Keynes’s Grandchildren and Marx’s Gig Workers: Why Human Labor Still Matters

Abstract

The current anxiety around the globe about automation and “the future of work,” the irrelevance of human labor, and the superfluity of human beings is based on a set of recurring ideas about technology, work, and economic value. Not quite novel, these ideas have been debated for a long time and by prominent thinkers such as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. To grasp the current moment, therefore, it would be useful to revisit those debates and to understand them within the broader history of capitalism. We examine this history with a focus on labor and technology, bringing attention to the hidden forms of value creation in the current economy, as well as the blind spots of the historical debate.