Breaking Things at Work

by Gavin Mueller

Instead, the more fundamental problem of technology is its role in the reproduction of hierarchies and injustices foisted upon most of us by business owners, bosses, and governments. In other words, the problem of technology is its role in capitalism. In this book, I aim to show how technology developed by capitalism furthers its goals: it compels us to work more, limits our autonomy, and outmaneuvers and divides us when we organize to fight back.

This view of the objectivity and inevitability of technology, science, and progress in general was at the heart of the philosophies driving the most successful Marxist movements in history. Yet it was often at odds with the practical activity of workers themselves. Further, it shaped socialist strategy in ways ultimately detrimental to the goal of building emancipatory societies. These mistakes are not simply historical curios, but continue to influence left politics of technology. And so, before we can invent our future, we should return to the past and take stock of these movements’ approaches to machines and technology.

Kautsky’s “orthodox Marxism” portrayed socialism as a kind of destiny that would inevitably emerge from the husk of capitalism in accordance with scientific laws of history, driven by the motor of productive forces. As he put it: “In the last analysis, the history of mankind is determined, not by ideas, but by an economic development which progresses irresistibly, obedient to certain underlying laws and not to anyone’s wishes or whims,” bringing about “new forms of production which require new forms of society.”16 Socialism would arise on the basis of the development of capitalist production, which followed its own logic and laws.

Automation thus recomposes the workforce, isolating and rearranging tasks, altering job descriptions, and hollowing out middle-tier occupations.

Processed World’s most notorious essay hearkened back to the controversial IWW tracts of the 1930s. “Sabotage: The Ultimate Video Game,” written by an office worker under the nom de plume “Gidget Digit,” extols the virtues of machine breaking.

In 1976, one of those entrepreneurs, Bill Gates, wrote a scathing letter to the hobbyist community: “Most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?”

As technology critic Jathan Sadowski argues, much of what is hyped as a system of autonomous machines is actually “Potemkin AI”: “services that purport to be powered by sophisticated software, but actually rely on humans acting like robots.”

Modern technologies appear to function not by helping us achieve our ends but instead by determining ends for us, by providing us with ends that we must help technologies achieve.