wackyakmed - 2013-01-04
Skip to 4:05 for the actual start.
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Old_Zircon  - 2013-01-04
That doesn't look like GraBear to me.
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paranex - 2013-01-04
Here's the article he was referring to, which is actually a better articulation of his points and worth the read: http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars
It's interesting as a critique, but if he's going to try and revive post-scarcity anarchism, he should at least explore why the post-scarcity theorists of the 60's/70's abandoned their early theories for stuff like ecology. The whole reason that school of thought isn't around today is because it's hard to answer questions like whether technology necessitates alienated labor, whether it's innately ecologically destructive or whether even liberatory technology can lead to dehumanizing social changes. They couldn't answer those questions, and he seems to dismiss them as mere symptoms of capitalism.
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wackyakmed - 2013-01-04 I feel like the onus is more on those who feel that radically democratizing the labor process, as well as our societal definition of what constitutes labor, to explain why it wouldn't have a de-alienating and ecologically positive effect.
For instance, if workers collectively direct production for an enterprise, would Larry decide to sweep floors all day, every day? Or is it more likely that he would come to an agreement with his coworkers to share the menial work, as well as the interesting variety? Would workers who collectively direct an electronics company decide to dump toxic chemicals used in the production process into their town's nearby stream? The idea is that if all labor associations, in addition to politics, were radically democratized, nobody would choose to alienate themselves of destroy their own community. It's not completely convincing for me, but I can't see it being worse than what we've got now.
Chomsky and Richard Wolff both make this argument, and the whole Parecon movement is based around the concept as well. The Mondragon Collective would be a good place to look to see if it holds water in practice, as they're a roughly 80,000 person collection of enterprises based on participatory economic principles (although by no means perfectly living them out). From what I've been able to research, it does seem to improve both labor alienation. I haven't dug into pollution at all.
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wackyakmed - 2013-01-04 Well that response was a typo'd mess, but you get the general idea.
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paranex - 2013-01-04 I agree with you on worker's councils, absolutely, but the post-scarcity theorists typically were more concerned with abolishing work, not democratizing it. That's the problem: They have this grand vision, but no practical way to get there.
As for alienated labor, I was going by the classical Marxian definition of alienated labor -- modes of production organized around the division of labor -- and from there it logically follows that technology, which requires specialization and technical expertise, to some extent has alienated labor baked in. That's the thing: It's hard to imagine technology existing without the division of labor or massive industrial bureaucracies because we've only ever lived in a world where it required both. It's not to say it's impossible, just that there is no theory, post-scarcity or not, that addresses it.
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fatatty - 2013-01-05
It's kind of interesting to consider why we don't have these technologies, but I think they all need the caveat that he leaves out which is "yet". He may be right that certain social forces and various thinkers have slowed technological progress in forms that would have supplanted human workers, but the case could be made that we're just not ready yet. I've read that McDonald's is ready to completely automate their restaurants, but they won't because they don't want to be responsible for the huge jump in unemployment and they know that they would see instant boycotts. If we do manage to get to a post-scarcity world they'd do it in a heartbeat.
I also think it's dumb for him to so easily dismiss smart phones and the internet. Having access to all the world's information in your pocket is no small thing, especially when combined with instantaneous worldwide communication, audio-visual recording and the growing myriad of nearly unlimited functions they can perform. They are quite a bit like Star Trek communicators, and superior in many ways and there's already early versions of tricorders being researched using that technology. These technologies in turn will make creating all the technologies he's disappointed in more likely to occur in the future, more quickly.
I agree we need to be pouring more money into AI, Robots, Energy and the unmentioned nano and biotech, but that doesn't mean we won't be seeing the fruits of those fields in the relatively near future. And that doesn't mean that an abundance based economy is impossible, just because it didn't happen by the arbitrarily mythical 2000.
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