Basically dress up the economics as futurism instead of tankie shit with its associations.

Marx said we should hold the means of production in common, and follow a socially beneficial plan. But a lot of audiences would roll their eyes and close their ears as soon as I said Marx.

If instead I say, “Artificial intelligence and computerised logistics are becoming so sophisticated we can think about phasing out the human element of management. We can choose democratically what we want the robots to do and they will produce it for us.”

This might sound like subterfuge to some of you, but it’s not actually dishonest. It’s a correct way to describe a Marxian economy. I replaced the phrase “the means of production” with “the robots”.

The real win here is you get around “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” People don’t expect a Marxist world revolution. People don’t expect the fall of capitalism. But people totally do expect robots and AI in the coming decades.

  • albigu
    14·
    10 months ago

    I’d be very careful with this tactic of obfuscating the communistness of communism with aesthetics. We don’t need to be citing Marx every second (just paraphrase some Yankee Marxist like Parenti or Cockshott instead).

    But if you want to use this as a rhetorical technique, I wholeheartedly recommend this documentaty about Project Cybersyn in Chile. I also like how Richard Wolff frames socialism as “Democracy at Work”, though I haven’t read his book. It’s also more urgent and tangible as a selling point, rather than waiting for the far off future where AI is competent, or abstract like explaining long-term economic planning.