What is the Future of Work in the Generative AI Era? A Marxist and Ricardian Analysis

Abstract

There is an increasing public discourse of automation for white-collar professional jobs due to improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) capacities, raising the question about the contours of the future of work. Marx and Ricardo’s framework of technological labour displacement helps us understand the future of work in the context of AI. Marx’s discussion in Capital and Ricardo’s discussion in Principles of Political Economy reveal the common thesis that technology-induced worker displacement and precariousness of employment relationships are built into the internal logic of the contemporary digital capitalist economy. There are three important differences in their theoretical framework: (1) Marx did not believe that high technological unemployment is possible within capitalism even with very advanced technologies such as AI, while Ricardo saw technological unemployment as a serious threat while he acknowledges countervailing employment-creating tendencies; (2) While Ricardo’s explanation for the falling rate of profit is limited to rising wages, Marx traces the profit decline to the rising organic composition of capital and automation itself; (3) For Marx, a desirable future of work is not found within a capitalist framework but in communism, while Ricardo sees no alternatives to capitalism.