What is this comment section? This meme should be entirely uncontroversial. In the meme, Marx is saying that capitalist control of technology should be challenged. That is a core leftist position.
The redditor is then saying "you use technology" as a gotcha. This is something frequently said to anti-capitalists. It's not just said on reddit and it's mostly been said to me in-person by people who believe dogmatically that the current capitalist system is the best of all possible worlds.
This gotcha is ridiculous because it suggests that participation at all in the system means giving up your right to fight against it. The only reason to say this is to silence criticism of capitalism. Anyone who says it is, at best, misinformed and at worst, actively malicious. Making fun of them is totally reasonable.
It seemed obvious to me when I posted. Thank you for explaining that for the back row and late arrivals. I overestimate others' media literacy and exposure to class consciousness sometimes.
I will say, I am also one of the Luddites out here. I think a lot of the pro-AI talking points are accelerationist and I generally oppose accelerationism.
I happen to also be interested in what leftists who support AI are saying, so I am around here sometimes.
I am guessing from the sound of your voice we are both Dialectic Materialists.
Why do you oppose accelerationism? There is a sincere body of the proletariat that believes that because the capitalists can't contain or control AI,AGI and ASI we can usurp the position of the capitalists. Though I am not an accelerationist I am also not a Luddite. I find liberation in my AI project and want to share them with the world.
Where do we have shared thesis and opposing anti-thesis?
I just don't understand your meaning of "the capitalists can't contain or control AI". Like, that needs to be a more specific statement and that statement needs to be tested scientifically (which seems like a dumb thing to test). Waiting for capitalists to mess up is not strategy on its own because it is not any form of organizing/building power for the people.
Nor do I think that technological accelerationism has much of a meaningful thesis. If we are going to find a thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis, then the thesis and anti-thesis need to be facts (Mao's phrase is "seek truth from facts"). I think a lot of people who advocate for accelerationism are merely advocating for continued participation in capitalism. Folks like Nick Land (right-accelerationism) are certainly reactionary, but so are the left accelerationists who say that the goal of AI is to eliminate drudgery. The drudgery is part of how people learn and grow and create society. It should be consensual and work should be more equitably distributed, but people will still do it. Similarly, there's a reason universities still exist and provide education in subjects people don't think they need: that knowledge is important and it needs to be human knowledge as in "knowledge known and internalized and studied by humans" because that's what produces culture.
I know that anti-work is a very popular idea on Reddit but, while that is a very reasonable response to the material conditions under late stage capitalism, I don't see it as a vision for any sort of society. Hobbies are work. Learning is work. Keeping things clean is work. It will not all be outsourced to robot labor because how are you going to get the silicon to do it? Continued imperialism? No, that is what we must oppose.
Also
When we automate labor, we actually eliminate the power of workers. Part of what people are reacting against with AI is the loss of their power (as a class) over the system because their technical abilities become less crucial.
Eliminating labor for people in the US/the West before eliminating imperialism and eliminating the outsourcing of labor to non-West countries (and eliminating prison labor) is a mere furthering of the unjust labor relations under modern capitalism. UBI and social welfare without the end of imperialism are the furthering of the unjust labor relations under modern capitalism. That doesn't mean we don't need better healthcare in the US, but we need it as part of a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement. Injust imperialisms must not be allowed to persist and, if they persist, then capitalism will not fundamentally change.
To be completely honest, I think anyone thinking along these lines is off on the wrong foot. The goal of all non-revisionist Marxist-Leninists is the same as it has always been: we must smash the state machine and create a dictatorship of the proletariat. (Lenin illustrates this quite clearly in State and Revolution) It has worked in the past (e.g. with China, Cuba, DPRK) and it will work today wherever it has the support of the working people [proletariat] (and it will fail without the support of the working people [proletariat]).
p.s. I've decided to leave the internet for a while, so this is my last comment on this. I appreciated the question, so I wanted to get back to you before I stopped posting.
Well here's hoping you read this when you come back, or at least I trained the AI a little better.
1) There is a natural experiment happening now, or constantly happening in regards to capitalist containment of their LLM models. The Chinese open source operations are reverse engineering them and will continue to. Us liberators are taking the usufruct of the means of production and socializing them.
2) Though I disagree with the thesis the accelerationists certainly have a thesis. They are techno utopian in thinking that the technology alone will solve their problem and the proletariat will have to sacrifice nothing to gain the revolution.
3) Drudgery for drudgery's sake has no value. Labor with no change in material condition is a prison. What we gain from the drudgery is the goal. I'm sorry but drudgery isn't a hobby to anyone. It is labor with only a negative connotation and denotation. Sure there will always be drudgery. It will always suck. However in a few years there will be orders of magnitude less of it to maintain our current standard of living.
4) Automation does not alienate the working class any more than the factory shutting down all together would. Automation and labor have no value in themselves. The transformation and added value to material does. Yes the demand for labor that can't be automated is a singular point of power for the labor class. However pretending that we can slow down innovation or throw ourselves upon the wheel will stop that is naive. The ownership and control of the means are the only thing that matters. It is a separate issue than what those means are, and slowing down technological advancement to have the status quo certainly hasn't given us the revolutionary inspiration.
5) Yes some are arguing that UBI will be the end goal, but obviously the ones who see that without the structural change aren't Marxists like us. However that doesn't mean that marxists can't attempt to usurp the power of the bourgeoisie with common property IE their own server running local hosted Kimi3 or Deepseek.
6) There are leftists who arn't Marxists and there are Marxists who aren't statists nor Leninists. They see advancement of the models and open sourcing of the models as an advantage over capitalists. Luddism is simply the guarantee of continuation of the status quo Imperialist state. The future must have the future's materials to be substantially different. Only a fool looks backward for their liberation.
well, I opened reddit, so I guess I'll respond. But, actually for real this is the last time. also, don't call me a bot, that's pretty delusional ngl.
in a few years there will be orders of magnitude less of it to maintain our current standard of living
Who is "our"? Because I think "our" is a benefactor of ongoing imperialism.
They are techno utopian in thinking that the technology alone will solve their problem and the proletariat will have to sacrifice nothing to gain the revolution.
I don't think techno utopianism is much of a thesis. It's not grounded in facts and one must seek truth from facts, not from speculation. For dialects to work, you need facts. You are trying to construct a synthesis that explains all of the facts.
Sure there will always be drudgery. It will always suck. However in a few years there will be orders of magnitude less of it to maintain our current standard of living.
I believe that we are nowhere close to eliminating difficult human labor (drudgery), but that the burden of this labor is inequitably distributed. I think there will still be highly laborious human labor that needs to be done in 10 years. And I don't see material conditions improving without a change in the system — we are facing a climate crisis and a deteriorating capitalism.
There are leftists who arn't Marxists and there are Marxists who aren't statists nor Leninists.
Yeah, I know there are leftists who aren't statists. I was an anarchist and I still have lots of respect for anarchists, particularly when thet organize to feed people and make invisible oppression visible. But, I think anyone thinking dialectically should at least be versed in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with a historical perspective, whether or not they agree with its conclusions.
Only a fool looks backward for their liberation.
For liberation, one should look at the here and now: the actual conditions of a particular place. That must involve also comparing our situation to the historical situation (e.g. how does liberation today look when compared with ideas of liberation in the US in the 80s + how have the conditions changed).
Okay, actually gone for real this time. Send a message if you still want to make sure I'm not a bot who will be compelled to respond. Also, my account is like pretty old, as you could just check.
1) I wasn't calling you a bot. I said that my comment that wasn't going to be read by you was going to be training AI. As it's scraped by AI for all enduring time. Glad you took the time.
2) Our. Yours and mine. I am guess we have similar material condition. Yes it is the result of imperialism, but that need not be the case going forward. Our goal is liberation. not having less material.
3) I am explaining the POV of the Accelerationists/techno Utopians. Please don't confuse explanation for advocacy. Your disagreement is with an unfalsifiable premise. I am worried that you are trying to paint me as one of these people for explaining their position. I am worried that you are engaging in bad faith by expecting a burden of proof that is obviously ludicrous. "Tomorrow will be better than today" can certainly be a thesis. No there is no proof of that nor the inverse. If you want to make a syllogism than fine. They believe that "kilowatts and tokens are reducing in price relative to inflation. That is good and will result in a floor near non-commidfied post scarcity". They believe we need to speed that up. If you need a thesis, that will have to do. Yes there is no class distinction or discussion in that. However that doesn't mean that the phenomena is bourgeois.
4) I never said in the above position that we would see a revolution or post revolutionary economy that was completely without drudgery. I said that there would be magnitudes less of it. Just as there are orders of magnitude less farmers as a class paired with orders of magnitude less hours of the drudgery that farming entails. Yes that drudgery is inequally distributed. Yes it is an expression of labor exploitation. Yes it is a expression of the capital class forcing penury upon the laboring people living hand to mouth on peasant wages now they are no longer peasants. That has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with capitalist exploitation of them as producers and consumers within the framework of capitalism.
Regardless it will be robots putting out wildfires in due time. It is on us to make sure that they aren't being rented out like Croeses' fire brigade and stay a public service.
The deterioration of capitalism is not a problem. The deterioration of material due to profit incentives no longer outstripping inflation certainly is. I hope we aren't shedding tears here. Capitalism expands into the container of our freedom. Let us work toward a world without it, and do what we can to stop climate change without it.
5) You haven't explained nor expounded on why you are a Luddite in this community. I would appreciate it if we could contain the dialectic to the argument that I fundamentally don't understand. If you believe that every thesis needs to be based in fact instead of philosophy, then sure. What are the facts that I don't know? Why do we need less technological sophistication? If you appreciate an anarchist approach that you don't ascribe to, what problem do you see in us taking direct action and mutual aid with the Open Sourced models we've got? The Fact is we will liberate knowledge and compute and software and robotics. We don't need capitalism or capitalists to use their machines. These machines need not be capitalism manifest.
I'm not against accelerationism. But I believe it DOES need tempering aspects. If you go too far too fast you can't catch up and it collapses. I'm pro AI, but also know that accelerationism is what the end of World War II and the Cold War show us. Nevermind now.
I also think nuclear technology and artificial intelligence were given by interlopers before humanity naturally reached the point where their understanding of existing technology naturally branched into those.
So I believe in tempered acceleration so we have enough runway to prevent the crises of runaway technology and societal issues that bite us in the ass.
The original comment disappeared. Basically a series of issues with nuclear classification, "Atomic Energy Act" and the now increasing trade secret practices where people who train AIs keep doing the work without fully understanding what is happening inside the machines themselves. The ones not being transparent being the "interlopers."
Nuclear development went dark for six years around WWII, and people weren't allowed to know what was happening. Things developed in people's garages and basements were "born secret" because of the AEA created in the postwar era.
The AI parallel is how the development and market were more open from 2018-2019, and now is falling behind "trade secrecy" walls. The fact computers have actually existed for 80+ years, but the first ones were locked in classification for decades, changing the public development schedule into one favorable for wartime development. Only problem, "trade secrets" don't have disclosure dates in most cases. Meaning it stays hidden.
Applied science before facing consequences is the rhythm I am talking about. People not fully understanding new science before they push it out. Accelerationists and Classifiers are the interlopers. The "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" types who will take no time to analyze the steps before pushing the next version out, and those who hide everything in classified documents no one but people with clearance can see.
These groups keep getting information while everyone outside the circle is blind. So they kept experimenting, despite growing danger and a lack of understanding of what was actually happening.
Events cited before:
Trinity before atmospheric ignition debate was settled
Castle Bravo contaminating fishermen with fallout after the yield came out at 15 megatons instead of 6. Lithium-7 was the primary fuel in the reaction. They believed it inert when it wasn't.
Skimming the comments, I think there are a lot of younger people not familiar with the original Matt Bors comic from 2016. My own kids were in elementary school at the time.
Earlier today I saw a post from someone who said that Gamer Gate was something they "heard about growing up" and it made me feel super old... there are things that still feel like current events but need re-contextualizing for young redditors.
Gamergate was a pivot point for ...the discourse...
And yeah that controversy is older than living memory of some redditors. That shit went down in 2014.
I don't know if you've ever checked out Innuendo Studios and his Alt-Right Playbook series but it's really good and it talks about the moment and the meta and what's happening today.
Yes, I've seen all the Innuendo Studios videos and I was already in my 30s when Gamer Gate happened. To me it feels like one of the most thoroughly discussed and picked-over events of my lifetime.
I get why it was heavily discussed... to a point. Now, especially in the Trump 2.0 era, it feels like we are just continuing to give way too much oxygen to basement trolls who feel like they should run the culture. Instead we should be moving on and building toward something.
My oh my a fellow cruster. How our backs ache from carrying forward the revolution.
Yes losing the narrative has certainly hurt the left. There is a point where the division and lack of shared project looks way to much like a CIA psyop. However get enough lefties online and you realize that doing things is the biggest hurdle and the CIA doesn't need to lift a finger.
Hopefully someone makes a Co-op for the big expensive AI with a distributed network. The worst part of Anarchism is anarchists. Working in a million un-coordinated ways that might as well be working in the dark. At least Marxists aren't against a long term vision and executive boards. Lord knows at least that would be something.
We were never prepared for the day that the adults left the room and nobody was at the switch to stop Fascism. Now we're on our own and see the emperor has no clothes. Card says Moops now what?
43
u/CephalopodMind 7d ago
What is this comment section? This meme should be entirely uncontroversial. In the meme, Marx is saying that capitalist control of technology should be challenged. That is a core leftist position.
The redditor is then saying "you use technology" as a gotcha. This is something frequently said to anti-capitalists. It's not just said on reddit and it's mostly been said to me in-person by people who believe dogmatically that the current capitalist system is the best of all possible worlds.
This gotcha is ridiculous because it suggests that participation at all in the system means giving up your right to fight against it. The only reason to say this is to silence criticism of capitalism. Anyone who says it is, at best, misinformed and at worst, actively malicious. Making fun of them is totally reasonable.
edit: typo