Marx and the Robots

'Cuts through the hype about automation and artificial intelligence to explain how technologies actually make it from the showroom to the factory floor' -- Aaron Benanav, author of 'Automation and the Future of Work' 'Excellent ... summarises the entire breadth of the debate about Marx and digitisation' -- Soziologie Magazin 'Stands out, [...] bringing a remarkably wide range of perspectives to debates often dominated by technological determinism and fetishisation. A compelling analysis of contemporary trends that combines theoretical sophistication with an unusual breadth of empirical detail' -- Virginia Doellgast, Professor of Comparative Employment Relations, ILR School, Cornell University 'In this engaging and valuable collection, Butollo and Nuss show how Marx's lens on the industrial revolution can help us examine and interpret the digital transformation' -- John Zysman, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley and Co-Founder, Co-director - Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) 'Brilliant. From factory to platform, from value to variety, the authors analyse the past, present and futures of work. Highly recommended for radical educators' -- Kendra Briken, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow 'An essential volume on digitalisation and platforms, moving beyond technology fetishism and technological determinism to highlight the contradictory nature of technical change within capitalism' -- Matt Vidal, Reader in Sociology and Political Economy, Loughborough University, London

Florian Butollo is a Research Fellow for Globalisation, Work, and Production at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Berlin. Sabine Nuss is managing director of the Karl Dietz Verlag. As a political scientist, she has published books on Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism, economic crises in capitalism, digitalisation and automation.

Introduction - Florian Butollo and Sabine Nuss 1. Automation: Is It Really Different This Time? - Judy Wajcman Part I: Productive Force between Revolution and Continuity 2. Voracious Appetite for Surplus Labour - Elena Louisa Lange 3. Industrial Revolution and Mechnisation in Marx - Dorothea Schmidt 4. A Long History of the Factory Without People - Karsten Uhl 5. The Journey of the Automation and Qualification Project - Frigga Haug 6. Forward! And Lets Remember - Christian Meyer Part II: Robots in the Factory Vision and Reality 7. High Tech, Low Growth: Robots and the Future of Work - Kim Moody 8. Productive Power in Concrete Terms - Sabine Pfeiffer 9. Drones, Robots, Synthetic Foods - Franza Drechsel and Kristina Dietz Part III: Digital Work and Networked Production 10. Networked Technology and Production Networks - Florian Butollo 11. Computerisation: Software and the Democratisation of Work as Productive Power - Nadine Mller 12. Designing Work for Agility and Affects Measure - Phoebe V. Moore Park IV: Platform Capitalism under Scrutiny 13. Old Power in Digital Garb? - Christine Gerber 14. The Machine System of the Twenty-first Century? - Felix Gnisa 15. Digital Labour and Prosumption under Capitalism - Sebastian Sevignani 16. Artificial Intelligence as the Latest Machine of Digital Capitalism - For Now - Timo Daum 17. Forces and Relations of Control - Georg Jochum and Simon Schaupp Notes on Contributors Notes Index