The society of the future is also a society of material wealth, which continues to grow. This idea is encountered in virtually all of Marx’s works. I shall cite just one example as proof. In the third volume of Theories of Surplus Value, he describes the two alternatives for increasing “disposable time”. One alternative would be to produce greater wealth in half the current average labour time. The other would be to reduce the labour time by half in such a way as to direct the remaining half towards the satisfaction of “necessary needs” as they are at present. Marx considers it a theoretical mistake, a lack of clarity, to confuse these two alternatives. He explicitly declares himself to be in favour of the first of them.
The base for the future development of production will be the extraordinary growth in the proportion of fixed capital, which is quite possible because the increase in production will be independent of the valorisation of capital. The increase in the proportion of fixed capital to levels that are impossible under capitalism is the guarantee that material production will require ever less living labour. This is the only way to reduce labour time uninterruptedly whilst maintaining a constant increase in production. This does not of course mean that dead labour will dominate living labour (because the capital relation no longer exists); on the contrary, living labour will prevail over dead.
Agnes Heller, The Theory of Need in Marx, Chapter 4
The “society of associated producers” appears in this quotation as a society in which labour is carried out by machines, in which “fixed capital” therefore completely predominates and in which — at least in the process of material production — labour power is employed only “as watchman and regulator”. To use a modern expression, Marx presupposes complete automation. In this way a specific type of labour acquires an extraordinary importance, namely, scientific labour, or (as Marx calls it) “labour in general”. Scientific labour is not, however, immediately productive labour, but the activity of the general intellect: planning, projection and so forth. This cannot however be measured in labour time, since the concept of “socially necessary labour time” is not applicable. In short, material wealth is still supplied by production, but no longer by productive labour in the conventional sense of the term. This determines the hegemony of intellectual labour over so-called “physical” labour.
Agnes Heller, The Theory of Need in Marx, Chapter 4
The material wealth which comes about through production is not and cannot be anything but a condition of the general wealth of society. The true wealth of society is realised through the free self-activity of social individuals and through their qualitatively many-sided system of needs. The true wealth of man and society consists not in labour time but in free time. For this very reason the wealth of the society of associated producers cannot be measured by labour time but only by free time. I shall here refer not to the well known passages in the Grundrisse, but to the third volume of Theories of Surplus Value:
“Labour time, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity, which - unlike labour - is not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one’s inclination.”
Agnes Heller, The Theory of Need in Marx, Chapter 4
What are the organisational perspectives of life in a society which authentically "reorganises production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers"? Work would more and more be reduced as an exterior necessity through the automation of production and the socialisation of vital goods, which would finally give complete liberty to the individual. Thus liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people, humankind will exude a new surplus value, incalculable in money because it would be impossible to reduce it to the measure of waged work. The guarantee of the liberty of each and of all is in the value of the game, of life freely constructed. The exercise of this ludic recreation is the framework of the only guaranteed equality with non-exploitation of man by man. The liberation of the game, its creative autonomy, supersedes the ancient division between imposed work and passive leisure.
Situationist Manifesto, Internationale Situationniste #4, https://libcom.org/article/situationist-manifesto
What would be the principle characteristics of the new culture and how would it compare with ancient art? Against the spectacle, the realised situationist culture introduces total participation.
Against preserved art, it is the organisation of the directly lived moment.
Against particularised art, it will be a global practice with a bearing, each moment, on all the usable elements. Naturally this would tend to collective production which would be without doubt anonymous (at least to the extent where the works are no longer stocked as commodities, this culture will not be dominated by the need to leave traces.) The minimum proposals of these experiences will be a revolution in behaviour and a dynamic unitary urbanism capable of extension to the entire planet, and of being further extensible to all habitable planets.
Against unilateral art, situationist culture will be an art of dialogue, an art of interaction. Today artists - with all culture visible - have become entirely separated from society, just as they are separated from each other by competition. But faced with this impasse of capitalism, art has remained essentially unilateral in response. This enclosed era of primitivism must be superseded by complete communication.
At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a producer-consumer of total culture creation, which will help the rapid dissolution of the linear criteria of novelty. Everyone will be a situationist so to speak, with a multidimensional inflation of tendencies, experiences, or radically different "schools" - not successively, but simultaneously.
We will inaugurate what will historically be the last of the crafts. The role of amateur-professional situationist - of anti-specialist - is again a specialisation up to the point of economic and mental abundance, when everyone becomes an "artist," in the sense that the artists have not attained the construction of their own life. However, the last craft of history is so close to the society without a permanent division of labour, that when it appeared amongst the S.I., its status as a craft was generally denied.
Situationist Manifesto, Internationale Situationniste #4, https://libcom.org/article/situationist-manifesto
Defining the new poverty also entails defining the new wealth. To the image propagated by the dominant society - according to which it has evolved (both on its own and in response to acceptable reformist pressure) from an economy of profit to an economy of needs - must be counterposed an economy of desires, which could be defined as: technological society plus the imagination of what could be done with it. The economy of needs is falsified in terms of habit. Habit is the natural process by which fulfilled desire is degraded into need and is confirmed, objectified and universally recognized as need. The present economy is directly geared to the fabrication of habits, and manipulates people by forcing them to repress their desires.
Situationist International, The Bad Days will End, Internationale Situationniste #7, https://libcom.org/article/bad-days-will-end-0
The next form of society will not be based on industrial production. It will be a society of realized art.
Situationist International, The Bad Days will End, Internationale Situationniste #7, https://libcom.org/article/bad-days-will-end-0
The present era can test innumerable innovations, but it is incapable of putting them to good use because it is chained to the fundamental conservation of an old order. Over and over, in all our innovating formulations, we must stress the need for a revolutionary transformation of society.
Now, The SI, Internationale Situationniste #9, https://libcom.org/article/now-si
After thousands of years of torturous development, the countries of the Western world (and potentially all countries) are confronted by the possibility of a materially abundant, almost workless era in which most of the means of life can be provided by machines. As we shall see, a new technology has developed that could largely replace the realm of necessity by the realm of freedom.
Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Black Rose Books 1986, p.115
In fact, the real issue we face today is not whether this new technology can provide us with the means of life in a toil-less society, but whether it can help to humanize society, whether it can contribute to the creation of entirely new relationships between man and man. The demand for a guaranteed annual income is still anchored in the quantitative promise of technology — in the possibility of satisfying material needs without toil. This quantitative approach is already lagging behind technological developments that carry a new qualitative promise — the promise of decentralized, communitarian lifestyles, or what I prefer to call ecological forms of human association. *
* An exclusively quantitative approach to the new technology, I may add, is not only economically archaic, but morally regressive. This approach partakes of the old principle of justice, as distinguished from the new principle of freedom. Historically, justice is derived from the world of material necessity and toil; it implies relatively scarce resources which are apportioned by a moral principle which is either "just" or "unjust." Justice, even "equal" justice, is a concept of limitation, involving the denial of goods and the sacrifice of time and energy to production. Once we transcend the concept of justice — indeed, once we pass from the quantitative to the qualitative potentialities of modern technology — we enter the unexplored domain of freedom, based on spontaneous organization and full access to the means of life.
I am asking a question that is quite different from what is ordinarily posed with respect to modern technology. Is this technology staking out a new dimension in human freedom, in the liberation of man? Can it not only liberate man from want and work, but also lead him to a free, harmonious, balanced human community — an ecocommunity that would promote the unrestricted development of his potentialities? Finally, can it carry man beyond the realm of freedom into the realm of life and desire?
Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Black Rose Books 1986, p.116-117
Let me try to answer these questions by pointing to a new feature of modern technology. For the first time in history, technology has reached an open end. The potential for technological development, for providing machines as substitutes for labor is virtually unlimited. Technology has finally passed from the realm of invention to that of design — in other words, from fortuitous discoveries to systematic innovations.
Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Black Rose Books 1986, p.117