Following post was written by one of my friends friend and we debated it in our own way. Name of the person who wrote this article on Facebook is Anand Singh.
Title was-
"Who is taking away our jobs? Robots? No, It’s capitalism, stupid!"
As the dark clouds of Layoffs and joblessness hover over not just the Indian IT sector but other sectors of the economy as well, the hirelings of the ruling classes are trying hard to make us believe that it’s because of Robots and the technologies of artificial intelligence that are mainly responsible for such a grave situation. There is no denying the fact that recent breakthroughs in the technological landscape such as artificial cognition, machine learning, internet of things, data driven decision-making, intelligent transportation systems have the potential to transform the production process and consequently large number of people will be thrown out of the production system as their skills will no longer be needed. However, while emphasizing this aspect of reality, what is often concealed is that only in a capitalist production relations that the automation becomes a threat to the livelihood of people. So, instead of blaming automation per se, our target must be the capitalist system itself. If it was not for capitalism, the technological advancements in Robotics and artificial intelligence could have been used to reduce the working hours and improve the life and livelihood of people rather than endangering it.
Marx brilliantly explained in Capital that the constant drive of the capitalists for more and more profit compel them to invest on new technologies as there is a limit up to which profit could be increased by way of increasing working hours and increasing the intensity of work. Investing on new technologies ensures increase in productivity for the capitalists and thus profit increases in the short run. But the introduction of technology ends up replacing the labour. Thus the constant capital (machinery, technology and raw material etc.) of the capitalists increases as compared to the variable capital (labour power), thereby increasing the organic composition of capital (ration between constant capital and variable capital). This capital-bias produce the contradictory effect of fall in the rate of profit in the long run since labour is the only source of value and the profit of the capitalists comes from the exploiting the labour power only. Marx had termed it as the tendency of falling rate of profit which is inherent in capitalism.
Against this backdrop, the crisis of the IT sector in India can be easily understood. It is an open secret that for all the lofty claims of IT superpower, most of the Indian IT companies have specialized themselves in the low-end IT services and not in any R&D work. IT industry in India grew enormously since the last decade of the 20th century by taking advantage of the huge demand of low-cost IT engineers due to Y2K bug, internet, e-commerce etc. Many of these companies earned huge profits just by engaging in what is known as body shopping. The IT engineers are also wage workers in the global machinery of capitalism and hence they too are exploited by the system.In fact $150 billion IT industry largely rests on the surplus appropriation of these IT engineers only. However, since their wages and working conditions are much better than ordinary workers in India, they normally do not recognize their status as wage laborers and more often than not they tend to defend and support the capitalist system. However, things began to change since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008. The slowdown in the advanced capitalist economies badly impacted the profitability of the IT industry in India which remained hugely dependent on these economies. It caused great stress to IT employees due to increased job insecurity, increase in working hours (10-12 hours a day and in some cases even more!) and introduction of new software development development methodologies such as Agile which increase the workload of the software developers.
As if this was not sufficient, we now have a new push towards Robotics and Artificial Intelligence which is nothing but the outcome of the desperate attempt of the capitalists of the world to increase their profit in the wake of an economic crisis. However, as explained by the law of tendency of falling rate of profit, it is only going to increase the crisis of capitalism. While the need of the hour is for the workers of the world (including the IT workers) to unite against the latest offensive of capital and demand for greater job security, it must be kept in mind that as long as the ownership of the means of production lies with handful of parasites, any technological advancement will primarily benefit only minuscule minority of the society while increasing the suffering of the overwhelming majority of working people. So, the unity of the working people must be aimed at overthrowing this inherently exploitative system and establishing a system wherein any technological advancement would lead to reduction the toil of working people and thereby enabling them to fully realize all their creative faculties.
Me- Nope it's not capitalism.
He- To kya hai bde bhai?(then what is it big brother?)
Me- Capitalism is not the problem too much regulations are , which prohibits small businesses to grow big . Capitalism ne hi sab innovations diye hain (capitalism had given a lot of innovations).
He- Abe ni ek pahlu ko lekar mat bol bhai ( don't you think you are considering only one side or point?)
Me- Jobs ke liye kya kar sakte hain ki (what we can do to create jobs is) move capital in poor countries and make them grow which benefit your country as well in long term.
Provide more skilled education.
Training which changes with time
He- Ha bhaii ye sab pta h ai bina capitalism ke kuchh ni possible hai but some other side also the part of it.(yes I know it and capitalism played an important role but what's about problems it created?)
Me- Job to definitely gayi hain ( jobs have been gone) but more high paying quality jobs has been created
He- Hmm
Me- For example pahle road banne me khudai manual hoti thi so jyada logon ko job milti thi but ab jcb se akele ek Banda hi bahot logon ka kam kar deta hai. Kam fast ho gaya
And that guy is paid more than those individual labours. (Road construction have become efficient and Fast by using machines but that layed off many workers as well.)
He- Ha but job creation to kam ho rha hai for less skilled labour and population ratio to increased ho rha h bhai. Job seeker kha jayenge? ( where will those workers go if laying off due to machines and population increases will create huge unemployment?)
Me- Is problem ke do core pahloo hain. (This problem have two core points)
- People wants job
- People wants cheap product to consume.
He- Hmm
Me- Computerisations made the product cheap but taken away the jobs of people for whom it was made to produce products.
He- To solution kya h?( then what's the solution?)
Me- Solutions I think is - this solution is not mine but of other people's and policy makers around the world. They suggest universal basic income to people whose jobs are taken away by computers or robots. I am quite disagree with that proposal because this will have very negative consequences- no person wants to work. Kaun kam karna chahega (who will want to work?) if they paid for staying at home.
But discussion thona sahi laga mujhe ki (I loved few points in the article) robots should be made to help the industry not to replace jobs and that's not happening bcz everything was robotising.
He- yeah!!
I had few problems with the article as well- they only highlighted the problem not given any practical and logical answer.