It is a signal for the unfolding of a new world with the advent of scientific technological revolution. It is a world where human labour is losing its classical definition given by Karl Marx. The commodity is losing its labour content, and value creation is losing its prime importance. There is lesser value creation which is based on labour spent on creating something from which is called raw material and the instruments of labour. Instruments of labour in our hands are generally things evolved during industrial revolution.

However, there is a visible sign of decline in the share of labour in the production process itself. It has being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence, which are gaining supremacy now. That makes it simply different from industrial revolution, and yet future is replete with possibilities that point towards a world dominated by computer, which has a monitor, and electronics. Dialectics rules both, the software and the hardware. It is also within both of them. This is the duality also of means of production emerging as central contradiction, where involved are the modern as well as post modern means of not only production but also information.

The basic instrument, called computer, that brought the social revolution simmering since last several decades through software, signifies the role of its language, the basic means of communication and also emerging as a source that influences the human consciousness. The residual human act that is involved in the process of production, that is giving command through keyboard which is also slowly losing its existence. Here ends also the machine as well as tool, and process starts towards being software alone.

Slowly the shift comes to dissolution of keyboard, marking the shift towards machine to non-machine itself. It is moving towards an age where machine moves to an era of non-machine. It is bio-electronic system that comes to define the role of our body. Information emerges as a mode of evolution itself, taking prime part in the production process. Becoming the source of production, it rules the material productive power. Thus as the mode of production itself changes in an unprecedented way, information enters production process with its new role, adding a new dimension of social development.

As it moves towards dissolution of machine itself, in a speed that marks the historical transformation, it upsets the basic principles of share of labour in the production process. This situation is sought to be utilized by the giant corporate to increase their super-profits by reducing the share of labour and resorting to retrenchments on a large scale. The share of labour dropped at the rate of 1. 6 per cent between 2019-22, the historic pandemic years. It was a decline that could not be claimed back in the years that followed.

Till now, the classical definition of labour in the process of production also defined the instruments or mechanism that explained the inequality between those who toiled to produce with the help of the mechanism and those who owned them. The drop of 1.6 appears negligible, but it actually amounts to 2.4 trillion dollars in lost wages at constant purchasing power parity, in relation to what workers would have earned had the labour income share been stable since 2004. The amount of 2.4 trillion dollar lost globally is more than half of India’s nominal GDP forecast for FY (Financial Year) 2023-24.

In the ILO study, it has also been highlighted that the gender issue also remains alive in the process instead of getting resolved. It may be pointed out that in 2024, almost a third of the world’s young women, 28.2 percent, are not in employment, education or training, it is double compared to that of young men, which is 13.1 per cent. This is alarming for developing nations with growing working age populations, as it highlights challenges in job creation. In fact, another ILO report on the status of employment in India estimates that 83 per cent of its unemployed are youth. The government’s advice to private sector has been to invest in labour intensive employment points to resolve a crisis in jobs growth and rising inequality, even as output and labour productivity rise.

The ILO report on Income inequality has also linked the falling trends in the labour’s income share in total income within nations to technological advances. It has emphasized that the automation and artificial intelligence have been more instrumental in the drop. It may be pointed out here that Scientific Technological evolution is not a mere evolution of the productive forces, though the productive capacity has grown and strengthened, it has discovered a new dimension for the information which is a new historical stage.

Industrial revolution is slowly losing its existence. New directions and dimensions are opening up. In fact it is the entire history of social development that has been placed on the dock. So far the evolution of the society has been traced in the context of mode of production, but now the shift has been total, and hence its influence can be seen not only in the way of life, but also in governance, in the socio- economic status, actually in the entire consciousness that signals birth of a new human society. (IPA Service)