I wonder how long it takes the petite bourgeoisie to realize that they’re going to be the first ones replaced with AI because they are the most expensive workers
The most bullshitty of jobs.
Perhaps that’s why they have so much fascist anxiety.
The bourgeoisie has always been willing to cater to incredibly inefficient or even counterproductive work by the bourgeoisie. Upper management wasting massive amounts of money on pointless resutructuring, consultancy firms, investment into pie-in-the-sky scams by rich friends, etc.
Capitalism has never been about the efficient accumulation of capital. The bourgeoisie will not replace itself, it is them that it exists for.
The bourgeoisie might face each other in a pitched battle of companies engaging in hostile takeover, but going after each other’s fun hobby jobs is like hiring a peasant to stab them in the neck at the dinner table. It’s being a class traitor and a threat to fellow bourgeois.
You might be thinking of the middle class, though, rather than (small) business owners.
Yeah, I was specifically talking about the petite bourgeoisie who basically uphold the bourgeoisie. A lot of folks in that class think that they are part of the bourgeoisie or ownership class, but actually they are more like lawyers and doctors people who still trade their time for money. Also everyone in middle management. Sure it’s a lot of money and these jobs can lead to entry into the ownership class. But you also have to be awarded a spot through whatever means.
There’s this idea that the empire has produced too many elites. Or people with an education who should qualify for a piece of the pie. But they are fighting over a shrinking pie. With AI the pie gets redistributed, but redistributed up. The bourgeoisie hates competition more than anything.
Lawyers, doctors, and middle managers are usually middle class, i.e. working class with privileges to convince them to be loyal to the bourgeoisie instead, not petit bourgeoisie.
Petit bourgeoisie are people who own enough that they can live off the labor their capital empowers them to extract from others; people whose investments pay enough dividends or accrue in value quickly enough that they can take a living wage and still have their investments increase in value.
Which is to say, petit bourgeoisie are single-digit millionaires, excluding the value of the home they live in. Small business owners, petty landlords, and also sometimes lawyers and doctors and middle managers and whatever else strikes their fancy. But when AI pulls up the ladder behind them, they can invest in AI companies and expect to be fine.
It’s more that the petite bourgeoisie own the means of production, but must still labor for their income alongside their employees. So only some lawyers and some doctors would qualify. Once you can solely live off the value of your investments and the labor of others you become haute bourgeoisie.
So if you have a bank account you’re petit bourgeoisie? Because the interest your bank is giving you comes from the bank giving you the fruits of other people’s labor extracted through your share of the ownership of the means of production.
Only if you also own the means of production for your career. The bank account that earns interest isn’t the means of production.
The “middle class” is a fiction created by capitalists.
The carrot that existed only because of the spectre of communism
Tell that to a child laborer in a holiday resort kitchen when he sees the children of lawyers going on holiday there.
Or tell that to those lawyers when you propose equality with the child laborers.
Ownership is already a fiction. The privileges the owning class gives to the middle class/working class traitors as long as they’re useful aren’t any less real.
As long as you don’t materially address the middle class-proletarian distinction you’ll never have a socialist revolution in a country with a powerful middle class (i.e. one that would win a civil war on the bourgeoisie’s behalf).
I can’t wait for it.
Hopefully, when enough people genuinely fear for the replacement of their jobs, they will start realizing that society can run without labor and will start thinking about a post-labor society.
It’s a real bumpy road between here and there, but once it gets better it gets way better
I hope we start desiring it collectively because right now people see AI as some spawn of Satan.
There seems to be a refusal or an inability to see it as a tool for liberation.
Well yeah, the evil assholes full of greed and power hungry empty souls own the fire. It’s like fire though once it’s in the world there’s no going back
