Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production

Art & Postcapitalism locates contemporary postcapitalist theory into a history of debates about art and labour which it suppresses through the twin demands of wages for traditionally unpaid forms of work and a post-work future. Whereas historical postcapitalism typically overstated the emancipatory potential of art as a model of work in communism, contemporary postcapitalism ejects art from its visions of a world emancipated from work. Art and Postcapitalism argues against both Romantic anti-capitalism and the contemporary politics of work by developing a new understanding of art and labour within the political project of the supersession of value production.