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Ignatius M. Meen posted:The electrical system in the US has been noted recently for how incredibly insecure it is and how it looks like foreign hackers already have the ability to break it from inside the network, but I doubt anyone here would seriously try to argue that it'd cost less in lives/money/time to start fixing the damage done by a complete shutdown across the whole network than it would to start fixing the system from, say, a regional/state blackout or maybe even when the system hasn't been broken yet by the potential intruders. Would it be easier to convince people to start the process of addressing the systemic problems that made it vulnerable to total annihilation in the first place after it was totally annihilated? Sure, but you're trading a lot of lives for only an increase in speed to start the process, not speed to an actual fix - it's going to take a lot of work, time, and money to fix it no matter when we actually start and a total shutdown will force that much more stress on everyone and make serious changes take that much longer vs. even a regional blackout. That metaphor only really works if you add in the belief that using electricity is the primary cause of human suffering. At which point it doesn't really work.
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Dec 23, 2015 20:46
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:Capitalism isn't exactly the primary cause of human suffering though? It's a means of economically organizing ourselves and it's not even the only one we've ever used. Unless you'd like to argue that feudalism was the primary cause before capitalism refined it, which would work up until dictatorships and oligarchies come in as the precursor to that at which point you might actually just be arguing any means of economic organization that involves 'might makes right' at any level is going to necessarily be the primary cause of human suffering... which I don't think is what you're actually going for, but you'll have to elaborate on what it would be instead then. You can argue that capitalism is the primary reason for scarcity in the world today, and that a more redistributive and, er, communist system of wealth organization would greatly alleviate an overwhelming majority of human suffering. Accelerationism is generally used as an argument against preserving the current social order on the basis that its perpetuation is the perpetuation of humans being born into inescapable suffering as a direct result of that order.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:30
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computer parts posted:Though this depends heavily on the scope you're willing to define for capitalism and communism. Being the a UKMT regular I would generally define both in Marxist terms, capitalism being accumulative and communism being distributive. Obviously you have a continuum between the two which is why I'm not an accelerationist, as I don't entirely see how Destroy Society > ??? > (lack of) Profit! is supposed to work.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:45
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computer parts posted:I think a lot of leftists would disagree that there's a continuum between the two, hence the need for revolution (or a clean break). Did they read the book? Because Marx even says there's like, the transitional period of state ownership to redistribute wealth. As I recall he thinks it's a bit laughable that people could seize the means of production via the processes of democracy, and I would agree that it's very impractical for a minority to do that, but I would argue that given you need mass unionization in order to seize it anyway you could probably figure out how to do it without violently killing a bunch of people and rebuilding from base principles, because it's a lot harder to say no to an organised proletariat that are willing to ignore the state apparatus for democracy in favor of more direct opposition. But that doesn't mean that direct opposition has to take the form of indiscriminate destruction of society. I don't really know where that idea comes from given that Marx argues that it won't really help much, what will effect the "revolution" is everyone deciding to work together as mandated by the condition of their lives. The idea that a violent minority seizure of the apparatus of state, or that the general destruction of society will achieve that seems... a bit random? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 21:59
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computer parts posted:In fairness, there's a recurring trend of adherents of an ideology not reading the texts that their ideology is based off of. True but the Manifesto is really short. And leftists are supposed to be smart.
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Dec 24, 2015 20:34
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Baudolino posted:What if you are all wrong and capitalism is not so destructive that a complete collapse will happen. Just bad enough to ensure the majority of humans will never ever ever get to not suffer extreme want and deprivation. The system can survive that and squash the odd rebellion here and there. So far it has always managed to beat back severe opposition from the workers, from spiritual leaders and ulta-violent political movements. I think it likely that our current economic system could in fact survive almost any apocalyptic scenario where humanity does not go extinct. Nah, it's predicated by our level of technology, it came about as a result of mechanization and mechanization will likely be its end as well, it's the result of the fact that the primary need for human labour is to service machinery which replaced the labour of other humans, when that human labour can also be replaced, society will necessarily change. As the feudal order did not stop mechanization on the basis that it brought wealth to some of the rulers, neither will capitalism.
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Dec 26, 2015 01:40
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Baudolino posted:Ok that`s interesting. But that`s not a apocalyptic scenario at all. If you are rigth there is no need for revolution ,just let the system evolve itself peacefully into something better. Things won`t get worse it`ll actually just get better if we unleash capitalism. Well, that's the thing, the "revolution" as described by Marx & co is not necessarily murderous violent overthrow. In fact there's very little reason for that at all, an ideal form of it would be entirely bloodless because it is argued that the proletariat hold the true power, they just do not exercise it because they are not organized. Capital cannot function without Labour, so if Labour deigns to withdraw itself then Capital is powerless, because it doesn't actually do anything except tell everyone else how to live. The machinery is operated by the workers, the laws are enforced by the workers, the wars are fought by the workers. If everyone in the country said tomorrow "actually we won't be giving you any of our labour but we will keep coming to work and distributing the products of our labour as we see fit" then Capital would overnight become completely impotent. They only 'own' the machinery in the sense that they tell everyone else they own it, and Labour as a general rule will go along with this, they don't have the ability or the knowledge of how to actually use it. Of course that is extremely unlikely because what currently organizes the proletariat is Capital, largely because everyone goes along with it out of habit. It would be very difficult to get everyone to do that. And there'd be some organizational issues with how to handle distribution of goods and stuff without it being dictated by who has money, but it doesn't really diminish the fact that the entire structure of our society is predicated on the people who make the world go round consenting to allow it to continue. And also on people being organized into Labour and Capital. Because even ignoring the need for humans in the production chain, you also need the proletariat as a market to sell to. The whole desire of Capital is to accumulate more Capital, which it does by producing and selling to Labour, Labour necessarily being the majority of the population and the majority consumers of what is produced. If Capital shot everyone then what does it do now? It can't sell to the dead, so that would still necessitate a complete social restructuring and, I suppose, would possibly constitute a kind of backwards form of socialism, whereby the majority of the people own the means of production and distribute based on need, not wealth. On account of everyone else being dead and money/markets as a concept becoming entirely farcical. Of course that assumes we invent self-sustaining and constructing murderbots before we invent robots which cause mass unemployment generally, which is possible but perhaps unlikely. Once Labour is replaced by machinery very thoroughly, you run into the aforementioned problem of wage-labour not making a whole lot of sense any more because nobody's being paid to work because there's nothing for them to do, and if nobody's being paid, they're not buying things. The primary argument against accelerationism however is not that there's something wrong with allowing capitalism to progress, because that will happen whatever you do,the argumens against it are that it tends to focus on simply destroying society rather than accelerating the inevitable changes. And further, destroying existing society will not cause people to organize better and seize control. What accelerates the march of capitalism is still what is described by Marx, mechanization. I don't imagine it's quite has he envisaged it but it's right in the manifesto, that eventually Capital will replace Labour so completely that the conditions of Labour's existence will necessitate a change in social organization. Simply pulling things like social security or abolishing the government don't advance that at all, they just make living conditions worse, but there is no need to change society because of that, it would merely be very unpleasant to live in for Labour. Society worked just fine with absolutely abysmal working conditions for hundreds of years. But if Labour is no longer paid to work, then Capital cannot function as it currently does either because it cannot make money without a market. The most accelerationist things in the world would probably either be the development of fusion power or the advancement of robotics and computing. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 03:00
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asdf32 posted:Not really and this is basically a weird myth that gets propagated by both sides of the ideological spectrum. People don't buy for no reason, if a small proprortion of rich people have all the money then they probably still don't have very much to buy. If you're hypothesizing that money may eventually be completely irrelevant for the majority of people and exist primarily for trade between the directors of massive mechanized production lines then I guess that's possible but seems unlikely. Again you still have other humans in there and they need to either be surviving somehow or non-existent. It is true that Capital has not yet permeated 100% of the possible markets and that is why it's still here, but it will always seek to grow. ronya posted:putting aside the Singularityesque/Pikettyesque increasing-substitution-of-labour-by-capital idea... Which would seem to substantiate my suggestion. Automation does not make people more productive, it makes people less relevant. The point is that automation initially moved people from being skilled to unskilled labour, and will eventually move people from being unskilled labour to being redundant, as it already is. And once that happens you need to figure out what to do with the people who are left over. You can try shifting them into service work as we see nowadays but that has its problems too, and suggests further that Capital is built on the idea of constant growth, which would seem to be necessarily unsustainable under a constant social structure.
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Dec 26, 2015 03:55
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asdf32 posted:Consider that if I'm a rich oligarch factory owner there are two scenarios. 1) I want more stuff in which case I'll produce it myself or engage another factory owner in trade or 2) I don't want more stuff in which case I'll do nothing. But the conditions of you being a rich oligarch factory owner are based on your capital having meaning. If it can't command labour then it doesn't. If capital existed only for trade between rich oligarch factory owners then what is everyone else doing? Currently we all use capital to some degree and its primary social function is to keep the majority of society engaged with, and under the control of, people who dispense it. You can't have a society where a tiny fraction of people have literally all the money and use it for trade between each other and everyone else does not use money or interact in any way with the people who own the means of production. You're suggesting that we could end up with a scenario whereby the entire industrial output of the planet would become completely disconnected from 99% of the human population and would exist entirely for making things solely for the use of the 1% who own that industry. No buildings, no food production, no energy or cars or anything. That's absurd.
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Dec 26, 2015 17:52
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The conditions of labour could certainly get worse but at the point where labour is completely irrelevant then you end up with lots of people with nothing to do and no means to live. While there is plenty of poverty in the world the majority of people in the west, at least, are absolutely not subsistence workers, they are directly integrated with the greater production chain. They work to facilitate the growth of Capital and in return they receive a greatly diminished portion of that which is then, for the most part, given directly back to Capital in exchange for the means to live. What you are suggesting is very different from that, complete social segregation. You might not rub elbows with the wealthy now but you are socially integrated with them in the sense that they dictate the conditions of your life through Capital. If you no longer work for money and no longer buy things then you are truly subsistent, or possibly dead. And the role of Capital in society would be very different because it would not have control over people's lives in that scenario. If you don't need it to live and you don't offer it anything then it's irrelevant. That's the point, you're not suggesting a mere reduction in quality of life, you're suggesting a complete break from the means of living as it has existed for the last several centuries. That necessitates a significant social change. The increasing replacement of menial workers with automation is not infinitely sustainable, because either everyone needs to become much more skilled or you need something to cater for the majority unemployed, or you need a lot of people to die, resulting in the survivors being the ones skilled enough to be employable. Whatever happens, the social structure of a majority of low-skilled employees can't continue along with increased automation. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 18:18
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Woolie Wool posted:Now that I think of it, otter guy didn't capitalize everything just because he was crazy (though he was), but because he had a fetish for the way the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written so he applied Capitalization to all the Nouns as part of his attempt to write like a village idiot in 1776. Otterguy was literally the first thing I thought of reading the posts above.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:11
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