Just last month, IBM’s chief executive warned that AI will automate white collar work, despite the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there is little evidence to support the claim that technology is accelerating job loss. Labor productivity, which should be skyrocketing if machines really were rapidly replacing workers, has been exemplary for below-average growth. This mismatch between automation’s hype and its reality has a history.

In reality, automation has always been more ideology than technology. Coined in the 1940s, the idea of automation was first articulated by managers. Its purpose was to provide rhetorical cover for union busting by depicting human labor as technologically obsolete, even as workers continued to toil under degraded conditions. In the not-too-distant past, some on the Left have called for an automated and workless society, while others have warned of impending doom for working people at risk of replacement by machines.

What unites techno-optimists and dystopians about automation is that both look at the workplace from the perspective of management. From the corner office they equate increases to productivity — made possible by technologies that speed up and intensify the pace and quality of work — with laborsaving technology. But if the history of automation discourse is any indication, the Left has not benefitted from uncritically embracing the notion of automation to understand the investment and managerial decisions of capitalists. A clear-eyed look at the history of the term reveals that behind its rhetorical justifications, automation is simply another way of explaining away the control that capitalists have over the conditions and compensation of workers.