André Gorz: From the End of Work to the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- Arda Tunca
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
The Philosopher Who Looked Beyond Capitalism
Few thinkers anticipated the dilemmas of twenty-first-century political economy as clearly as André Gorz (1923–2007) did. Born in Vienna as Gérard Horst, Gorz became part of post-war France’s intellectual milieu, writing for Les Temps Modernes under the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre. Over time he fused existentialism, Marxism, and ecological thought into a critique that re-imagined what economics could be about: not growth or productivity, but autonomy, justice, and the meaning of work.
Gorz’s lifelong concern was the fate of human freedom in societies where labor and technology dominate life. Long before “post-industrial society” or “automation anxiety” became common phrases, he diagnosed the contradictions of a system that demanded continuous productivity while destroying the very social bonds that gave work purpose.
The End of Wage-Centered Society
In Farewell to the Working Class (1980), Gorz argued that industrial capitalism was entering a phase where automation would make necessary labor progressively obsolete. Instead of liberating humanity from toil, capitalism clung to employment as a moral and social obligation. The result was a paradox: technological abundance coexisted with economic insecurity.
He foresaw today’s condition almost exactly. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital platforms now produce vast surpluses with minimal human labor. Productivity increases, but wages stagnate. Many workers are pushed into precarious or meaningless service jobs, a dynamic Gorz predicted decades ago. He warned that this situation would persist as long as societies defined citizenship and dignity through paid work rather than shared prosperity.
This observation describes the twenty-first century’s productivity-without-prosperity dilemma with eerie precision.
Ecology as Politics
Gorz was among the first to see that economic growth and ecological limits were fundamentally incompatible. In Ecology as Politics (1975), he rejected both socialist productivism and capitalist expansionism. Economic systems, he argued, must be judged not by how much they produce but by whether they sustain life.
This ecological perspective resonates strongly today as AI’s massive energy consumption and data-center emissions become new frontiers of environmental concern. Gorz would see the current enthusiasm for “green growth” as a repetition of the old myth that technology alone can solve ecological crisis. Efficiency, he noted, often increases total consumption by lowering costs, a dynamic now called the rebound effect (or Jevons Paradox). What is required instead is a politics of sufficiency: the conscious decision to produce and consume only what is necessary for well-being.
Basic Income and the Liberation of Time
Because automation undermines full employment, Gorz proposed universal basic income as an institutional response. His version differed from contemporary technocratic models. It was not meant to preserve consumption, but to guarantee autonomy, freedom from market dependency. A basic income, in his view, would allow individuals to divide their lives between paid work, care, art, study, and civic participation.
In the age of AI, when machines can perform creative and cognitive tasks once considered uniquely human, Gorz’s proposal acquires new urgency. If intelligent systems generate wealth, then a share of that wealth must return to society as a social dividend. Only then can technological progress become liberation rather than exclusion.
Knowledge, Immaterial Labor, and Digital Capitalism
In his late work The Immaterial: Knowledge, Value and Capital (2003), Gorz explored the emerging knowledge economy. He noted that information and creativity, unlike physical goods, are non-rival. One person’s use does not diminish another’s. Yet, capitalism imposes artificial scarcity through intellectual-property rights, data enclosures, and corporate platforms. Knowledge, he argued, should belong to the commons.
This insight prefigures the structure of today’s AI economy. Today’s AI economy is built on large-scale data capture, proprietary models, and control of digital infrastructure. The strategic asset is not just labor, but access to data and compute. This allows a small number of firms to lock in advantage and monetize capabilities that depend on knowledge produced by society as a whole. What once was cooperative human creativity (language, images, code) is transformed into proprietary capital. Gorz thus anticipated the political economy of data: exploitation not of labor, but of information itself.
The Politics of Post-Growth
Gorz’s critique of growth-obsession provides a philosophical foundation for today’s degrowth and post-growth movements. He insisted that well-being should not depend on expanding output but on reorganizing time, relations, and institutions. In a post-growth world, success means equilibrium: ecological balance, social justice, and meaningful activity.
Artificial intelligence exposes the same contradiction he identified in industrial capitalism: technological progress divorced from social progress. Without new social contracts—shorter working hours, shared ownership of digital infrastructure, and democratic control of technology—automation will magnify inequality and ecological stress. With them, it could support a transition to what Gorz called a “civilization of time” rather than a “civilization of work.”
From Gorz to AI Policy: Building the Digital Commons
Gorz’s ideas now echo in global policy frameworks, even if indirectly.
The EU AI Act embodies his demand for democratic oversight of technology, emphasizing human rights, transparency, and accountability over market freedom.
Open-source and digital-commons initiatives follow his call to treat knowledge as a public good rather than private property.
Universal basic-income pilots and working-time reforms in Europe and Latin America reflect his vision of decoupling income from employment.
Degrowth and circular-economy strategies integrate ecological and social accounting into policy, an institutional translation of Ecology as Politics.
Taken together, these developments reflect what Gorz envisioned: an economy where technology serves human needs and digital progress replaces the pursuit of endless material growth.
The Moral Horizon of Technology
Gorz’s philosophy was grounded in humanism. For him, the question was never whether technology could transform society, but who it would serve. He warned that a society adapting people to machines, rather than adapting machines to people, was destined for alienation. His ethical test remains simple yet radical:
“The question is not how to make people fit for the system, but how to make the system fit for people.”
This principle offers a compass for today’s AI revolution. The challenge is not only technical regulation, but institutional reinvention, creating forms of ownership, income, and governance consistent with human autonomy and ecological responsibility.
Gorz in the Twenty-First Century
André Gorz stands as one of the rare thinkers who bridged the industrial and digital ages. He saw that automation could either deepen inequality or free humanity from needless labor.
He linked ecology, democracy, and technology into a single framework of moral and institutional renewal. His message remains urgent.
If artificial intelligence is to serve life rather than capital, societies must design systems that reward care, knowledge, and creativity instead of endless growth. If automation is to bring freedom, it must distribute time and income as public goods. And if technology is to coexist with the planet, it must operate within ecological limits.
In this sense, Gorz’s thought is not nostalgia for the industrial past but a map for a humane digital future, one in which intelligence, human or artificial, serves the common good rather than the accumulation of power.
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