Abstract
In July of 2016, a gunman opened fire on an otherwise peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas, targeting uniformed police officers. The suspect was eventually killed, not by police gunfire, but by a bomb-wielding robot. In orthodox Marxism, automation has represented both a threat to the employment and livelihood of the worker, and the potential to free human beings from drudgery. What does it mean now that lethal robots are in the arsenal of what the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser called “the Repressive State Apparatus”? We argue, drawing on the respective ideas of Althusser and Erich Fromm, that a dialectical resistance to this development may require humanized robots, robots imparted with the best aspects of humanity, those aspects we ourselves seem unable to embrace sufficiently.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Althusser, Louis. 2001a. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, ed. Fredric Jameson. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Althusser, Louis. 2001b. Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, ed. Fredric Jameson. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Althusser, Louis. 2011. Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, ed. Gregory Elliott. New York: Verso.
Althusser, Louis. 2014. On the Reproduction of Capitalism. Trans. G.M. Goshgarian. New York: Verso.
Asimov, Isaac. 1950. Runaround. Genius.com. http://genius.com/Isaac-asimov-runaround-annotated.
Chockshi, Niraj. 2016. Slain Supsect is Identified as Micah Johnson. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/live/news-dallas-shooting-protest/hfo-suspect-identified/.
Davis, Todd L. and Scott Friedman. 2016. Lone Gunman Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Sources. NBCDFW.com. http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Police-Identify-Gunman-in-Dallas-Protest-Shootings-386015971.html.
Editorial Board. 2016. When Police Use Lethal Robots. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/opinion/when-police-use-lethal-robots.html.
Ford, Martin. 2015. Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. New York: Basic Books.
Fromm, Erich. 1955. The Sane Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Fromm, Erich. 1968. The Revolution of Hope: Towards a Humanized Technology. New York: Bantam Books.
Fromm, Erich. 1971. The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil. New York: Harper & Row.
Fromm, Erich. 1990. Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics. New York: Holt.
Fromm, Erich. 1994. Escape From Freedom. New York: Holt.
Fromm, Erich. 2006. The Art of Loving. New York: Harper Perennial.
Fromm, Erich. 2010. Humanist Socialism. On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying ‘No’ to Power. New York: Harper Perennial.
Lindsay, Greg. 2011. The DIY Terminator: Private Robot Armies And The Algorithm-Run Future Of War. Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/1769673/diy-terminator-private-robot-armies-and-algorithm-run-future-war.
Mason, Paul. 2015. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Marx, Karl. 1963. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl. 1970. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, ed. Maurice Dobb. New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl. 1988. Economics and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.
Marx, Karl. 1991. Capital, vol. Three. London: Penguin Books.
Marx, Karl. 1998. The German Ideology. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Book.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1985. The Communist Manifesto, ed. A.J.P. Taylor. London: Penguin Books.
Sculos, Bryant William. 2015. Automaton, Robots, and Capitalism in a Very Wrong Twenty-First Century: A Review Essay on Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie. In Class, Race and Corporate Power, vol. 3, no. 1. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=classracecorporatepower.
Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. 2015. Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. New York: Verso Books.
Volz, Dustin and Isma’il Kushkush. 2016. Use of Dallas ‘Bomb Robot’ to Kill Revives Police Militarization Issue. Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-robot-idUSKCN0ZO2KR.
Weber, Max. 1946. Politics as a Vocation. From Max Weber, ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walsh, S.N., Sculos, B.W. (2018). Repressive Robots and the Radical Possibilities of Emancipated Automation. In: Kiggins, R. (eds) The Political Economy of Robots. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51466-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51466-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51465-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51466-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)