The Dig: Don't Blame Robots with Aaron Benanav
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2020
⏱️ 129 minutes
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Summary
Dan interviews Aaron Benanav, who argues that the problem isn't that robots are stealing our jobs but rather that capitalist growth is finding its limits and making jobs worse.
Read "Automation and the Future of Work" in New Left Review. Parts one and two.
Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com and by Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you. |
| 0:15.8 | One that you might like is The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party, the enduring |
| 0:20.4 | legacy of Henry Wallace's anti-fascist, anti-racist politics by John Nichols. |
| 0:27.0 | 75 years ago Henry Wallace then the Vice president of the United States, mounted a campaign about |
| 0:35.9 | the danger of American fascism. |
| 0:38.8 | As fighting in the European and Japanese theaters drew to a close, Wallace warned that the country might win the war and lose the peace. |
| 0:48.0 | That the fascist threat the United States was battling abroad had a terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power. |
| 0:57.6 | Wealthy corporatists and their allies in the media, Wallace's political vision, as well as his nomination to remain vice president, was |
| 1:06.2 | sidelined by Democratic big city bosses and southern segregationists. |
| 1:12.2 | In the decades to come, other progressives would mount similar |
| 1:15.7 | campaigns. As John Nichols chronicles in this book, they ultimately failed. |
| 1:21.0 | But their efforts provide us with insights into the nature of the Democratic Party and strategic |
| 1:28.4 | lessons for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Acasio Cortez. |
| 1:34.0 | The fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, the enduring legacy of Henry Wallace's anti-fascist |
| 1:40.2 | anti-racist politics by John Nichols. Out now from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and |
| 2:01.2 | I'm interminably broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island. |
| 2:06.4 | What is going on with capitalism? Are we on the verge of a fourth industrial revolution that will prompt robots and machines to wipe out human labor? |
| 2:18.0 | If so, is Universal Basic Income, or UBI, the tool to ensure that this becomes a dream instead of a nightmare |
| 2:27.2 | Given the huge divides in our politics what does it mean that so many people of so many different ideological persuasions agree in rough terms on both the problem and its solution? |
| 2:40.0 | My guest today is Aaron Beninov. He argues in two recent lengthy pieces in the New Left |
| 2:46.9 | review that automation theorists have misdiagnosed capitalism's Malays. |
| 2:58.0 | Automation isn't destroying capitalist demand for labor, he argues. |
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