Well all this technological innovation does not seem to be improving happiness. And I think the
Marxist answer would be, just along Marx's lines, to say well because the Innovation is not designed
to create happiness. It's designed a lot of the time to facilitate one's needs and desires,
to stimulate desire and all of those kinds of things. It's certainly about doing all of that,
but it's not about making the world better for people. And it's not about improving their
lives in any way. It's about trying to actually create a world in which more profit is to be had,
and that is why it's there. And therefore it doesn't lead to shortening of the working day.
It does not lead to sort of economies of time for the labor. It means that Capital can actually use
these innovations to soak up more time from a laborer. Capital and capitalism maybe brilliant
at creating a cornucopia of new products, of new ideas, new possibilities, new consumption patterns
and new lifestyles and all the rest of it. It is fantastic at doing that, but it's also not only
producing all of those new commodities and all the possibilities of real improvement of wealth.
What capital also produces is alienation. Now put that together. In other words,
there you have the contradiction, the central contradiction of what capital is about. This is
what Marx is identifying- that there is this contradiction between Capital as a dynamic
creative force at the same time it's creating alienation and increasing alienation. So that,
the increase of productivity is associated with an increase in alienation and alienating behavior.
Now, alienated behavior doesn't end up just being anti-capitalist; it tends to be anti-anything
and easily susceptible to all kind of crazy ideas. That the problems of society are due to too much
immigration, too much attention being paid to minorities, too much potential being paid to
women or whatever. Anything can come up there as a form, but the fundamental contradiction is this:
between Capital as a productive and constructive force in terms of increasing the productivity of
labor but doing it in a way which is kind of an increasingly oriented towards the maximization
of profit versus Capital which is increasingly alienating and is creating alienated labor. And
Marx in the Grundrisse is very explicit about this when he kind of says actually Capital,
at its heart, contains the conflict between alienated Capital- that is Capital which is
not in charge of its own destiny but it has to engage and abide by the laws of motion of
capital. But the laws of the market the coercive laws of competition force Capital to employ labor
harder and harder and harder. And therefore, the capitalist is alienated and of course, the laborer
is alienated because their creative capacities and powers are taken over by another. And those
creative capacities and powers are turned into something which is making something which maybe
you don't care about. I mean, do you really want to make munitions to go and blow people up in
Ukraine? Do you or is that what you want to do? And the answer is no, but it's a job and I have to
do it. And do I really want to do a job where I'm alienated in the sense that I'm screwing people in
terms of opioid addiction or all the rest of it? Is that what I want to do. The answer is no. Well,
that's the only way I can make money. Therefore I have to do it. So Marx says quite
simply that Capital arrests upon alienated capital and alienated labor encountering each other
and working in relation in such a way as to maximize the laws of motion of capital which
are independently established of anybody's wants, needs and desires. Remember the definition of a
market in Adam Smith is a market is one in which prices cannot be determined by any one individual.
Prices can only be arrived at through buying and selling in the market, and that is therefore an
alien situation in that I have spent a lot of time on a particular product, but I only get in the
market what its value is which is what the average social average or its productivity would be.