超越“劳动终结论”:“替代”结果还是“互补”过程?——关于技术与劳动的理论辨析

Beyond the“End of Work”:Accepting Displacement as the Result or Shaping Complementarities in the Process——A Comparative Review of Four Major Theories on Technology and Labor

技术终结劳动的预言在历史上反复出现。本文从不同的技术观和劳动观出发,选择了四类典型的理论视角——主流与创新经济学、马克思主义、技术社会学以及产业关系学,并指出这些理论对技术的目的和结果、劳动的意义和作用存在差异化的假设,由此推导出相应的对策方案。本文发现,学术争辩早已超越"劳动终结论",因其既不符合历史,更规避了现实的社会问题。四种理论既激烈争辩,也相互渗透,并从各自角度提出技术与劳动并非简单的替代关系;技术并非单方面地影响劳动,劳动也作用于技术,二者呈现的是互动关系。本文的分析对技术与劳动研究的主要启示是,应从技术的结果回归过程,从劳动的数量拓展到质量,继而从当下流行的终结论转向探讨如何在具体社会政治情境下塑造"互补"的技术与劳动。

The predictions that technologies would replace or even end work have repeatedly appeared in history.This study reviews four typical theoretical perspectives on technology and labor—mainstream and innovation economics,Marxism,technology sociology,and industrial relations.This article points out that these theories have different assumptions on the purposes and results of technology as well as the meanings and roles of labor.Corresponding countermeasures are drawn on this base.This study argues that the latest academic research has gone beyond the popular"end of work"predictions as the latter did not explain the reality but only evaded real social problems.The four theories are fiercely contested and infiltrating each other,and they propose from their respective perspectives that technology and labor are not a in a simple substitute relationship;the technology does not unilaterally affect the labor,instead,the labor also acts on technology,and the two present an interactive relationship.The main enlightenment of the analysis of this article for the research on technology and labor is that the new research should shift focus from the result of technologies to the process of it,from the quantity of work to the quality of it,and therefore shift from the popular"end of work"predictions to the discussion on how to shape the complementarities of the technology and labor in the specific social and political context.