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biracy · 9 months

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If I'm being honest tho the reason I think a lot of "anti-AI art" shite falls into "not real art" bullshit semantics and not a constructive critique of capitalism is because a lot of people don't ACTUALLY seem to have a problem with how capitalism treats art at all! Of course most people will do the "capitalism bad" thing as much as any Tumblr user with pronouns does, but when you actually listen to what they're saying you'll hear that hard work is (morally) good, as long as it's work that can be defined as "artistic", and that automating extremely menial work, as long as it's work that can be defined as "artistic", is bad and evil, and actually the goal is to have people work their fucking asses off drawing backgrounds for Disney movies or manually add every stylistic detail to the new totally anti-capitalist animated Marvel movie. If I'm being REALLY honest, I don't think most people understand "the commodification of art" either, they're all for the commodification of art as long as it upholds their sole sense of identity as An Artist (special) and reinforces underlying ideas about the moral value of hard work. I personally believe that a "society that values the arts" is not a society that pays people to draw Microsoft Teams emotes, but a society that doesn't revolve so heavily around work that people (all people, anyone who wants to, not just "career artists" or people who went to art school) actually have the opportunity to create art for themselves. I understand that that's not likely to be realized soon, but neither is The Total Annihilation Of The AI Art Which Is Evil And Bad, so if we're talking futuristic utopias, you might as well discuss one that has no work, instead of one where artists still need to beg for commissions in order to eat but at least there's no evil techbro AI this time 😊

#open mick night

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feydrautha · 6 years

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im curious because i saw a post you reblogged saying gulags didnt exist and i also saw your reblog about reports about ppl eating their kids in north korea were fake and they were from the daily mail so that does cast suspicion on it but i've seen presentations by a north korean defector who said she saw people starving and eating grass to survive so i'm just wondering what do you think were actual atrocities committed by the soviet union/DPRK and whats red scare anti communist propaganda? 1/

(cont. )2/ because ive been taught that the soviet union did x and that north korea does x and im wondering how much of that is true and where to read different takes on history. im also admittdly worried because sometimes i feel like the language used by people reminds me of holocaust deniers and so i’m kind of worried about where to read abotu stuff that isnt straight up denail for the sake of repressing truths in order to push an agenda (even tho i know all history comes from or has bias)

which post said gulags didn’t exist? because they did but contrary to what western propaganda says, they weren’t death camps à la auschwitz but lit just the prison system (not a perfect but necessary one, in the sense that fascists, collaborateurs, capitalists and dissidents were a danger to society) which was also necessary for re-education

as for the north korean defectors, i’m p sure most of them get paid by US or south korean authorities to exaggerate on their reports, so i’m always very skeptical about that, especially considering most of them end up saying they wanna return to their home - why would you go back to a place where mothers eat their children and prisoners are tortured and you’re free of their influence? it really doesn’t make any sense

about the atrocities, i’m not gonna say that the soviet union did everything right esp by today’s standards because it was still a product of its time but compared to pretty much every non-socialist country, they were still a more pleasant country for its population to live in, but the gravest stuff such as the holodomor and the czechoslovakian counter-revolution were fascist propaganda (unless stalin had a weather machine up his sleeve) in the first case and a fascist counter-revolution in the second case, and considering that north korea has been the target of imperialist warmongering, be it openly or subtly, since the 50s, it’s safe to say a great deal of supposed crimes committed against civilians/anyone who isn’t a fascist are NATO lies

in which way does it remind you of nazi language? because that would imply there’s actual real proof for these supposed atrocities and they’re confirmed by the perpetuators (since the nazis had an actual plan on how to commit genocide)

it’s impossible to find sources that aren’t biased for the reasons you mentioned because literally everyone has an agenda when writing something, so i’d say a good start is being aware of the general thumb rule that mainstream media outlets in the west and heavily supported by such generally do serve the capitalist neo-imperialist interest unless they’re stated to do otherwise, and that looking for sources is important. as for non-western media outlets, doing a bit of digging about the political affiliations takes less time than one might think

#anonymous #asks

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lennyandkarlmarx · 4 years

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Guns: The Cause of, and Solution to, all the Proletariat’s Problems

There is a certain type of leftist, who is likely relatively new to the political scene, that is deeply invested in guns as a sort of broad concept. They tell you the working class needs to be armed, they’ll quote under no pretext… at you, and maybe even cite a desire to disarm the police. If you interrogate them much beyond that tho, asking how the working class could possibly hope to become armed when guns have an extremely variable legality based around class, race, or gender lines, or what is to be done about suicides or school shootings, or how purchasing firearms from the same manufactures that not only arm the police and military but lobby to make them exponentially more armed, their arguments start to fall apart. That’s because guns, for them, have become an identity, rather than a genuine outreach of their ideology.

Not to get too horseshoe theory about it, but it’s worth recognizing how guns, for both the working class right and left, serve as a consumable substitute for a complete lack of political power and legitimacy. Even the most ardent pro-gun leftist understands that they are heavily outmatched by the state (the police and military) and the reactionary forces the bourgeois allows to remain armed (right wing militias, etc.), and that harm is caused by the role guns play, at least in the United States. Yet, still, they persist, offering no solution, but happy to float along with the cultural tide, either completely omitting any examination of this viewpoint, or else happy to live with the contradictions.

Does this mean guns are bad and that there is no truth to the broad concept that they will be at some point necessary for any radical. Obviously not, but the goal should be to not just blindly trod along, passively supporting the status quo, nor should it be to allow liberal gun reforms that will inevitably turn reactionary. Instead, we should strive to come up with a multistep process to prepare the working class to become armed once it reaches a tipping point of class consciousness, while striving to minimize harm to working class individuals in the mean time.

As a broad starting place, we obviously have to look into unionizing the labor at gun manufacturers. Very few used unionized labor, and control of the means to produce guns is going to be vital. The status quo features a system where every new gun someone buys, no matter how committed they are to the working class, they’re doing more harm by enriching the forces that will not only seek to arm the opponents of the left, but will do so at a much cheaper rate when necessary.

The perils of trying to buy our way to an armed proletariat should be obvious, and if they aren’t, remember why the second amendment was written to guarantee a right to ownership, rather than serve as a program to arm a populace: because the goal at the time was to prevent newly or potentially soon to be freed slaves from arming themselves or those still in bondage. This intentional desire has manifested itself countless times after as well, for example in the way gun rights were easily revoked from the Black Panthers, or how black individuals such as Philando Castile are barred from ostensibly state approved gun ownership. The process by which the working class should become armed will never come through the status quo.

Even in a situation where labor starts to make serious in roads towards controlling gun manufactures, we’ll still have to reckon with the state and reactionary militias that exist today, not only fully armed, but armed to a substantially greater degree than the working class would likely be able to produce with the rapidity necessary to stand much of a chance. Instead a simultaneous effort needs to be made, starting at local levels in all likelihood, to disarm the police. It’s possible this could be done through traditional political means in some circumstances, but in others there will likely require a wide variety of tactics. In addition to that, the majority of individuals who make up the military will need to be ideologically won over, and the size of the military will need to be severely shrunk.

Harm minimization is also crucial throughout this process. Many liberal gun reforms are reactionary in nature, targeting people of color, or the mentally ill aggressively. One of the worst examples of this is a proposed list of mentally ill individuals to prevent them from owning a gun. This would obviously be used by reactionary forces, who often target the mentally ill when they start to lose their value as individual laborers (as the labor pool grows, mental health services tend to shrink, which passively kills or displaces many mentally ill people). There is, however, both a real threat to allowing the harm caused by the status quo to continue, as well as resisting attempts at reform.

First, it’s crucial to understand that, for many, attempts at reform, however liberal and just awful in concept, are often sincere. Events like school shootings make people feel so disconnected from the levers of political power, that seeking reform is often an extension of a genuine desire to claim it back in the name of murdered children. Resisting that is obviously dangerous rhetorically, and some people will immediately be viewed as reactionary for doing so. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the libs should be pandered to either, and reforms that will target the marginalized must always be rejected.

Second, there is some potential to utilize that energy to help reduce the rate at which bourgeois can arm itself. Obviously in the form of reducing the size of the military and the rate at which the police are armed, but also by targeting gun manufactures to make them weaker and thus more susceptible to a labor takeover. Gun control reforms that target individuals are, in most cases, going to likely do more harm than good (there might some exceptions, particularly in the realm of domestic violence), but ones that target manufactures via shifting liabilities, etc. can be, if nothing else, a pain.

The most cynical and craven pro gun leftists, who are almost certainly using gun as an identity feature rather than an instrument of any sort of Marxist ideology, will say that any harm done is a worthy sacrifice, that it’s better that every just be as armed as possible, regardless of how aligned with the left they are, so that they’re prepared once they join our side. This is easily refuted by looking at the way gun ownership has manifested in the US. We are the most armed country (which itself is an easy refutation as well, given how many other countries with stricter gun laws seemed to be far more primed for revolutionary action than we are), but those guns are evenly distributed, with bourgeois elements, even if you exclude the state, controlling a disproportionally high amount. Socialist politician Joshua Collins has discussed in his platform the desire to ban the sale of ammunition in favor of creating community armories as a means to prevent the stockpiling of ammunition that heavily favors the bourgeois. This is another crucial first step that can occur likely in several local contexts, or nationally if it’s in conjunction with either a broader political or labor movement against gun manufacturers.

The goal here isn’t to grow the divide between pro and anti gun leftists, but hopefully to unify. Violence, while it of course should be avoided whenever possible, is at times necessary as a means of self-defense against the passive violence committed by a capitalist system. Thus, the tools of violence must also, at times, be necessary. However, we must resist the desire to maintain the status quo, or allow guns to become yet another fetishized commodity, just as strongly as liberal gun reforms must be resisted. Taking a step by step approach where gun manufacturers are slowly seized, the size of the military is reduced, and the police are disarmed is the only way the working class can achieve a preparedness for violence and harm can be minimized.

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