Re:Jobs, robots, capitalism, inequality and you
by einhverfr on Sunday August 25, 2013 @12:00AM
(#6270859)
I don't think that quite works. Here's why.
The reason why control over economic production is the control over life itself is that we humans cannot live absent such production. We don't live naked in the trees without tools. Heck we now know even chimpanzees have tools so we can talk about a material culture beyond our species, and the same means this is means of production. But we are more dependent on more complex means of production than chimpanzees are.
From what we know of hunter-gatherers, there is no employment so there is no unemployment. Even today we would not say a self-employed individual with no work is unemployed. Until you get to the point where people have currency, you don't have a possibility of a division between worker and employer. Instead you have other sorts of economic arrangements.
The Marxist mistake here is to assume no social and economic stratification. There is such from what we know but it is not along employee/employer lines or the like.
The reason why control over economic production is the control over life itself is that we humans cannot live absent such production. We don't live naked in the trees without tools. Heck we now know even chimpanzees have tools so we can talk about a material culture beyond our species, and the same means this is means of production. But we are more dependent on more complex means of production than chimpanzees are.
From what we know of hunter-gatherers, there is no employment so there is no unemployment. Even today we would not say a self-employed individual with no work is unemployed. Until you get to the point where people have currency, you don't have a possibility of a division between worker and employer. Instead you have other sorts of economic arrangements.
The Marxist mistake here is to assume no social and economic stratification. There is such from what we know but it is not along employee/employer lines or the like.