On Abolition

My (De-/Re)Constructing Worlds project is an experiment that aims to further both abolition and decolonization.

With respect to decolonization, I have written that my (De-/Re)Constructing Worlds project will consider ways in which we may counter nationalist imperialisms with regionalisms, capitalist imperialisms with communisms, and careerist imperialisms with dilettantisms.

The six theses below articulate how it is that my project aims to further abolition.

One.

With respect to abolition, the (De-/Re)Constructing Worlds project will consider the ways in which we may deconstruct the industrialized world and reconstruct and repair convivial worlds. 

Why further abolition by deconstructing the industrialized world?

Because the industrialized world has been built on the hypothesis that machines can replace slaves or, rather, that new machinic slaves could be gradually made to replace the human slaves of old, and that a “temporary” and “voluntary” system of human slavery, wage slavery, would suffice in the interim between the old and the new order.

Two.

The logic of slavery pervades the industrialized world: the logic is built into the *deep structure* of the environments, implements, and statements that characterize the industrialized world. The pervasiveness of this logic is such that many people do not fully appreciate the horrors that were endured by the human slaves of old, believing that much of the work that slaves did was “essential work” that somebody had to be made to do.

This is to say, in other words, that many still believe that slavery is a bad solution to a real problem. They do not recognize that slavery is, in fact, a bad solution to a false problem, a problem to which there can be no sensible solution. This is to say, in other words, that the enterprise of slavery is a senseless offense against human life.

Industrialization is but another bad solution to the same false problem: the problem of who (or what) can be made to work *for* us. Ay, but whereas slavery is a senseless offense against human life, industrialization is a senseless offense against life writ large.

Three.

We will not be able to confront the global economic and ecological crises that we are living though unless we learn to see beyond the false problem getting others to work *for* us and learn to confront the real problem of working *with* others. As Ivan Illich writes in Tools for Conviviality:

“[Our crises] can be solved only if we learn to invert the present deep structure of tools; if we give people tools that [...] [eliminate] the need for either slaves or masters and [enhance] each person’s range of freedom. People need new tools to work *with* rather than tools that work *for* them. They need technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has, rather than more well-programmed energy [and information] slaves. [...] Neither a dictatorial proletariat nor a leisure mass can escape the dominion of constantly expanding industrial tools.”

Abolition, as I conceive of it, would construct a world in which the prevailing working relationship amongst humans and machines is that of *working -with* as opposed to working-for. Eliminating chattel slavery was only the beginning of the abolitionist movement.

A recurring question throughout the (De-/Re)Constructing Worlds project will be, “How thinkers, builders, and tinkers can make statements, environments, and implements that favor working-with as opposed to working-for?”

Four.

Industrialization in its latest and most extreme phase is about building a world in which artificially intelligent machines perform intellectual labor *for* their masters and robotic machines perform physical labor *for* their masters: a world in which slavery has been perfected.

The only problem that the masters of this brave new world would have to confront is what to do with superfluous human beings, with those who are neither the masters nor the overseers of perfected slaves, fully automated robots.

Those peoples most likely to be counted amongst superfluous are those who once were slaves and those who were displaced and dispossessed by the "advancement" of slaveholding and industrial societies. It follows that, in the United States of America, black and indigenous peoples are those most likely to be counted amongst the superfluous.

Five.

Performing physical and intellectual labor *with* the aid of a tool is not the same thing as having tools that perform physical and intellectual labor *for* you. The difference between tools you work-with and tools that work-for you is the spectrum between augmentation and automation, between the prosthetic and the robotic.

A major goal of the (De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds project is to encourage augmentation and prosthetics, technologies that develop our senses of our being-in-the-world; and to discourage automation and robotics, technologies that senselessly rationalize the world around us.

robot (n.) from Czech robotnik "forced worker," from robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery," from robotiti "to work, drudge," from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude," from rabu "slave"

Six.

But promoting the prosthetic above and beyond the robotic is not enough to encourage working-with above and beyond working-for.

Promoting working-with above and beyond working-for also means promoting collective prostheses above and beyond individual prostheses. Rather than prostheses that individuate and segregate different bodies from one another, I believe that we ought to promote prostheses that associate and integrate different bodies together.

It is preferable to have a prosthesis requiring that two or more people to provide each other with mutual-aid in order to operate the prosthesis as one. This as opposed to a prosthesis that one person can operate on their own without any assistance from others.