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40 ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CULTIVAR Issue 22 APRIL 2021 From predicting the future to historical experience What can we expect from technological evolution or revolution? According to “compensation the- ory”, higher labour productivity and the temporary destruction of employment in some sectors offset by investment growth in oth- ers and the resultant creation of jobs. From the Marxist perspective, structural unem- ployment (long-lasting) and the poverty of those with and without jobs. In Keynes’ opti- mistic outlook, a society that resolves the problem of scarcity frees itself from the cogs of accumulation and divides labour between moderate daily shifts of three hours per person a day, five days a week. Over eighty years now sep- arate us from all these attempts to predict the future. How can we assess them according to the lived experience of almost a cen- tury? Let us start with compensa- tion theory. The 20th century, which witnessed important waves of technological inno- vation, was far from being uniformly characterised by low levels of unemployment. On the contrary, there was mass unemployment in the more developed capitalists countries at times, particularly between 1929 and Wold War II. However, this had more to do with cri- ses originating in the finan- cial sector than with techno- logical changes. In the long period that followed World War II, rises in productivity from technological innovation were accompanied by proportional increases in wages, demand and product compatible with relatively low levels of unemployment. However, somewhere around the late 1970s, there was a decoupling of wage growth from productivity growth. Real wages stagnated and unemployment, though subject to cyclical fluctuations, began to trend upwards. Wealth and income inequalities grew. This scenario, while not the “absolute pauperism of the working class”, is very simi- lar to Marx’s idea of “relative pauperism” in Capital . The 150 years that separate us from the first edition of Capital , notwithstanding the episodes of mass unemployment and the most recent trend towards increasing inequalities and rising unemployment, can hardly be described as a whole as a period in which the industrial reserve army and impoverishment of the working class has contin- uously risen. Was Marx’s pre- diction wrong? In fact, the laws formulated by Marx are poorly adapted to forecasting. According to Marx, these laws, including the “absolute general law of capitalist accumulation”, were always subject to mod- ification by many circum- stances. It is therefore plausible that during the 20th century, circumstances occurred that countered a trend inherent to capitalism. What circumstances might these be? What made it pos- sible in the 30 years following World War II for productiv- ity growth and wage and demand growth to be closely linked? It certainly was not because of the mechanisms of a “flexible” labour market. Rather it was a set of institutional devices such as labour laws, trade unions and collective bar- gaining whose origins lay in political developments It is therefore plausible that during the 20th century, circumstances occurred that countered a trend inherent to capitalism. What circumstances might these be? … a set of institutional devices such as labour laws, trade unions and collective bargaining whose origins lay in political developments not strictly governed by economic factors. Keynes … his forecasts of growth were not wrong, but his predictions about shorter working hours were. Over eighty years now separate us from all these attempts to predict the future. How can we assess them according to the lived experience of almost a century?