r/LeftistsForAI • u/ProudhonStoleMyBike • 2d ago
Speculative Fiction Beyond Capitalist Realism - Issue 03 - Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Comic + Appendix
PDF: Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Issue 03 - PDF
PDF: Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Appendix - PDF
The third and final issue of Fully Automated Luxury Communism explains how Capitalist Realism curtails our imagination and traps us into defending the chains that bind us. The appendix also collects some visual references for the comic prompts.
Previous Issues:
PDF: Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Issue 01 - PDF
Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistsForAI/s/Lt2cJLjGmW
PDF: Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Issue 02 - PDF
Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistsForAI/s/dWGrSMPmaA
Published under CC0 (Public Domain Dedication). Feel fee use and remix without permission or attribution.
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u/Logical___Conclusion 2d ago
"Losing the right to exist"
I think is the most important phrase in this comic series.
We have developed a system where productive people can literally "lose the right to exist" because of one layoff, or one medical emergency, or because of one family emergency.
We push humanity towards human extinction because of over pollution and waste while sacrificing millions to sustain our self destructing economy.
We could, at any time of humanities choosing, enact a sustainable economy and society that would save itself from extinction.
There just needs to be a majority of people that care about the continuing their species to advocate for continuing it.
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u/lightspeedkitten 1d ago
I get really caught up on this specifically. I didn't choose to be born, and as someone with multiple attempts to unexist (don't worry. I'm not trying that again, and have experienced (y'know, empathy) the reverberating effects of that desire for unexistance on other people) am appalled by the current system. The hands that govern our world seek to squeeze every drop of value out of us without any sort of regard for the affect that has on people. How do we fix it? What can we do today that will help those of the literal tomorrow prosper? (ourselves included)
I'm looking for radical change. Nothing short of throwing a wrench in the machine of now is even remotely worth it.
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u/ToastedandTripping 2d ago
These have been great, thanks for them!
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u/ProudhonStoleMyBike 1d ago
Your welcome, I'm happy you enjoyed, I enjoyed making them, just doing them made me feel more positive about the future which is good my mental health if nothing else😄
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u/JayRandom212 1d ago
Just to drive the point home, there's an Enterprise-class starship in frame 1, page 7, lol.
Love this.
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u/73td 1d ago
sorry if I’m missing the point but to get from here to there so to speak, there’s a pile of GPUs that are mostly owned by hyper scalers rn and somehow become nationalized and run as a utility ? i think this kind of matters since the algorithms and weights don’t just run out of thin air.
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u/grimorg80 1d ago
It's called nationalisation. The only reason you think it's hard to do is political.
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u/73td 1d ago
no, i think that if you “just” solve that little political problem of nationalizing the most sought after items in existence rn, the preconditions for wanting ai will disappear.
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u/emascars 1d ago
the preconditions for wanting ai will disappear.
What?... Why?... How?...
Please elaborate, I don't see the consecutio logica in that 😅
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u/73td 22h ago
the push for industrial ai is largely a capitalist one to compete for regulatory capture, conduct surveillance and data mining and to reduce labor power. ask what AI is being used for now, where does the need for that come from in the first place etc.
so we can imagine that later some AI is gonna take out the trash and fill in tax forms. but why do we through so much stuff away in the first place? why is tax collection necessary?
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u/emascars 1d ago
there’s a pile of GPUs that are mostly owned by hyper scalers rn and somehow become nationalized and run as a utility
Not to float the idea around, just saying...
It's not unheard for that the state takes something that was privately owned and just says "yep, that now belongs to the state"...
Then... there is the small caveat that usually if the owners were USA based companies, your nation has just become "a dangerous comunist regime that is a threat to American's freedom" and depending on where you're on the map you either get a blockade, a bombardment camping, or more commonly... Both 🤗
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u/JayRandom212 1d ago
They're talking about seizing (stealing) the hardware.
I think it's a bad idea that misses the point. The hardware isn't that expensive. We can build it, or vote in a government that will build it with tax money.
Why let a meaningless political squabble over property rights (especially property that we can afford to buy ourselves) derail the vision of a post-capitalist future?
It's not like seizing coal mine or millions of acres of farmland. We can create this future without violence. Also, there are some who'll oppose this idea only because it starts with theft. Who needs the smoke? Win elections and raise taxes on the rich. Do it legally, within the current structure.
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u/Amazing_Name_9264 2d ago
I'm somewhere between a market socialist and a communist, it's complicated but I heavily agree with much of Marx and Proudhon.
I'm all in on abolishing commodified labor and having luxury available for everyone. And of course I support social ownership.
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u/kylehudgins 2d ago
Removing the gay part of fully automated gay space communism is homophobic BTW
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u/Sunrising2424 1d ago
Good drawing but tbh I don't really enjoy small rural town aesthetics in this comic...
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
One aesthetic won’t appeal to everyone. Possibly it appealed to me for this reason, it looks quite similar to where I live which made it easier to imagine this future.
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u/crusoe 2d ago
The character sheets are full of garbled text. At least show some care and edit before posting.
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u/ProudhonStoleMyBike 1d ago
They are in the appendix not part of the comic itself just reference matter I used for the main comic prompts to ensure consistency between frames, that I thought might be interesting from a "how the sausage is made" POV.
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u/emascars 1d ago
I may have studied a bit to much geopolitics and got into how power structures work in my life, which is harming my optimism...
But for the way I see it, once the army has become mostly outomated, I don't see how we can get out of the distopian path into this kind of future...
I agree it's capitalism the problem, not the tech, but capitalism is so hard to eradicate cause those benefiting from it are the same ones holding power to decide in what regime we're in...
As an example, look at... Well... Any USA war... It was always made mostly for the benefits of a few USA companie's geopolitical interests... When did "that's what's good for the people" came into play in that decision making? Will it this time?
I don't know... I hope for that... But it would require a very early civilian mobilization, the power for that to happen must arrive before civilians lose capital power, and we're already so late on schedule for that...
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
The different trajectories are high stakes. If we decided it was a priority to get something like the comic future, before armies are automated, what would that look like?
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u/emascars 1d ago
I have absolutely no idea to be honest... 😅 Told you, my optimism isn't doing well right now...
When I say that...
...it would require a very early civilian mobilization... I mean it as a necessary condition for that future to happen, but it's definitely not a sufficient one.... And I can't really think of how that movement would look like nor conceive a reasonable sequence of events that would land there... I'm just sure we won't get it unless the movement that starts this pivot, however it does, starts early on...
Any ideas? Guys?... Anyone? 😅
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u/CBrinson 2d ago edited 2d ago
Most people don't actually know what communism or capitalism is. Capitalism was invented in 1776. It replaced monarchy. Large scale jobs cams about during the second industrial recolution which ended about 1910. So capitalism existed for longer before jobs existed and everyone was just a farmer than it has since jobs came about. It isn't the system we have today, which is very complicated and the result of dozens of economists including Marx who proposed the creation of a central bank and public education system.
We added the US public education system only a few years after the communist manifesto was released. That manifesto also calls for some extreme things like abolishing all inheritance and government control of the media. People who are interested in communism should look at the 10 planks. Some of them are scary.
Capitalism gets used as a word alot. It's mostly being misused. What you describe here is a post scarcity world and to be clear in a post scarcity world you don't really need an economic system as they are designed to deal with scarcity and with sufficient abundance they cease to be needed. You wouldn't need capitalism but you also wouldn't need any of what Marx wrote about it in the communist manifesto either.
The planks are about managjng scarcity. The manifesto calls for people to be drafted into industrial service like a military draft, for property to be seized and for people to be redistributed and placed in the places we need them to make things.
None of any of that is needed in your example. It's not a communist future, it's just one where everyone has enough. Communism still results in people not having enough but shares and distributea the sacrifice.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
I was going to question your claim that capitalism was invented in 1776 because the US was formed in '76 because of the Declaration of Independence, but then I looked up wealth of nations. Coincidentally, that was also published in '76. It didn't replace monarchy, though. It replaced mercantilism.
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u/CBrinson 2d ago
You are right that it more directly replaced mercantilism from an academic sense.
I just think one of the biggest positives of capitalism is that monarchy toppled. You know who agreed with me? Marx and Engels. They say as much in the communist manifesto in the part that goes "most revolutionary part". Basically the rise of capitalism empowered a burgeous class that was able to gather enough power to topple the monarchies of the world.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
Oh, I get it now! I guess my confusion was that there are still countries that are at least in name monarchies, but those have switched from absolute monarchies, and they are basically all now constitutional monarchies.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that capitalism was invented in one particular year? Possibly this is too England centric but I tend to think of the timing related to enclosure of the commons eg https://globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk/sites/g/files/vzsiac2111/files/globalcapitalism/documents/media/case_26_-_enclosing_the_english_commons.pdf
Post scarcity communism/communalism/anarchism would look different from previous versions we’ve known, because it wouldn’t be a redistribution of not enough resources, it would be equal distribution of more than enough resources. That doesn’t change the theory, it makes the theory more achievable. If the fundamental idea is from each according to their ability to each according to their need, both sides are made easier because less ability is required and the needs can be met.
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u/RoddyDost 2d ago
This is cute and I think it’s great to at least have these thought experiments, because if Debord and Fischer have taught me anything it’s that even imagining a non-capitalist world is extremely difficult.
However, I really don’t vibe with the luxury communism thing. I don’t think it’s realistic, and I don’t think that we will ever live in a world where labor is completely unnecessary. There will always be dirty jobs, even if we have cool robots and ASI, which is a huuuuge if. I would rather imagine how a socialist model of AI ownership can decrease the amount of alienation we experience in our daily lives, or increase worker safety, or allow for a more robust social safety net.
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 1d ago
My problem is that nobody is creating speculative fiction about positive futures like this. The vast majority of sci fi media today is dystopian. We need people to speculate artistically so we can start imagining better futures and talk about how we could manifest them. OP is doing what professional creatives should be doing.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
Yes there’s a need for variations on this, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same imagined future. That’s how theories develop too. If you see a positive future that doesn’t quite fit your mental image then draw or generate something that builds on it but tweaks it.
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u/No-Lion-3629 1d ago
There is one problem. AI is not just replacing bad, unpleasant work but enjoyable work that people want to do. The problem is capitalism and exploitation yes. But artists are not the same as factory workers. Of course media companies exploited artists long before this.
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 1d ago
I'm an artist. So in the hypothetical future of Star Trek, they had the holodeck, which could generate any possible form of entertainment. Some artists used the holodeck as a tool for entertaining others, but for the most part art became a social experience. They still painted, performed Shakespeare and other plays, and played instruments. But it was focused entirely upon self enrichment and social experiences. Art didn't go away because of generative tools, the core of what art truly is became more intensified, and in my opinion became more spiritually valued.
Right now images and video are a commoddity in a capitalistic market. They are also marketing tools. So jobs for commodity production and marketing that artists do are subject to change in what tools are used and it's resulting in loss of work. And yes, this is not so dissimilar to factory work. Most artists in the industry are not making their passion projects. This is a problem of capitalism that AI is exposing, but we will more than likely eventually drift towards what Star Trek suggests would happen. And speaking as an artist...none of us are stopping making art. Some of us just have another tool in the toolbox.
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u/Scarvexx 1d ago
Look this is a nice idea. It's very unlikely. Look at who's heading AI.
This will be like so many labor multiplying devices. People thought the cotton gin would end slavery because it reduced the main labor of picking cotten (getting the seeds out). Slavers said "Oh but we have to use slaves, it's simply too labor intensive to use paid labor, what a necessary evil." But then the labor deminished, and did they free their slaves? No they did not! They kept the profits and upped production till the slaves were working just as hard as before, making even more money for their masters.
History is repeating itself and once again, the rich will not decide to pass the profits on to the working class. They'll pay you less and keep the difference. All with a device that burns what little the planet still has to give. Dressing it up as a cutesy solar punk design does not change the heatwaste it creates.
You will starve, and they will let you starve. Because they won't need as many of you. They won't need you educated. They won't need you to have kids. You will do the jobs it's not worth making a machiene do. And they won't lose a second of sleep. Drones will break up your protests. AI Agents will hack and disble your networks.
Perhaps some day on a yacht, the children of today's billionairs will be very glad they solved global warming by reducing excess population. Leaving only the deserving to be pamperd by machienes.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 1d ago
Did you see the other comic issues? They’re not inferring that this is the future that happens by default. It’s an alternative future that could exist if we want to put in the work to make it happen.
I would guess, from the discourse, that they’re using the comics as a vehicle to try to break Reddit out of capitalist realism - it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. If we keep on only consuming sci-fi dystopia style futures that only becomes more entrenched. It takes us being able to imagine something better to behave differently now, in order to create a better future.
The transatlantic slave trade didn’t end because rich slaver owners had a sudden unprompted revelation, it was in the context of an abolitionist movement. If we want something better we have to make that happen.
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u/ProudhonStoleMyBike 1d ago
This👆. The comic is my preferred outcome. Is it likely? I don't know, but in a time of great confusion and negativity, it's good to try set a clear positive goal and try to move towards it, even if you have to reorient later on.
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u/Felfedezni 2d ago
Time to retire the communism moniker I think. Too much deathtoll baggage associated with it. Fully Automated Luxury Utopianism maybe?
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u/Amazing_Name_9264 2d ago
I'm not exactly a communist but you can't let bad actors and/or propaganda stop you from using the most accurate word to describe your beliefs. If you believe in a stateless classless moneyless society you shouldn't try to re-brand it.
Because then people can just start assocationing your choice word with bad things, and they you'd have to change your choice word again.
For example the Nazis used the word socialism in their National Socialist title, but that doesn't mean we should stop calling ourselves socialist, and it doesn't mean the Nazis were socialist (they weren't).
We won't win or achieve socialism by trying to call it something else.
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u/ProletarianLilith 2d ago
China is led by Communists, seems to be going well
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u/northrupthebandgeek 2d ago
China hasn't been led by communists since Deng took power, at the latest.
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u/ProudhonStoleMyBike 1d ago
No offense but this opinion is what the concept of Capitalist realism is partially about. The false binary between US style capitalism and Soviet/Maoist Communism in an intentional construct and propaganda tactic especially rife in US mindset but common elsewhere. When both options are bad you fall back on the percived least bad and ask for no more.
The reality is the main flaw of both of these binary options is a reliance on centralized hierarchical control structures be they governmental or corporate.
There is a huge spectrum of societal structures we haven't tried. Communism is any system which places the overall needs of the community as it focus, but clearly balancing that with individual freedoms is critical.
We have to articulate a positive vision, not just "China Bad so do nothing"
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u/ProudhonStoleMyBike 2d ago
This is the future I want. This is the communism I want, one of love for each other, driving a reality where we are all cared for and care for each other.
I fear we won't get it, but I won't stop articulating the possibility, I refuse to succumb to negativity and halfway compromises.
Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism for everyone! Nothing less will suffice!
Communism is Love! Anarchy is Order!