Capital captures it
Nothing is abolished. The gains are simply owned by someone.
The least fantastical answer, and the one most consistent with how every previous general-purpose technology has landed. The machines arrive, productivity rises, and the org chart barely moves — because the question was never what the technology can do, but who holds it.
Marshall Brain sets the fork most cleanly: identical automation produces welfare warehouses in one country and post-work abundance in another, and the only variable is ownership. Martha Wells makes the same point from underneath, by giving the story to the machine — a SecUnit that is legally equipment, and whose deadpan account of corporate survey work is funnier and bleaker than either.
If you find the post-scarcity premise implausible, this is the pattern to read first. It assumes the technology works exactly as advertised and still arrives somewhere recognisable.
6 works give this answer
Metropolis
Workers below move in shifts, bodies synchronised to machinery they do not own. Above, the owners' children run races and stroll in the Eternal Gardens. Two entirely separate days, stacked vertically.
Capital captures itBK·2003Start hereManna
Two societies from identical technology. In one, the displaced live in windowless welfare dormitories on a fixed allowance. In the other, everyone holds a share of the robots and does as they like. The variable is ownership, and nothing else.
Capital captures itBK·2004Cloud Atlas
Sonmi-451 works nineteen-hour shifts at Papa Song's dinery, engineered to want nothing else, sustained on Soap, promised retirement at twelve years' service. The promise is a lie and the retirement is a slaughterhouse.
Capital captures itFM·2008Sleep Dealer
Mexican workers plug in and spend shifts operating machinery in American cities they will never enter. The labour crosses the border; the body does not. Nodes burn out the people who use them.
Capital captures itBK·2017Start hereAll Systems Red
Humans still run survey contracts, file reports, and cut corners on safety gear to save money. The AI does the dangerous parts and would rather be watching serialised drama.
Capital captures itFM·2017Blade Runner 2049
K does police drudgery and files reports. Replicants farm protein grubs in the dust. The companionship is a subscription product with an advertising tier.
Capital captures it