Leveraging AI against Capitalism: It's Time for the 15-Hour Workweek [KKF longread]

The moment AI can replace human labor, the road to communism will be open.

Guest essay from Egor Kotkin. Support Egor’s work on Substack and Patreon. Follow him on Twitter and YouTube

In contemporary progressive/left politics, there is a fundamental misconception of the relationship between the left political project and the working class, which has entered the 21st century with the baggage of the 20th century and, like everything else in it, has remained unexamined. To put it simply, the anti-capitalist struggle has come to be understood as a struggle to empower working people as a class, whereas in reality it has always been about the liberation of people from the working class.

This distinction is anything but technical or academic—especially now, when technological progress has reached or is approaching the point where automation can replace a significant portion of human labor.

In the paradigm of the struggle for the working class, this is an existential threat, since with the loss of the need for the worker’s labor, the worker loses the power that the ability to withhold their labor gave them.

But if we take a step back, this makes no sense in the bigger picture: being a worker has never been a human dream, and permanent employment has never been what the idea of freedom meant. Throughout history, people have dreamed of an artificial servant who would do their work—these themes have existed in myths since as far back as preserved records of myths goes; it’s quite possible that they were created with the transition to agriculture and the emergence of the peasant—the first worker.

Right now the undisguised threats of a massive permanent reduction in the labor force required by capital, regularly issued by the AI kingpins, taken at face value, as a danger for working people, causing even genuinely anti-capitalist voices to take either

1. the losing path of the Luddites,

2. or the self-defeating path of defending capitalist employment at any cost—which only means a willingness to re-negotiate conditions already incompatible with normal life into even worse ones.

Both choices follow from:

1. the underlying assumption that AI capitalists are in a position of strength,

2. and from an understanding of the struggle for the interests of the working person as a struggle for their jobs (ideally, for better jobs, but in such dire circumstances, at least to keep them)

—where the former follows from the latter, in other words, the AI capitalists appear to be in a position of strength, because of understanding of the left anti-capitalist struggle for better jobs.

When, in fact, selling labor for living, is a relatively modern phenomena, and the whole proletariat thing is of capitalism and for capitalism. And going beyond capitalism means freeing people from the entire “selling themselves for living” situation, i.e. freeing people from proletariat, not unlike—in fact, very much exactly like—freeing them from slavery. And though concern of losing the shelter and food provided by masters, being turned from a human property to a propertyless human, is valid and was a real issue for most, if not all, emancipation struggles, it should not undercut the point of it—ending slavery. The fact to the matter that many people hate or at least don’t love their jobs.

The modern jobs are a relatively new phenomena, which arrived with the Industrial Revolution, that fundamentally changed the nature of labor: pre-industrial productive labor was primarily a manual labor, supplemented with tools. In the Industrial Age, thanks to the steam engine, production became mechanized, and human labor began to complement the work of machines. This required human labor to become increasingly machine-like, a phenomenon that became especially noticeable with the invention of the assembly line.

In other words, the jobs that emerged during industrial age were always, in a sense, intended for machines that had not yet been invented, and so were instead given to human workers to do the work, for about 200 years now. And just as this labor was difficult for humans, so too were the humans ill-suited as workers for what industrial production required, which was evident from the era of the first steam machines to the work in Amazon delivery, employers have been trying to train a human worker to become a living machine. And the Industrial Revolution, that started with steam-powered mechanization of production, remains incomplete. But now, when technology is starting to catch up, these jobs can finally be given to machines—and with automation, completing the Industrial Revolution, and releasing people from the obligation of industrial labor, to be free to engage in human labor from that point onward.

And the kinds of jobs that can be most seamlessly automated away are disproportionately the ones that humans hate the most, bullshit jobs, and/or jobs that were reducing people to automatons before AI and robots already. The issue with losing such jobs is with losing the income, the jobs themselves aren’t the loss mostly. And the good jobs, where the human place is integral, cannot be easily automated away without compromising the business (for example, DuoLingo, that was initially this year reported to go “AI first,” and laying off people for the past two years, later was reported to go full DOGE and rehiring them back).

• AI automation has a potential of helping to clean the capitalist job market from bullshit jobs: the jobs where people are not essential, and therefore unlikely to be fulfilling for people anyway, leaving only the jobs where people are essential, and therefore more likely to be meaningful.

For capital, on the other hand, mass layoffs are deadly. A classic Marxist notion that unemployment is a weapon of capital to keep the workforce docile, is one half of the truth. The main tool of capitalist control over the masses is capitalist employment itself. Nothing neuters a revolutionary potential of the masses like keeping them busy surviving in the game, the rules of which create illusion of free choice and personal responsibility, thus obscuring it made-up nature and the very fact that there’s someone to blame for and revolt against. And while people too busy making money to pay to live, they can’t get busy with anything else, including the scariest thing for any oppressive power: mingling with other people on their own and building connections that are not facilitated through the means provided them by the system of oppression (i.e. outside of work). Work has turned humans into willing slaves, each with their own internalized little overseer with a whip, stifling the radical within.

There is a weak case that massive AI layoffs are not beneficial to the capital, because “effective consumer demand will disappear.” First of all, is not a good anti-capitalist logic as it still operates within the market logic, treating people as the functions for the purpose of capital—as labor or consumers. But also, we already can observe that markets can functions perfectly well most of the effective demand is concentrated in just 20% of the population. And with bottom 50% having only 3% of combined wealth, they already barely exist as a customer demographic of importance, employed or otherwise.

Keeping them employed at starvation wages is actually much better deal for capital, then letting them go and figuring out things for themselves. Single digit level of unemployment is a problem for workers. Double digit level of unemployment is a problem of capital.

If AI layoffs ever reach single digit level of labor force, they will do half of the job of the communist revolutionaries, because eliminating such significant share of labor market will eliminate compromise with capital, a social democratic option, as a political option, and will force renegotiating the entire social contract instead, with capital having gave up their only real bargaining chip—power of employment.

The reality of actually big, in double digits, levels of AI layoffs means nothing else but refusal of capital to uphold the current social contract, written by the capital and for the capital, forcing it to be renegotiated without capital and beyond capital.

…and understanding this, creates a historic opening for the left. It is time to flip the table over, and hang the capitalist on the very rope by the noose from which they threaten the working class: if the capital openly states that it is about to rewrite social contract, and the left are actually completely agree that it’s long overdue—their challenge should be taken head on and accepted. If AI kingpins claim that the current social contract is about to be ended—instead of running or hiding from that, the left must meet their plan to create permanent unemployment for half of the workforce by demanding a 15-hour work week, and put it at the forefront of progressive politics.

The more AI capitalists boasting about how they are about to be able to fire all humans—the stronger the case for 15 hour work week will they make. Due to the structure of capitalist society, the richest people are considered to be the utmost authorities on reality: “they know better because they risk their money, unlike lazy proles or greedy scientists” or something. Such are the rules of capitalist realism. And by those rules, AI kingpins’ claims that human workers soon to be obsolete, are constitute the better, stronger and more urgent case for 15-hour workweek, than any statistics on how much productivity has increased since the introduction of the 40-hour week possibly could.

The more AI capitalists themselves threaten AI with unemployment, the more they strengthen the foundation for such a demand. They think they’re strengthening their power by scaring the people with unemployment. But in reality, they’re simply convincing people that machines can do their work for them, i.e., that halving the workweek is already technically feasible. That is, the demand for a 15-hour workweek shifts the political ground from “anti-systemic” to “compliant with capital conditions”.

And the best part is, that whether they will ever be capable of replacing even a third of the workforce with robots and algorithms doesn’t matter: what matters is that they have a vested interest to claim that they can. Facing a call for 15 hour work week they will have to either support it or blow the entire house of cards.

…and this is how one uses the contradictions of capitalism against it.

Why 15 hour work week matters

Apart from the obvious logic “You say that you are gonna be needing humans to work much less? Deal,” the long forgotten fight for reducing working week has its own huge significance for entire progressive political project, which organized labor after winning 40 hour workweek effectively exited.

It is frankly a bit weird how sidelined the question of work week has become among the post Cold War left. Like something immaterial as opposed to material issues like wages or healthcare, which are, at the end, are negotiating conditions of humans selling themselves on labor market for living, without questioning the situation itself. Even though the matter of salary is just the other half of equation “time for money” where the thing of actual value is irretrievable time of finite human lives that people have to exchange to pay for living. And the matter of healthcare to a significant extent is about fixing the damage of living by inhumane—in a very medical, physiological sense—schedule that was forced upon humans in the industrial era.

And the whole AI rush creates a once-in-a-century level of necessary urgency to refuel and resurrect this fight. This is one of the first big openings to reintroduce the left revolutionary politics in the XXI century, a potential entry point for the left to reclaim the lead in the struggle for the future.

Reactionary minds are very suspicious of—and the ruling classes are very hostile to—people having free time. What will they make up on their own, would they have enough time for that?

Actual freedom, as David Graeber pointed out, has been historically understood by humans as freedom of socializing, freedom of establishing connections to other humans. Hence the etymological connection of words freedom and friendship.

It makes even more sense, looking at how the power operates: it tends to replace human-to-human horizontal bonds by vertical master-to-slave bondage. Ideally, for masters, the closest relationship a slave has should be with the master—closer than with other people or fellow slaves. This is a universal truth for all sorts of abusive exploitative relations. I always struggle to understand what “personal relations with Christ” in the evangelical Christianity means, until I realised that it exploits human ego, desire to consider themselves special, in order to separate people from each other and put them under control of those who speaks to them on Jesus’s behalf. Human bonds represent the greatest threat to those who wish to keep humans in bondage.

As physical beings, human capability of establishing connections is limited by space and time. For most of the history of human settlement, being peasants, the majority of the world’s population lived in small settlements at considerable distances from each other. Low population density slowed technological progress and facilitated control over the population. But the rapid urbanization of the industrial era facilitated the acceleration of technical and political progress.

And although cities were the preferred residence of the rulers of virtually all empires, they were also the source of their greatest headaches. Urban life was therefore always distinguished by a certain degree of autonomy compared to the average for the empire. Otherwise, people who were disenfranchised by their class status acquired political significance simply by virtue of proximity.

Which meant that maintaining control over population became the matter of controlling their time. The Roman maxima “slave must work or sleep” was effectively realised in capitalist employment: work, work-related concerns and commute took over the entirety of waking hours of workers, and simply by virtue of time spend working, relationships with employers have become the most significant in the lives of employees. Although, Americans, being the leaders in life-consuming working hours, still managed to squeeze in some spatial alienation in urban life by promoting car culture, which in many ways neutralized the effects of proximity on the establishment of connections that had previously been commonly present in urban life.

Politically, time makes all the difference. And it must become the focal point of progressive politics.

• on its face 15 hour work week doesn’t sound that revolutionary, which is to its political benefit: just like Mamdani’s political platform, it looks in the eyes of society inoffensive enough, to make the elites, frightened by the long-term consequences of such a political retreat, alone and looking like complete freaks in their panics.

• in practice, 15 hour work week has revolutionary implications, because in the proximity of city life time became the key to unlocking the dormant political power of the urban population.

Human drive to bond is the most powerful human motive which, unleashed, trumps any human vices. Or at least, to quote Paul R. Lawrence, one of the authors who coined the term “drive to bond” as one of the four fundamental human drives that underlie all human behavior, the innate drive to bond is “the strongest constraint of the excessive exercise of the drive to acquire” (the other two are the drive to defend and the drive to comprehend), which makes it the worst enemy of all systems based on exploitation, wealth extraction and accumulation.

Conversely, the power of vice (drive to acquire unrestrained) in human societies was always dependant on ability to promote human alienation. (In which the US, again, took the lead by normalizing using the term “alien” to people. I honestly can’t tell how the native speakers feel about this, but for me as ESL hearing the word I know first by the world famous sci-fi horror applied to people has never stopped being jarring.) No wonder, that the most powerful system of exploitation and domination ever developed, colonialism/capitalism, is also achieved record levels of human alienation with record population density, “loneliness in the big city.” And to such success, that the idea of loneliness in the big city became a cultural meme, almost inescapable feature of living in the big city, a necessary trade-off.

Which is why one of the many important parts of Mamdani’s campaign in New York to replicate were elements of gamification, a group activity, a community holiday or a festival. It showed, that life in big cities doesn’t have to be lonely, and it specifically connected finding community with struggle for power, because there’s nothing natural about millions of people living together as strangers: the entire machine of capitalism works against the human drive to bond, living in proximity.

Capitalism sustained by consuming time of human lives as workers and as consumers. “Slave should be working or sleeping” was met by “consumer must be consuming or sleeping” (Netflix’s biggest competition were not other streaming services, but sleep—2017), thus leaving to people no free time free from capitalism. At this level of integration in human lives, capitalism is becoming integral for human life. Which creates codependency, making people reluctant of fighting to destroy, abolish capitalism, as it “provides structure” to their lives even though this structure is literally a bondage. Constrained by life-consuming conditions of capitalist survival, drive to bond gets commodified and warped into the ugliest forms of online “communities,” which makes the idea of people left to their own devices, having the time to spend and each other to spend it with, additionally scary.

But this is what freedom is: it requires trust in people and to people to decide what to do and how to live their lives on their own. Or at least humility towards any idea to decide it for them.

Specifically, trust in ability of people to self-govern (which, come to think of it, should been self-evident because in every other possible system people are still governed by people, proving that people are, in fact, capable of running society, which makes anti-democratic sentiment “but only these people, not those people” look as silly and self-serving as it is) which is what human drive to bond, when unrestrained, ultimately leads to. Human society in fact does not need oppressive powers to exist. Drive to bond provides not only the force of attraction, but also the motivation to find a way to make this work. Oppressive powers are needed to override the drive to bond of all to empower (satisfy the drive to acquire) of some.

This is why the question of political engagement of the masses becomes a matter of providing them the space and time to do so. The issue of political engagement of the masses has been the biggest pretend-concern of liberal politics:

—I don’t know how to get my kids to be friends with other kids!
—Have you tried letting them out of the house first?

It is not a coincidence that the most politically engaged people are either young, before they get fully engaged in life under capitalism, or those who have disposable income (which is a proxy for disposable time). Ignoring the glaring material reality of political engagement en masse being a function of material ability to do so, i.e. having time to spare not at expense of vital needs, is very self-serving for the people already in position to be politically engaged, which creates resentment towards “stupid masses,” which ultimately makes them fearful of an actually popular engagement. There is simply no reason to assume that there’s something special about politically engaged youth and well-off people but the material ability to realise universal human drive to bond via political engagement. Some will argue that this is a function of education level, but education in a class society has always been and still largely is a proxy of class. And because the drive to comprehend is another fundamental human drive, there is no material reason to think that people who satisfy their drive to comprehend and drive to bond via education and politics differ, generally speaking, from the rest by anything else but ability to do so.

And thus, making political engagement majoritarian, and politics actually democratic, shouldn’t require any special tricks and solutions beyond simply giving people the time for that. Every little bit of additional free time for the masses will facilitate building more horizontal connections, which will strengthen them as a political force, and allow to fight back another bit of freedom from the system.

And though it doesn’t have to be the either/or choice, but

1. between raising wages 2.5x for the 40 hour work week,

2. and leaving the same salary, but halving the work week to 15 hours,

—the latter option is much more sustainable as it is freeing people to continue the fight, allowing actual mass political mobilization to not only win, but defend their gains. While a bigger income with the same workload can pacify people for a bit, but doesn’t do much for their political power, which will allow the capital to wait them out, as they did wait out the New Deal, to come back with vengeance in 40 years.

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