Technologies are meant to reduce human effort in the production process. Sometimes innovation creates new products which cater to new uses. These uses may not even exist before the product being launched meaning necessity is not always the mother of invention as the saying goes. In fact, the different goods and services people use are not fixed for ever; rather new products and services are added to the consumption basket signifying the progress of civilisation and well-being. The struggle to include new goods and services in the consumption basket of the working class had been the fulcrum of wage revision over time.

The second important dimension of technology relates to the process of production. In this case, although the same thing is being produced it could be produced using less labour hours and hence with a lower cost either because of efficient use of materials or due to altered production organisation or a combination of these. The third dimension of technological change may be contributing to reducing the circulation time through the reduction of transportation cost or transaction costs. All these three dimensions of technological change reduce use of direct labour and are supposed to increase human well-being. But this reduction in labour time can be manifested in two ways: one, unchanged number of workers working a smaller number of hours per day, hence shortening of the working day; two, number of workers reduced while intensity of work and working hours increased coupled with large number of unused labour force or unemployment. Therefore, technological change essentially alters the configuration of employed and unemployed labour force and within those who are employed the proportion of paid and unpaid work also changes. What is important is that the changing configuration of paid-unpaid-unused labour due to introduction of new technology brings to the fore new dimensions of the capital-labour conflict.

Unpaid Labour in Production and Reproduction

Marx showed that the source of profit is surplus value, that is unpaid labour. But unpaid labour contributes to capital accumulation both in the realm of production and reproduction. Unpaid labour in the process of production is the surplus labour appropriated by the owner of the means of production, the capitalist. Unpaid labour in the realm of reproduction is the labour of the female member of the family appropriated by the patriarch. In the realm of production appropriation of unpaid labour comes under capital relations. But within the family, appropriation of unpaid labour is not mediated through capital relations. The female member is not a wage labour appointed by the male members. It is a non-capital feudal relationship articulated through the structures of gender. But this appropriation of unpaid labour within the family is subservient to capital relations in the following manner. The unpaid female labour enters the production of food, providing care to the elderly and rearing of children that is future stream of labour force and reproducing the current worker ready to work for the day. If this service had to be paid, then the reservation wage of the worker, that is the minimum wage at which the worker would agree to sell labour power, would increase, which increases the cost of production for the capitalist. Therefore, the unpaid labour in the household subsidises the capitalist and allows him to contain wages. This is precisely the reason why capitalist accumulation is in sync with the gendered structure of family, the latter being supplier of unpaid family labour that reduces the cost of reproduction of the labour power.

Technology use may alter the configuration of unpaid labour, the way past industrial revolutions did and it may also lead to a rise in the paid work force bringing more female labour into the work force. In fact, with the use of electric power enabled home appliances during the 20^th century, female labour force participation increased in the advance economies. However, this change did not radically alter the gendered relation within the family as the patriarchal structure continued to decide the use of disposable time of the female member and in most cases led to extended hours of paid and unpaid work in total. New technology, particularly the network of platform-based work, enables women to participate in tasks that are mostly part-time in nature and amenable to their gendered structure of household responsibilities. This draws part of the reserve army of labour into the active labour force altering the proportion of unpaid and paid work. In fact, many of the gig tasks are performed on part-time basis by people who are otherwise employed. Since jobs are a combination of tasks and new technology allows allocation of tasks, work is contracted out at zero time. One may offer her labour for a slot of one or two hours in the evening or morning to a task platform and earn income on a piece rate. The fragmentation of work and assigning task to a particular labour is not new. In fact, it happened in the Fordist assembly line as well. But now it is not a line, not unilinear, it is a huge multidimensional network spanning across the globe and digitised identities and modes of tracking allow drawing in bits of labour time with increased scope of joining the process of creating surplus for capital.

Technology and Unemployment

In the process of capitalist accumulation, the speed of technological innovation often outpaces the growth of labour force. Capitalism is an uncoordinated system, and technological growth is driven by spontaneous functioning of the market and competition. There is no reason that the number of people joining the labour force would match the net number of labour required with increased use of technology. Therefore, a higher pace of technological growth would make a large number of people redundant as production with new technology would require decreasingly direct labour. The problem of capitalism is that it is a society of commodity production. It recognises human interaction based on exchange values and hence if labour power doesn’t get exchanged in the labour market, it has no claim over the social product. Work is only recognised as employment. Someone may work but if s/he is not being employed for that work then in capitalism it is ‘unproductive labour’— it does not generate any value or surplus value. Therefore, the labour in that case is not only incapable of producing value but also cannot participate in the realisation of value already produced. New technologies do not drastically reduce jobs. In some sectors it may happen, but largely technologies replace some tasks within a job. Earlier jobs were relocated, now tasks will be relocated. And the scope of demand and supply of tasks has turned global. If fragmented tasks can be coordinated through digital networks, then the scope of getting hooked into any of those tasks through platform networks increases for the vast mass of people across the globe. Open unemployment may decline while underemployment is going to rise.

There is no doubt that a host of new tasks will emerge as new avenues of income and the outcome is not predetermined but what is surely going to happen is blurring of the distinction between paid-unpaid-unused labour. A worker is currently in a state of flux— the interface between active and reserve army becomes porous with frequent exchanges between the two. The world is increasingly divided between two broad groups – a few employers and a vast number of labourers who are paid someday, unpaid the other day and unused for some days. Convergence of the exploited and excluded is the new objectivity of class formation. This demands a flexible and evolving network of relations between various layers of the exploited and excluded mass with converging interests. Increasingly, capital as a class confronts the labour force and the gains of human wisdom and intellect increasingly become subservient to the interest of capital. General progress of science and technology appear to be attributes of capital and human beings confront their own creation and intellect as an alien power beyond their own control. This makes new technology scary and income threatening for most people. However, an alteration of social relations that doesn’t allow private property over human wisdom or science and technology will lead to more free time for everybody accompanied by enhanced well-being and not misery.