After reading Jason Hickel’s (2020) Less is More , I wrote about how I wished I had a better grasp of economic theory and practice. I have recommended that book several times to peers as it contains in a single chapter the most accessible explanation and description of a Cartesian worldview, and how such a view formed, that I have come across. And I have read several, including, amongst others, the desperately difficult Karen Barad (2007), a more approachable Nicholas A. Christakis (2019), new materialist Deborah Lupton (2020), neuroscientist Alan Jassanoff (2018) and, also, Carlo Rovelli (2017) who is so keen to make impossibly hard quantum science understandable. Joseph Henrich’s (2020) WEIRD thesis is also all about how the West’s idiosyncratic (which we can describe as Cartesian) view came into being, and then dominated; but for a concise precis, Hickel’s passages are excellent. A deconstruction of that view, and of its manifestations in the form of media, underpins my level three OCA project. Although Hickel never mentions photography, he does address marketing and the entanglement of landscapes, institutions, bodies, ideas, and economics. I found the book immensely helpful but had this nagging feeling all the way through that I was not equipped to judge whether the economic solutions he proposes are realistic or workable.
In any case, I had read a review about of Aaron Benanav’s (2020) Automation of the Future of Work in The New Statesman and reading that after Less is More, felt a suitable book to tackle. While there is certainly some theoretical language, it is all well-explained and the book is also relatively short, so it wasn’t really a ‘tackle’ at all. Hickel calls for economic de-growth in Western states. Benanav tells us this de-growth has been happening anyway since the 80s across the world, as an inevitable outcome of over-manufacturing in the post-war years, and discusses real-life consequences such as a lack of investment and de-industrialisation. This has led to persistent under-employment and a migration towards services rather than manufacturing, which for the very wealthy who make money servicing debt is a boon, but for the less privileged, where secure working conditions are a thing of the past – life’s become a never-ending struggle against scarcity. Both Hickel and Benanav propose working towards economic post-scarcity.
Hickel take us back to the 13th century when landowners embarked on enclosure of the commons, limiting or blocking access to land, unless it was paid for, thereby instigating an economic system that prevails today. While Henrich tells us the Western Church’s crusade against extended kinship was the source of Westerners’ individualism, Hickel, and to a lesser extent Benanav, place responsibility with the perpetrators of enclosure. Either way – relationships and networks were broken and small parcels of land objectified. Both these, no doubt entangled, endeavours created a sense of there not being enough to go around, leaving small families rather than large familial networks to fend for themselves, but reliant on a greedy leadership who perpetuated the myth of scarcity by keeping so much for themselves. Benanav, like Hickel, believe that a post-scarcity world is possible; that we can undo centuries-old propaganda and build a fairer, more just, less corrosive society for all.
However, for anyone hoping that a better society is around the corner due to automation, Benanav critiques Utopian ideas so common in that discourse. In 2017, I made a project with a young woman called Honor who had been home-schooled for most of her life, which queried current educational practices, given we were heading into a world where manufacturing is all but over and people were beginning to speak about a post-work society. For research, I read about changing economic landscapes in books such in Paul Mason’s (2015) Capitalism (cited by Benenav) along with evolving attitudes to work, as in Fritjof Bergman’s (2013) New Work. The excitement around the idea of a post-work society has dissipated since then (it was even referred to in an episode of Jill Solloway’s Transparent in 2016 or 17), although there has been a lot of noise about universal income throughout the pandemic. Benanav’s book is a timely reminder that as life is structured now, the only people who will benefit in a late-Capitalist world, without or without automation, are those at the top of the pile. The rest of us are already becoming increasingly insecure as middle-class jobs dissolve, and blue-collar jobs disappear altogether, replaced by fragmented delivery and/or packing; and it not due to some sudden technological revolution, but rather to long-term underinvestment and de-industrialisation, which is compounded by automation that has been happening for decades. But has been hurried along exponentially by COVID-19. Capitalism’s inherent failure to provide for the majority – after all, it grew out of a move to take away from the majority back when enclosure of the commons got going – will simply get worse and worse unless we address the system. (In Hickel’s work, we need to address the underlying Cartesian view of the world before we can do that, which is what my own work aims to explore.)
I still don’t feel able to judge Hickel’s economic suggestions with any authority, but my continued research feels enhanced by Benanav’s book. At the end, I worried that Benanav’s thought-experiment, where he outlines his view of a post-scarcity society, would drum up fears about the likes of Napolean, Snowball and Boxer. (My poor old dad, who completely misunderstood socialist principles and confused them like many do with the name of Hitler’s Nazi party after he appropriated the word Socialist, was so horrified by my left-leaning principles, he once be-moaned, ‘what did I do to bring up a Trotskyite?’ – I’m not by the way – but if Benanav’s thought experiment triggers such concerns in me, God knows what it might do to *conservative-voting friends and acquaintances, and people like my late dad?) But I completely agree and hope that Capitalism’s current state of entropy must and will somehow lead to a society that is less destructive and amoral. (Hard to stay hopeful with the current crop of Conservatives ripping everything apart with impunity but clinging to the thought their behaviour is an angry death rattle).
I enjoyed Benanav’s references to popular culture and science fiction. And with that, may I recommend Lodge 49, a wonderful series on Netflix which addresses the absurdity and decay of our current times.
And despite my concerns, mentioned above, Benanav’s words couldn’t feel more pressing right now: “Recognition of the fundamental dignity of the 7 billion plus who make up humanity requires that we no longer agree to relegate some to a life of drugery so that others may be free. It means we must share out the work that remains to be done in a technologically advanced society, so that everyone has the right and the power to decide what to do with their time.” (93)
- Barad, K. M. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Benanav, A. (2020) Automation and the future of work. London: Verso.
- Bergmann, F. (2013) Partially Examined Life Ep. 83: Frithjof Bergmann-New Work | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog. [Podcast and Blog] At: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/10/10/ep83-frithjof-bergmann/ (Accessed 07/03/2021).
- Field, SJ, ~ (2021) Book: Less is More, Jason Hickel, 2020. [Blog] At: https://sjffieldscribbles.uk/2021/02/15/book-less-is-more-jason-hickel-2020/ (Accessed 07/03/2021).
- Field, SJ, S. (2017) Assignment 2: Honor’s Dance with Oxford House. [Blog] At: https://ocasjf.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/assignment-2-honors-dance-with-oxford-house/ (Accessed 07/03/2021).
- Henrich, J. (2020) The WEIRDest People in the World. S.I.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Hickel, J. (2020) Less is more: how degrowth will save the world. London: William Heinemann.
- Jasanoff, A. (2018) The biological mind: how brain, body, and environment collaborate to make us who we are. New York: Basic Books.
- Lupton, D. (2020) Data selves: more-than-human perspectives. Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA: Polity.
- Mason, P. (2015) PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books.
*Said friends no longer vote Conservative, so horrified are they by the behaviour of the post-Brexit-vote Tories, and blatant corruption and immorality.