6
How AI Exposes the Class Character of Democracy (dialecticaldispatches.substack.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/socialism@lemmy.ml
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Nice piece that resonates with my current thoughts. That China is sharing the fruits of industrial success with society as a whole gives hope to the cause—we lost that hope with the privatizations of the 1990s—but we should check how the money is truly distributed. I've read that China is also replacing an aging workforce with robots—wouldn't it be better to employ young foreigners instead? As Marx pointed out, machines don't buy; thus, once the aging population has died out, who will buy the robots' products? How will wealth be generated and redistributed then?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago* (2 children)

    My hope is that China will start moving away from consumerism entirely. There's no need to build an economy on vapid consumption in the first place. As the machines produce more and more of the things people need autonomously, that frees people up to do whatever they want with their lives instead of slaving away to meet their needs. China could start reducing work hours, and build things like sports halls, craft shops, art studios, workshops, where people can just creative and social with one another. Instead of going to the mall to buy stuff, you go do some activity that you enjoy with friends.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    That's a big hope — even Russia was supposed to become the workers' paradise, but under Stalinism it became their tomb...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    USSR was literally the first attempt at building a worker state, and it was demonstrably better than anything before it. On top of that, USSR was under the threat from the imperialist west throughout its whole existence. It was invaded by western powers in 1918, then plunged into WW2, and the Cold War right after that. Obviously, that forced the Soviet Union to develop in a way that made it possible to preserve itself. Blaming Stalinism here is frankly absurd.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent