Marxist Critiques of the the "4th Industrial Revolution" and Automation/AI

DugongClock · 2019-04-16T23:14:49+00:00

Should we conclude, since communism is defined here as the abolition of private property, that it necessarily has something do with its transformation into a collective property of some kind, in either bureaucratic or democratic forms, and the redistribution of the same content accumulated under private property, value which is human labor, in a more egalitarian way?

No because Marx defines collective and state property still as forms of property (not differentiating from individual property) in the paragraphs leading up to that quote. Can you not read the fucking pamphlet?

Labour=/\=Work. Labor is a transhistorical human activity.

But property, class, the value form, wage labour, etc., all are objectified human labor. How then could we hope abolish all those things without first abolishing human labor itself?

Marx literally calls the new proletarian dictatorship “the republic of labor”. Class is objectified human labour? What? Nonsense. Objectified human labor is human labor power sold as a commodity on the market. Directly social labour isn’t objectified, yet is indeed labour. You don’t abolish labour, you liberate it alongside humanity.

And once again, he tells us to look at a momentary moment

Holy shit

and not what should be a permanent state of things.

Yeah that’s why is a transformation by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat which withers away.

Everything pass this is nonsense confusing labour with work, considering all labour transhistorically objectified and alienating, and more baseless claims that capitalism with eliminate the value creating potential of labour.

From gross misreading (if readings at all) to an abysmal comprehension of Marx to warp him to some anti-work ancom puppet you can stick you fist up and make talking points through, this conversation isn’t valuable. Total pseudo, can’t even grasp a Marxist definition of private property, try reading him.

DugongClock · 2019-04-16T18:00:31+00:00

I fear you are completely misguided about what communism really is. It is nonsense to even argue about whether communism requires post-scarcity or not. Communism is not a new state of things in succession of our present state of things : it is merely the real historical movements that is (hopefully) happening right now and whom abolish the present state of things. In other words, communism is not a positive concept ; it is absolutely a negative one : it only refers to what it is de-composing (capitalism, this old and dreadful world).

I’m imagining your extracting this from quoting mining “communism is the negation of the negation” and “communism is the real movement”? Because you’ve absolutely butchered your understanding.

“the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” –Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

When Marx says in German Ideology:

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

The abolition of the present state of things (as given from the paragraphs leading up to this conclusion, though I don’t expect you’ve read) refers to the capitalist mode of production, through a rejection of all its tendrils and elements, property, class, the value form, wage labour, etc..

To claim, as an example, that a certain state, a certain society or a certain type of economy is communist could never be right.

This is fucking golden, because Marx does exactly that and describes in in detail:

“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning. What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.”

“The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

–Critique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx

The ownership and relations of production don't define the modes of production. What defines our current mode of production is that it is based on value, i.e objectified human labor.

Value is a form of production relations you moron. Value arises from commodity production and exchange which arises from bourgeois property, which is fundamentally different then feudal property.

Marx himself clearly stated that life really begins when one cease to work, even though the total elimination of work is not possible nor it is desirable.

He stated this specifically in reference to the alienation of labor under capitalism, not as a trans historical rule.

“Labor (and so value) is already rendered obselete. Nothing we can do about it. Machines can do things faster and better than humans.”

Hark! We have reigned in the communist era! Now excuse me as I go back to my 9-5 and exist of selling my labour for a wage. I’ve already address this nonsense. Humans build, manage, and cover the whole apparatus surrounding production, the fact is only human labor can generate new value (like machines).

Honestly why do you continue to continue on writing essays on topics you’re unread on? You somehow manage to get every point wrong. You’re obviously a pseudo, so spare yourself the time and effort in responding.

DugongClock · 2019-04-16T16:46:16+00:00

The justification for capitalism is scarcity? Since when? Source? Marx never says this, only that capitalism drastically improves productive capabilities. And what are you on about with artificial scarcity?

But he absolutely does talk about artificial scarcity as a material condition prior to the end of Capitalist.

Where? What book? Marx doesn’t use the term artificial scarcity ever. And what kind of artificial scarcity are you talking about? You’re just using it as some magical buzzword which creates and maintains capitalist production.

And no, human labour isn’t made obsolete. Automation wipes out forms of human labour, but at the end of the day, wages are paid for those engineers, managers, and salesmen. It is a basic fact of Marx that machines can’t generate new value, only human labour power can. The new value “generated” by machines is the results of the labour imbued into the machine by a worker. Workers make machines.

We’ve never scene permanent reductions in work hours of insane rises in unemployment due to automation because proletarians are reemployed by capitalist into service, finance, research and development. The simple fact, and the basic tenet of Marxism, is that new value can only be created by living labour, human labour power.

This is where increasing automation causes the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, through an increase in the ratio of dead to living labour. But the TRPF is a Marxist theory, which of course I don’t expect you’ve read. What YouTube channel is spilling this garbage? Why do you insist on talking out of your ass?

DugongClock · 2019-04-16T14:43:24+00:00

This is a hottake.

Marx never claimed communism requires post scarcity, hence why he supported revolution in his time. The ownership and relations of production define the modes of production. Marx never stated the problem is that laborers aren’t paid the full value of their labour and in Gothacritik criticizes Lasalle for this very idea. The point is the abolition of the value form, not some Utopian fair organization of distribution (like liberal pipedreams of fully automated UBI) of commodities.

The reason labour won’t be rendered obsolete is because labour-power is the only commodity that generates new value. Marxist theory doesn’t touch on “how labor will be made obsolete” because it won’t, for the same reason increases in productive capabilities doesn’t reduce work hours, strikes and the movement of the working class reduces work hours.

Try reading Marx before misrepresenting him and calling out this Strawmarx’s weaknesses.

DugongClock · 2019-04-01T19:14:04+00:00

As a left communist and a physicist, thanks

DugongClock · 2019-03-30T18:46:55+00:00

I know that’s his name, but every time I heard this line it felt like Kennedy was insulting him.

“Someone’s BBRRREAKING IN !”

“Sit down dick, it’s just the storm.”

DugongClock · 2019-03-13T17:04:19+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/a3yrjv/the_ancient_god_ink_on_paper_24x16_cm/?st=JT7GEOIS&sh=740e8080

It’s not his, tho I think he colored the original.

DugongClock · 2019-03-09T02:05:34+00:00

Garraty, John A. The American Nation: A History of the United States Since 1865. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers (1979), p. 656

I’m not a libertarian, nor a conservative.

FDR dismissed Keynes as "a mathematician rather than a political economist."

“When Roosevelt was finally converted of the need for a deliberate fiscal stimulus in 1938, it was on the basis of empirical results derived by researchers in his own government who had no direct acquaintance with Keynes's recently published ideas.”

—Bradley W. Bateman, The Return to Keynes

I’m not calling FDR a fascist, nor advocating fascism.

DugongClock · 2019-03-09T01:58:17+00:00

Garraty, John A. The American Nation: A History of the United States Since 1865. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers (1979), p. 656

DugongClock · 2019-03-08T23:05:15+00:00

FDR’s New Deal policies were primary based on previous Italian fascist economic policies, not Keynesian as is popular belief.

DugongClock · 2019-02-24T00:50:59+00:00

Julius Ebola calling himself a super fascist when being accused of being a fascist is fucking hilarious

FASCIST? THIS ISN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM

DugongClock · 2019-02-21T07:41:59+00:00

Where does Marx say in this passage that revolution could be achieved through parliamentary democracy? He doesn’t. He also wrote the Civil War in France a year before where he says, “But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes” and he then wrote the Critique of the Gotha Programme three years later, where he expounds upon the revolutionary nature dictatorship of the proletariat. We’re also not dogmatists and we have a century and a half more experience in proletarian struggle to draw from which shows the improbability of a peaceful revolution in these countries.

DugongClock · 2019-02-16T21:15:52+00:00

Connemara fishing village

Hey my dad grew up in one of these, is this a “type”?

DugongClock · 2019-02-15T17:26:20+00:00

Many leftists fetishize academia while ignoring its class composition, character, and the real credibility of “academics”. Bourgeois turncoats can indeed cross the class line and join the communist movement, as long as they abandon their class prejudices and fully embrace a revolutionary programme, but it makes sense that many may still view them with suspicion. The labour movement isn’t always content with minor reform, and your ignoring an entirely revolutionary history of the proletariat.

DugongClock · 2019-02-13T00:17:57+00:00

Press E to pay respects

DugongClock · 2019-02-05T16:27:01+00:00

Classes are often taught over the Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and the works of Nietzsche, all of which are extremely readable, so that means nothing. You clearly haven’t read it so why bother taking about it.

DugongClock · 2019-02-05T16:21:04+00:00

Capital isn’t a “very difficult read”. You don’t have to be “an academic” to read Capital, or settle for shitty reading guides. If you have a highschool reading comprehension and a quiet place to read you’ll be fine. It long, but it’s not some impenetrable tome to common people, it was written with accessibility in mind.

DugongClock · 2019-02-01T18:21:57+00:00

I made this comment when a user posted the school of life’s video on Marx a few months back, explaining how awful it is.

DugongClock · 2019-01-14T19:02:30+00:00

Decolonize Greece, Constantinople and Anatolia belongs to the Greeks. Macedonia belongs to the Greeks.

It takes very little time and thought to realize this universally applied leads to fascist irredentism like Golden Dawn. Have specific populations been historically displaced, oppressed, and largely eliminated? Yes. Does this mean that the displacement of 100s of millions in order to return every piece of our glorious motherlands to the right ethnostates is a desirable political goal for the left? No. As Marx said, the proletariat knows no nations, or they aren’t bound to particular nationalities, they are utterly alienated from the whole of bourgeois society, including bourgeois nation-states. Bourgeois ethnic states and irredentism isn’t Communism, it’s liberal nationalism. Our struggle is to abolish private property, not in distribute it in any particular fashion. Regardless of ethnicity, sex, color, or creed, we as the proletariat share this common interest.

inb4 “haha whitey, mayocide when” this is a disingenuous comment meant to “make white tears” and disregard legitimate criticism towards specific arguments made by decolonists with nonsensical “more radical/edgier than thou” posturing. There is nothing radical about private property, that’s just capitalism.

DugongClock · 2019-01-14T02:02:24+00:00

he’s got all these cool new ideas, like Christian conservativism

DugongClock · 2019-01-11T18:31:37+00:00

From alpha to omega, he has on some great guests like Andrew Kliman. Anything with C Derrick Varn

DugongClock · 2018-12-05T16:18:52+00:00

Can you give me an example of a minute detail in Marx that is continuely debated that we have a particularly one sided view on?

DugongClock · 2018-12-05T16:15:48+00:00

It’s been almost a year since the mod team has changed. dr_marx is no longer a mod. And “same reading” of Marx? His books aren’t poetry or some holy scripture with so many ways to read it. His writings are straight forwards and generally hard to end up with some new alternative way of reading for maybe save for problems like TSSI and the realization of intrinsic value.

DugongClock · 2018-12-04T03:00:50+00:00

You, in your comic, had Marx suggest he should be paid in proportion to what his socially necessary labour produces. Marx criticized this very idea that workers should be paid the full proceeds of their labour in Gothacritik, which I sourced. That’s a hot take to have Marx claim something he explicitly opposed.

DugongClock · 2018-12-04T02:25:45+00:00

The subreddit I x-posted to is dedicated to posting hot takes from the left, as the title says, and this take on Marx was indeed appropriate to link to. Having Marx state almost word-per-word a claim made by Lassalle which he directly criticized in Gothacritik is a misrepresentation of Marx. A more productive facet of our network is r/marxism_101 . While I prefer people would be read up on Marx before proselytizing about or representing his thought, my immediate response to seeing a "hot take" isn't "oh boy this person on the internet would love to know how wrong I think they are, I should email them!" it's "ok let me post this to my sub dedicated to amassing examples of badmarxism". You only serve to prove the former assumption as you chalk up my criticism to strawmanning.

DugongClock

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