Rjan:
It may not be written in stone, but it is extant, and I’d only return to the point I made in my previous post, that some socialists seem to forget that we don’t live in a socialist society, and today’s workers want to be confident that socialists aren’t going to kill workers in the process of getting there.Indeed the society you envisage is not even one formally envisaged by Marx, since in both “socialist” and “communist” society workers still had to work, the difference (compared to capitalist society) was that workers were in control of the means of production, and without the need to toil to support the extravagant lifestyles of an overclass, what modest work needed to be done to support ourselves would be divided fairly.
This automatic society of yours, and that advanced by UBIers in general, does not appear to involve such a prior transfer of wealth and power to workers (i.e. to those who are currently workers - by your own admission, they won’t be workers after automation has taken place).
So again I say, that I am not talking about a tweeking of the current system.
I question whether we will be living in a capitalist society if automation continues. Not tomorrow but at some future point.
In the world seen by Marx there was still need for the majority to do physical work. Maybe that will no longer hold true?
Likely or not, it needs to be considered, unlikley events happen every day. We can all se the results of failing to allow for rare events.
I am not proposing anything as being better or as a goal. I am exploring the possibilities. It isnt "my society". As Capitalism isnt written in stone for our future, neither are previously envisaged socialist and communist societies.
Free yourself from the dreams of the 19th century! 
Rjan:
Rather, it seems to pre-suppose that if we allow the corporations to drive automation, then the capitalist owner will simply recede from the picture for unstated reasons, and some sort of high-minded working elite will emerge who work to create and maintain the machines, but expecting nothing in return from the great masses who are now engaged exclusively in leisure.
I have said that I dont know how we can arrive at a new system. A gradual change is difficult to envisage,and I dont wish for violent revolution.
Rjan:
In this society, work is absolutely imperative, not just for simplistic reasons that it obviously attracts a wage, but because a worker’s labour is his power in every respect.
A strike by welders or paint sprayers in car plants doesnt hold much fear for manufacturers. A workers labour is his power only if a machine cannot do his work.
Rjan:
Socialists should not be promoting the abolition of any job on grounds of dirt or undesirability, unless there is already an equally powerful job for the man to go to. Not any old job, not a job with the same wage, not a dole funded by machines, but a job that means he has clout amongst other people in his daily life, because that’s what’s really important.
You use the word “dole” in a pejorative way. There is a hangover from the idle ruling classes telling the “born and bred” “salt of the earth” working classes to get earn their keep and be proud there!
I am talking about sharing what may be produced for very little cost by machines. Not a measly subsistence level dole, but a decent income given as a right, not as a charity. Something all are entitled to, not a big wedge for a few “high born” and a pittance for the rest.
Rjan:
And that’s what the capitalists intend to destroy with automation. They don’t intend to eliminate work! Hahaha, no! They only intend to eliminate any work that gives a man clout, and replace it with work which gives him no say - no say over his terms, no say over how the work is done, no say over his wage, no say over whether he is even the man to do the work that day instead of another.
I am not sure that the present system does much long term planning, and may not be said to have long term plans or intentions.
As a reactive competitive capitalist system, it will follow short term* expediencies in order to survive. Those (especially smaller companies with little resources) will go for quick cheap solutions.
Governments look too often to the next election and not further forward.
Should long term planning be left to business or politicians? And what alternatives are there?
No answer from me.
*Yes, what are short and long terms? In energy terms bigger companies are now investing in longer looking plans than previously.
