(John McCann/M&G)
Francis Fukuyama famously wrote in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, that history ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It heralded the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Soviet Russia and, more generally, communism as an economic system, and, correlatively, the global spread of unopposed liberal democracy.
One hundred and eighty years before Fukuyama, Hegel had said the same thing when he saw Napoleon riding a horse to the city of Jena in 1806. Napoleon, for many in the early days, was a symbol of the spread of freedom through Europe and against the tyranny of the monarchy.
There is now a suspicion from Marxists and conservatives that the transformation of the labor process, complete automation through robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), will end history.
What would happen in an ideal situation where humans would be freed from labor? Isn’t the journey of history a progression that tends to get rid of work and effort and pain?
Such narratives usually covertly rely on the Christian story of the Fall. In heaven, man is idle and immortal. Because of the Fall, they are mortal and must work to live. Eventually history will return to a paradisal state.
The narrative shows a poor understanding of work and the human condition. What will happen when the productive process is completely automated? The answer, obviously, is consumption. No need to work, but still need to eat, smoke, dress, wash and do whatever is necessary to stay healthy and alive. We work to stay alive and by freeing ourselves from work, desire cannot free itself from life. Certain forms of productive consumption, and the pain and effort involved, cannot be eliminated without ending life.
The idea that complete automation of the productive process coincides with the end of pain and work is ideological and a falsification of human life.
From a Marxist perspective, universal unemployment through the automation of the productive process coincides with the end of capitalism. In what sense? Capitalism is based on the extraction of surplus value from human labor. Machines do not produce surplus value. Without surplus value, there is no capitalism.
What is surplus value? It is the profit made by capitalists. What is the source of profit? It is usually referred to as the difference between the cost of production and the price of the commodity in the market. The capitalist makes a profit by reducing the cost of production, in particular, by stealing a few hours of labor from his employees: he pays less than what he owes, and he collects the difference as profit. But this is wrong.
We must assume that capitalists pay workers fairly. Workers get the same, in the form of wages, for the time they work. Surplus is the commodity produced by their labor. It is something that is not considered in wages and it is the source of profit of the capitalist.
What is unique about human labor is that it yields more than its value in the labor market. Automated labor does not create surplus value. Therefore it cannot be a source of profit, wealth or capital. A society in which goods are produced automatically is no longer capitalist, and those that circulate in the market are no longer commodities. It is not clear that such a society can be understood from a contemporary point of view.
“The end of history” can be taken in another sense, not only as the liberation of human labor but as the fulfillment of human desires or, what amounts to the same thing, as leisure, idleness or enjoyment of unproductive consumption.
Let us suppose that the mature man has a goal to achieve, wants to be whole and himself, and starts as a low subject. What is the purpose through the work? What is the purpose of rest? No, because rest is uncomfortable. The subject rests to regain his strength and continues to work. It works to secure the necessities of life and the good things, to live and live well. But for a good life, in other words, a good life in the eminent sense of the word, it is a life of idleness, freedom or leisure. Work leads to leisure as war leads to peace.
What is leisure? Anyway, it is antithetical to work in structure or meaning, for work is a means, but leisure is an end. For example, the brightness of the sun in the morning, it is the taste of wine, it is the touch of a lover’s skin, it is spectacular and luxurious destruction of wealth. We like these things for themselves or in their own right. They are useless pleasures. Kant said of them as agreed on the third sensation Criticism. Isn’t that the purpose of history, to enjoy useless pleasures?
perhaps. At any rate, the “purpose of history” can be understood as the idea that it corresponds to the purpose that the human subject serves, consciously or not, in and through history. And we can say that history ends when the subject has the ultimate object of desire, that is – whatever it is, freedom, love, justice, useless pleasure – which makes everything and complete, the same. for himself, outarchic and independent.
But a moment’s reflection shows that even in this case, the idea of ”the end of history” borders on nonsense and paradox.
Let’s say humans have the ultimate object of desire. The simple question is whether we are still dealing with humans. Doesn’t it eliminate the human condition?
The human condition is defined by, among other things, lack, work, begging and all the ordinary sorrows that come with it. From this point of view, it is clear what will happen to the identity of the human subject who cannot fall. My point is that if fulfillment is the goal of history and the human subject, then achieving it will end both. It will equal destruction. Is it not because the pleasure that promises perfection repels us as much as it attracts us?
I can think of no better example that illustrates this impossible fulfillment than the perfect libertine who appears at the end of the 600 passions narrative in the Marquis de Sade. 120 Days of Sodom. This libertine is called a “man” by a woman who tells him the kind of passion he wants. The description of him suggests that he is neither human nor animal, but something inhuman and terrifying. They are images of the indestructible id or the indeterminate libido before the formation of the ego. “He was about forty years of age, very large and equipped with the members of a stallion: his prick was almost nine inches in circumference and the whole length of a foot; he was very rich, a powerful lord, very violent, very cruel, a heart of stone.”
I will spare you the details of how he fed his passion with his victims. The narrator calls it “the passion of hell” and the victims are 15 girls aged 15 to 17. Suffice it to say that the goal is to humiliate what is pure and innocent and destroy what claims to have a status of authority.
What do I want to say? Very simply, achieving perfection is like giving up work: the human ego will cease because it will cease to desire. And what will remain? Unhampered satisfaction of the id. In short, unproductive (or useless) consumption, the kind anticipated at the end of history or capitalism, will swallow the world in one fell swoop.
Rafael Winkler is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Johannesburg and is currently a researcher at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.