Automation The transformation of variable capital into constant capital, or alternatively, the transformation of living labour into machinery. Capitalist competition drives firms to implement higher-efficiency technologies so as to capture additional surplus value, driving technological development. According to the labour theory of value, the implementation of increasing levels of machinery intensifies the labour of workers or creates pressure to elongate the working day, as value is ultimately derived from human labour. Marx argues that this presents a paradoxical situation: powerful technologies are introduced that could reduce the labour-time necessary for workers, but become “the most unfailing means for turning the whole lifetime of the worker and his family into labour-time at capital’s disposal.”
Mine Flows
By Max Symuleski
"Perception as a deprivation of action and reaction brings to the mind the desolate, but exquisite, surface structures of the empty 'box' or 'lattice'"
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Speculations on Making (Inverted) Mountains
By Natalie P. Koerner
"I looked at the mounds of excavated rock, the plateaus of even, grey, scattered rock, the endless views across huge water basins that resemble marshlands or the site of ebb, of pre-tsunami, pre-epic-arrival. Because of the superhuman, supra -human scale, I thought of Gods and the mountainous architectures that have been built for them."
