Mesto Detroit, nekoč zibelka ameriške  avtomobilske industrije, je v četrtek razglasilo bankrot. Dolgovi so se povzpeli na 18, 5 milijard $. Juan Cole, profesor na univerzi v Michiganu in bloger na Informed comment se ob tem sprašuje, ali podobna usoda ne čaka celotnih ZDA in ali ni povezana z robotizacijo in globalizacijo.

Detroit je najprej izkusil hitro rast, da bi doživel zastoj in padanje prebivalstva:

First of all, Detroit grew from 400,000 to 1.84 million from 1910-1950 primarily because of the auto industry and the other industries that fed it (machine tools, spare parts, services, etc.) From 1950 until now, two big things happened to ruin the city with regard to industry. The first was robotification. The automation of many processes in the factories led to fewer workers being needed, and produced unemployment. (It was a trick industrial capitalism played on the African-Americans who flocked to Detroit in the 1940s to escape being sharecroppers in Georgia and elsewhere in the deep South, that by the time they got settled the jobs were beginning to disappear). Then, the auto industry began locating elsewhere, along with its support industries, to save money on labor or production costs or to escape regulation.

Cole nam ponudi pojasnilo, ki se ga ne bi sramoval noben socialist, se pravi, analizo ki vzroke za probleme išče v kapitalističnem sistemu in rešitev, ki je pravzaprav socialistična:

While other cities have avoided Detroit’s extreme fate, I think the nation as a whole faces some of the intractable problems that the city does, and I don’t think we have a solution for them.

Take robots (and I really just mean highly mechanized and computerized production of commodities). More and more factory work is automated, and advances in computer technology could well make it possible to substantially increase productivity. This rise of the robots violates the deal that the capitalists made with American consumers after the great Depression, which is that they would provide people with well-paying jobs and the workers in turn would buy the commodities the factories produced, in a cycle of consumerism. If the goods can be produced without many workers, and if the workers then end up suffering long-term unemployment (as Detroit does), then who will buy the consumer goods? Capitalism can survive one Detroit, but what if we are heading toward having quite a few of them?

It seems to me that we need to abandon capitalism as production becomes detached from human labor. I think all robot labor should be nationalized and put in the public sector, and all citizens should receive a basic stipend from it. Then, if robots make an automobile, the profits will not go solely to a corporation that owns the robots, but rather to all the citizens. It wouldn’t be practical anyway for the robots to be making things for unemployed, penniless humans. Perhaps we need a 21st century version of ‘from all according to their abilities, to all according to their needs.’

Dolgoročno je seveda res, da nas čaka pomanjkanje zaposlitev. Za zdaj je mogoče krize še vedno reševati z umetnim, državnim ustvarjanjem delovnih mest, toda v prihodnosti bo to vedno težje, saj za večje projekte ne bo več potrebno toliko delovne sile. O tem lahko govorimo na planetarni ravni, ko se revne države dvigujejo iz svoje nerazvitosti, medtem ko bogate le počasi stopajo naprej, ali kot večina Evrope, stojijo na mestu. Kako lahko kapitalistični sistem razreši to nasprotje, torej vedno večjo produktivnost, upadanje deleža industrije in kmetijstva v deležu zaposlitev in zasičenost s storitvami, je veliko vprašanje, s katerim se bomo morali soočiti v naslednjih desetletjih.