Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). The upheavals currently being caused by the transition to a multipolar world may not even be the greatest challenge facing humanity. Ironically, it was a billionaire who recently reminded us that there is an even greater one.
Just a few days ago, billionaire Elon Musk gave the impression that he had read ‘The Communist Manifesto’. Work, he said, will be ‘voluntary in ten, twenty years or so… like playing sports or playing a video game’. Money, he added, will become irrelevant.
A society in which there is no scarcity, in which necessary work is largely eliminated and thus all the things that previous societies have used to distribute power and influence become unimportant? Equality in abundance? That is pretty much the description Marx gave for communism. ‘To each according to his needs.’ A stage of society that, according to his theory, is the result of the development of productive forces, and here too Musk provides the appropriate keywords: artificial intelligence and robotics.
There are currently two reports that show how this development is currently unfolding: computer manufacturer HP wants to use AI to replace up to 6,000 jobs, mainly in administration, and a subsidiary of Allianz Insurance wants to have AI take over its call centres worldwide over the next 12 to 18 months; this affects 1,500 to 1,800 jobs.
In contrast to previous major advances in productivity, this time there is no need for labour to absorb the impact (sociologist David Graeber argued in his book ‘Bullshit Jobs’ that this was actually already the case in 1929/30). The problem here is not only that access to essential and other goods offered as commodities still depends on money, and that money can only be obtained by the majority of the population through work – the question arises as to whether the currently rich and powerful will even allow a development such as that described by Musk (there are strong indications that they will not), and then there remains the not insignificant question of whether today’s societies can cope with this situation at all.
The impact that technological changes can have is little noticed, but there are individual phenomena that reveal the remnants of past upheavals.
“Keep your hands away from the mill, you mill girls; even when the cock crows to announce the morning, continue to sleep. For Demeter has imposed the work of your hands on the nymphs, who, leaping down onto the highest part of the wheel, turn its axle; with the rotating gears, it turns the hollow weight of the Nisyrian millstones.”
This was written shortly before the turn of the millennium by the Greek Antipater of Thessaloniki. Who has ever heard of mill girls? Who has ever given a thought to how much human labour was required to grind grain before the invention of the mill?
Mills, whose creation required two key inventions, the water wheel and the gear wheel for power transmission, spread slowly and only crossed the borders of the former Roman Empire to the north and east during the Carolingian period. In large areas of what is now Germany and the neighbouring regions to the east, this innovation was deeply unsettling, quite apart from the milling obligation that led to conflicts between farmers and landlords in later centuries.
A well-known children’s book reflects how this new technology was perceived: Krabat, a story in which the miller is a sorcerer who is in league with the devil. The fact that millers were considered dishonest professionals in the Middle Ages was not only based on the assumption that every miller cheated when weighing; it also concealed the reaction to a technology that seemed mysterious to many. After all, the use of water power was the first step beyond the limitations previously imposed by the physical strength of humans or animals. And the watermill was the basis for many other applications of its technology: sawmills, fulling mills, large forging hammers.
Anyone reading Grimm’s fairy tales today, the story of Sleeping Beauty for example, encounters an activity that is now exotic, but which was still very much present at the time when the Brothers Grimm collected their fairy tales, until 1815: spinning. Even in Wagner’s opera ‘The Flying Dutchman’ from 1843, there is still a chorus of spinners. ‘Spin, spin a thousand threads, good little wheel, hum and buzz!’ This was by no means a hobby. Just over two hundred years ago, every thread of every fabric was still spun by hand. Even the first machine tool in history, the famous Spinning Jenny, did not change this; it only made it possible to operate several spindles at the same time instead of one, which multiplied productivity.
Spinning and, depending on the region, weaving were activities performed by women. In ancient Rome, even upper-class women were expected to work at the loom, and historical research into the origins of the long-practised Chinese custom of binding girls’ feet links it to silk weaving. Thousands of people were busy in the summer washing the finished fabric over and over again and laying it out in the sun; it was only with the invention of chemical bleaching agents, which was virtually necessitated by increased textile production, that this activity disappeared.
The change brought about by the Industrial Revolution (which first combined the steam engine and the spinning jenny, and then the steam engine and the loom) is not only hardly recognised today, but, unlike the introduction of the water mill, it has not had enough time to be reflected in myth. Because after that, things just kept moving forward.
Looking at German society today, one could almost believe that even the upheaval after the Second World War, when the increasing mechanisation of agriculture reduced the proportion of people employed in agriculture in Germany from half to one hundredth of the population (there are areas in Africa where it is still 80 per cent today), has not yet been digested. Rural society disappeared, but was not really replaced. With it, a large part of the seasonal drama with its collective highlights, from the grape harvest to the potato harvest, also disappeared.
However, one point should be noted: the great rhythm of the year used to be characterised by communal work, apart from the noble lady at the Roman loom. The spinners sat together just as the washerwomen stood together by the river, and the annual harvest was an event that involved many additional people. Looking at the developments that have taken place from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, these spaces for communal work have continued to diminish, contributing to the loss of communal structures.
The extent to which the lives of many people have changed as a result of this mechanisation of agriculture gives an idea of how far-reaching the consequences can be when, in a sense, everything becomes mechanisable. Large parts of administrative tasks are performed by AI, and other work, from cleaning and care to logistics and trade, by robotics or a combination of both.
When the first industrial robots appeared, which were actually machines whose capabilities were limited to individual movements, they were very expensive. The price of the first robot, Unimate, which was used by Ford in 1961, is unknown. In the 1980s, prices were at least several tens of thousands of US dollars. Nowadays, simple humanoid robots are available on the market that cost just US$5,900. These are models that would still have problems replacing a cleaning lady – but they have a versatility that far exceeds that of the first industrial robots. The human machine does not yet exist, but it is not far off.
The replaceability of humans makes the question of how the oligarchs, at least in the West, will react to this a central one. For there are two ways in which it can be implemented. Musk’s description is one – yes, it would probably be possible in the foreseeable future to choose one’s own occupation completely freely; it would no longer be necessary to remain in hazardous or monotonous jobs, as they could all be taken over by the human machine. This development could therefore provide the basis for human freedom.
But there is also the other version, as the positive one has already been anticipated many times by old science fiction authors (the word robot itself was invented a century ago by the Czech science fiction author Karel Čapek). What does the version that the oligarchy would prefer look like?
Assuming that the relationship between the lower and upper classes remains unchanged, i.e. that attempts are made to convert the freed-up time into even greater wealth for the few, the billions who could develop freely in the first version become superfluous mouths to feed. If machines can maintain the necessary production and only a small number of people are needed to satisfy the desire for luxury, most people become superfluous from the point of view of the powerful, as they are no longer needed to maintain their own standard of living. They are transformed into ‘overpopulation’. And the moment that, to quote Marx, could be the entry into the realm of freedom, turns into a moment with a whole new threat.
But even if this danger is averted, is today’s society capable of dealing with this development? Even if the reduction in necessary work is translated into freedom, what are people supposed to do with it? Yes, there is art, science, there is the possibility of devoting time to the creation of beautiful things (if you look at the Chinese poverty reduction programmes, you can see what form this could take), but mobile phone zombies who have never read ten pages or created anything in their entire lives cannot do anything with this freedom, let alone create the community structures that are a prerequisite for many creative activities.
Not to mention that not only reading, but also fine motor skills of the hands play an important role in the development of intelligence, just as groups and community do in the development of morality; and with the emergence of true artificial intelligence, humanity would once again face a competing species for the first time in a long time, one that, like the current oligarchs, might conclude that there is no need for humans at all.
Here, too, this is not as far off as one might think, even if there is still a lot of cheating going on in artificial intelligence at the moment; there are already cases in which such constructs have protected their own existence, even resorting to lies, and there are signs of emotion; a point at which stable morality would be needed (Isaac Asimov played this out in his robot stories), but also a human society that does not lose its mind despite the takeover of many activities by robots and artificial intelligence.
Or humanity will split, as H.G. Wells described at the end of the 19th century in his ‘Time Machine’, albeit not through a continuation of the Victorian class division, into one part that lives stupidly and naively on the surface, the Eloi, and the other part that keeps the machines that make this possible running, the Morlocks living underground. For what has happened in recent decades, at least in the West, namely increasing isolation and, more recently, the increasing destruction of education, clearly worsens the conditions for enjoying potential freedom rather than being broken by it.
Even a few decades ago, culture was something that many people actively participated in, even if it was just in the church choir. But growing together and alongside one another requires more closeness than is possible in a particularised consumer society. Currently, countless small moments of everyday communication are disappearing between the gym and delivery services. A completely silent, isolated existence is easier than a life in a community.
Yes, when it comes to adapting to this change, the countries of the global South actually have better chances than the core countries of the West, at least in their current state. Their societies are so focused on status and wealth, on appearances rather than creativity, that a loss of these two goals could create a gigantic depressive void. This emptiness becomes all the more powerful the further craftsmanship and industrial culture have already disappeared, and with them even the memory of the creative power that still inherent in alienated labour.
Work, according to Musk, would be more of a hobby in the future, just as some city dwellers grow their own vegetables instead of buying them. ‘When we learn to enjoy the fruits of the earth without effort, we will taste the golden age again,’ Antipater of Thessaloniki concluded his description of the watermill over two thousand years ago. It is up to us whether it will be a blessing or a curse.
