Nothing About This Is Inevitable: Gavin Mueller on Automation, AI, and a Different Future
Notions of ProgressShow Notes
This episode closes out a three-part conversation with Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam), author of Breaking Things at Work. In Part 2, Mueller traced Marx's own ambivalence toward machinery through the split between orthodox and heterodox Marxism, Frederick Taylor's theory of workplace control, the Technocracy Movement, and Norbert Wiener's early warnings to organized labor about automation. In this final part, Mueller brings that history into the present. The conversation moves from Shoshana Zuboff's early sociological research inside computerized factories to her later, better-known work on surveillance capitalism, and from there into Mueller's own reading of artificial intelligence: the argument that AI systems depend on training data gathered without most people's consent, the concept of cognitive offloading, and the rapidly growing, cross-partisan resistance movement against AI data centers. Mueller closes with what he calls Luddism's real legacy — not a rejection of the future, but the insistence that a different one is still possible.
About Our GuestGavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin, and sits on the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of two books. Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021) — the book at the center of this three-part conversation — argues that machine-breaking has functioned throughout history as a rational form of labor politics rather than an irrational reflex against progress. Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019) examines how piracy operates from within the media industries it disrupts, rather than simply against them.
Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Introduction 02:21 Shoshana Zuboff and Computerized Labor 05:18 AI and the Automation of Work 07:50 Training Data Without Consent 09:54 Cognitive Offloading and Social Degradation 14:30 Resistance and Data Center Opposition 18:03 The Good Life and Luddism's Legacy 23:01 Next Time on Notions of Progress Key Concepts & Terms– Surveillance Capitalism — Zuboff's term for an economic model built on extracting human behavioral data and converting it into predictive products sold in new markets. – Cognitive Offloading — Mueller's term for the practice of handing routine thinking over to an AI tool, with the risk that independent judgment weakens from disuse. – Luddism — in Mueller's argument, drawing on historian Eric Hobsbawm, a rational labor tradition of resisting how new machinery gets deployed against workers, rather than a blanket rejection of technology itself.
Fascinating Historical InsightsBefore Surveillance Capitalism, There Was the Factory FloorLong before she became known for her work on surveillance capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff was a sociologist studying early computerized factories — workplaces where embodied labor was already being translated into displays, buzzers, and lights, a shift Mueller connects back to the same managerial goals Taylor pursued decades earlier. A Debate About ConsentMueller points to the Anthropic author settlement as a concrete instance of the training-data question he raises: a case in which an AI company's use of copyrighted material became the subject of a formal legal resolution, rather than remaining an abstract argument about data ethics. A Resistance Movement That Crosses Party LinesMueller describes local opposition to AI data centers — driven by concerns over electricity and water use — as a movement that has drawn support across the political spectrum, making it, in his account, one of the more unusual coalitions to form around technology policy in recent memory. The Word “Luddite” Doesn't Mean What Most People ThinkAs established across this three-part con
More from Notions of Progress
In this third and final part of the conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts brings the argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression into the present. He begins with the view that the system works as long as decisions are good, which he finds unconvincing: a system that produces for profit, he argues, delivers both vitality and grotesque inequality, and cannot continue as it is. He describes a generation now worse off than its parents and presents the postwar golden age as the exception, a period when profitability was high enough for capitalism to make concessions. Turning to the current cycle, Roberts considers whether the long depression that followed 2008 may be ending, whether AI could lift profitability for a time, and why he expects the law of profitability to reassert itself, possibly in the 2030s or later. He answers economist Robert J. Gordon on stagnation and Thomas Piketty on taxing billionaires, and closes on three futures: a renewed expansion, a longer stagnation, or, if working people do not change the system, fascist and military regimes and what he calls barbarism, drawing on the fall of Rome. About Our Guest Michael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for more than thirty years before retiring. He is the author of The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009) and The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; joint editor of The World in Crisis (2018); author of Marx 200: His Economics (2018) and Engels 200: His Economics (2020); and, with Guglielmo Carchedi, Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His next book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s, is expected in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps 00:00 Capitalism Fails People 01:17 Welcome and Recap 01:37 Financialization and Crisis Myths 03:02 How Capitalism Works 04:06 A Generation Worse Off 06:12 Golden Age Was Exception 08:19 Inflation and Profitability Shift 10:19 Another Expansion or New Slump 12:49 Who Benefits From Profits 13:49 Working Class Alternative 16:04 Reaction and Fascism Risk 17:01 Three Future Scenarios 21:06 Rome and Barbarism Warning 23:34 Closing Thanks and Wrap
In this second of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts takes the central claim from Part One — that the 2008 crash opened a long depression — back to the two historical cases on which his 2016 book The Long Depression rests. He begins with the 1870s, answering the Austrian-school argument that no depression took place and a rival monetary explanation tied to the gold standard; his reply draws on the data for Britain, the hegemonic economy of the period. He then sets out the mechanism he takes from the third volume of Marx’s Capital: capitalists invest only when it is profitable, and competition drives them to invest ever more in machinery relative to labor, which Roberts argues pulls the rate of profit down over time, held back for a while by counteracting tendencies. The same pattern, on his account, ran beneath the stock-market boom of the late 1920s and the slump of the 1930s. The episode closes on the rival crisis theories Roberts contests — policy error, unregulated finance, underconsumption, and overproduction — and on his case for profitability as the driver of booms and slumps alike. About Our GuestMichael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 30 years before retiring. He is the author of several books: The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009); The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; World in Crisis (joint editor, 2018); Marx 200: His Economics (2018); and Engels 200: His Economics (2020). With Guglielmo Carchedi, he co-authored Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His new book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond, is forthcoming in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Profit Drives Capitalism 01:41 Setting Up Three Crises 02:38 1873 Depression Debates 05:22 Profitability Causes Slumps 07:22 Marx’s Law Explained 09:56 Organic Composition Basics 13:13 Counteracting Tendencies 15:07 Profit Waves Through History 18:32 From 1929 to War Economy 23:58 Competing Crisis Theories 28:06 Why Profit Matters Most
In this first of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts joins Notions of Progress to lay out the central argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression: that the 2008 financial crash was not an ordinary recession, but the opening of a longer structural depression driven by capitalism’s own tendency toward falling profitability. Before getting there, Roberts traces his own path — from a Marxist conversion as a student to a three-decade career as an economist inside the City of London, a combination he treats as complementary rather than contradictory. He then lays out a materialist conception of history underlying his economics: social change driven by who owns and controls production, not by ideas or political leadership taken on their own. Capitalism, on his account, is real progress — rising productivity, rising living standards — and, at the same time, structurally exploitative and radically unequal. The episode closes on the specific technical definition of a “depression” that Parts Two and Three will test against the historical record: not simply a downturn, but one whose recovery never returns to the prior trend line. About Our GuestMichael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 30 years before retiring. He is the author of several books: The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009); The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; World in Crisis (joint editor, 2018); Marx 200: His Economics (2018); and Engels 200: His Economics (2020). With Guglielmo Carchedi, he co-authored Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His new book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond, is forthcoming in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Cold Open: The Contradictions of Capital 01:03 Welcome & Introduction 03:38 Michael’s Background 08:38 A Marxist in the City of London 11:03 The Nature of Capitalism 16:25 Inequality & Systemic Change 20:35 The Long Depression Thesis 28:31 Next Time: Historical Parallels
In Episode 17, Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam) traced the Luddites back to the guild economy of England's Midlands. In this second installment of a three-part conversation, Mueller follows that struggle into the twentieth century: Karl Marx's own ambivalence toward machinery, and the split between Karl Kautsky's “orthodox” Marxism — which treated capitalist technology as a scientifically inevitable path to socialism — and the workers' movements that resisted that framing directly on the shop floor. Mueller traces Frederick Winslow Taylor's “scientific management” as, above all, a theory of control rather than efficiency; the short-lived but influential Technocracy Movement's vision of automation as an unstoppable social force; and mathematician Norbert Wiener's cybernetics, including his largely unheeded 1949 letter warning UAW president Walter Reuther that automation posed a genuine threat to organized labor. The episode closes on how that warning intersected with civil rights-era debates about automation's disproportionate impact on Black workers. As with the whole series, the through-line is not a settled verdict on technology and progress, but the recurring argument over whether machines serve human ends or reshape them.
They've been remembered as machine-smashers who tried to stop the future with a hammer — but historian Eric Hobsbawm called what they were doing “collective bargaining by riot.” In this episode, Prof. Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam), author of Breaking Things at Work, walks through who the Luddites actually were: skilled textile workers in England's Midlands, organized under the mythical banner of King Ludd, fighting to preserve their wages, their working conditions, and the quality of their craft against machines introduced without negotiation. Mueller makes the case that this was a rational response to an existential threat, not an irrational rejection of progress — a reading that places the Luddites' resistance inside the history of the idea of progress rather than outside it. This episode is the first of a three-part conversation with Mueller drawn from a single recorded interview. Episode 18 turns to Marx and the theorists who followed him; Episode 19 carries the argument through to Shoshana Zuboff and today's debates about artificial intelligence. About Our GuestGavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. He is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin and a member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021), the book at the center of this episode, and Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019). Show Notes & Timestamps- Introduction — 0:13 - Guest Introduction: Gavin Mueller — 1:13 - About the Book: Breaking Things at Work — 1:50 - Why the Luddites? — 8:44 - The Luddite Movement — 11:36 - Guilds vs. Unions — 21:36 - Hobsbawm & Rehabilitating the Luddites — 25:49 - Outro & What's Next — 32:27