The New Dark Age

Wednesday, 22 June 2022 — michael roberts

In the first post of my Future of Work series, I looked at the impact of working from home and remote work which has mushroomed since the COVID pandemic.

In this second part, I want to consider the impact of work on people’s lives and health and how that will pan out over the next few decades. Marx once said “The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.” —Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844.

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