All my communist posts keep getting deleted there. It is crazy to me that a workers subreddit is not communist 😵💫. They are not going to achieve anything by being neoliberals.
All my communist posts keep getting deleted there. It is crazy to me that a workers subreddit is not communist 😵💫. They are not going to achieve anything by being neoliberals.
No you misunderstand. Automation to the degree of ending mandatory labor does not exist. The technology we have today is capable of Communism, material abundance. Expecting technology alone to bring us there is as idealistic as solving Patriarchy through machine births removing the requirement for sexual reproduction. Automation accelerates human labor. It cannot replace it, ever.
It’s a technologist’s dream. We don’t need to wait for technology, we need to organize society in a way that liberates technological advancement, that itself is Communism.
I will say that, General AI is purely science fiction. We are absolutely nowhere close to specific AI either. It’s not intelligent, that’s a fact. ML is only a technique for predictive processing, it cannot constitute intelligence however.
You seem to have an odd definition of exploitation. Labor itself isn’t exploitative, laboring for someone else is not exploitative. We don’t need to hand all labor to a class of machine slaves to achieve Communism. This is a capital L Liberty ideal in the original sense of the word, freedom to own slaves.
Idealizing a society built off of technology that does not exist in our time is by definition Idealism.
Do you legitimately think that machines are comparable to human slaves? Do you think we are going to be giving sentience to a “Janitor-bot”? It’s a computer.
Do you view your phone and computer as mechanical slaves??? Are factory assembly line robots, slaves?
Why would a “worker bot” require higher level thinking? That would be horrifically cruel.
I heavily disagree.
I never said that we have to wait for machines and technology to implement socialism and communism. Where did you get that?
Humanity has always striven to do less work and that is the core foundation of a lot of technological progression. “How can we preform more, by doing less?” That’s the entire point of humanity moving from a 12-14 hour workday as peasants, to 10-12 hours in the early industrial revolution, to 8-10 hours currently. Saying that we should not aim to do less work is bizarre.
My definition of labour exploitation is not “work bad”, I’m saying you can avoid the entire concept by cutting the middleman and removing the human from the equation at all.
Second to that, how is labour not exploitative at its core? Why should humanity not aim to be free of its shackles and pursue that which truly matters to us? Do you think many people find any meaning at all in being factory workers? Cashiers? Clerks? Janitors? Electricians? Or do you think they would find more meaning in pursuing intellectual endeavors, the arts, the sciences, or developing their own identity though self discovery?
Or should humans look forward to toiling hours away doing work they find little to not meaning in?
Again, that’s the entire point of technology. To do less MEANINGLESS work. Do you think if you have a person all their basic necessities that they would stay home and not do anything at all?
Humanity proceeds only as a species through technology. That’s why we are measured by our inventions. Fire; the wheel; agriculture; architecture; the internet; computers; etc.
You don’t understand alienation if you’re talking about work in such a manner. Your miscomprehension allows you to take such an antisocial position on laboring for others without exploitation, the comm in Communism stands for Community. I shouldn’t have to describe socially divided labor as being the true power of production over Capital.
Extremely eurocentric evaluations of “progress”. It frankly isn’t true, which is why the Euros have been trashing the planet for 5 centuries. Technological determinism hasn’t proven itself useful, we are Marxists.
From redsails:
Quote mining Marx but avoiding the parts of Capital where he talks about humans laboring because that’s what we do.
And I’ll answer the two other replies here, you were the one who brought up generalized AI, which is pure science fiction, as way to free humans from labor. If an artificial intelligence actually existed, it would necessarily enter social relations with humans and could be considered exploited by your “Communists”.
When would we ever have a world where there’s not enough things to get done? If we free from “janitorial duties” as you so much lament, shouldn’t we use that surplus labor in a “progressive” field? Since the level of technology you expect to free us completely of labor is basically mastery of the universe, I’m going to call it utopian Idealism. It’s unhelpful if people think that’s what we Communists are about, and we only attract increasingly bourgeois audiences.
You have completely misunderstood my point.
Where did I ever say that we should just up and leave all work? I said we should put our efforts towards work that matters, not “janitorial duties”.
Where did I ever say that we should every isolate ourselves? That we should not do any work with those around us? Did you even read what I wrote? You completely strawmanned my position and avoided nearly everything I mentioned.
Also deriding technological progress as “Eurocentric trash” is insane.
Lastly, planes, smartphones, MRI machines, tanks, the internet, and rockets used to all by science fiction. To completely disregard a notion that is right spring the corner because it’s “science fiction” is the exact thinking that lead the Soviet Union to completely fail to anticipate or make use of computer technology in the 60-80’s.
Have fun burying your head in the sand and deriding technology because it’s “Eurocentric”.
No your judgement of societies by their “technological progress” is eurocentric. It’s the same reactionary positions of Liberal historians who look at Africans as “primitive” because they didn’t use wheels, despite wheels being useless for certain terrains. It’s giving terra nilus BS that justified stealing productive human-managed ecosystems of the Amerindians and razing them for plantations worked by slaves. I’m saying there’s no “objective” level of progress. It can not be calculated based on how many gadgets you have.
All of these things are cool and great, when used towards definite human needs. There is no march on progress that we need to shape our societies towards today because petty bougies like to live lavish lives through Imperialism. There will never be a time in which human labor shouldn’t be directed to developing material conditions. You are comparing exploitative work with time loss for what, hobbies, isn’t that still labor? Peoples’ hobbies require labor. We have no need for Aristocratic Marxism. You took issue with me calling full automation Idealism, because it is. I’m an automation engineer, I build it for a living. I can only accelerate human labor, make it more efficient, but there will always need to be humans doing work toward definite goals.
Utopian views of a laborless society are bourgeois because they are a class of exploiters who seek to or live that dream already. The difference in our stances is that I believe you can never eliminate work, and if you could, you are only limiting your society from the benefits of socialized labor. You believe that there is a point in which labor itself is unnecessary. I’m asking what technology this would require, and is that technology even feasible? Is it even worth this being a goal for our movement? I think it completely focuses on Capital and dead labor instead of the living labor that makes any society run. It’s the same grand vision of the bourgeoisie.
Our robot slave “Communism” finna be overthrown by robot Socialism
Why would you give robots that do menial labour or mindless tasks any form of sentience? That would be horrifically cruel. Why would you even build a machine like that?
If you give them sentience, treat them as humans. But you don’t need to give higher level thinking to a computer that doesn’t need it.