In 1917, in the same month of the Russian Revolution that swept Leninâs Bolsheviks to power in Petrograd, the New Statesmanâs founders, Sidney and Beatrice Webb,drafted Clause IV of the Labour Partyâs constitution. According to the clause, the aim of the Party would be âto secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.â
It was a constitutional commitment to full-blooded socialism, based on the belief that working people were, under capitalism, denied âthe full fruits of their industryâ, that value was created collectively by workers through their work, but appropriated privately by the owners of capital. The remedy would be âcommon ownershipâ, âpopular administrationâ and âequitable distributionâ. This was a party founded to represent the labour interest and defend the dignity of work.
Over a century later, the Labour Party, and the late-Victorian economic model that spawned its creation, have been transformed beyond recognition. The factory-based mass production that had once made Britain the workshop of the world has given way to a service-based economy. Labour-intensive manufacturing has declined. It has been replaced with highly automated, data-driven, advanced methods of specialised production that employ a fraction of the workforce. Assembly lines have moved abroad in search of cheaper workers. The primary industries that fuelled a coal-fired economy have all but disappeared; the manual, back-breaking work that accompanied it replaced by so-called âimmaterialâ, cognitive labour carried out in silicon-dependent offices. An all-pervading finance sector powered by algorithms, high frequency trading and speculation sits alongside a debt-driven retail sector, the creative industries, the knowledge economy, and low-paid gig workers (for whom back-breaking work is still very much a reality) taking orders from mobile phone apps. Rapid advances in bots and computer software have decimated industries that were once thought immune to automation. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have spread the threat of mechanisation from blue collar, manual work, to white-collar, service-sector jobs as well. A 2018 report by PwC found that 30 per cent of jobs in finance and insurance were at risk of automation by 2029. Clerical work and human resources departments are being transformed by robotic process automation (RPA). Under these circumstances, under an economic model in which fewer tangible goods are produced, in which value is seemingly ever more detached from productive activity, in which technology is driving exponential productivity gains, and in which the manufacture of scarce objects seems to happen in another world entirely, ideas about work and the âdignity of labourâ have altered dramatically.
Clause IV was dropped in 1995 as Tony Blair attempted to rid Labour of its militant leftwing image. But rather than reject automation as a threat to job security and workersâ livelihoods, a significant faction on the partyâs activist left has embraced it, taking up the promises of emerging technology, automation and AI to espouse a âpost-work futuresâ and âfully automated luxury communismâ. Recent technological advances, so this interpretation holds, have made possible an (almost) workless utopia, in which human needs and wants are satisfied by the ever-expanding productive capacities of robots and machines. The post-work Labourites are inspired by sections from Karl Marx, reinterpreted by leftwing Italian âpostworkeristâ theorists several decades ago: the âFragment on Machinesâ predicted that as âlarge industry develops, the creation of wealth comes to depend less on labour timeâ, and thus âthe free development of individualitiesâ would be made possible. This is a post-scarcity world of publicly owned fleets of driverless cars, of mass-produced synthetic meat, of asteroid-mining for rare minerals, of state-run, solar powered dark factories churning out the latest goods, and of a digital and creative commons providing the wealth of humanityâs cultural and intellectual output free at everyoneâs fingertips. AI and automation have provided the catalysts for the party of labour to go from advocating full employment to one which attracts those that advocate for no employment.
The tendency reached the height of its influence during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, when it found fledgling expression in 2019 manifesto policies like Universal Basic Income pilots, the move towards a four-day week, and free universal broadband for all. Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell promised âsocialism with an iPadâ and a âhi-tech economy of the futureâ even as critics lambasted his âbroadband communismâ as unworkable and unaffordable.
From 2015 onwards there was a flourishing of literature that was, says Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, âintertwined with Corbynismâ. Influential texts emerged from leftwing academics. Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams implored readers to âdemand full automationâ and âdemand universal basic incomeâ on its cover, while espousing a âleft accelerationismâ that embraced full-throttle technological change and a âpost-workâ âleft modernityâ. Leftwing writers like Paul Mason embraced visions of tech-enabled, automated âpost-capitalismâ, with machine learning, big data and computer algorithms working in the service of radicalised ânetworked youthâ. The late pro-Corbyn anarchist academic David Graeber published Bullshit Jobs, which explained that automation had not led to shorter working weeks because people were increasingly employed in pointless professions that could easily be abolished. And pro-Corbyn journalist Aaron Bastani introduced the âFALCâ acronym to a reenergised, youthful British left in âa manifestoâ on âfully automated luxury communismâ.
âInitially I found this post-work stuff quite compellingâ, says Dr Harry Pitts, a lecturer in management, co-editor of the online magazine Futures of Work and specialist in work futures at the University of Bristol. âWhen I entered the labour market in my teens I was doing a lot of precarious, service-based jobs and I was looking for a way of understanding how that differs from the type of jobs that my dad did, or my brother, or my grandfather â the meaning and purpose and community that they got from their work was absent in mine.â But, Pitts adds, the post-work tendency âwishes away things that are going to be much more permanent and longer-lasting, and also some things that are worth returning to about work as well⊠Thereâs something about work â even the so-called âBullshit Jobsâ â that can be a source of meaning and social life and enjoyment, which of course are quite important to keep as part of our lives.â
For Cruddas, the emergence of techno-utopian and post-work thinking amongst Labourâs left wing factions coincided with a period of intellectual bankruptcy on the Labour right. âThis was a time when [that side of the Party] had nothing to say and hadnât had anything to say since Blair and Brown had goneâ, he told Spotlight. âThey were devoid of energy, and it looked like the energy and vitality was on the left.â
A generation of activists had come of age during the direct action, anti-austerity struggles of #Occupy and UK Uncut, and had made headlines during the student protests and occupations of 2010. Some of the oldest of their cohort had been involved in Camps for Climate Action, alter-globalisation movements and anti-G8 and G20 protests, and when Corbyn became leader, many joined the Labour Party. But unlike in previous waves of the UK leftâs resurgence, workplace struggles had taken a back seat. There was no equivalent of Arthur Scargill, âRed Robboâ or Jimmy Reid on the picket lines for the new urban service workers or the underemployed precariat. The industries that they represented as shop stewards or union bureaucrats had dissappeared, and this newer left wing emerged at a time when trade union membership and militancy remained at historic lows following the defeats of the Thatcher era. The stage was set for a left that was detached from the labour movement, and one that saw the world of work as something not to be transformed or to be decommodified, but to be liberated from via breakneck automation. The philosophy, Cruddas says, is underpinned by a crude âtechnological determinismâ, which holds that the inexorable rise of AI and automation technologies will inevitably lead to an overcoming of capitalism and a new post-capitalist future.Â
Post-workerism, according to Pitts, âprematurely serves up the fruits of struggles that havenât yet been waged or wonâ. âThe imposition of technology in the workplace in the past has tended to dovetail with workersâ militancy, struggles for higher wages, or with bargaining around productivity with strong trade unions coordinating industrial relationsâ, he says. âThat infrastructure of gains, of struggle, of militancy, isnât necessarily so much in evidence. We have a kind of economy that doesnât make that possible since the role of unions has been eroded.â This is a contradiction that post-work advocates are aware of and account for, but not one that has been resolved through a groundswell of grassroots action around implementing a shorter working week, or on introducing labour-saving technology into workplaces. When Corbyn led Labour, the strategy had been informed by what Pitts calls a âpopulist leftâ electoral turn â the automated, post-work revolution would be implemented top-down by a rebuilt, Corbynite state following a general election victory. But that model of social and political change has âcome a cropperâ, he says, following the 2019 defeat and Keir Starmerâs ascendancy to the leadership of the Party.
A year into the Starmer era, the post-work left have settled into a period of waning influence but remain as a definite intellectual strand and even inter-Party, factional presence, organising around groups such as Forward Momentum. âTheyâre subtly trying to present themselves as innovative political strategists for Labour post-Corbynâ, Cruddas says. The Dagenham MP and former Policy Coordinator under Ed Miliband has written extensively on the need for his Party to reconnect with its working class roots. His recent book, The Dignity of Labour, earned praise from the current leadership. Post-work leftists, according to Cruddas, âjettison the working class as the agent of left politics⊠they double down on what they say is the new base of the left â the urban, educated, networked youth⊠and in political strategy that translates into doubling down on the cities, the new heartlands, the university towns, and saying the red wall voters are nativist and reactionary, and that they donât have a future in left politics.â
Debates on the evolving nature of class, and on who the Labour Party should be for in an age of increasingly automated, hi-tech, cognitive-cultural, advanced capitalism, rage on. The Labour Partyâs key demographic has undoubtedly become younger, more metropolitan, more educated, and more scarce in areas where traditional industries and the organised working class once dominated. The post-work left can promote a focus on the ânew heartlandsâ with confidence that a âone-two punch of technology and demographyâ is on their side, Cruddas tells me, and that the red wall can be safely abandoned, its voters dismissed as asset-rich pensioners or hopeless reactionaries. âIâm of a certain age and background where I find that a bit uncomfortableâ, he laments.âI think weâre in a terrible stateâ.