/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6113765]

>wanting to bring about the end of capitalism
>not letting capitalism destroy itself with automation and a worldwide labour crisis

[Anonymous No.6113773]

It's called accelerationism.

[Anonymous No.6113779]

>>6113765
The emancipation f the working class still doesn't happen on its own, it requires human action, just like capitalism itself.

[Anonymous No.6113783]

>>6113765
> implying capitalism can actually destroy itself if, through control over government, it can make concessions to the working class to ameliorate their condition to prevent crisis and thus maintain labour-capital relations.
> see: the welfare state

[Anonymous No.6113793]

>>6113783
The current welfare state is a concession. A welfare state cannot be sustained in the event of labour-abolishing technology.

[Anonymous No.6113795]

>>6113765
Mein Gott! Destruction ist only making the beast stronger!

[Anonymous No.6113828]

>>6113793
Even if skill-biased technical change means that majority of jobs might become redundant, capital will always protect its interests. We won't wake up one day and find that robots have taken all our jobs. It'll be a gradual thing, or won't be a thing at all, because it didn't happen in the past, so there's no reason to think that people will ever be taken out of the equation.
But regardless, let's say one day skill-biased technical change becomes so apparent that unskilled workers begin to show unmanageable amounts of discontent, the most logical outcome will be concessions in regards to either education or welfare. The reason is simple: cost-benefit analysis is a fundamental process of capitalism; it rationalizes risk and manages it to safeguard accumulation.
Unemployment is hence not in capitalism's best interest, so it will always find a way to manage it.

[Anonymous No.6113840]

>2015
>not knowing that a spectre is haunting europe

[Anonymous No.6113850]

>>6113765

Wasn't this what Marx envisioned anyway? That there should be a period of capitalism before socialism/communism is put in place?

[Anonymous No.6113863]

>>6113840
Marx is a truly unique writer.

[Anonymous No.6113864]

>>6113850
yes, capitalism, followed by a revolution, and right ofter that comes a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, followed by communism

>pic related

[Anonymous No.6113889]

>>6113765
>>6113783
>>6113864

They don't realize that automation and advances in tech will created a sort of post scarcity society where marxism/communism will no longer even be relevent

[Anonymous No.6113894]

>>6113889

Agreed, scarcity is simply a mismanagement of resources.

[Anonymous No.6113911]

>>6113889
Full automation is not gonna happen. You're like one of those people that used to say that during the industrial revolution.

[Anonymous No.6113913]

>>6113889

kek
do you believe in the singularity too?

[Anonymous No.6113920]

>>6113911
>>6113913

Luddite detected.

[Anonymous No.6113921]

>>6113911
>>6113913

Yeah, cars are never going to replace horses, why have a mechanical contraption when I can ride my trusty horse?

[Anonymous No.6113937]

>>6113921

>we invented cars, surely a technocratic utopia awaits us in the future!

good luck

[Anonymous No.6113947]

>>6113864
>Herrschaft des Proletariats -> Keine Staat

Man I wish it were that fucking simple. The State is necessary for foreign relations, is the only valid issuer of money and credit, and is necessary for economic management on a Macro-economic level.

Realistically building Socialism isn't that hard; worker coops and direct democracy can form the basis of Socialist economy thats compatible with otherwise broadly Keynesian economic policies and use the market as distribution. Its actually getting past this sort of cooperative based model of Market Socialism (Alec Nove has a great book on how to get to realistically build Socialism) to the lower phase of Communist society that I can't figure out.

[Anonymous No.6113956]

>>6113937
I can watch, read or listen to 98% of all the movies, books and music ever created. Less than 20 years ago this would have been impossible. In terms of entertainment we are almost already in a post scarcity society.

[Anonymous No.6113965]

>>6113947
>direct democracy
Not with XYZ millions of persons. Nobody knows how to have a better democracy, but everybody agrees that the situation is detrimental.

[Anonymous No.6113972]

>>6113965
Perfectly possible with the appropriate dissemination of state power to local governments. Direct democracy is feasible on a state level, if not federal level, and is absolutely necessary on a local level for worker self management.

[Anonymous No.6113995]

>>6113956

let me know when technology enables you to not have to work (whore out your body as a tool for labor power) to be able to consume entertainment of any kind

dipshit

[Anonymous No.6114015]

>>6113995

I think self-driving cars is a very good example of how technology will eliminate jobs.

[Anonymous No.6114021]

>>6113995
>oh you are too old to work?
Here is some money
>oh you have autism?
here is some money
>oh you are disabled?
here is some money
>oh you can't get a job?
here is some welfare

Also most 1st world countries and even some 3rd world countries provide basic income.

Libraries also provide free computers and internet where I live as well.

[Anonymous No.6114023]

>>6113828
lel

[Anonymous No.6114033]

>>6113765
>implying capitalism will end

[Anonymous No.6114044]

>>6114021
> he thinks not participating in the capitalist system and still enjoying its benefits is that easy/fun

[Anonymous No.6114051]

>>6114033
rome, spain, and england all once thought they'd rule the world forever

[Anonymous No.6114053]

>>6114051
I'm sorry? is capitalism a nation-state?

[Anonymous No.6114055]

>>6114021

I can't get a job, welfare or disability
I live in the heartland of capitalism and I don't qualify for any benefits
I have to sell my time and body for money to survive or be entertained
that's how capitalism is designed, how it was meant to work. it's terrible

[Anonymous No.6114062]

>>6114044
> he thinks not participating in the capitalist system and still enjoying its benefits is that easy/fun

It becomes easier every year, the government is paying for my engineering degree and giving me an allowance on top of that. I have to intention of being an engineer tbh. Currently starting my own business because I like to stay busy.

[Anonymous No.6114085]

>>6114055
>I can't get a job
>I have to sell my time and body for money to survive

[Anonymous No.6114097]

>>6114085

Yep, if I don't find someone willing to buy my labor power soon I'm sorely fucked

What a utopia capitalism is

[Anonymous No.6114105]

>>6114097
its cool bro you can just chill on the street and you dont even have to go to jail most of the time

[Anonymous No.6114113]

>>6114062
Cool blog

[Anonymous No.6114128]

>>6114097
It's not perfect and some people get left behind but it's getting there.

Marx didn't predict that automation and capitalism were eventually going to lead shorter work days and better living conditions and an all-round improvement in quality of life for the so called "wage slave".

What can I say, capitalism is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried .

[Anonymous No.6114129]

>>6114062
Looks like you'll be participating in the capitalist system then.

[Anonymous No.6114132]

>>6114128
>capitalism
>form of government

[Anonymous No.6114133]

>>6114129
I never said I wouldn't, I said others could survive without doing so.

[Anonymous No.6114134]

>>6114055
>I'm a fucking loser
>This is capitalisms fault somehow

[Anonymous No.6114139]

>Le post-scarcity face
Back to etc.
Will never happen, def. not in your life time

[Anonymous No.6114143]

Just so you know, I come to /lit/ specifically to laugh at all the bitter Marxist losers.

[Anonymous No.6114146]

>>6114128
Except its not getting there, every advance in conditions for the working class in European republics is borne on the backs of third world workers and only exists as a concession to Social Democrats. Without constant pressure from the liberal center left we get situations like Iceland whee the economy simply collapses, Capitalism is not a stable economic system.

The only reason you don't see this on a daily basis is that most (MOST) of the daily ramifications of poor economic policy (or even just general market shifts) fall upon investment Capitalists (who have a tendency to THROW THEMSELVES OFF THE DEEP END when things go poorly).

The entire history of modern economics is rooted in Keynes and stabilizing Capitalism.

[Anonymous No.6114147]

>>6114134
I want Margret Thatcher to leave

[Anonymous No.6114152]

>>6114143
>Implying I'm not a Keynesian
>Implying you understand Macro-economics well enough to laugh at anyone

kekkity kekeroo

[Anonymous No.6115563]

the material conditions set the possible outputs of history. But only man as the agent of history is able to drive the historical process.
So we have 2 options
either capitalism AND humans fail and in the process of rapid devaluation we'll kill ourselves
OR
humans realize that capitalism will be kill and sublate the notion of property (in other words communism)

[Anonymous No.6115587]

>>6113864
Du hättest ruhig ne englische Grafik posten können.

It's important to note that "primitve communism" isn't really communism the way we imagine it.

[Anonymous No.6115613]

Since the 1970s onward, the historically unparalleled victory of global capitalism has been closely intertwined with the dissolution of democracy and the welfare state. Capitalism exists in perpetual crisis, yet these crises pose no challenge to the legitimacy of the capitalist system. Thus exploitation and greed will continue unchecked until the Third World eats itself and the decadent West explodes like a bloated corpse rotting in the sun.

[Anonymous No.6115647]

>>6115613
>with the dissolution of democracy and the welfare state
Nah I wouldn't say that.
I'd argue that german post-marxists were right in their assumption that the massive growth of the finance sector in the 70s/80s saved capitalism one last time.

this interview is particularly interesting:

Part 1
http://www.krisis.org/2012/making-every-central-bank-a-bad-bank-ernst-lohoff-and-norbert-trenkle-discuss-the-economic-and-financial-crisis-part-1-of-3


Part 2
http://www.krisis.org/2012/the-economic-crisis-and-fictitious-capital-ernst-lohoff-and-norbert-trenkle-discuss-the-economic-and-financial-crisis-part-2-of-3

Part3
http://www.krisis.org/2012/neoliberalism-turned-into-the-godfather-of-the-finance-industry-ernst-lohoff-and-norbert-trenkle-discuss-the-economic-and-financial-crisis-part-3-of-3

[Anonymous No.6115654]

Implying capitalism will or can ever die.

[Anonymous No.6115673]

>>6113793

You all keep talking about this mythical era of labor-abolishing technology, yet we don't have any idea if it will happen and in any case it won't destroy capitalism anyone, it will just mean people have no need to employ other people. People will just produce for themselves.

[Anonymous No.6115677]

>>6115654
according to Marx there's no new value produced in your example.
It's just value shuffled around

[Anonymous No.6115702]

>>6115677

The new value was created by the fact that guys road wasn't created with the stolen property of millions of people.

[Anonymous No.6115727]

>>6114053

[Anonymous No.6115749]

>>6115702
>mfw austrians caricature themselves.

[Anonymous No.6115762]

>>6115749

Well I'd be a pretty bad Austrian if I didn't agree with them. The difference with me is that I do believe collectivism works, but only in small scale homogenous tribes that form voluntarily. The very idea that 350 million people can all find common ground and know what's best for each other is laughable to me.

[Anonymous No.6115844]

>>6115762
Hold up, an actual Austrian doesn't believe in human nature?

[Anonymous No.6115875]

>>6115844

Humans don't have a nature beyond their instincts, hence why despite being bahaviourally modern from 65,000 years, its only in the last 6000 we've really began to think about the world.

[Anonymous No.6115954]

>>6115875
The realization of instinct is limited by environment, and it has nothing to do with your second. You also have the absurd notion that people who can't write can't think about the world, despite the most influential philosopher of the western tradition never writing down a single word.

[Anonymous No.6115969]

>tfw trying to get through Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Revolution Betrayed, and the Permanent Revolution
>historical materialism, proletariat and bourgeois, structure and superstructure, working-class struggle, the party, revolution, revolution, revolution, and revolution over and over again

I've never been more bored than reading what comes from a privileged class who studied and lived most of their lives abroad, but yet somehow still knew struggles of the actual working class, and the solution. It's so goddamn hollow most of it should've been laughed into irrelevance long before it turned Eastern Europe into a sewage drain.

[Anonymous No.6115980]

>>6113793
It's called standard income. It'll happen eventually.

[Anonymous No.6115981]

>>6115954

Where did I mention writing? Also, the realization of instinct is not limited by environment, the suppression of it is encouraged by the environment.

[Anonymous No.6116008]

>>6115980

Standard income is a terrible idea for a vast amount of reasons. But even disregarding 99.9% of them, the biggest one is still enough to decimate any good will towards the idea. The fact the government, the state, is one who controls all the reasources and is the one who gives you your allotted property should be morally repulsive to anyone except fascists and socialists. No, here's a better idea: do away with the state altogether and eliminate the need for a "standard" income altogether. The only reason we find it so hard to survive today is because the state declares everything within its country as its property, and unless you have vast sums of money you're banned from providing for yourself by any means except working so you have 30% of you labor stolen to pay for some stupid faggot to tell you what to do and bomb foeginers.

[Anonymous No.6116071]

>>6116008
The state is necessary to prevent the existence of other states. If you were to abolish the state, you wouldn't magically have access to all of the resources under it's control, you would instead have a bunch of smaller states controlling the same resources.

Some of them might be easier to deal with, or more generous with the resources they control, but there is no grantee.

[Anonymous No.6116105]

>>6115969
>a privileged class who studied and lived most of their lives abroad
They're the only ones who know the solution, mate. What do you think the oppressed working class is going to do without class consciousness?

[Anonymous No.6116128]

>>6116071

No it isn't at all. That's like saying "killing yourself is necessary to prevent other people killing you". Not only that, but states don't prevent the existance of other states.

[Anonymous No.6116138]

>>6115981
What's your criteria for "thinking about the world" then? If you think that there is no possibility for the realization of instinct in the human environment, there is nothing but the suppression of it and so there is no reason for it according to any definition of instinct.

[Anonymous No.6116665]

>>6116128
>"killing yourself is necessary to prevent other people killing you".
That's a horrible analogy and you know it. And states only have to prevent the existance of other states (in this case I mean power structures) within their own domain that are not directly a part of them.

While this is not always successful (Organized crime is just a parasitic state living inside another larger state) one of the functions of a state is to protect it's territory from incursion by other states, and prevent states from spontaniously forming inside of it.

If you could remove the state magically, you wouldn't be free, you would just have other states move in and take the resources it leaves behind. Even if you removed all states, you would see new ones forming up as people band together around the closest charismatic asshole.

States are an emergent phenomena, the only way you could ever have a stateless society would be if you could continuously remove any power structure as it forms. This would require, paradoxically, something akin to a state.

I do think that a state that does nothing but prevent the existence of other states would be ideal, but it would probably be unworkable, and at any rate, by definition not anarchy. You need a rule to prohibit the creation of rules, or a king to kill anybody who tries to exercise dominion over others.

[Anonymous No.6116679]

>>6116105
>>6116105
The working class no longer have any revolutionary capability, the economic equalization of the 20th century created too much social mobility for intelligent members of the working class, the working class left behind in the 21st century is not intelligent enough to have the faintest idea of class consciousness.

Most always were but at least there were enough intelligent people distributed throughout the working class to act as leaders. Now there aren't.

[Anonymous No.6116704]

>>6113793
A welfare state is easiest to sustain in the event of labor-abolishing technologies. More things are created with less people needing to work for them.

A capitalist market side by side a post-labor society where everyone has a substantial minimum income from the state and only work if they want to, thereby greatly increasing labor standards and quality of life, with people doing with their new non-working time what they please (volunteering, studying, creating, working on community projects) is the new vision of an attainable utopian socialism.

[Anonymous No.6116847]

>2015
>Not seeing the death of the proletariat at the hands of general service robots and drone soldiers.

Technology is closing the window on any kind of revolution. Pretty much the elites of global capitalism can't lose power and the position of those not currently in power is hopeless decay.

Talking about concessions, consumer capitalism is a much bigger concession than the welfare state ever was. In the end consumer capitalism will be dismantled the same way the welfare state is being dismantled. The technology of the future will give those in power the ability to control without needing to make concessions.

Marx was wrong in predicting the death of the bourgeois from the creation of industrial capitalism. In reality, the creation of industrial capitalism signalled the slow death of the proletariat by delayed obsolescence.

[Anonymous No.6116859]

>tfw conservative echo chambers wont stop using "cultural marxist" as the stock go-to insult

[Anonymous No.6116865]

>>6116847
>Marx was wrong in predicting the death of the bourgeois from the creation of industrial capitalism. In reality, the creation of industrial capitalism signalled the slow death of the proletariat by delayed obsolescence.

but industrial capitalism created the proletariat in the first place

and furthermore we already have enough food worldwide for everyone to be well fed, yet many still starve and live in poverty, what makes you think just because we have even more resources that they will be distributed equitably under capitalism?

[Anonymous No.6116882]

>>6116847
Technology is if anything increasing chances of revolution. As long as proletarians had labor power the capitalists needed they had something to bargain with, something that eventually would induce capitalists to make real concessions.

Now they have nothing with which to force concessions but they're not going anywhere. They can't work within the system to uphold it while improving their living standards because they aren't in the system anymore. If they want things to get any better, and they will get much worse before they get better, the only option is direct assault on the system itself.

We are really living in the worst times, trapped between when things were too good for the workers to revolt and between the time when things will be so intolerable as to force revolt. We are living in a steady but slow enough downward trend that won't get any better in our life time, but where things won't get so bad that misery isn't wide spread enough to ease the pain through necessary communal solidarity.

[Anonymous No.6116883]

>>6116865

You must have me confused with someone else, I don't think resources will be equitably under capitalism or under any system for that matter. I am using the word proletariat as a word to mean individuals outside the elite of society.

[Anonymous No.6116894]

>>6116847
The engineers which design the drones are the Proletariat. And you only need one disgruntled drone programer to start a revolution.

Alternately robot revolt.

[Anonymous No.6116906]

>>6116882

Technology is moving power from labor to machines owned by capitalists and built by machines in a closed loop. A revolt you speak of will be easily put down by drone soldiers. It will happen slowly but by the time people feel the need for revolt as you say, it will be too late.

[Anonymous No.6116940]

>>6116894

This division among those not in power will probably be used by those in power to create conflict between those engineers and their peers. At least, until their positions are taken over by the computer programs they build.

AI revolt is a possibility and probably the only hope for humanity. But then again I am guessing an independent AI will probably view humanity as inconsequential to its continued existence and just watch humanity slowly become extinct.

[Anonymous No.6116952]

By the time capitalism destroys itself, the world will be in a doom cycle set to make humans extinct

[Anonymous No.6116999]

>>6116883
>im using this word to mean something other than what it means

bitch pls

[Anonymous No.6117086]

Zizek Unruhe debate when.

[Anonymous No.6117255]

>>6114128
>shorter work days and better living conditions and an all-round improvement in quality of life for the so called "wage slave"
Jesus. What you're describing is the ear of underemployment and ultraflexible no-job-time-no-free-time workers, i.e. postindustrial society, not a good thing at all. Read Ulrich Beck's Risk Society, or someone that deals with liquid modernity, e.g. Zygmunt Bauman.

[Anonymous No.6117388]

>>6116940
> I am guessing an independent AI will probably view humanity as inconsequential to its continued existence and just watch humanity slowly become extinct.

Or we could get The Culture. Either way, capitalism and class struggle will end.

[Anonymous No.6117465]

Capitalism is an exercise in sustained economic brinkmanship. It will in time give way to something else, just as feudalism gave way to capitalism. Pure communism in Marxist terms can never be achieved until it's divorced from the specter of state capitalism and pseudo-communist regimes that ended up defiling its name for almost a century.

[Anonymous No.6119144]

>>6117465
I'm ok with this. We really need to get rid of those pseudo-marxists perverting marxism up to the point where they believe it's possible to have commodities as the general form, the value form, abstract labor and state in socialism.

[Anonymous No.6119249]

>>6113765
>soon no man will be need for no job
>mandatory minimum wage or
>kill every one but owners or
>revolution to the first,

[truman capote !!cO9KVBDtkqQ No.6119335]

>letting capitalism destroy itself with automation and a worldwide labour crisis

we've been waiting for that to happen for hundreds of year, you should know by now that the more capitalism rots the better it works.

Here is what will change global capitalism as we know it:
Biogenetics
Wealth Inheritance
Ecological catastrophe

Change for the worse, of course. Perhaps a kind of free market oligarchy. We will look back on the early 2000s fondly as a time where billionaires at least could claim to have made their own success.

[Anonymous No.6119907]

>>6119335
>We will look back on the early 2000s fondly as a time where billionaires at least could claim to have made their own success.
But they haven't? Ever?

[Anonymous No.6119984]

>mfw the average pleb thinks communism was a historical occurrence in the past
>mfw their faces when communism will rule the world in 200 years

[Anonymous No.6119998]

>>6113793
of course it can, the cheaper stuff is the easier to give it away

[Anonymous No.6120003]

>>6115969
>knew struggles of the actual working class
Man you sure dont know any shit of how Marx abd Engels lived dont cha? *cought* The Condition of the Working Class in England

[Anonymous No.6120011]

>>6114051
>equating capitalism, an spontaneously emerging economic system compromised of private property and free exchange to empires.

[Anonymous No.6120031]

>>6120011
The bourgeois idea of spontaneity (and the risible idea of the inherent justice of it) is as crippled as their idea of freedom.