[allturtles]

The industrial revolution is coming for white collar work. I'm finding Marx more and more relevant these days:

"So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of the workman’s labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsaleable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enactment. That portion of the working-class, thus by machinery rendered superfluous, i.e., no longer immediately necessary for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches of industry, swamps the labour-market, and sinks the price of labour-power below its value."[0]

[0]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm

[lanfeust6]

The labor theory of value has been thoroughly debunked. The value of something is whatever we're willing to pay for it, in balance with what the producer wants. Items aren't imbued with value through sheer hours of work.

[tartoran]

Marx’s point here is not that prices equal labor hours but more that automation can make workers economically superfluous, intensify competition among them, and depress wages. You can reject the labor theory of value and still admit he saw that dynamic clearly.