What is the fourth industrial revolution? Toward a critical theory of the future of work

At the root of any conversation about the future(s) of work is a more fundamental question, namely, why humans’ metabolic relation with nature assumes a general social form that reduces them to a mere means to an end: the quantitative self-expansion of an alien social power, capital. In offering a critical reading of the significance of the first to fourth industrial revolutions, and of the dialectical relation between capitalism and crisis, the chapter foregrounds the process of the real subsumption of human subjects as exploitable and disposable appendages to the technoscientific systems and networks integral to contemporary forms of industrial profitmaking. The chapter provides a panorama of recent literatures that cast light on the transformation of work and labour markets, transformations that are integral – rather than contingent - to this latest phase of global capitalist development. Its main implication is that the technological determinism, complacency, and apologia characteristic of the fourth industrial revolution thesis, which suggests that the degradation of human labour-power is somehow collateral to ongoing processes of industrial transformation, should be resisted.