no it gets more fascist than ever
In which sense?
in the sense that once corporations no longer need laborers then the people just become a drain on the resources and profits of the ultra wealthy. since the government is of and for the wealthy they will do whatever it takes to curb the drain
I would research “tendency of rate of profit to fall.” No, automation is not socialism, though it is more viable with socialism than capitalism in the long term.
So, what could happen at the end? Once the rate of profit becomes 0?
Presumably a massive economic crash. This has obviously never happened, it doesn’t even “fall” consistently over time due to the repeated capture of new markets overseas. Marx is just describing the consequences of “automation” under capitalism, or more generally the outsourcing of human labor to machinery.
Not necessarily.
Socialism specifically refers to who owns and controls the means of production, such as factories, farms, businesses, or other assets that produce commodities which hold useful value.
As it stands, the means of production, despite its operation becoming increasingly automated, still largely remains owned by private individuals.
To achieve socialism, the means of production would need to be seized and both held in common / public ownership and be put to use producing on a basis of the material needs of the population instead of chasing the profit motive.
Here’s a version without an ideological filter : An actuary will calculate what is the best for the stock market for a corporation: invest into automation or offshore production to a country where production is cheaper. It’s mostly always cheaper to offshore than invest in automation.
At some point, no offshoring option exist and some actuary will actually tell their masters to invest in automation. Some will do, but research is not always successful and takes a long time.
Neo-liberal gov. will seek stability and so they will either invest into their friends corporation, to stabilize them and enrich themselves. This will mean wage stagnation and being outcompeted by countries that successfully automated.
At this point, the empire will grow hungry for stability and stock market growth, and will either try to make another country it’s cheap offshore location, by several economic, diplomatic or even millitary strategy or start to make it’s actually population serf again.
If the second happens, chances of revolution starts to go up. We may see a modern French-style revolution in the empire, or something like that, start to be more likely.
But more realistically, we won’t get to see this, as the climate is already starting to disrupt human activity. The western empire is already imploding and unable to respond to the new reality so mostly, no one serious is able to predict the next few years.
Ay, I made a post asking this question before! https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6729708
TLDR: if the rich succeed in building AI systems that cater fully to their needs through the whole supply chain (i.e. AI can mine and process resources into what they want with no humans needed), then the rich will have no reason to keep anyone else around and can just massacre all the poors.
Recently, the r/singularity subreddit has had several posts which show some class-consciousness, despite they mostly-techbro atmosphere.
The post I’ve linked and reproduced below states a concern I also have with AI:
If we assume that we reach AGI, maybe even super intelligence, then we can expect a lot of human jobs will suddenly become obsolete.
First it could be white collar and tech jobs. Then when robotics catches up, manual labor will soon follow. Pretty soon every conceivable position a human once had can now be taken over by a machine.
Humans are officially obsolete.
What’s really chilling is that, while humans in general will no longer be a necessity to run a government or society, the very few billionaires at the top that helped bring this AI to existence will be the ones who control it - and no longer need anyone else. No military personnel, teachers, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, engineers, no one.
Why should countries exist filled with people when people are no longer needed to farm crops, serve in the military, build infrastructure, or anything else?
I would like to believe that if all of humanities needs can now always be fulfilled (but controlled by a very, very few), those few would see the benefit in making sure everyone lives a happy and fulfilling life.
The truth is though, the few at the top will likely leave everyone else to fend for themselves the second their walled garden is in place.
As the years pass, eventually AI becomes fully self-sustaining - from sourcing its own raw materials, to maintaining and improving its own systems - even the AI does not need a single human anymore (not that many are left at that point).
Granted, it could take a long while for this scenario to occur (if ever), but the way things are shaking out, it’s looking more and more unlikely that we’ll never get to a utopia where no one works unless they want to and everyone’s needs are met. It’s just not possible if the people in charge are greedy, backstabbing, corporate sociopaths that only play nice because they have to at the moment.
I find their argument quite valid, only lacking in the explicit mention of ‘capitalism’.
Once the rich have full-supply-chain-AI, we wouldn’t be able to revolt even if we wanted to. The robotic police force controlled by the rich can just massacre all the poors.
This puts a hard time limit on when revolution needs to occur. After that I guess we need China’s J-36s to save the American proletariat.
They can’t do that. They will realize that they need real human slaves to satisfy their oppression needs. Machines can’t be oppressed, so, they need us.
Capitalism cannoy automate everything. The road to such automation creates crisis for capitalism, namely profitability due to, e.g., firing too large a percentage of the workforce and killing demand while operating on even slimmer profit margins. Resolving these crisis has historically been fueled by destruction and rebuilding. War and occupation. Genocide.
No, they’ll just kill us.
No. Anyone not wealthy enough to own the means of production, will become servants to those that are…or they’ll be allowed to die of starvation, somewhere just out of sight.
I think nothing would substantially change from right now. The world is already able to provide for everyone. The capitalists will just make up billions of extra bullshit jobs.
No, they would not. That is something a more socially oriented government would do, capitalists have no interest in employing everyone and anyone. It goes against their interests
Yanis Vourofakis thinks we end up with technofeudalism. Profits are abolished and rent seeking becomes the dominant force of wealth accumulation on the economy.
idk how much I agree with his book, but it was neat I guess
Yanis Varoufakis just put a new label on monopoly capitalism. Marx wrote about it already. The end stage of capitalism is monopolies everywhere who charge monopoly rents, because rents are the easiest form of profit. No investment, just money.
