Also I don’t mean to put words in your mouth. I asked those questions to get you to think about how the anti-plagiarism laws you want for AI would manifest in real life.
Making the abstract concrete is always a good dialectial materialist approach. It is how we should often dissect a problem as marxists. For anyone still lurking and interested in further reading:
Well done for highlighting the LTV the way you did; it is an excellent examination of the defense against proprietorship. (I was deliberating against commenting because it may feel like ganging up on the relative OP here but I felt an upvote was not enough)
The OP pic I think touches on this, albeit unintentionally; the implication is that the annoying parts of existence are fine to automate, but the cool parts shouldn’t be, and that the annoying parts are icky manual labor and that the cool parts are expressing yourself.
There is a certainly an undercurrent of this; labour aristocratic mores.
…This reeks of bourgoisie “feminism”…
Rather, all I have been seeing are artists refusing to use genAI and usually the arguments that pops up are about theft, which I don’t think is a good argument to use.
That’s what the defense of proprietorship means.
This automation is taking away their jobs and fighting back against that is rational since they now see their lively-hood threatened. What they usually lack is the notion that fighting against the tech itself is not feasible…
This is ludditism. Why are so-called marxists acting like this? Why is the automation of every other industry acceptable but theirs is not? It is such a common phenomenon, as exemplified on this thread, one then needs to consider a deeper class phenomenon. They, like others, fear proletarianization. And the argument in defense against this devolves into essentially into two things: proprietorship and the metaphysical idealism of where creativity comes from.
There needs to be introspection to the inherent nietzschen elitism in all of this if one is doing the above while calling self a marxist. Read up and expand one’s horizon and burst the myopic liberal bubble.
…AI slop…
The quality of output of AI as a defense against the technology in the first place is a poor defense because all that means if it was to reach the level that is acceptable then that means one would be for the technology? Instead what is inferred by this is that it can never reach an acceptable quality because there is something inherently mystical about human creativity that the machine cannot create.
I have no problem against organising against capital. The solution to the problem of unemployment produced by automation is the equitable redistrubution of resources, the end of the rentier economy, and at the scale of genAI it will end up needing to be a dictatorship against capital. That is the point here.
(Socdem compromises such as regulation is nearly not enough. You need to own the means of production. We are marxists. We should know why reform over revolution does not work)
Paid employment could mean retraining under socialism. Remember communism is moneyless, stateless and classless. The aim of society is the socialisation of all labour to free up time to do more leisure including art. People will still want art from humans without AI but there’s a difference between that and the preservation of regression through ludditism to maintain less productive paid labour.
Equating anti-capitalism to anti-corporatism, the appeal to ludditism, the defense of proprietorship, or the appeal to metaphysical creativity is not going to cut it, and that is a low bar to clear for marxists.
It is art with its relationship to paid labour that is at stake here. People are free to make art irrespective of being paid.
We are in agreement that it is reactionary to hold back automation.
The argument that automation in fields were creativity is involved is acceptable except for artisanship is reactionary and often relies on metaphysical and idealistic concepts of where the artists’ creativity comes from. Creativity has a materialist root if one is to do away with unscientific notions.
Paid labour is undone by unemployment due to automation and so that only leaves the defense of proprietorship as a means of income, which again is reactionary and regressive. It is this bourgoisie ideal that is being defended and claimed authentic because it happens at a smaller scale.
If ones wants authorship without payment that again is a problem with capitalism and not the technology. The bourgoisie own the means of production - they claim rights on ownership de facto or de jure. However, that is not what is being argued against here; it is the technology itself.
(As you were hopefully alluding to AI art can save time and thereby increase productive capacity. For example a software engineer who wanted to make a game now has lower barrier to entry for say the production of glyphs, a revolutionary as lower threshold to make agitprop, a civil engineer with interior design etc etc. Furthermore a world where everyone can do art is already a world where there is less paid labour for art. We consider making the abstract concrete to take a more dialectical materialist approach.)
I feel similarly disillusioned about Westerners’ revolutionary potential and this AI “debate” is not helping. It feels like such a basic aspect of marxism.
Everytime one wants to clarify it is capitalism and not the technology people do mental gymnastics which ends up being usually some combination of defense of proprietorship and mysticising creatvitity (including the quality of AI output; if the output was high enough quality would that they mean they would then support AI?)
There’s zero self awareness of how Nietschean they sound and how effectively they are saying the automation of other people’s jobs is fine but not theirs because of some inherent superiority that they bring to the table of humanity (usually artisanship). There is no examination of their own fear of proletarianization.
It really feels their marxism, at least in this field, is vibes based.
There could be lots of interesting discussions, for example how we could seize the means of production of AI, or how it could be used to organise or create agitprop, or help progress towards DOTP but all of that is lost because people refuse to leave their liberal myopic bubble.
(The downvotes I’m not bothered about. Lemmygrad is a place for learning and pushing my understanding of theory. I want someone to show me the error of ways so I can learn but this one is such an easy “dunk” against reactionary takes. My own field (I don’t want to say what to keep anonimity) is under threat so I am less sympathetic when other so-called marxists refuse to expand their horizon.)
All labour should be socialised. Laundry, dishes, writing, art - it doesn’t matter what.
If one wants to create art, let them have at it.
The argument made here that we should gatekeep skilled labour by fighting against mechanisation or automation is reactionary and regressive.
Attempting to draw an arbitary line for the artisan by distinguishing their creativity from other’s is not possible without alluding to idealism and mysticism. It is made more obvious when examples of creativity, including in other fields and industry where automation has happened, is recalled.
Division of labour through gender means women disproportionately end up doing unpaid labour including laundry and dishes. The emancipation will include the socialisation of these roles and thereby abolishment of gender. It is irrespective of your personal ability as a man to do the same work.
If this socialisation was helped by automation would you then be saying we should destroy the machines to help preserve the employment of those that do this work for a living? Of course not but you want to apply that standard to artisans by drawing arbitary lines by apparently appealing to the mysticism of creativity.
There’s a clearly a recognition of this inferred from the quote. However, that is then juxstaposed with the fact that the labour of artisans should not be socialised. So the writer wants to preserve gatekeeping of the ability to make art in order for some artisans can remain being paid for it.
This reeks of bourgoisie “feminism”. The emancipation here is for individual liberty at the expense of class consciousness. The individual wants socialisation of domesticated labour not for universal emancipation but so they could gatekeep who gets to do art. It is individualism for reactionary ideals. Patriarchy is a structural concern, it is not a synonym for misogyny.
It’s ok if your excuse is that you are uneducated about this. We are all learning.
There’s no need to have a “cold” perspective to be marxist. Nothing human should be alien. Capital has countless references to nature.
The importance here is not to mystify here to metaphysical nonsense. We should not resort to idealism of where human creativity comes from.
Art is clearly subjective and it is the relationship between the viewer and the art that defines it as art; whether it is exchanged for money or not.
However, what is effectively being requested here is to gatekeep who gets to make that art (only those skilled enough) and that art should be paid for; the defense of proprietorship. It is this that is reactionary while appealing to ludditism.
This reply is probably not directed at you but for anyone who is lurking.
Metaphysical nonsense.
Dishes and laundry aren’t the same as art. One is manual labor that just has to be done and has tangible utility. The other is creative work that has value to a large part because a human made it.
Tangible? How did you decide to draw that arbitary line? Is it tangible if you can touch it? How about writing code? Is the artisan’s output not tangible? Is creativity not found in other industries? Is the baker not creative?
Your argument against this is essentially the sophistication involved by devaluing those who do manual labour. You’re arguing for the path toward labour aristocracy/petite-bourgoisie to be unobstructed. This is a very reactionary take.
Noone is stopping anybody’s “want” to do art and writing. You just want to just tie that to the above.
Where’s the “inherent patriarchy” in the image?
Who does the unpaid labour here? Why is that normalised? Why use that as a juxtaposition here?
Did you just run out of arguments?
No. I’m a marxist. What’s your excuse?
Finally, why shouldn’t writers or or makers of art be paid a living for writing or making art?
That’s a problem under capitalism; the allocation of resources. As a commodity if it is provided more efficiently and cheaper by a machine, should we be regressive and hold back that process so that artists can be paid? Should the weaver still be employed at the invention of the loom?
These are bourgoise ideals defended due to artisans fearing their own proleterisation. Why isn’t the quote in defense of AI doing all four things - the dishes and the laundry, and the art and the writing? Why not socialise the unpaid labour? There’s an inherent patriarchy here as well.
Noone is stopping one from writing or making art; the implication here is one should be paid a living for it. The issue here is captialism not the technology. Artisans having reactionary takes is not new.
The phrase “late stage capitalism” is deserving of the marxist eye roll.
No, it wasn’t directed at you. I reworded it before I saw your reply, if it helps. And I upvoted your reply :)