s personality.”

Volkov adds:

“The second industrial revolution resolves the contradiction between the machines and those who operate them, i.e. the contradiction within the joint working mechanism. By completing the automation of production, it paves the way for the implementation of the principles of socialist humanism in society. Hence, the very logic of the second industrial revolution strengthens man’s personality and humanism.

“In capitalist countries, however, this logic and the above-mentioned features of the second industrial revolution contradict the very essence of the relations of exploitation. All the same, mechanised labour gives way to automation, the antithesis between mental and physical labour tends to disappear. And the cultural and technical standard of the workers tends to rise. Substantial changes also occur in the social structure and in the relation between the various economic branches. In other words, many of the essential elements of an industrial revolution are distinctly on hand.

“The fundamental difference between the revolution in capitalist countries and its counterpart in the socialist states consists in its leading to the breakdown, [our emphasis] instead of the consolidation, of the existing relations under the conditions of the private ownership of the means of production. The modern industrial revolution has strained to the utmost all the contradictions of capitalism…. It does not reform capitalism. Instead, it creates the material preconditions for a social revolution and paves the way for the eventual replacement of capitalist relations of production by communist relations.”[21]

The automation revolution cannot be consummated under capitalism — socialism must be established to finish what capitalism started.[22]

The technological determinists who see automation as the ‘fourth’ industrial revolution do not put the development of technology in its proper socio-historical context, but instead in isolation from the human component of the productive forces. They fail to see “the genuine dialectics [interactions] of the forces and relations of production, [and] deny the inverse influence of the relations of production on the productive forces and the development of science and technology”.[23]

Recap

To summarise: over many centuries, manual labour determined the technological basis of society. The technological mode of production, the mode of combining inanimate and human elements, was subjective.

The next stage, paved by the specialisation of implements in manufacture, began when the main working function — control of partial implements — of the ‘living mechanism’, the worker, transferred to the mechanical mechanism, the machine. From human-inanimate, the working mechanism became inanimate-human. The technological mode of production became objective and labour became mechanised. This is then the first industrial revolution.

Finally, the third historical stage in technological development is ushered in by automation. The working mechanism becomes fully technical and the mode of combining man and technology becomes free and labour itself is automated. This then is the second industrial revolution.

Marxists therefore reject the bourgeois definition that posits the automation revolution as the fourth industrial revolution.

Towards a Single Automatic System

The maturity of technology that socialism will inherit in the 21st century means that the problems of planning associated with the 20th century Soviet Union will be much easier to overcome. (Indeed, in hindsight it is arguable that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 proved to be somewhat ‘premature’, given that the Bolsheviks thought capitalism was entering its final crisis at that time.)[24] Thanks to contemporary computing power, ‘big data’ and stock coding, the dominant ‘command and control’ military style planning that overlooked the finer details is no longer necessary.

As Volkov writes:

“Let us anticipate the future and suppose that it has attained its zenith and that its characteristic features… have reached full development. We shall then have a society with fully automated production of material wealth, ensuring abundance. Such production will form a Single Automatic System which, for the sake of maximum efficiency, will incorporate all the branches of industry and agriculture, centrally controlled according to a single plan.

“From the social point of view, this will be a single society, because there will no longer be any workers or peasants previously associated solely with physical labour, and because the distinction between mental and manual labour, and between town and countryside, will have vanished. Creative work incorporating intellectual, emotional and manual activities will predominate. The life of society will be governed by the laws of free, instead of working, time, and so on.”[25]

The direction of history towards turning world productivity into a Single Automatic System shows that the final stage of socialism before the higher stage of communism is a de facto single world state. To get there each nation-state obviously needs to become socialist, with its own governing structure and centrally planned system working towards full automation in that country. A Communist International would be required to oversee development and trade between each socialist state — making sure, for one thing, that the plan incentivises the sharing of technologies and material wealth (including human resources) — which would act with the same semi-autonomy in relation to the International as a region of a country does to its central government or a state to federal level (or a local soviet to its regional soviet, and so on).

As this system develops, the Single Automatic System and a de facto one-state world would come into being, with borders being rejected as fetters on productivity — there being no transfer of ownership when it comes to trade in a socialist political union, anyway — and individual nation-states withering away in all but regional name.

We can see then that, whereas capitalism in the long run has a historically centralising tendency, socialism in the long run has a historically decentralising tendency. This then is the path to a borderless, stateless world, not the fantasy anarchist one, which, with its desire to introduce federations of fully autonomous communes, would effectively introduce new borders and undermine internationalism. The necessary aim of communism is to unite — to un-divide — the working class and humanity as a whole.

Conclusion

The essential point that must be grasped about automation is that it is abolishing the source of profit and exchange-value, i.e. capital’s exploitation of commodity-producing labour. This process is not reversible. Innovation and the tendency for machinery to grow relative to labour continues throughout history, under any mode of production. Under capitalism, the process is driven by the needs of capital accumulation.

Commodity-producers must continually expand production to overcome the inherent contradiction contained in the commodity: it is both a use-value, a utility; and an exchange-value, containing surplus value and sold for profit. The quicker and more abundantly commodities are made, the less labour, exchange-value and therefore profit tends to be contained in each commodity, compelling the capitalist to expand production yet further, only to continually intensify the contradiction. All production under capitalism is governed by this, the law of (exchange-)value.

This contradiction is also expressed in an overaccumulation of capital (a surplus that cannot be (re)invested profitably, resulting also in the equivalent surplus labour (unemployment)) and a contraction in economic output. This is at the same time an underproduction in surplus value. The necessary reaction for capital is to expand and cheapen the labour base and raise its productivity through innovation, only to increase the underproduction of surplus value in the long-run, since the amount machinery and capital employed tends to rise relative to the total surplus-value-producing labour employed.

Commodity-producers continually have to attract greater investment to turn a profit. As a company gets bigger, though, its costs get larger and more unsustainable, and so greater profits need to be generated than before (hence the dominant tendency towards the ever-greater monopolisation of industry, for economies of scale (efficiency)).

Since wages eat into thinning profit margins, expenditure on wages must be slashed. Robots do not need toilet/rest/lunch breaks, sick or holiday pay, and are therefore much more productive and cheaper to employ. (There is no such thing as ‘technological unemployment’, though; people go unemployed when capital can no longer afford to employ them (so socialism, capable of permanent full employment, would take advantage of automated production by training and employing far more scientists, doctors, teachers, etc). Even police and soldiers, who do not produce surplus value and are therefore paid out of the surplus produced by commodity-producing workers, are increasingly being replaced by surveillance technology and autonomous weapons, since one effect of shrinking profit margins is shrinking government tax bases, at least in relative terms per capita.)

Innovation is necessary to continually raise the productivity of labour, to meet the demands of accumulation — only the size of the ever-expanding total capital eventually becomes too large for the ever-dwindling pool of surplus-value-producing labour to renew and expand. The underproduction of surplus value becomes insurmountable. The system comes up against a historical limit of accumulation and breaks down into barbarism, necessitating socialist revolution.[26] Indeed, interest,[27] GDP and general profit rates have all trended historically towards zero,[28] along with commodity prices.[29]

As with previous modes of production, the contradictions between the productive forces (the means of production) and the productive relations (the ownership of production) are being driven into irreconcilable conflict by sheer historical force. While this contradiction has always been expressed under capitalism by the private appropriation of the products of collective, socialised labour, it is now increasingly expressed by automated labour and a diminishing source of profit, tending ever-closer towards the self-abolition of the law of value.

Just as capitalism matured in the womb of feudalism through the concentration of industry, socialism has matured in the womb of capitalism through the further concentration and monopolisation of industry and the deindustrialisation, servicisation, automation and digitalisation of labour. The new technological-economic base demands a new, applicable superstructure; ie public ownership of the means of production; an all-socialist state (a people’s democratic republic); centrally planned production on a break-even basis; and the replacement of money by digital (non-transferable) vouchers pegged to labour time.

Indeed, fiat money is becoming more and more worthless — pound sterling having lost more than 99.5% of its purchasing power during its lifetime, for example. Worldwide hyperinflation is already on the horizon.[30]

The age-old arguments about which system works better, capitalism or socialism, are quite redundant — the answer has of course always been socialism, but the point that now has to be stressed is that, for the first time, socialism is becoming an economic necessity.

As Volkov concludes:

“As the mass of exploited manual workers decreases due to scientific and technological progress, particularly automation, the mass of exploited intellectual workers, i.e. white collar employees, engineers and scientists [who increasingly contribute to commodity production] also increases in reverse proportion (or even more rapidly)…[31]

“Capitalism in the age of automation increasingly turns the majority of the population into proletarians and, in doing so, creates all economic, social and political prerequisites for the system’s downfall.”[32]

Ted Reese is author of Socialism or Extinction: Climate, Automation and War in the Final Capitalist Breakdown.

Political Automatons and the Politics of Automation

By Bryant William Sculos

What's in a Meme?

While it would be easy to exaggerate the significance of any meme shared on social media, it is widely acknowledged that memes are inherently limited and simplistic. But their value in conveying important political messages is also clear-especially through sarcasm and irony. One need only spend a few seconds on social media to see the creative energy that people put into making and sharing these often-captioned images across various digital platforms. With that said, I came across this meme below (shared in a number of Facebook groups), and it seems like a useful starting point for a discussion about its central claims regarding political-economic change and the overall goals of such change. The meme's central argument (insofar as we can say a meme has an argument) is that consumers should not use the increasingly prevalent self-checkout lines at grocery stores, because the more they are used the fewer people the company will hire to work as cashiers and baggers. If consumers make the ostensibly simple choice to not use these lines and instead use the lines with human cashiers, grocery stores will not only stop installing these automated checkout lines and will even remove the ones they have already put in place-hiring more cashiers to work the in-person lanes that would be needed to service the customers once the automated systems are replaced.

Given the dire life circumstances that unemployment can cause, especially for previously underemployed, low-wage workers, the goal of struggling for more jobs for people is a noble one. However, this essay will show how that goal, as articulated in the context of a grocery store-and in society more broadly-is misguided, rooted in problematic assumptions about capitalism and transformational change, and is ultimately ineffective and an inefficient use of political energy. The core misunderstandings that produce the argument of this meme are two-fold: 1. individual consumer choices are an effective means of resisting the devastating consequences of capitalism (e.g., automation-induced unemployment), and 2. That resisting automation is productive goal.

There is an automated character to these modes of thinking, a kind of superficial intuitiveness that if we (each as individuals) simply behave differently the forces of the market will adjust to the implications of those choices in aggregate-as if neither the forces of the market (of capitalism) were to blame nor the individual choices difficult to make. Politics is not primarily about our individual daily choices. In fact, the least positive political thing you can do is act on your own. This is the liberal-influenced ideology, ensconced in capitalistic assumptions about society and human nature, that "individual choices matter"-and matter more than collective choices. In fact, liberalism doesn't even have the theoretical architecture to think through the concept of collective choices. Neither does capitalism. Aggregating individuals is all they can do. Socialist political praxis-rooted in democratic, egalitarian solidarity- on the other hand, knows better.

Your Choice Doesn't Matter, But Ours Do

In the 1960s, we saw a number of direct-action campaigns utilizing tactics like sit-ins and occupations to fight against segregation, the Vietnam War, and even capitalism itself. While these actions were taken by consumers of a certain kind, it was not primarily as consumers that these actions were conducted. Thinking about student protests specifically, students are often-and increasingly-treated as consumers within more contemporary neoliberal capitalism, but it is worth remembering that this conception of the student-as-customer is relatively new. Despite historically (and too often still being) bastions of elitism, too often excluding the poor and people of color, college campuses in the 60s were communities of radical dissent, often engaging positively with local communities, with people coming together to enhance their political power through collective action as affected (and effected) human beings with moral and practical interest in challenging violence, exploitation, oppression, and antidemocratic politics. They were not exercising political power rooted in "consumer choice."

We see similar, seemingly automatic, consumer-choice arguments made by left-liberal environmentalists. We are encouraged to recycle, to "shop Green," to use reusable bags, to use energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances. But in a world where something like 100 companies account for approximately 75% of carbon emissions and pollution more broadly, I can assure you that what kind of lightbulb you use could not matter less. You could burn all of your recycling daily in a tire pit using 1950s hairspray as an accelerant and it wouldn't matter in the slightest compared to the ecological footprint of just the US military (the single greatest ecologically-criminal entity in human history). We need collective, solidaristic, organized solutions on a massive scale to make a dent in the ecological damage wrought by centuries of extractive capitalism. In other words, fuck your lightbulbs. The planet's biosphere is dying. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to think outside of our individual consumer choices. Choose organized resistance, not Starbucks' Ethos Water.

Marches, protests, occupations, organizational meetings, public talks and discussions, sit-ins, and strikes, on the other hand, are all forms of collective political action that tend to speak better to the depth of the systemic forces that need to be resisted and superseded. They tend to be more effective at rejecting the forces of exploitation and oppression that drive our societies in the contemporary period, because they do not reinforce the underlying logic of automated consumerism produced through manipulative marketing and advertising, themselves driven by the profit-motive. It is not the choice of product on which you spend your almighty dollars that expresses your political power, but instead it is your capacity to act in concert with others. One of these conceptions of politics challenges the status quo-but the other conception is the status quo.

Thinking back to the meme that started this piece, the implied activism here is undergirded by a false alternative: I can either use the self-checkout line or use the human-clerk line. That is all. What should I do? What is the best political decision? First, it is useful to accept the fact that despite this decision taking place within a highly politicized context, in general, this decision is politically irrelevant. The structures involved are deeply political. We may feel that the appearance of our decision is reflective of a certain perceived set of political commitments-but compared to the political character of the political-economic structures that shape the circumstances where we feel like there might be important political consequences of one choice or another-or simply the fact that we have those two choices-the actual choice we make is functionally irrelevant. In aggregate, which is what I take this meme to be expressing, if customers stopped using the self-checkout lines, supermarkets would indeed stop expanding their use; they may even remove some of the ones they've already installed and hire more human cashiers, but given the enormity of the systemic evils we face, we should be thinking much bigger, broader, and deeper about our politics.

Given the degree of forces levelled against us, the severity of the problems we face, and the time and effort and general difficulty of collective action and organizing, it is too easy to think well at least I'm doing something. The problem is, after a long day or week or month or year of alienating labor, raising children, filling out memos, whatever wears you out, it is easy forat least I'm doing my part to become, I'll try again tomorrow. Our political engagement, our reflective capacities are increasingly automated. Like the automated checkout lines, we are (re)produced as (de)politicized subjects with little sense of any activity other than what we've been programmed-conditioned over years and years-to think. My individual choices matter. And, in fairness, to some degree they absolutely do, but some choices matter more than others.

Which choice matters more here: the decision as to which checkout line I should use, or the decision to get involved in a political organization or local social movement? Again, there is a false alternative here. You can do both, but if you're only going to do one, it should be clear that because of the depth of the structures of exploitation and oppression most people face daily, the latter choice-and the content of that choice-is the choice that really matters. It is a choice that, if made in the affirmative (and the choice is made to get involved in an organization that is socialist, anti-imperialist, pro-worker, anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc.), the choice automatically challenges the programmed automated political (un)thinking that is predominant in our society. Building solidarity in collective struggles with others directly challenges the automated, one dimensional, pathological (anti)politics of individualized consumer choice-oriented slacktivism.

With that criticism laid out, it is worth noting that collective consumer-side actions can be effective in short-term, limited circumstances. They can be a productive dimension of a broader strategy which utilizes a variety of tactics. One of the most historically significant examples of this is the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While it was certainly an exceptional example of collective consumer action rooted not in the ideology of individual choices. A boycott is not an individual act, so, if we give the meme a more charitable reading, we could interpret it as a call for collective action against self-checkout lines. Again, that isn't made clear in the meme explicitly, but it still leaves open the broader question of the limitations of consumer actions, even when done collectively, but it also leaves open the issue of whether resisting automation is a good idea for those interested in progressive or socialist political-economic change.

A Robot Could Do Your Job (and It Should)

As for this second dimension of the meme, the opposition to automation itself, I want to suggest here, in line with what has been argued elsewhere by Peter Frase, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams, that automation-done democratically and equitably-is a process that we should support. There are, quite simply, jobs, where if there is an opportunity to make them not exist, that is precisely what should be done. Where is the expression of humanity in being a cashier or bagger? In what ways, other than simply engaging in casual sixty-second conversations with customers, do people employed in these kinds of professions express their humanity in any significant way? I want to be clear; I'm not criticizing the people who, for whatever reasons, do these jobs. I'm criticizing the existence of these jobs as such.

Who should feel compelled to clean piss or shit off bathroom walls in order to make some more money to pay for basic human needs, such as: healthy, nutritious food; safe, clean housing; and/or quality health care? Who should feel compelled to pick strawberries or lettuce in 100-degree heat? Who should feel compelled to install roofing in the scorching sunlight day after day? There is nothing wrong with manual labor per se, and certainly many people would prefer it to sitting in a cubical for eight hours per day, but the problem with any of these options is that none are typically chosen freely. Very few people, if any, would actively choose to undertake the most revolting, dangerous, uninteresting, and socially-unrewarding jobs if it weren't for the lack of better alternatives, if it weren't for the fact that freely chosen labor is barely a mythology in our societies (in that we can hardly even fantasize about it).

In an automated political economy, there will be plenty of creative, hands-on, salt-of-the-earth jobs to do. There will also be plenty of time for other, perhaps a bit more sedentary, creative, and productive activities for those of us who are less callously-inclined. The point is that automation driven by democratically-organized movements of working people, everyday people, the 99%, is the best way to make freely-chosen productive, humane labor thinkable again.

Automation in and of itself is neither a positive nor a negative. At its worst, automation deskills jobs so that the cognitive engagement and technical know-how needed to do the job decreases. Sometimes whole job categories disappear. All the while, companies continue to rake in record-breaking profits. These are the very real, if still exaggerated, fears that underlie this meme.

History need not go in that direction though. We can have an automation that increases quality of life for all people. In order for automation to have the liberatory effects that the above meme eschews, there would need to be a corollary supplement in the form of a universal basic income and/or shorter workweeks or job-share programs with no loss in pay - but it is highly unlikely either of those options would be achievable without the kind of mass organized political action that the individualized, automated politics of consumer choice activism undermines.

Automation-only when combined with genuinely democratized workplaces, companies, homes, towns, cities, states, and countries-can set us on a path of increased freedom for all people. Put simply, we want our shitty jobs automated, not our capacities for creative, collective activity. We want to automate toil, not politics. And it is always worth remembering: automation isn't the enemy of working people, their bosses are.

Bryant William Sculos holds a PhD in political theory and international relations. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at The Amherst Program in Critical Theory, contributing writer for the Hampton Institute, and Politics of Culture section editor for Class, Race and Corporate Power. His other work has been published with a variety of academic and non-academic outlets, including: Constellations, New Political Science, Public Seminar, Truthout, Dissident Voice, and New Politics. His most recent article "Minding the Gap: Marxian Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Postcapitalism" is in the May 2018 special issue of tripleC commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Bryant is also a member of Socialist Alternative-CWI in the US.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and Society: An Interview

By Brenan Daniels

Today we interview two members of the Socialist Party USA. Stephanie C. is a biochemist working in the university and Eric D. is a quality manager, though by trade is a civil engineer. In the interview we discuss STEM as it relates to them personally, through the lens of capitalism, and we end with asking what advice they would give to someone looking to go into the STEM field.

What got you into the STEM field? What part of STEM do you engage in?

Stephanie C.: As long as I can remember, I had an interest and knack for science. My father was a microbiologist for the FDA, and he used to take me to work. I always knew I wanted to work in a lab. My main interest was chemistry, but the biological sciences were where I had the most knowledge and skill. I got my degree in biochemistry; I currently work making proteins that are used for cancer research at a large public research university.

Eric D.: I have always had a love for math and science. As a child, I wanted to be a scientist of some kind. But because things came easily to me in school, I got really bored and distracted. It wasn't until I got married, years after high school, that I started taking classes at my local community college.

My initial plan was to get an associate's degree and then transfer to a four-year school for a degree in chemical engineering. But during the course of taking classes at the community college, I grew more interested in civil engineering and I ultimately ended up going down the path of a degree in Civil Engineering Technologies.

I ended up getting a job with a local mechanical contractor doing CAD drawings for them on second shift and moved my way up through that department. Now, I run the company's quality management system. It's my job to establish processes to ensure that the products that we deliver meet all applicable requirements.

Why do you think that there seems to be a battle between liberal arts and the STEM fields, with people denigrating the former?

Stephanie C.: I cannot say why it is STEM that is valued over the liberal arts. Perhaps the roles would be shifted if there were more STEM graduates than liberal arts graduates, but valuing one over the other when both are useful in different ways doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The working poor have always been shamed and blamed for the failings of capitalism, this is not a new thing, though the rhetoric changes to fit the times. Lack of education can no longer be used as an excuse for why so many hard working people live in poverty, as so many of those in poverty have an education now. So the narrative shifts: It must be that they don't have the right kind of education. Or they didn't get enough education. Or the education system itself is broken. It is all about turning working people against each other: rather than questioning the system that continues to fail them.

Eric D.: Honestly, I have no doubt that it comes down to capitalism. Our country goes out of its way to cater to businesses and is set up in a way to ensure maximum profits. As a result, our education system gets manipulated by legislators in order to push whatever agenda they think will lead to a profitable outcome, with no regard for the long-term effects of such action on the wider society.

Liberal arts feed the human spirit. We can construct highways that runs through mountains and over rivers, probe into the vastness of space, open up a chest and see a beating heart without killing someone, and develop a way to instantly communicate with people anywhere in the world - all because of STEM fields. The things that we have managed to accomplish on account of STEM fields are amazing. But to truly appreciate the depth of humanity, enjoy the beauty of the world around us, and enrich our lives beyond what technological marvels can accomplish, we need the arts and humanities. But there is more money in developing technology than there is in poetry. A ballet company will never be as profitable as a medical technology corporation. Of course capitalists want to drive investment towards STEM fields and away from the Liberal Arts.

And let's not forget one very important thing. STEM fields develop a system for thinking about issues and developing solutions. But they really don't drive someone to think critically about the world around them in a way which would challenge the status quo. The Liberal Arts helps make someone a better critical thinker about social issues. It's much easier to govern a people who don't ask hard questions about why things are the way they are than it is to have a society full of deep thinkers who challenge those in office. That's not to say that people in STEM fields aren't engaged in the political issues of the world. Only that a person who has studied history, philosophy, and other things of this nature tend to bring an entirely different perspective to things than people who have spent their entire lives approaching problems like engineers.

What would your response be when people act as if a STEM field is a ticket to fast money? Why is it that this idea persists even though there are people with such degrees who can't find jobs?

Stephanie C.: I do hear this a lot, and it bothers me. It is as if we're getting to the point where education is nothing more than job training, and the concept of pursuing an education for its own sake is considered frivolous or old-fashioned. While it is possible to make money in STEM, it is by no means guaranteed, and there are other ways to make money that don't involve taking on a lifetime of student loan debt. Also, it is difficult to succeed in any field that requires long hours covering subject matter that seems boring to most people. It can be done, but at the end of the day money isn't the greatest motivator. Personally, I'd rather live in a world where doctors and scientists are motivated by their love of the field and desire to help people than money. I think this idea persists for the reasons I mentioned in the second question. The myth that the poor are poor because they chose the wrong profession, an argument that falls apart as soon as you realize that ultimately, someone has to do the low-paid professions, no matter what they happen to be at that point in time.

Eric D.: Personally, I'd tell anyone not to pursue a career just because of the money. We all know people who are absolutely miserable with what they do for a living but who make a decent living. Who cares how big my TV is if I spend 40% of my day hating what I do?

That said, if you think that you have found a ticket to fast money which is being pushed by the government, you have to keep in mind that millions of other people will be thinking the same thing. Politicians and business leaders are perfectly happy to herd millions of people towards STEM fields in order to maximize profits - and if some slip through the cracks, that's a price they're willing to pay.

Talk about some of the internal problems in the STEM field that people may not know of. We all know of the racial/gender problems?

Stephanie C.: I cannot speak from personal experience when it comes to racism in STEM, as I am white, but it is a very real problem that deserves it's own discussion. I have seen women make in roads into STEM, especially in the life sciences, but I have not seen the same progress in racial equity. Like all fields, STEM has a gender wage gap. It may be smaller than other fields, but it remains, especially in the most highly paid fields. For example, one study showed that having a male name on the top of a resume meant $4,000 more in compensation than the same resume with a female name.

Many studies have shown bias against women : in addition to being paid less, they are less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, and are viewed as less competent than men doing the same work. Women's work is devalued simply by the nature of women's doing it, and there are many examples showing pay drops when women take over a field and rises when men take over, It isn't just women naturally picking lower paying jobs, women are simply valued less, despite working more. And although some effort has been made to counteract gender discrimination in STEM, it is still widely believed to be a myth, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Eric D.: Well, I can't speak for all STEM fields and I'm sure that they vary in certain areas. But, in my experience, the engineering field tends to be overwhelmingly men who are very conservative. It's not at all uncommon to catch part of a conversation in which people being racist, sexist, or homophobic.

Additionally, a career in a STEM field can be very demoralizing. There is a lot of stress, tight deadlines, and a sense that you can be replaced at any moment because there are million people who are ready to step into your place. It's like the giant wheel of our economy will crush anyone who falls behind.

In what ways does pushing STEM in K-12 aid in the further decline of the power of labor and the aid in the empowerment of the corporate state?

Stephanie C.: Corporations have been pushing kids into STEM for some time now. Whether it is because it is good PR, for tax write offs and free advertising, or because they are actively trying to drive down wages by flooding the market I cannot say, but I sincerely doubt their sole motivation is helping kids.

Eric D.: The entire push towards STEM is intended to benefit the corporate state. They are creating this sense that kids need to lock in what they want to do at a young age and push towards being the best that they can be in order to be successful. My kindergartener comes home with math homework every night. While I think it's good to be competent in math regardless of a person's career choice, I don't at all think that it is more important to do math homework than it is to play in the dirt and explore. This worries me because I can already see how the drive towards STEM is taking place for him in school. The pressure only increases as kids advance in their education.

My wife teaches 11th grade Language Arts and Cultural Literacy. She does a remarkable job helping motivate kids to think outside of STEM, better understand the world in which they live, and challenge the status quo. But things have changed. There is less of an emphasis placed on her courses and far more pressure on the students and teachers where STEM fields are involved.

I've heard numerous teachers talking about life after high school and the importance of jobs in the STEM field. I hate it. I wish that students were taught the material which would best develop them as humans instead of being taught the material which would make them most useful to businesses. Not only does this have a detrimental impact on students due to them placing less importance on obtaining a well-rounded education, but it also skews their worldview and places an elevated importance on making money above other things.

A person whose main motivation is the amount of money they can make will give no thought to the forms of oppression being faced by others. In short, it reinforces the problems that already exist in our society and creates a cycle by which those oppressions continue to get worse. But this suits legislators and businesses very well. A person who is looking out for themselves and the amount of money that they can make will not be organizing labor unions or engaging in behavior which might in any way risk the stability that they cling to.

By making people focus on their wages above all else, capitalists have taken another step in neutralizing any efforts made to regain power for the working class.

What would you say to a person thinking of majoring in the STEM field?

Stephanie C.: I would ask them why want to go into STEM, and what they expect from their degree. If they say that they want easy money but have no interest or skill in STEM, I would try to encourage them to check out other options as well before committing to a path. If they are legitimately interested in STEM I would do what I could to help them discover what would be a good fit for them. I'd definitely recommend taking all the credits they could at a community colleges to transfer to another school, as this can save a lot of money, and not to take out unsubsidized or private loans if possible.

Eric D.: If it's where your heart really is, go for it. But if you aren't sure or if you're just doing it because it's what others expect you to do or you think it will provide a good source of income, don't do it. The world needs more poets, artists, dancers, philosophers, etc.

I'm concerned that with the drive towards STEM, we are sacrificing part of our humanity at the altar of "progress."