Does machine work free the worker or degrade them?

Whether machinery relieves toil or reduces the worker to a part of the machine.

Direction Machine-like humans
Span 1776–1922
Questions 3
Works 18
Languages English, French, German, Gujarati

  1. Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?

    Yes3

    • 1832Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

      Machinery first displaces labour, but lower prices raise demand and soon reabsorb most or all of the displaced workers.

    • 1835Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures

      Ure reports seeing cheerful child workers in factories and claims that, with adequate food and clothing, they would thrive there better than in unhealthy homes. These are Ure’s claims, not independently established facts about factory conditions.

    • 1845Bastiat, Economic Sophisms

      Labour is a means, not an end; any machine that saves an hour of work is progress, and suppressing machinery to create jobs is a sophism.

    No5

    • 1819Sismondi, New Principles of Political Economy

      Sismondi locates the calamity in unjust distribution, not improved machinery. A self-employed worker could take the productivity gain as leisure, whereas a dependent worker may work longer for the same wage.

    • 1821Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (3rd ed.)

      Added chapter concedes that the workers' belief that machinery often harms them is correct: it can cut the fund that employs labour while landlords and capitalists gain.

    • 1848Mill, Principles of Political Economy

      Doubts that all mechanical inventions so far have lightened the day's toil of any human being; they have let more people live the same life of drudgery and made fortunes for manufacturers.

    • 1879George, Progress and Poverty

      It was expected that labour-saving inventions would lighten toil and end poverty; instead poverty deepens where machinery is most developed.

    • 1909Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule

      Machinery has impoverished India by destroying handicraft and has begun to desolate Europe; India should do without it.

  2. Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?

    8 answers are hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.

  3. Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?

    The worker, as shorter hours1

    • 1819Sismondi, New Principles of Political Economy

      Sismondi argues that greater output per unit of labor ought to increase enjoyment or rest; his self-employed worker stops after two hours, while the dependent worker does not receive the benefit.

    Consumers, through cheapness1

    • 1845Bastiat, Economic Sophisms

      Society's interest is the consumer's interest in abundance; labour saved by machines is freed for other wants, so the gain spreads through lower prices.

    The workers, through co-operative ownership1

    Under capitalism the capitalist takes it; this is the problem1

    • 1867Marx, Capital, Volume I

      Machinery is not meant to lighten toil; it cheapens goods so the worker's share of the day shrinks and the unpaid share taken by the capitalist grows.

    Currently landowners; it should go to the community1

    • 1879George, Progress and Poverty

      Improvements in production raise rent, so landowners capture the gain; the remedy is to tax land values.

    The workers, as leisure1

    • 1883Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy

      As machines improve, workers work harder instead of resting; machine productivity should be taken as leisure by limiting work to three hours a day.

    All citizens equally1

    • 1888Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887

      The nation owns the mills and machinery, and every citizen receives an equal credit on the annual product.

    Everyone in common1

    • 1892Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

      Machinery and all accumulated wealth are the work of past generations in common, so no one can claim them privately; all belongs to all.