Aesthetic Labor And Identity Production

The invention and popularizing of Artificial Intelligence(AI)will create a new social condition for human beings,in which material productivity will rise to an unprecedented height.However,it will still be a human society,AI will not become a subject with independent consciousness.But,new condition will generate new theoretical questions after all.When AI gradually substitute human laborer,we have to think about whether there will still be workings left for human beings? If so,what form will labor become? Is there any change that new labor will make to the social form and human liberty?To have a clearer understanding on the philosophical implication of “labor”,this paper will interpret it in contrast to “practice”.In Aristotelian point of view,practice is an activity which aim at the good of activity itself;labor,on the other hand,is an activity for the sake of another being.But,when the object of labor is seen as the work which is the actualized subject itself,Aristotle instead thinks it is the same as practice in the sense that it too points to the good of subject.This leaves a self-contradiction in the labor and practice theory of Aristotle.In order to avoid this contradiction,Kant shifts the object of interpretation from activity itself to the principle behind the activity.Kant attempts to purify practice by purifying principles,and separate practice from labor by the autonomy and heteronomy of the principle.However,when Kant develops Aristotelian practice to the extreme,a new problem emerges: an adverbial principle is not enough to constitute a complete activity,pure practice is not self-sufficient.Hegel in turn develops Aristotelian labor theory.To Hegel,the movement of subject has to experience the alienation to object,and the return of the object to the subject.In this process,labor is the objectified alienation.Labor seems to be for the good of object outside,in fact,it aims at the good of the subject.Therefore,its ultimate goal is the well-being of the subject itself,so called in-itself and for-itself.On the synthesis of the previous theories,this paper tries to make a new definition of practice and labor,on the basis of innate structure of every activity: practice is the activity which aims at the good of the adverb,while labor is the activity which end to the good of the object.Both adverb and object are the indispensable elements of every activity,practice and labor,in this sense,are different only in the way we see it.And the object of labor is not necessarily material.On the standard of value,this paper divides the end of labor into three categories: the existence value,the political value,and the aesthetic value.On the foundation of the new definition of labor,we will discover that labor will not be substituted by AI,human labor will still exist.Although its objects will not be material productions anymore.In the envision of Karl Marx,the use of automatic machine system will squeeze the necessary labor time to an extremely low degree.This creates an opportunity to the comprehensively free development of human beings.However,freedom will not come automatically,laborers have to make the Communist Revolution in order to change their mindset,and overthrow the dominance of capitalists.Only after that,can the communist society be realized.If we skip the process of the Communist Revolution,laisser faire the capitalism,then AI will not bring freedom to the human labor in the future,on the contrary,capitalists will have a stronger dominance over the masses.In this case,laborers will have to cater to the capitalists in order to acquire an identity enough for living.We name the labor in Communist society “aesthetic labor”,and the one in capitalistic society “identity production”.Different labors represent different future.