Simone Weil's Analogical Philosophy of Labor for the Automated Workplace

What is the future of human labor in an increasingly digital workplace? In 2023, McKinsey Digital estimated that time spent on work activities will reach 50% automation between 2030 and 2060. Goldman Sachs reports that “two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” and that “generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work.” Moreover, according to a 2021 study by the National Skills Coalition, 92% of all jobs require digital skills that a third of workers lack sufficient training to perform. This lack of training is often due to structural inequalities, such that “the digital skill divide disproportionately impacts workers of color, low-income individuals, and rural residents.” The data make abundantly clear that if we continue measuring the value of human labor chiefly in terms of efficiency, then we will begin dramatically displacing ourselves in the workforce, starting with the most marginalized and economically disadvantaged groups. In response to this crisis, it is essential that we develop a renewed vision of the telos of human labor, and from that, a thicker criteria for evaluating success in the workplace. 

This paper takes a first step in the development of this renewed vision and corresponding criteria by turning to Simone Weil, twentieth century philosopher-activist-mystic who wrote extensively on—and lived a life in search of—the meaning and purpose of human labor. I proceed by first analyzing Weil’s critique of Taylorism, a theory of labor management developed around the turn of the twentieth century that prioritizes efficiency to the exclusion of much else. Next, I turn to her often misunderstood solution, proposing that it must be read alongside her theological-mystical writings, wherein her conception of liberated labor emerges as analogical, imitative. Following this theological reading of Weil’s philosophy of labor, I apply its insights to today’s “Digital Taylorism,” arguing that, in order to respond to the existential risk posed by AI and automation in the workforce, we must reckon with the fundamentally analogical nature of labor—that it is imitative and thereby, above all else, a kind of identity formation. Rather than judging human labor primarily in terms of efficiency—primarily in comparison to our technologies—we must instead consider chiefly its role in promoting the laborer’s capacity for encounter with God, other, and self. This elevated conception of labor calls for a more vigilant integration of AI in the workplace. 

Weil believed that human labor should facilitate a dialectic between activity and rational reflection, but that, under the influence of Taylorism, factory laborers are reduced to “mere cogs… specialized unskilled workmen, completely enslaved to the machine” (Oppression and Liberty, 20, 143). The factory laborer repeats the same actions incessantly without the possibility of sustained mental presence to the purpose of said actions; they are stuck in a senseless cycle of pure activity. Meanwhile, the manager is stuck in pure thought, formulating plans, representing them abstractly, but never herself participating in their actualization. This divorcing of thought and action impinges upon freedom because freedom, she posits, entails a relation between thought and action, in which “every action” is followed by “a preliminary judgment concerning the end,” an end chosen by the actor herself, along with the means for its attainment (OL, 81). 

While Weil’s diagnosis is widely understood and recapitulated in secondary literature, her solution has proved difficult to parse. How are thought and action to be brought together so as to liberate the laborer from endless tedium and into this life-giving dialectic? Must we all become skilled artisans? I argue that the reason Weil’s solution has proved largely obscure is that her philosophy of labor is rarely read alongside her theological-mystical writings. In this paper, I demonstrate that, once they are brought together, her solution to Taylorism emerges as essentially analogical. That is, the laborer is liberated to pursue work that facilitates a meaningful dialectic between thought and action only when they come to see their work—however insignificant it may appear—in relation to the labor of God. Namely, Weil’s account of God’s work of creation, wherein God “decreates,” is mirrored in human labor, through which we too must “decreate.” When we do, we are primed to co-create with God via a corollary movement, “recreation.” The result of analogical labor is that the laborer becomes like God—imago Dei—by being rooted in God, and with that, rooted in a present opened to eternity. 

The Taylorism that Weil bemoaned continues to massively influence the organization of labor today, albeit in new and advanced forms. Efficiency remains the chief priority in its current iteration, but the techniques and tools employed towards that end render its consequences evermore pervasive. Common examples include the increasingly quantitative metrics used for measuring performance, surveillance systems to monitor employee efficiency, or the complete erasure of jobs previously performed by humans. Tasks that Weil describes as “pure activity” are increasingly automated, and managerial tasks of “pure thought” are increasingly performed by algorithms—“algorithmic management”—the scope of which “is constantly broadening” (Kinowska and Sienkiewicz, “Influence of Algorithmic Management Practices,” 2022). With these developments, the tyranny of the clock is being replaced by a “tyranny of the app,” a tyranny of the algorithm (Lehdonvirta, “Flexibility in the Gig Economy,” 2018). 

According to Weil, laboring under the clock’s tyranny turns one into a machine. Likewise, I argue, laboring under the algorithm’s tyranny renders us increasingly equivocal to God and univocal to AI. Through our work, we become what we imitate–either that which we seek to emulate and/or outperform. The presence of AI in the workplace should create space for its own absence, facilitating human imitations that do not reflect our technologies but stimulate greater discovery of God, other, and self. While technological advancements can reshape the kind of labor we perform, to make humans compete with or conform to perceived strengths of AI is to fundamentally fail in upholding something essential about our humanity, that we labor as a means of discovery, as a means of becoming who we are.