Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work

Author:   Jason Resnikoff
Publisher:   University of Illinois Press
ISBN:  

9780252086298


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   18 January 2022
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work


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Author:   Jason Resnikoff
Publisher:   University of Illinois Press
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.50cm
ISBN:  

9780252086298


ISBN 10:   0252086295
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   18 January 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. “The Machine Tells the Body How to Work”: “Automation” and the Postwar Automobile Industry 15 2. The Electronic Brain’s Tired Hands: Automation, the Digital Computer, and the Degradation of Clerical Work 39 3. The Liberation of the Leisure Class: Debating Freedom and Work in the 1950s and Early 1960s 64 4. Anticipating Oblivion: The Automation Discourse, Federal Policy, and Collective Bargaining 89 5. Machines of Loving Grace: The New Left Turns Away from Work 114 6. Slaves in Tomorrowland: The Degradation of Domestic Labor and Reproduction 136 7. Where Have All the Robots Gone? From Automation to Humanization 160 Conclusion 187 Notes 193 Bibliography 221 Index 241

Reviews

Resnikoff's forceful and coherent argument reveals that automation was not a technological process but an ideology which equated freedom with freedom from work and downplayed the workplace as a site of politics. As he convincingly shows, automation largely did not lead to a reduction in labor but rather to speedup, work intensification, and the degradation of labor, creating a huge chasm between the grandiose claims made about an automated future and the lived reality of workers. --Joshua Freeman, author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World


The history recounted in Labor's End helps arm us to counter fallacious reasoning about automation and advocate for shifting the workplace toward greater worker power, dignity, and prosperity. Resnikoff's probing analysis directs our gaze away from the shiny objects of new technology and redirects it to where it belongs - on workers. --Catalyst Resnikoff's forceful and coherent argument reveals that automation was not a technological process but an ideology which equated freedom with freedom from work and downplayed the workplace as a site of politics. As he convincingly shows, automation largely did not lead to a reduction in labor but rather to speedup, work intensification, and the degradation of labor, creating a huge chasm between the grandiose claims made about an automated future and the lived reality of workers. --Joshua Freeman, author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World Labor's End not only shows how the automation discourse was and is mystifying but also demonstrates the political consequences of its adoption on the Right and the Left. There is no technological fix for the political problems of work, Resnikoff reminds us. . . . Labor's End will be seen by future historians as a book that freshly reinterpreted the past to inform the politics of the present. --H-Sci-Med-Tech


Resnikoff's forceful and coherent argument reveals that automation was not a technological process but an ideology which equated freedom with freedom from work and downplayed the workplace as a site of politics. As he convincingly shows, automation largely did not lead to a reduction in labor but rather to speedup, work intensification, and the degradation of labor, creating a huge chasm between the grandiose claims made about an automated future and the lived reality of workers. --Joshua Freeman, author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World Labor's End not only shows how the automation discourse was and is mystifying but also demonstrates the political consequences of its adoption on the Right and the Left. There is no technological fix for the political problems of work, Resnikoff reminds us. . . . Labor's End will be seen by future historians as a book that freshly reinterpreted the past to inform the politics of the present. --H-Sci-Med-Tech


The history recounted in Labor's End helps arm us to counter fallacious reasoning about automation and advocate for shifting the workplace toward greater worker power, dignity, and prosperity. Resnikoff's probing analysis directs our gaze away from the shiny objects of new technology and redirects it to where it belongs - on workers. --Catalyst Resnikoff's forceful and coherent argument reveals that automation was not a technological process but an ideology which equated freedom with freedom from work and downplayed the workplace as a site of politics. As he convincingly shows, automation largely did not lead to a reduction in labor but rather to speedup, work intensification, and the degradation of labor, creating a huge chasm between the grandiose claims made about an automated future and the lived reality of workers. --Joshua Freeman, author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World Labor's End not only shows how the automation discourse was and is mystifying but also demonstrates the political consequences of its adoption on the Right and the Left. There is no technological fix for the political problems of work, Resnikoff reminds us. . . . Labor's End will be seen by future historians as a book that freshly reinterpreted the past to inform the politics of the present. --H-Sci-Med-Tech


Author Information

Jason Resnikoff is a lecturer in the Department of History at Columbia University.

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