Free labor and active leisure in the era of artificial intelligence
2025-09-23
Leisure is free time beyond necessary labor. Leisure is an autonomous behavior in free time. Livelihood labor, due to its external purpose, occupational division of labor, and process oriented nature, causes workers to exhibit a natural state of fatigue, and restorative rest has become an urgent need for workers to meet their living needs. Although "restorative rest" attempts to incorporate "leisure" into the normal life of workers, this balanced compensation mechanism is more classified as a negative leisure culture. Moreover, the fatigue reinforced by the "accelerationism" in the era of artificial intelligence has led to passive leisure easily evolving into consumerism and hedonism, which cannot fundamentally change the shortcomings of livelihood labor. But we should also recognize that the era of artificial intelligence has provided the possibility to transform the concept of free labor for making a living. The digitization of information has promoted unified occupational division of labor, and programmatic and holistic operations have replaced the operation of a single process. The application of artificial intelligence technology has shared the negative impact of livelihood labor fatigue mechanisms for humans, bringing us a lot of free time. Workers who break free from the limitations of livelihood labor are no longer restricted by passive leisure, but can practice free labor in a complementary manner with artificial intelligence machines that act as agents for necessary labor. People's free time is no longer used for passive leisure, but for active leisure that practices free activities. Active leisure has become a pioneer of free labor in updating ways of making a living. Marx affirmed the anthropological and natural necessity of labor. In his view, labor is a purposeful activity that creates use value, occupies natural objects for human needs, is the general condition for material transformation between humans and nature, and is the eternal natural condition for human life. Labor thus becomes necessary labor. The surplus value of necessary labor production corresponds to the surplus free time of labor time, thus establishing the foundation of leisure. The constant trend of capital is to create disposable time on the one hand, and to turn this disposable time into surplus labor on the other hand, but it includes at least a rest period. The principle of division of labor revealed by Smith presents as increasingly single processes to maintain high production efficiency, so both physical and mental labor tend to simplify operations, leading to physical and mental fatigue. Rest is a functional link that restores the ability to work and maintains compensation and balance in the labor process. Intermittent sitting, work exercises, shift breaks, and sleep are direct forms of rest. In modern urban layouts centered around production enterprises, community residences, theaters, parks, etc. are extended spaces for rest. These consumer activity spaces have always been necessary resting places for labor. The rich and colorful leisure culture that arises from this does not change its nature of rest, which is subordinate to necessary labor. Therefore, leisure based on rest is passive leisure. The external purpose of necessary labor inevitably has passivity and instrumentality. Under the competition and profit system of Western capitalism, the instrumental nature of labor tends towards a single and repetitive tool effectiveness, which is internalized as the physical and mental response patterns of workers, reversing the complete Gestalt natural behavior of the labor subject and causing fatigue and weariness. The passive leisure that bears alienated labor is alienated: "As long as the physical coercion or other coercion stops, people will escape from labor as they escape from pestis... As a result, people (workers) only feel free when they use their animal functions - eating, drinking, sexual behavior, at most living, decorating, etc., but when they use human functions, they feel that they are just animals. Animal things become human things, while human things become animal things... eating, drinking, sexual behavior, etc., of course, are also real human functions. However, if these functions are separated from other human activities and become the last and only ultimate goal, then, In this abstraction, they are the functions of animals." Marx's concept of free labor and active leisure Marx believed that 'time is actually the active existence of human beings, it is not only the scale of human life, but also the space for human development'. As a human trait, labor extends into infinite time and space: "By creating the world of objects through practice, transforming the inorganic realm, humans prove themselves to be conscious beings... Animal production is one-sided, while human production is comprehensive; animals only produce under the support of direct physical needs, and humans even produce without being affected by physical needs, and only truly produce without being affected by these needs; animals only produce themselves, while humans reproduce the entire natural world; animal products directly belong to their bodies, while humans are free to face their own products. Animals are only built according to the scale and needs of the species they belong to, while humans know how to produce according to the scale of any species, and Understand to apply the inner scale to objects everywhere; Therefore, humans are also constructed according to the laws of beauty. ”The labor of human characteristics is free labor that transcends animal like survival. Free labor is based on necessary labor but transcends it: "The kingdom of freedom only begins where the labor required by necessity and external purposes terminates; therefore, according to the nature of things, it exists on the other side of the real material production field... On the other side of this kingdom of necessity, the true kingdom of freedom begins with the exertion of human abilities as the purpose itself. However, this kingdom of freedom can only prosper on the basis of the kingdom of necessity. The shortening of the working day is the fundamental condition." Although the development of artificial intelligence technology has provided a prerequisite for shortening working hours, it requires the guidance of free labor. Free labor goes beyond necessary labor and includes passive leisure that goes beyond dependent necessary labor, pointing to a positive leisure that corresponds to free labor. Active leisure is also based on free time, but its focus is not on maintaining the reproduction of necessary labor, but on the "exertion of human abilities as an end in itself", that is, free labor. The core of Marx's ideal society is a free personality based on the comprehensive development of individuals and their shared social production capacity becoming their social wealth. The ideal of comprehensive human development includes three basic meanings, which refer to the ability of individuals to fully unleash and realize their natural and cultural potential; The way of human activity transcends the one sidedness of modern division of labor and achieves a complete and comprehensive form; At the same time, it is required that individuals have as rich social relationships as possible in their survival activities. Behaviors that fit these three connotations belong to active leisure. All non livelihood activities, from hobbies and hobbies to self-directed learning of new skills, to volunteer groups, are active leisure activities that expand the use of free time. There is a profound difference between a positive leisure and a hedonistic outlook on life. Although individuals with "comprehensive development" share a self-cultivation culture of negative leisure, they are not hedonistic consumers who dislike labor, but rather free laborers who no longer succumb to mandatory division of labor or are bound to a single profession for life. Free laborers are essentially active free agents based on individual endowments. The personalized form of labor inherently contains diversity in labor forms, fundamentally transforming the monotonous and repetitive form of labor, and helping people get rid of negative leisure. Negative leisure alleviates single necessary labor, manifested by constantly changing behavior patterns and attention objects. The fundamental change towards a single division of labor points towards individual diversified and free labor. Marx and Engels, based on the activity patterns of their time, envisioned free labor as the full realization of individual potential through morning hunting (but not professional hunters), afternoon fishing (but not professional fishermen), and evening philosophical thinking (but not professional philosophers). The premise of individual freedom is not only the accumulated free time of surplus labor, but also the necessary labor that requires a change in the form of division of labor, in order to give workers the freedom of subjectivity. The transformation from passive leisure to active leisure in modern economy is based on a modern historical view that constantly transcends the status quo, forming accelerationism with economic globalization and the rapid reduction of socially necessary labor time as the central axis, and radiating from "technology production" to social interaction and daily life, leading to fast-paced modern life. Passive leisure has thus surpassed the rest between work hours and become an essential way of adjustment in daily life. Accelerationism reinforces the interdependent structures of production-oriented and consumerism. Negative leisure has become the biggest carrier of consumerism. With the rapid replacement of programmed labor by artificial intelligence technology, humans are gradually reducing labor, leading to a decline in the purpose and meaning of labor. This gave rise to the nihilism of deep spiritual crisis, namely the meaningless outlook on life. What we need to be wary of is that negative leisure has become a lifestyle for some people, who alleviate the crisis of the inability to release negative leisure energy with a leisure intensity that fills time and space. Fundamentally speaking, the cultural surge of negative leisure beyond its resting function is a manifestation of civilization development driven by surplus social productivity. Tourism has stepped out of the narrow space of professional labor and broadened the horizons of life. Working women have transcended rest and become artistic in the free expression of square dancing. Negative leisure culture is developing into a way of life that enhances material civilization and refreshes spiritual civilization. But the problem is that using various negative leisure activities to counter accelerationism will only make people lose themselves in the surface of leisure and gradually drift away from the true meaning of leisure. The production under accelerationism has strengthened the defects of necessary labor, leading to the deformity of negative leisure as its balance compensation mechanism. This not only refers to the vulgarization of aestheticism in expensive art and cosmetic surgery, but also manifests as the opposition between labor time and leisure time. Labor time is abstract, rational, and uniform, making it tedious and tedious; Leisure time is manifested as emotional and diverse in speed, making it comfortable and stimulating. They reflect a series of divisions in modern human emotions, rationality, body mind, public life, and private life. Therefore, it is necessary to seek free labor that is independent of necessary labor, in order to form a behavioral coordinate that gathers free time and transform negative leisure into positive leisure. Nowadays, the rapidly developing artificial intelligence is constantly achieving the integration and replacement of division of labor. As Canadian scholar McLuhan wrote, "When electronic technology begins to take effect, the extremely complex and endless activities of industry and society quickly take on a unified posture. Only in such a situation can the scale of wealth, as Marx envisioned, be no longer labor time, but time that can be freely controlled. The comprehensive development of human beings is the fundamental purpose of individuals and humanity in the process of time history. This is also the meaning of free time and leisure returning to the core. It means that production aimed at compulsory division of labor, exchange, and possession of wealth will no longer dominate social time, but will be replaced by individual choices based on natural differences and diverse activity scales of time. Marx's view of free time is a dual critique of both production and consumerism. On the one hand, it liberates free time from production and makes it a historical prerequisite for the comprehensive development of human beings; On the other hand, in response to the consumerism worldview, free time is directly reflected as a form of free labor for individuals modeled after science and art. This is no longer a distant vision. Taking the theory of the end of modern art as an example, the contemporary art of "everyone is an artist" has emerged in the 20th century
Edit:Luo yu Responsible editor:Zhou shu
Source:GMW.cn
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