Just because machines do the labor doesn't mean that labor isn't the source of wealth.

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant? — Bitter Crank

Yes. Sadly this what will happen in the future. Probably a lot of jobs we are consider as ordinary today will be extinguished in some years. I guess those automation machines would attack practical jobs as waiters, manufacturers, farmers, etc... just because their bosses or businessmen will want have something or someone to make exactly the same but cheaper. It is interesting this fact because they already do so... if we go to Bangladesh or India most of the businessmen go there due to cheap manufacture and child labor. But with automation machines they would produce everything in their own country and FREE.
So yes... it will make disappear a lot of jobs or at least make them irrelevant.

An example of the labor theory of value would be if a t-shirt takes half the time to make as a hat, the hat would be priced at two times the t-shirt.

It is true this is an interesting theory about Marx but I think he forgot something important according to value: material and handmade. Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat.

Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat. — javi2541997

To use an English expression, one can make a purse out of silk or make it out of a sow's ear. Or to be more precise, try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Moving on from the pig pen...

The thing is, whether it is a fine Egyptian long-fiber cotton T shirt or a ratty polyester one, a certain amount of time is required to make it. Same for the hat, whether it is $9.99 hat or a $99 hat, depending on time/labor inputs.

It seems to me that a large portion of the world's work force will be increasingly irrelevant as automation, robotics, AI, and the like advance. I've had some clerical jobs that I would have happily handed over to a machine to do. (I hate detail work)

How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please.

Just because machines do the labor doesn't mean that labor isn't the source of wealth. — Pfhorrest

Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced.

How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please. — Bitter Crank

Agreed. Of course I prefer human jobs or at least being with natural workers. You put the perfect job example here: bartender.
Sadly, these kind of jobs will suffer lack of stability in the future due to AI. I would prefer being around humans not only for a lively experience but an ethical criteria.
We cannot create a big unemployment ratio for those which have "low academical level" just because is cheaper having AI

Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please. — Bitter Crank

Then that is a job that still calls for human labor -- the emotional labor of being a friendly person to talk to, even if the actual drink-making part of the job is automated away. If people prefer to have a drink somewhere that there's a live bartender to chat to, they will patronize the places where a live bartender pushes the make-me-a-beer button for you, instead of places where you push it yourself and then sit alone with your own thoughts wallowing in sadness and spoiled barley water.

Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced. — Bitter Crank

I think there's a couple of different things to be teased apart in this topic. One is the nature of wealth in the abstract, what makes something of value in general? The other is the question of where humans fit into that abstract picture.

I think I'll just quote myself from a recent thread of my own for my answer to that first question:

...purpose is the prescriptive analogue of the descriptive ontological concept of causation: cause is about why something does happen, while purpose is about why something should happen.

[...]

Similarly, the prescriptive analogue of the descriptive ontological concept of substance is wealth: wealth is stuff of value. And just as in my ontology I hold real objects of substance to be constituted by the things they cause to happen (ala "to be is to do"), so too I hold that the value of wealth is constituted by the purpose that it serves: a thing is of value for the good that can be done with it.

This concept of wealth can be further decomposed into concepts of capital and labor, which in turn can be further decomposed to familiar ontological categories: capital is of value for the matter and space that it provides, while labor is of value for the energy and time that it provides. And just as matter is ultimately reducible to energy, so too capital is ultimately reducible to labor: capital is the distilled product of labor, worth at least the minimal time and energy it takes to obtain or create, and no more than the maximal time and energy it can save elsewhere.

Similarly, just as physical work happens when matter and energy flow through space and time, what we might call "ethical work" happens – good gets done – when wealth flows in an economy, each kind of wealth diffusing from where it is in higher concentration to where it is in lower concentration. — Pfhorrest

That last part then begins to segue into the second question above: where do humans fit into that abstract picture of wealth and value? In a capitalist economy, where all the capital is owned by a small fraction of the populace, the only thing of value most people have to offer in trade with the capitalist class is their labor. If machines obviate the need for labor, then most people cease to have value to the capitalist class, which poses the threat of an enormous problem, if most people have nothing to offer the parasites who claim ownership of the whole world in exchange for the right to use some of that world.

One solution to that problem could be a socialist revolution, seizing the means of production by state force. Maybe a relatively peaceful revolution, if enough people can be convinced by their own eminent starvation and homelessness to actually use the levers of democracy sensibly to make the state act in the common interest; but also maybe a more violent one, if the threat of eminent starvation and homelessness pisses enough people off enough.

However, circling back around to the abstract topic of theory of value, if machines obviate the need for labor, then cost of new machines is free (it takes no labor to make another one), and the value of yet another machine to someone who already has one is also zero (it saves no more labor to have more automation than you need), so the price of those excess machines should tend to zero, as there's nothing lost by just giving them away, letting all the poor people who used to have nothing but labor have a free automaton, since it costs the rich nothing to just let them do that. And it might save them the costs associated with a revolution of starving homeless masses.

That of course depends on the capitalist class acting even in their own rational self-interest, which I'm not completely convinced is something that can be counted on, since many people of all classes seem happy to cut off their own noses just to spite someone else's face.

Until the robots takeover, are humans being exploited as a unit of labor, if only because the conditions of being born demand it? How is not being born, knowingly as a future laborer to be a unit of utility to an entity not unjust? Marx wasn't radical enough as he focused on the economic system in place and did not drill deeper to realizing that the exploitation starts by being born at all. If only he realized the nascent antinatalism in his ideas of exploitation.

Humans are the only animals that need justifications, not just incentives to do work. We are running out of anchorings and slogans to keep the justifications going. It is now the barest of reasons..you were born and need to survive and be comfortable which work affords you to do to keep you doing generally the same thing the next day.

Okay. The labour-value theory is actually the labour-price theory. Price of a product can't be lower than its inherent cost, which is determined fully by human work. This is the theory by Marx.

If robots produce all the goods, and humans need not work, then the price will be zilch. Indeed, people will take what they want or need, and don't have to pay for it. (Eventually.)

Thus the value will be still the inherent utility of the product; but the price will still remain at the Marxian definition: zero human time spent with producing the goods, zero price paid for it. Notwithstanding the good's utility value.

By-the-by, Marx's vision of ultimate communism depends on robotism.

My addition to this is that robotism also renders the hierarchy of people null and void. Marx declared that it is the proletariat that ought to own the production machinery and factories. They did in my home country back 40-80 years ago, when I defected. But the impression was never, NEVER in the people that they owned the factories. They had to go in and work and get paid and do what the boss told them.

This was the ultimate problem with socialist systems, who openly pursued the ideal of communism. Sang ever so eloquently by the rock group, The Who:

"Meet the new boss!
Same as the old boss!"

To be completely frank, it was more screamed than sung.

But anyway, the lesson is that complex production needs complex work arrangements, which necessitates a hierarchy of work-related duties including planning and slotting people into doing their jobs. This was the crux that made people throw away communist rule: they worked just like their counterparts in the free west (free? ha!), and yet they lived in abject poverty compared to the same, and had to listen to the same bullshit at work.

Robotism will do away with all that.

Sang ever so eloquently by the rock group, The Who:

"Meet the new boss!
Same as the old boss!"

To be completely frank, it was more screamed than sung. — god must be atheist

Ironically enough, the Who's recording of the song was used in a car commercial. Meet the new Nissan, same as the old Nissan.

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant? — Bitter Crank

Lemme give you a value theory answer: no, so long as human labour is required in the production process, that socially necessary labour will be distributed/re-appropriated through the ownership of automatons.

Lemme give you a less value theory answer: probably not, so long as labour's price is kept down by disciplinary measures. Lots of work being done now could be automated, but it's cheaper for owners (short term) not to.

But anyway, the lesson is that complex production needs complex work arrangements, which necessitates a hierarchy of work-related duties including planning and slotting people into doing their jobs. This was the crux that made people throw away communist rule: they worked just like their counterparts in the free west (free? ha!), and yet they lived in abject poverty compared to the same, and had to listen to the same bullshit at work.

Robotism will do away with all that. — god must be atheist

Let us say the prevention of the next generation solves the problem in one generation. Simply don't produce more people that need to labor, and problem solved. No relying on a utopian future which is undetermined and where the goalposts are always moving further out. No people that need goods and services. It's too late for the current generation, why not spare others the "joy" of laboring in some economic system, capitalist, communist, hunting-gathering, whatever.

A common misreading of Marx stems from interpreting the Labor Theory of Value as a trans-historical theory. It's not! It's a theory of how value is created given a specific process of production, in Marx's use-case, Capitalism.

In regards to automation, Marx actually did discuss it conceptually in the Grundrisse. I will place together some selected quotes from the short section, Contradiction between the Foundation of Bourgeois Production (value as measure) and its Development. Machines etc.:

The exchange of living labour for objectified labour – i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour – is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting on value. Its presupposition is – and remains – the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production....Real wealth manifests itself, rather – and large industry reveals this – in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. 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....The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head....With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.

To paraphrase, what Marx is saying is that as Capitalism continues to develop labor-saving technology, Capitalists can invest more in fixed capital (i.e. Machines) here also referred to as "Objectified Labor" rather than "Living Labor" (i.e. the workers). The end result of this potential process would be solely automated production. But, this in turn would transform the Labor Theory of Value as well into something applicable in a post-Capitalist society when living labor i.e. the working class is rendered moot in the production process.

Marx continues:

On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high.

This is such an interesting passage. Marx is saying here that on one side automated machinery can create wealth regardless of labor time (i.e. necessary labor time) that is employed into the production process. But on the other hand, Capital still seeks to measure value (and as a corollary, price, and wealth) based on necessary labor time. Capital, according to Marx, "becomes a moving contradiction that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth."

This contradiction leads to a material condition which can "blow this foundation sky-high", in other words the Labor Theory of Value becomes irrelevant, we've moved past it to something else! A Theory of Value based on automated machine power.

But this poses a looming question and places humanity at an important crossroad. Who owns the automated machinery and as a corollary, who owns the profits and wealth created by the machines? If they are owned by a minority of Capitalists then we may have something that looks similar to Blade Runner, where mega-trillionaires own the vast majority of wealth, most people are unemployed and are sustained through a measly Andrew Yang-style UBI at the cost of public support. If they are owned by the people, with the created wealth flowing back to the public, maybe we can see a more Star Trek like society where everyone's needs are met, housing, food, health etc., with disposable time open up to free development, personal, intellectual, social etc.

Marx continues in this section to say:

​‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.’

Wealth here isn't the accumulation of profits, or commodities etc., it is the disposable time "for every individual and the whole of society" beyond what is required by individuals in the production process.

Supposedly, labor creates all wealth by turning raw material (iron ore) into finished products (cars, shovels, guns to blow you away with, etc.) — Bitter Crank

All wealth? Goldman Sachs doesn't create wealth?

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant? — Bitter Crank

No. You will need even more workers to make sure the machines don't break. Or workers to make sure the machines that make sure the other machines don't break, don't break. As systems become more complex, the amount of effort required to maintain them tends to increase.

So there must be more people maintaining farm equipment today than there used to be people farming then, no?

Indirectly, yes.

↪darthbarracuda So there must be more people maintaining farm equipment today than there used to be people farming then, no? — Pfhorrest

↪Pfhorrest Indirectly, yes. — darthbarracuda

Back in the day when farms were shifting from horses to machines, about 1/3 of the population was engaged in farming--32,000,000. Today there are about 2,000,000. Are you saying that there are many millions of people repairing the machinery used by 2 million farmers? That just doesn't seem plausible.

In any town in agricultural areas one will find a few equipment sellers and a number of people engaged in service and repair--not a large number in absolute or relative terms. Of course, farmers do some repair themselves.

:up: :100:

Thank you.

My point is its all connected, but I get how superficially it might look like its not. The problem of labor can be solved other than with robots and Marx missed the biggest point of all..not putting more workers in the system in the first place. But thats the last I'll put in this thread. Systematic holistic philosophy is only as good as the things it decides to consider. Economic conditions aren't a straightup demand supply, whathaveyou, it is existential. In some ways, he understood economics to be more than mere models, but connected to history and the human condition. For example, his end goal was a new man not fettered by the needs of being exploited by their labor. But im taking an existential step beyond this. I'm asking if being born, we can ever escape not being exploited at all. If he focused on this idea of man being exploited by their labor value, then it is relevant. So I'm just saying in his analysis of what causes this negative outcome, he overlooked some things. Certainly, until the robots are complete, from now to them, how is adding more laborers not itself a kind of exploitative aspect for those people? It is relevant to Marx but was too far afield for it to even be close to the radar..he was too attached to economic answers only. And my suggestion too radical. How ironic.

This isn't about Marx missing anything (which quite frankly is a bullshit claim, since Marx was describing an existing economic system unlike fairytale antinatalism) but about the OP's framing of his questions. They're exploring two questions in relation to Marx' theories and those are:

Does this scheme invalidate Marx's theory of labor value?

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant?

Nothing about antinatalism is even remotely relevant to these questions. So if you don't have anything to add, just read.

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant? — Bitter Crank

One can only hope. I mean that in the sense that if robots produce everything, and since they don't have needs, we can finally create the communist utopia where each receives in accordance with their needs. And we'll have all the time in the world to pursue our personal interests, which may include working, like pursuing arts and crafts, teaching others, studying, making music, dancing, hobbies, relationships...

Ah, I can smell true freedom on the air. If only we'll manage to distribute the wealth robots create properly among everyone.

Automation/robots would be created by an immense amount of physical labor by humans. For example, say you're making some kind of robot to automate a given task... you would take into account all the kinds of workers who would be required to even get functional model of it, building the parts, doing the tedious days of programming, hours of trial & error, manufacturing, and so nothing is already "automated" humans automate things. they do this to save work for other humans. This would be a huge downside that could create further labor to create a commodity that ironically would be intended to decrease labor. It would really screw around with anarcho-transhumanism or any kind of ideology that advocates for rapid acceleration of technological advancement.

The end result of this potential process would be solely automated production. But, this in turn would transform the Labor Theory of Value as well into something applicable in a post-Capitalist society when living labor i.e. the working class is rendered moot in the production process. — Maw

I think that's true of Marx, but do we have any reason to believe it's true of reality?

This contradiction leads to a material condition which can "blow this foundation sky-high", in other words the Labor Theory of Value becomes irrelevant, we've moved past it to something else! A Theory of Value based on automated machine power. — Maw

If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going.

*constraining productive to be meant in a physicalist sense since the SNLT reduction is unambiguously true in that sense - stuff which counts as a commodity has a physical body => productive labour produces expendable goods.

A very large problem of capitalists eliminating labor in production--but maintaining ownership of all the factories--is 'how would the market of goods continue to exist when the people had no income to buy'?

Yes: automated factories producing goods to satisfy the needs of people, rather than for producing profit, would liberate us to pursue fulfillment rather than dreary work (work is not always dreary, but it usually is, sooner rather than later).

Actually, I don't see any reason for capitalists to automate all production (which they alone would control) because their wealth is extracted from the workers. Unemployed workers can't buy much, and several billion unemployed workers is a hazard they would not prudently allow.

Unless, of course, they could eliminate workers altogether. Capitalism is perfectly capable of disposing of workers. The American rust belt has been the site of large scale worker disposal. It's not pretty. These people have sunk into poverty rather than seize the means of production. (Had they seized anything they probably would have been shot.).

Capitalists could operate the worker-free factories to meet the minimum needs of the unnecessary workers--as protection, not out of the goodness of their hearts--but why would they if they they could find a long-term solution to the existence of unneeded workers?

If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going. — fdrake

Eliminating all labor through automation would be a colossal blunder on the part of capitalism. We are aware, are we not, that capitalists are perfectly capable of Colossal Blunders? They would destroy the model that creates their wealth and power--without another model in sight. They might fantasize a world of Alpha Plus people (Brave New World) without the plague of betas, deltas, and epsilons, but achieving it would be inordinately messy.

I think that's true of Marx, but do we have any reason to believe it's true of reality? — fdrake

Of course not, and I'm pretty skeptical about the technological viability of automation or AI. And I don't think that Marx is saying this is an inevitability either, but rather a tendency by virtue of investing towards labor saving fixed capital. There are of course numerous counterforces that can push back against this tendency, the most obvious being a majority wage labor population.

A real world example of this tendency towards fixed capital contra workers, along with my following skepticism on how fully viable the former is, is Uber, which has fought tooth-and-nail to declassify their US drivers from employees to contractors, exempting full employee benefits they would otherwise receive, while simultaneously investing in AI technology for self-driving cars, according to Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick back in 2014:

when there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

Uber has never been profitable, and there doesn't appear to be any road to profitability other than diminishing costs for Uber drivers to the point of eliminating them.

However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. And maybe it appears to be a delusion Uber too since they sold their autonomous vehicle division several months ago, and that even if it were technologically feasible operating costs might be too cumbersome to drive profitability.

Automation/robots would be created by an immense amount of physical labor by humans. — Zazie Kanwar-Torge

Yes. A technology where robots could replace themselves and produce other machines without involving human labor is imaginable, but is more in the realm of science fiction (at this time). The robots we use have narrow application. We don't have plenipotentiary robots, yet. A robot's fully autonomous production reaches back to mining ores, mining and refining oil, creating complex raw and finished materials, and so on.

Humans are fully capable of doing all these things--and, of course, have been doing them for a long time.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense.

However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. — Maw

Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense. — Bitter Crank

This is sort of the Uber view -- labor is an unnecessary expense. But in reality labor is essential to their model.

What makes Uber and Lyft workable at all is a large enough number of workers with inadequate income and a willingness to spend a lot of time in traffic with no guarantee of enough ride orders to make it worth the time. Lyft and Uber are post-great recession companies, becoming 'popular' about 8 or 9 years ago.

I use Lyft 2 or 3 times a month for trips where public transit takes too long. Maybe taxi companies have acquired the kind of software that makes Lyft workable--knowing how long the car's arrival will be, and knowing how much the ride will cost.

Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology. — Bitter Crank

Sure, irrational exuberance

All wealth? Goldman Sachs doesn't create wealth? — frank

?
This is about Marxist theory.

Not about reali... hm, better leave it to that.

A good datapoint is Silicon Valley startup formation. A few smart people get together to start a company to "change the world," aka make life easier for 20-something urban hipsters: order dinner, catch a cab, find a sex partner. What do they need? A lot of money. They go to the venture capitalists, who give them money in exchange for a big piece of their business. Without the brains, nothing happens. Without the money, nothing happens. Labor + capital. You need both.