Stephen Hawkins: It is capitalism not robots we need to fear
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Actually, although he doesn't actually use the word capitalism, he does say so in so many words:
Stephen Hawking wrote:If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.This is not going to happen of course unless society as a whole becomes the machine owners. Only then can we decide how what is produced can be distributed.Quite apart, that is, from cheaper labour power being an obstacle to complete automation coming about under capitalism, So the wages system would have to go too. But then common ownership and the abolition of the wages system are two sides of the same
Actually the introduction of machinery (mechanization, automation, robotization) under capitalism is not just about technology: it depends on whether installing and using the new machine is cheaper than employing workers to do the work by hand. Because of this capitalism in fact holds back,or rather slows down, the use of machines.A minor example of this was reported in the Times a couple of weeks ago (14 December):
Quote:Garage owners said that the number of car-washing machines has more than halved in the past 15 years because they are struggling to compete with migrants doing the job by hand…. [T]he number of automated “rollover” car washes in Britain has more than halved, from about 9,000 to less than 4,200 in 2015. It is estimated that the number of dedicated handwashing sites has ballooned from 4,000 to at least 20,000 over the same 15-year period.So, ironically (or is it perversely?), if robotisation were to lead to increasing mass unemployment the downward pressure this would exert on wages would make it more profitable is some cases to revert to employing workers.So Hawking is not quite right when he says:
Quote:If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed.It will depend rather on who owns the machines. If the machines stay owned by a capitalist minority, it will be the economic laws of capitalist that will continue to decide. If society owns them, as socialists advocate, then society can decide democratically and apply the old socialist principle of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'.
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