Can technical progress make us free? On the idea of freedom from labour

Jan Wasserziehr

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper explores the idea that technical progress could free humanity from necessity and labour. Taking inspiration from a remark in Arendt's Human Condition, I consider a tension immanent to that idea: the possibility that its realisation requires social transformations that culminate in a world incommensurable with our own and to which our concepts of freedom no longer apply. Drawing on resources from social theory, the philosophy of technology and critical theory, I defend this incommensurability thesis in two steps. I argue, first, that technical progress entails a social dynamic which leads to continuous upward shifts in the level of automation required to free people from work, plausibly extending beyond the sphere of production; second, that this leads the idea of freedom from labour ad absurdum: the widespread automation of human life would render modern concepts of freedom unintelligible.

Keywords: technical progress; technology; freedom; freedom from labour; automation; artificial intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2026-07-27
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Published in European Journal of Political Theory, 27, July, 2026. ISSN: 1474-8851

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