Socialism
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
A certain knowledge of socialism is expected, if you are new to/interested in socialism, please visit c/Socialism101 before participating here. Socialism101 will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.
Memes go in c/Lefty Memes
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!
Rules
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion is enforced here.
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavour.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengist) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Xenial Xerus" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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And how does this statement in any way have an effect on the problem at hand?
gen AI is harming people which capitalism is actively trying to crush beneath their boot
And the usage of it is tantamount to a tacit agreement with capitalism doing that.
If we're talking about gen AI as a whole and not just IP law, I assume by the problem at hand you mean small business owners in creative industry being displaced.
And yeah, under capitalism, technological advancement kinda sucks for everyone in general, not just AI. For those being made redundant, it's either proletarianization, going for a shittier more general job or homelessness, for factory owners to get the same profit margins the factory needs to be creating more stuff to keep up with LTV and so on.
Gen AI isn't anything special in this regard either, but the reaction is amplified because a bunch of hitlerite small business owners that run social media accounts and create slop content are afraid that AI is going to take their job.
This is the primary demographic of people who are the most affected, it isn't some vague notion of "the masses", and going on a moral high horse being like "if you use genAI you support capitalism, we need to FIGHT the technology so small business can continue creating slop and stuff they don't want to be making since it's profitable", then not only is it promoting lifesfyleism, but has never worked and just puts you in the same category as luddites except reactionary since you want to go back in time now before Pandora's box opening.
You know Luddites were actually not against progress right?
That was dark propaganda against them by the dominant socioeconomic class of the time.
The luddite movement was against using industrialisation to remove workers rights and to reduce safety standards which was prevalent at the time. It started as a direct response to the horrendous death of a child in a factory.
And they did actually win in the end, though as a splinter group after the original fell apart due to the bad PR.
That's why there's safety standards now, and statutory minimum of legally mandatory holidays in EU.
My argument is that genAI is being used for the exact same reason now, to erode workers rights.
Maybe you need to brush up on your history lessons?
Luddites were an embryonic form of workers struggle against labor saving technology back in early 19th century, back when there was no theory or analysis for workers to actually know where the issues were coming from, so way before the birth of scientific socialism.
They were mostly violently suppressed by the government, any gains that they might have had were really temporary and local (like some temporary wage increase), so
is just you talking out of your ass, especially considering that luddites were contained within the UK, and it happening ~150 years before EU was even formed. These rights were concessions that bourgeois states gave to the working class to pacify them, since the threat of a communist revolution back when was real AND the post-WW2 superprofits allowed these kinds of rights and welfare in general.
Now if you're gonna go "genAI technology displaces workers, erodes their bargaining power and thus their rights" then yeah no shit, that applies to every labor saving technology under capitalism. If you then hyperfocus on one piece of technology due to moral panic spearheaded by petty bourgeois slop creators who risk getting displaced, saying how it has to go and how that's gonna fix everything - you're just a reactionary that wants to turn time back, it is an impossibility.
It's almost like progress in one country can make progress happen in others, but no, that would be impossible!
Especially not when that country had an empire at the time that could force vassals to follow the same rules!
Cool, what's that got to do with anything? You've heard of "grandfathering" right? Taking existing rules and going "y'know what, they work, will just copypaste as they are"
I love that you keep trying to paint artists as Slop creators. You mean the thing that takes hours of dedicated practice, learning and trial and error? That thing?
Slop creators, those who use genAI, are the ones who try to displace them.
And again, your points all fall apart when you mention one very very very specific thing. We don't live under socialism, so to work towards it, shouldn't a goal be to ensure the Safe and Healthy lives of those who live, right now, in the real world, so they can then work towards improving it and hopefully making socialism real.
And your points would fall apart if you actually decided to read what I wrote instead of cherry picking sections out of context. For instance:
The rules in question: "They were mostly violently suppressed by the government, any gains that they might have had were really temporary and local (like some temporary wage increase)". A temporary local response to some movement where individual capitalists decide to temporarily bump up the wages to appease luddites and so they can continue exploiting workers and accumulating capital unimpeded isn't some universal rule that was applied everywhere.
Also this entire exchange literally came about because of some off-hand remark about luddites that wasn't even important to the argument.
Whatever, I'm disengaging.
Sorry for thinking that other humans deserve to live a happy life without fear of their livelihood being destroyed, that's very unlefty of me.
I didn't know that using robots to replace people by doing a bad but cheap job was a core tenet of socialism.
I'll have to read up on the part of the socialist theory that states "For the Robots and the Capitalist Oligarchs that own them, by the Robots and the Capitalist Oligarchy that owns them"