Throughout Capitalism’s history, the worker has been used by the bourgeoisie to extract, refine, and market resources. This is a modified continuation of the serfdom practices that preceded the rise of the bourgeoisie, where the worker is paid a wage instead of being owned outright by their lord. This relationship and its development may seem radically different, as the serf was treated as property and the contemporary wage worker receives a supposed portion of the profits they bring to their employer. this relationship is, for the most part, an improvement of the feudal mode of production, but it only modifies the master of the serf, not the relationship between serf and master.
The new economic paradigm, which sees the employer as paramount, shifted many responsibilities that the feudal lord had, not to the employer, but to the worker themselves. In the past, the feudal lord would be responsible for the housing, feeding, and wellbeing of the serf with no regulation on quality of said provisions. Obviously that relationship would have extraordinarily negative results for the commoner. This, of course, would see a large number of serfs seek escape from the feudal lord’s land, where the only other option would be the relative comfort of the bourgeoisie’s workshops and storefronts in the towns and cities. This would lead to the rise of the proletariat, or the city-dwelling worker who produces commodities for the bourgeoisie to make their living. The population of the proletariat would steadily increase within the towns where the bourgeoisie had their businesses, leading to more and more available labor. This would culminate in the rapid development of the industrial capacity of the towns over the feudal lord’s estates, which would mainly be agrarian in nature.
However, this rapid development would bring about the devaluation of the worker, both in labor and in spirit. The proletarian population exploded, in part due to the rapid industrialization of the agricultural sector. Towns, where artisans and apprentices used to work to produce goods for sale, were changing to accommodate both the increase of available labor and the decrease in required technical ability of said labor. The workforce was growing, as was the technological advancements to assist in making work less difficult in terms of skill required to produce the same amount. Machines would replace the arduous tasks that would require years of specialized training to master, and this would only hurt the worker.
It’s unserious to consider automation an abject horror to the the working class, but, under capitalism, it only pushes workers into more grueling positions in the best scenarios, or completely out of the workplace in the worst. While the machines could do the work much quicker and easier than the human worker, the capitalist structure which the worker is forced under only rewards the owner of the machine, and punishes the worker for becoming obsolete. Amadeo Bordiga speaks of this progression in his article Who’s Afraid of Automation, just as Marx speaks of it in Capital.
To fully understand this, one can look at the Luddites of the early industrial revolution. The Luddites, despite what pop-history understanding of the movement would say, had very specific grievances with the capitalist class. It was, by every sense of the phrase, a proletarian movement. The movement itself was made up of workers made obsolete by the machines in their old places of work. These machines were made to streamline industry, and could have, if under the proletariat’s control, actively made the lives of many workers better and safer, but instead, the capitalist class used these new production methods to circumvent the worker, meaning less people to pay for the same, or in many cases more product. In the end, the Luddites sought to literally destroy the machines which stole their jobs and livelihoods away from them.
This progression would march onward, with the gradual creeping of machines into the work world, where entire processes, such as manufacturing, can be done by a fraction of the workers it would have taken mere decades ago, let alone centuries. This would be a good thing if, instead of utilizing the commodity form of production, we as a global society decreased real work hours and increased wages, but that is simply not the case. The worker has been pushed to the fringe of the economy, where they must fight to survive.
But now, we are seeing the rise of an even more exploitative practice within Capitalism: that of the Gig Worker. This new form of worker is divorced from the protection of even their employer. In many cases, the gig worker is solely responsible for any mistakes or delays made in their line of work, as opposed to the company they work for or facilitate business for. By making every employee accountable for what was once the responsibility of the employer, or more specifically, the owner of the means of production, these gig workers are forced to provide exceedingly good service while being offered none of the protections once available. This is most exemplary in the case of delivery app drivers, who are often rated by the costumer’s satisfaction. Previously, the restaurant or other provider would be responsible for their employee’s conduct and efficiency, but those days are gone. Instead, the worker is alienated from even the most basic protections that were once offered to them through employment. These workers are paid minimal amounts and have no upward mobility, as the entire system is pseudo-decentralized. There is no accountability on the sides of these companies. they hide behind the gig worker and allow them to be viscerally attacked on all fronts to avoid responsibility. We no longer see a world where the proletariat is protected by the laws and regulations they fought for. Instead, we see a new form of serfdom, where the capitalists can enslave those working for them without providing anything in return.