More on Marx

A thought occurred to me during our class working through the Base/Superstructure dichotomy of society in Marx. What happens when labor has been more-or-less removed from the Base?

This may sound completely impossible. And I suspect that as long as it is cheaper to exploit some worker (in some likely Third World/Developing Nation) and then import the product than it is to let robots do all the work, we are not likely to see this. But even so, there are some jobs which cannot be moved from their territorial locations (agriculture), and those are becoming even more automated.

Agriculture is a prime example. This would at first seem to be something that is destined to be perpetually labor-intensive. Someone has to plant and harvest. Yet modern farming equipment is becoming more technologically advanced.

Looking primarily at grain (corn/soy/wheat) production, the implements which are used in their planting, care, and harvest could become automated. Modern tractors can include GPS-based tracking of fields. This allows the driver to maneuver through the field down the exact same path that they went through it last time. With just a little automation in the steering, this could be adapted to effectively mean that after the initial plowing of a field, the tractor steers itself through planting, spraying, and harvest, the human farmer likely only determining when such actions take place and perhaps monitoring the progress. Additionally, computing optimal planting paths could likely be automated, thus even the initial path of the tractor might be computer generated. While this doesn't fully remove the human from the process, it does mean that they are involved in much less of the work, and what work they do have to do is increasingly indebted to the superstructure (education).

This may not work for everything, but I suspect that we will increasingly find ways to remove human labor from the workforce, especially as exploited work forces begin to make the same demands that Western labor made in the early 20th century. Could it be that the revolution Marx saw was not to be as violent as he might have thought? (Or as abrupt?)

I'm curious how much of the Base Marx thought could be replaced with technology. Or does the Base shift to include the technicians at that point?