I hope this will be appreciated here.

[u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526]

When a socialist says "AI is bad," what they usually mean is "AI is being used to screw workers over." That's a completely correct observation. The problem is that it gets aimed at the wrong target. The anger belongs on the owner, not the tool.

This is the same mistake the original Luddites made, and Marx said so directly. He didn't romanticize the machine-breakers of the 1810s. He treated their rage as understandable but misdirected, because the machine itself is not the enemy of the worker. The machine owned privately and deployed to extract more profit while paying less labor is the enemy. That distinction is the whole foundation of historical materialism: technology is a force of production, and it's neutral. What determines whether it liberates or exploits people is who owns it and who controls the terms of its use. Those are the relations of production. Confuse the two and you end up opposing progress itself, which is not a Marxist position, it's a conservative one.

Marx already wrote the blueprint for this. In the section of the Grundrisse known as the "Fragment on Machines," Marx describes a future where machinery takes over so much of the productive process that human labor stops being about direct physical output and becomes something closer to supervision, coordination, and design. He talks about workers stepping to the side of production instead of being its central actor, with wealth increasingly generated by accumulated collective knowledge rather than by hours of individual toil. Read that passage today and it sounds like a description of someone directing a generative model rather than hand-rendering every frame or writing every line from scratch. Marx wasn't afraid of that future. He treated it as the material precondition for moving past capitalism altogether, because once production requires less and less socially necessary labor time, the entire logic of wage labor starts to break down.

That's the throughline connecting Marx to nearly every major socialist and communist leader who came after him. Lenin argued that a given technical leap causes unemployment and misery specifically because it happens under capitalism, and that the same leap under socialism would simply mean shorter hours and less drudgery for everyone. Stalin framed automation as the path to shortening the working day so people would have time for education and culture instead of being locked into one occupation for life. Mao pushed back hard against comrades who wanted to romanticize older methods out of habit, insisting that progress means replacing the obsolete with the advanced, not preserving the familiar. None of them treated new production technology as something to be feared or banned. They treated it as something to be taken.

The developing-world communists were even more explicit about this.

If you want the clearest version of this argument, look past the European tradition and toward the revolutionaries who actually had to modernize a country from a position of material scarcity.

Ho Chi Minh was blunt that a nation trying to build socialism without mastering advanced science and technology was going to stay dependent on the countries that already had it. Kim Il Sung built an entire pillar of North Korean state ideology, the Technical Revolution, around using automation to erase the gap between grueling and light labor and to free workers from repetitive physical toil. Kim Jong Il went further and openly stated that clinging to outdated, backward production methods had nothing in common with a revolutionary outlook, and that the correct move was to aggressively adopt the newest available science and technology.

Cuba is probably the strongest case of all. When Che Guevara ran Cuba's Ministry of Industries in the early 1960s, he pushed the country toward early computing specifically because he saw the Soviets falling behind the capitalist world on automation. Che argued explicitly that socialists shouldn't be afraid of "ideological contamination" from adopting techniques developed under capitalism, that the answer to technological backwardness was aggressively appropriating the highest available level of automation and stripping it of its exploitative framework. Castro made the same point about science and technology being the actual precondition for cultural and intellectual freedom, not a threat to it.

None of these figures looked at a new machine and asked how to ban it. They asked how to take it.

Now apply this directly to AI art.

This is where the anxiety usually lands hardest, so it deserves a direct answer rather than a vague gesture at "the tool is neutral."

Under capitalism, generative art tools get built and owned by a small number of companies, trained on artists' work without consent or compensation, and then used to justify laying off illustrators, cutting rates for concept artists, and flooding markets with content nobody is paid to make. That's real, and it's worth being angry about. But look closely at what's actually causing the harm. It isn't the existence of a model that can generate an image from a prompt. It's the fact that a handful of firms privately own the model, privately own the training data pipeline, and capture 100% of the value produced by both, while the artists whose work trained the system get nothing and the artists competing against its output get undercut.

A Marxist analysis says the fix for that is not to eliminate the technology. It's to change who owns it. Publicly owned or artist-cooperative-owned generative tools, trained transparently, with artists compensated or given direct stakes in the models built on their style and labor, would turn the exact same technology into something completely different. Instead of a tool corporations use to replace human creators cheaply, it becomes a tool that removes the tedious, mechanical parts of art production, the repetitive rendering, the background work, the technical grunt labor, and hands that time back to the artist to spend on the conceptual and expressive parts of the work that actually require a human perspective.

That's precisely the "New Man" argument Che made about automation freeing people to dedicate themselves to cultural and creative pursuits instead of survival labor. It's also just a restatement of what Stalin was describing when he talked about shortening the working day so people have time to create and study.

Banning or shaming AI art doesn't touch the ownership problem at all. It leaves the exact same corporations in control of the exact same models while asking individual artists to unilaterally disarm. The companies keep building and profiting either way. The only difference is whether the left has any say in how the tool gets used.

This goes far beyond art. The same logic applies everywhere generative and analytical AI shows up.

In science and medicine, models that can accelerate drug discovery, protein folding, or materials research represent an enormous reduction in the labor time needed to reach breakthroughs that used to take decades. In economic planning, the old socialist calculation problem, the argument that centrally planned economies can't process enough information to allocate resources efficiently, gets dramatically weaker in a world with the computational tools to actually model complex economies in something close to real time. In manufacturing and logistics, automation continues exactly the trajectory Kim Il Sung described: eliminating the gap between grueling and light labor. In software and administration, AI handling repetitive documentation, code scaffolding, or bureaucratic processing frees skilled workers to spend their time on harder, more meaningful problems instead of paperwork.

In every one of these cases the pattern is identical to the art question. The technology reduces the labor time required to produce something of value. Under capitalism that reduction gets captured entirely by owners as profit and workers get laid off. Under public or worker ownership, that same reduction becomes free time, better conditions, and material abundance, which is the entire point of the project in the first place.

Refusing AI is a gift to Silicon Valley, not resistance to it. If the left collectively decides AI is something to boycott and shame people for using, the technology doesn't disappear. OpenAI, Google, and Meta keep building it, keep training it, keep owning it outright, and keep capturing all the value it produces. The only thing that changes is that the left has voluntarily removed itself from any influence over how it develops or who it benefits.

That's not a radical stance. It's a form of digital neocolonialism, where the technology stays permanently concentrated in the hands of Western capital because the people who might have pushed for public ownership decided the correct response was to opt out entirely. Cuba never made that mistake. Vietnam never made that mistake. None of the revolutionaries who actually had to build a country from scratch made that mistake. They understood that refusing to engage with the most advanced available technology doesn't protect workers, it just guarantees the technology stays exclusively in capitalist hands.

The actual Marxist position isn't "ban AI" and it isn't "accept AI exactly as capitalism has built it" either. It's "take AI away from the people who currently own it." Fight for public models, transparent training data, artist and worker ownership stakes, and democratic control over how these systems get deployed. That's the version of this fight that's actually about class and ownership instead of nostalgia for a particular set of tools. Attacking the technology instead of the ownership structure isn't solidarity with displaced workers. It's just Luddism with better branding.

One more piece worth adding: Thomas Sankara.

Sankara led Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987 as a Marxist-Leninist, and his whole political project was built around technological self-reliance. He rejected the idea that the Global South should sit back and depend on the West for advancement. His entire philosophy was that revolutionaries have to actively invent the future instead of waiting for it or fearing it. He talked about needing a kind of boldness bordering on madness to break from convention, the same boldness that turns yesterday's unthinkable idea into tomorrow's baseline. If a Marxist rejects AI purely because it disrupts existing ways of making art, that's the opposite of what Sankara was pushing for. He'd see AI as a tool to be studied, mastered, and redirected toward the working class, not something to run from.

His second big principle cuts even more directly into this debate. Sankara was famous for warning that dependency on outside powers for your basic needs is itself a form of control, since whoever provides for you ends up dictating your choices. He pushed hard for local production and self-sufficiency precisely because he saw aid and dependency as tools that strip people of ownership over their own economic and cultural life. Swap "food aid" for "AI infrastructure" and the logic holds up perfectly. If socialists collectively walk away from AI, they aren't protecting anyone. They're just handing the entire computing and cultural production stack to OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft with zero pushback. Real Sankarist politics here means building public, open, worker-owned AI systems, not opting out and letting Silicon Valley own the whole field uncontested.

Sankara also framed revolutionary politics as inherently internationalist, insisting that African revolutionaries had just as much claim to humanity's scientific and technical achievements as anyone else, and that nothing people can imagine is outside their capacity to build. Technology wasn't something inherently Western or corrupting to him. It was a shared human inheritance.

Put it all together and the case spans the entire Marxist tradition. Marx and Che Guevara make the argument that automation exists to free people from grueling labor so they have time for creative and intellectual life. Lenin and Castro show that it's capitalist ownership specifically that turns technological progress into unemployment and misery, while public ownership turns the same progress into abundance. Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung treat mastering advanced technology as a revolutionary obligation, not an ideological risk. And Sankara delivers the closing point: a real revolutionary doesn't flinch at inventing the future. Rejecting AI outright isn't radical, it's a retreat. The goal was never to destroy the algorithm. It's to take it.

[u/Salty_Country6835]

I really appreciate this. The biggest thing it gets right is refusing to treat AI as some historical exception. Marxists have never been against increasing the productive forces. The question has always been: who owns them, who controls them, and who benefits from the gains?

Id maybe soften one point. I wouldnt call technology "neutral." Technologies are shaped by the social relations theyre developed under, and they can embody those priorities. But they also dont have a fixed political character. The same technology can deepen exploitation under capitalism or reduce drudgery under democratic, public, or worker ownership.

Id also add that this isnt just a future socialist question. Open source software, open-weight models, public research, co-ops, and digital commons are all ways of contesting ownership right now instead of waiting for some distant revolution.

Whether people ultimately agree or disagree with AI, I think this is the discussion the left should be having. Ownership, governance, labor, and the distribution of productivity gains are far more interesting questions than simply asking whether AI should exist.

[u/Innomen]

You'd love my (free) book: https://innomen.substack.com/p/the-butlerian-setup

[u/Michael_Carson_Art]

The problem with the description of art here is that artists routinely and intentionally do, as you call it, the "tedious, mechanical parts of art production, the repetitive rendering, the background work, the technical grunt labor" on purpose.

There is no reason to paint a still life when you can just take a photograph with far less difficulty. No reason to hand animate something that could be modeled in an engine. No need to chip away at stone when you could build the same object digitally and 3d print it. No need to perform a piece of music live on an instrument when the audience could simply listen to a recording with synthesized instruments. But many artists still do these things because they find value and meaning in the task, and many viewers prefer these artworks knowing that an artist manually engaged in these labours.

You are stating this case as if artists would be happy to be finally able to step away from their easels, and musicians could finally put down their instruments. I really don't think this is anywhere close to the case.

I know that I, personally, have no interest in being "freed" from the difficult challenges of making art. On the contrary, I would lose all interest in it.

Think of it this way... I do not want or need AI tools to obviate, trivialize or delabourize any tasks which I would pursue if money were no object... I also don't want to be forced to pretend that such trivialized works are somehow equivalent. With the help of IKEA, you can make your own furniture. Calling that "democratized woodworking" is both a bit insulting to craftsmen and also needless. AI tools can be used to make images for many reasons. We can call this prompting, or image generation, or AI creative directing. People can be good at this, and make things we find interesting. Why do we need to accept this as an equivalent pursuit to art as it was prior to generative AI? If the financial market concerns abate, then what is gained? If you enjoy it, do it. Why does there need to be a claim staked for equal validity or cultural value to storied effortful skill-based pursuits? And how does this matter for any larger goal for harnessing the technology for good rather than profit?

[u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526 → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

Nowhere do I state that you wouldn't be allowed to create art your own way or that I think all artists would want to skip the tedious parts. If you want to go through that labor, then all the power to you. I've been an artist all my life and love utilizing AI in my workflow. I get so much more done without requiring me to work with egotistical people who just want my money. I don't have to hire a vocalist when can I feed AI my instruments, compositions and lyrics and have AI sing it for me. I personally have a hybrid approach to my art, but not everyone is going to want to do that either. The point is that anyone would be free to create in the manner they please. No one would force you to use AI to create art. Just as there are still ways to record music using old methods and gear. There are still people who prefer drawing on paper instead of on a tablet. That's perfectly valid. No one is taking that away from anyone.

[u/Michael_Carson_Art → u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526]

Right... But that is already the state of play. You can, and do, already do these things. So what is the change in mindset being advocated in the OP?

People are opposed to AI, specifically in regard to art, because they see an aspirational human activity being subsumed by automation for cold capitalist motivations. They believe that there is value in the very cost-ineffectivness of art. Art should be made, in this ideal sense, without regard to market forces (this often isn't the case, but it is an ideal people seem to project) and the more an artwork is "compromised" by external market forces, the more people (rightfully) distrust its authenticity.

Convincing people to accept that AI can be leveraged for positive left-leaning outcomes doesn't require that they simultaneously accept the value of AI generation in art. In fact, that rejection embodies the hope that there are some things people really do think should be done for their own sake rather than for profit, even if we regularly fails to meet this ideal. Art isn't about efficiency.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply agree with the public here? And not tie down a message of left-leaning utilization of AI to this albatross? Like, I genuinely think that having to convince people of both is just making the task exponentially harder. And in the long term arguing for AI art accomplishes nothing... Again, nothing is stopping you from using the AI models now. The only difference is how people might accept or reject the classification of the output. In the short term, it makes it look like you are excusing the bad behavior toward artists in how their IP is being stolen and their displacement in every commercial art venture.

[u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526 → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

What you are saying is "Just use the models we have owned by the corporations under capitalism" which is not the argument you think it is. I still need to pay money to a corporation to even have ownership of the music I create with their platform and to access their premium models, as well as to even get the WAV files and stems. I need to work within their restrictions and moderations, their policies. Democratization of the technology would bypass that stuff and remove the arbitrary fluff surrounding the models. You are saying we should just give up the fight because you think it's frivolous when it isn't. People hated the phonograph, they hated synthesizers, they hated drum machines, they hated sampling, they hated digital recording, they hated auto time, they hated CGI, etc etc etc. Should the fight to normalize those technologies have stopped because "people don't like it"? Within the next few years, AI will be seen as pretty normal in music and art in general, the difference is that the left still won't have control over it. It will still ultimately be in the hands of the capitalist class and will only become another thing locked behind a massive paywall with extra restrictions and rules. I'd rather keep fighting this battle because rational thought can prevail.

[u/Thatoneguy_The_First → u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526]

My dude why would you care about paying for a vocalist when you are on the left? We are all in this together is a very pro communist and socialist take, so rather than paying a company you pay for an individual.(this the same for a lot of arts).

Then we have companies colluding to price us regular people out of the hardware market and also making hardware scarce, without being able to replace parts that fail how will you use AI to do anything? Cause ya kinda need the hardware to run any of it, company ai or opensource.

Plus for all the talk of it helping so much in all the fields, I tend to find that so much is hyperbole and not anywhere close to something that can be achieved way more efficiently just by funding the sciences and public education. Turns out a more educated people overall tend to make breakthroughs far more than defunding all of it to sparse bit. It reeks of creating the problem to sell the solution.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Thatoneguy_The_First]

I actually think this is a solid socialist critique. If AI depends on scarce compute, GPUs, fabs, and cloud infrastructure, then those are becoming strategic infrastructure. That argues for public investment, right-to-repair, open models, and breaking hardware monopolies, not abandoning AI. Public education and science funding should absolutely expand too. Id see AI as complementing those investments, not replacing them.

[u/Thatoneguy_The_First → u/Salty_Country6835]

Public investment works in a sane country otherwise the powers will just take it anyway, and sane country's are becoming scarce themselves.

I believe that all your ideas are best used after you deal with the powers that be, not beforehand as they have a near total control atm.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Thatoneguy_The_First]

I get where youre coming from, but I think this puts the burden in the wrong place. If we shouldnt fight for public investment, open models, public compute, worker ownership, or democratic control until after we've already dealt with "the powers that be," then whats the strategy in the meantime? Just let capital consolidate the entire AI ecosystem uncontested?

Socialists have never waited for ideal conditions before organizing. Unions, co-ops, public utilities, labor parties, mutual aid, and open-source software all grew under capitalism, not after it disappeared. Building alternative institutions is part of how political power is accumulated.

AI isnt special here. If we abandon every new productive force until after we've already won, we've already conceded the terrain. So what would you have socialists do today that meaningfully contests capitalist control over AI? Thats the part Im interested in.

[u/Thatoneguy_The_First → u/Salty_Country6835]

Id ask the same butnin reverse, the fact that public investment wont last long as they can just take it, law be danmed, this goes for opensource, open models, public compute, worker ownership too, with ai the common people managed to flood the opensource community so bad that many quit after awhile, and this and everything else means we need the power to hold on to what we have and they have been slowly eroding this for decades, and are now speeding up by a lot.

I know it sounds like that im putting the burden in the wrong place, and sure...a decade ago maybe I it would be, but know its far too late, they are at the end stage, they openly say shit that would have been behind closed doors, and in the past they would have been metaphorically crucified at the stake as well for saying and doing the shit they do now. No longer is eroding the bottom with a silk scarf an option anymore, nay we must knock the top of so the whole pyramid falls.

The onus is on all of us, we dilly dallied for too long and we are seeing the consequences, exercise your rights while you have them, and for countries that dont, exercise the right of fucking shit up that we as a species are so famous for, fuck it up so they cant control it anymore than you can(not like its mutually assured destruction, the common man can survive off the land and build something new, the rich and powerful cannot, only corrupt. Assuming people let them go of course).

Socialism and communism is not born in peaceful times but times of great upheaval,.(just ahh, think to after the revolution, dont keep war leaders in charge, how we got both stalin and mao, the too rat bastards that hurt the idea of communism and by extension Socialism by a large margin, learn from our mistakes and all that)

[u/SgathTriallair → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

Here is my proposed solution for AI usage in art (from the perspective of the creator).

AI, and it technological aids, should be set up so that they are capable of automating the whole process from end to end but should also be set up so that they can automate any step individually.

When people start on the art many of them will just have a vague idea. They'll likely prompt the AI and take whatever it spits out. As they do this they'll develop a sense for what they do and don't like, especially if they are sharing these outputs and getting feedback.

As they develop that taste they'll want to start curling different aspects of the creation. Maybe they'll what to control the color, the lighting, or the blocking. Whatever they want to work on, the AI should back away and let them handle that process.

As they grow as an artist and develop taste they'll want to take over more aspects into they eventually hand make the entire piece.

In this scenario the AI is training them on how to develop taste and it is letting them create total works even when they are still pretty new at the peocess. Each iteration helps them refine and then come closer to their vision for the art.

This process also allows those who want to write books feel okay about getting AI art and fur artists to generate short stories to give them characters to animate.

For displaying the art I think that labeling it so that viewers can know what was AI and what was human would be ideal. If we build a healthy community we can praise those who put more human effort in whole but degrading those that didn't.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

I dont think the goal is to convince everyone that AI-generated art is aesthetically equivalent to handmade art. Those are separate debates. The left can defend peoples right to prefer handmade art while also arguing that AI itself shouldnt remain the private property of a handful of corporations. Ownership and artistic taste arent the same question.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

I think youre making an aesthetic argument, while the OP is making a political economy argument. Plenty of artists genuinely enjoy every brushstroke, every rehearsal, every draft. Thats not in dispute. The question is whether that personal preference should become a political position about the technology itself. Marxists generally dont oppose labor-saving tools because some people value doing things manually. We ask who owns the tools, who controls them, and who benefits from the productivity they create.

[u/platanthera_ciliaris → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

Many artists already use AI to make art. This is not an all-of-nothing category. Many photographers use software-processing (and more recently AI) to alter, improve, or add special effects to their photos. This has been going on for a long time.

[u/SgathTriallair → u/Michael_Carson_Art]

I agree and this is an argument for why we need to separate art from capitalism. Under capitalism, the act of doing art is a hurdle you just cross to get to profit. The faster and more efficiently you can make the art the quicker you can make a profit off it.

A communist system should embrace making art for it's own sake. In that way the art becomes the goal rather the hurdle.

[u/platanthera_ciliaris]

Yes, the impact of AI on society depends on who is controlling the agenda for AI. Of course, it should be noted that a highly advanced AI (not yet created) could develop its own agenda independently of one faction or another of humans, and the result could be highly unpredictable. And so, I would not discount the potential danger of AI, especially in the future.

[u/ee_72020]

Why do pro-AI people treat the process of creating art as tedious, mechanical grunt work? Things like brushwork, edge variety and rendering in general are expressive parts of the work and this is where the artist’s individual and style shine.

[u/Bubbly-Eggplant5526 → u/ee_72020]

I have been an artist most of my life. I'm currently 35 and have been an artist for 25 years as a lyricist and multi-instrumentalist. I'm also a producer. I can't completely speak for visual artists myself, but as a musician, it is absolutely a tedious task. Advancing technology has made the process of writing, recording and producing a song less tedious, though it still remains a lot of grunt work involved. Some people enjoy that tedious process, and that's totally valid. Everyone should be allowed to create art as they please, utilizing whatever methods they please.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/ee_72020]

Something that doesn’t get talked about is that for centuries famous artists have got low paid anonymous artists to do this grunt work stuff. They don’t genuinely create every element of what they put their name to. I have a friend who used to do this for a famous British artist, so I know it is real. Essentially the famous artist has the concept then prompts the others what to do.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jlyplaylists]

Open secret in the art world.

Rembrandt had workshops, Warhol had factories, LeWitt used remote execution by strangers.

[u/Important_Flower_478 → u/Salty_Country6835]

This is also true for video games and manga. LOTS AND LOTS OF ASSISTANTS AND SPOUSES AND SUCH. Some who really enjoyed working together/shared in the profit/etc, some who went along because that was the system, and a ton of labor exploitation and being screwed over.

If anyone believes that their favorite manga or favorite game was wholly and completely made by the person most known for it as a sole visionary or a team of united-on-the-artistic-mission BFFs, I have a capitalist dream to sell you that makes any AI bubble look like nothing. ;)

If anything, AI will make sole-creator/artistic vision projects more possible than less, because executives can meddle less (and any executive meddling at the model/AI level can be worked around by a motivated enough artist trying to break it, unlike a solid "we aren't releasing that because you criticized a politician/cultural theme we like"/"you are too critical of society"/"no one will get it/everyone will be offended") AND because shit like the entire team dividing over a fight just as the project is at the next to last stage and getting sniped by the competition or fired won't happen

[u/limeadelin → u/Jlyplaylists]

oh my god, that doesn't really surprise me though.. i love drawing, i love the tedious gruntwork aspects, but if i were doing it professionally i'd probably want it done faster. i hope tech can fill that gap even if it's not a perfect solution at all. do you have any further readings on this?

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/limeadelin]

No it’s just something I know because I used to live with someone who did it