An interesting and wide-ranging interview about the social and economic developments associated with the period of the "Great Acceleration" (roughly the post-WWII period that has brought about the climate change catastrophe); an excerpt (with some resonaces with this):
[B]efore 1940, high school graduates were a small elite and a sufficient degree for management jobs; as high school became mass rather than elite, in the 1960s the same jobs now required a B.A; by the 1990s, an MBA. The sociological argument had been that mass schooling created social equality; but statistically it became clear that extending the length of schooling continued to give more credentials to the children of educated parents. In my 1979 book, I argued that equality would never be achieved along this path; better to decredentialize by banning credentials in hiring....
Is there a reason why credential inflation, sexual revolution, and informalization, occurred in a capitalist economy? The most immediate connection is that the leading capitalist economies in the 20th century had industrialised, and had less need for manual labour; and they became wealthy enough to expand mass education, first in secondary schooling, then in universities. As I mentioned, it wasn’t that modern technology needed a huge, highly-educated labour force (a modest number of scientists and engineers is enough); mass education is a luxury that rich societies can afford. Once there was a sizable youth cohort with years of freedom from work, this provided the troops for the sexual revolution; starting with the upper and upper-middle classes of the 1920s (in England and Germany as well as the US); and again with the informalization movement when credential inflation was keeping a large part of the population in school. It is not the “logic of capitalism” per se to have informalization, in-your-face sexuality, and mass education (since these did not exist in the earlier phases of capitalism); but these trends did provide new markets for more capitalist products — capitalism has no morality, it is willing to produce anything if it can be sold at a profit....
The consumer-oriented capitalist economy is a major cause of global warming; its profit dynamic depends on creating new products for sale, and these need energy and raw materials (even if these are for electric batteries). But capitalism may not continue very far into the future. Capitalism depends on having masses of people who can buy its products, and that means people who have jobs and earn enough money to spend. But contemporary capitalism is investing heavily in eliminating jobs — — not just manual labour, accomplished previously in factories — but white-collar labour, labour of communication and management. Current trends are towards self-driving cars (eliminating truck drivers), robot warehouse loaders, self-check-out machines in stores (eliminating sales clerks); artificial intelligence algorithms that attempt to replicate how people write, what managers do, even what high-skilled professionals create. High-tech enthusiasts’ predictions about the future of white-collar computerization see a highly automated future by around 2040, give or take 10 years in either direction.
Hardly anyone has studied the long-term consequence of eliminating a large proportion of the middle-class labour force. It is conventionally argued that people always develop new tastes and demands for new products, so that there will always be customers for whatever capitalism creates for them to buy in the future. But the question is, will they have the money to buy it? Automating the labour force, both manual and middle-class, into unemployment is a formula for capitalist crisis. Profit cannot be made if no one buys its products.
The solution, it has been suggested, is universal guaranteed income; but this would likely be resisted by the wealthiest section of the population, whose wealth must be confiscated in taxes to keep the consumer economy alive. Steps in this direction may lead to socialism. And whatever the faults of previously existing state socialism, it has one merit: it can continue indefinitely as an economy without growth. If the crisis of capitalism happens soon enough in the 21st century, it could be the solution to global warming. [For more on this issue, see my chapter in Wallerstein et al. 2013]
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