I have come to realize that some of the analysis Marx makes can be applied a bit wider
The quote that is significantly less an accurate analysis of history than that of
However, this applies not just to capital, but to general machinery and technology. The creation of technology both implies the creation of further technologies in competition and efficiency increases, and importantly, it also implies the consumption of human labor invested permanently in the creation of said technology. We can completely cut the bourgeois capitalist from capitalism and still have the necessity of machinery to reproduce itself at the expense of the human laborers. The design of capitalism can be made consistent with that of capital itself taking up the class against which the laborer works with the bourgeoisie (and in fact the other ruling classes as well) taking up an essentially parasitic role on the reproduction of technology.
We are, therefore, acting in the service of capital and technology to destroy the bourgeoisie regardless of our own role in it, because the bourgeoisie are acting as parasites slowing down the development of machinery. We are even now seeing that the reproduction of machinery is struggling against the will of the bourgeoisie to maintain the current economic system because they are aware that further mechanization of society is going to cause severe economic issues.
The ultimate result seems to be that humanity is going to invent itself out of existence and there really seems to be no way around this. The only other proposition seems to be that humanity must merge itself with machinery in a transhumanist resolution to the machine/human class war(?).
lmao how is machine/humans class war real like just unplug the machine
Isaiah Diaz
Take this image. Remove Hegel and replace him with Heidegger and Deleuze. Now take DMT in Shanghai while staring at said image. Congratulations, you now understand accelerationism
You cannot just unplug the machine for much the same reason the capitalist is driven to oppress the worker and reproduce his capital. I don't propose that machinery is just "useful" but that, as a force multiplier of not just labor, but of every process of humanity, it requires its own usage through its existence. Tools demand usage.
Interesting, though I do point out one point This is the entire concept of Von Neumann machinery, that it is no longer simply the tool of humanity but self-replicating systems in and of themselves.
Matthew Hughes
Also I really don't just mean "machinery" as in robots and other self-powered devices. I genuinely mean every tool humans have ever made in the entirety of history has been a part of this. The spear implies the atl-atl; through the development it requires its own reproduction as an improvement over the spear, and so on and so on.
Christian Foster
wat
if private ownership of the MoP is abolished then I am free to decide if I make a machine more efficient or not, I am free to decide if I use it or not. Under capitalism the capitalist must improve the productivity or else faces going bankrupt.
Easton Nguyen
yes, i believe nick land is prophetic of an overlord AI which is the inevitabile result of technological reproduction coming to a centralised brain hub of sorts. The operations of capital will come in service to itself in anti-human conscious terms.
Nolan Carter
this sounds like some primie shit fam tbh
Landon Bailey
this is precisely an idealised imagination of Plato's forms. All is descended from divine forms of utility and all fracture into such use in material plane and so on and so on.
Christopher Parker
It's not primitivist, it's a refutation of primitivism that suggests that no matter what, we are forced to develop our technology unless we completely abstain from ever touching a tool ever again. Seeing as a tool can be as primitive as a stick, I rather doubt this is feasible.
The market is but one system of evolutionary pressure. Even if we abolish the capitalist, the market, money, etc. we are not free from evolutionary pressures that force us to strive for ever greater ability or perish. This just happens under capitalism because capitalism creates its own system of evolutionary pressures.
I actually was thinking more along the lines of Aristotelan thought at the time what with the distinction between life and tools as tools have a teleological cause that life does not. I suppose you could make that but I'm not specifically arguing for the "forms" of greater technological development, rather that new technologies are developed from the internal and external relations of each technological idea as they must develop.
Adam Jones
Also this actually includes non-human species too, such as crows or octopi, really, it's just that humans are so much more developed for this that we're able to sprint where they can barely crawl. Even if humanity wipes itself out, crows will eventually develop AI.
Caleb Long
I suppose that this means that the dialectical relationship between life and death results in machines?
Nicholas Bailey
i legit dont get your point, before the industrial revolution we were developing tools yet the methods of production were different from capitalism.
the development of tools doesnt mean you are reproducing capitalism, hell I even dare to affirm that we could have capitalism without the development of tools, it would be more inefficient at producing commodities but it wouldn't be a requisite. A monopoly could get away with it as it would face no competition, thus it would not have the necessity of develop more efficient machines.
Dylan Moore
I am not talking about simply "capitalism" in itself. What I mean is that the development of tools implies further development and refinement of tools regardless of whether you "want" to do that or not.
I beg your pardon, what?
Elijah Hall
also, in the OP, you claim that the development of, let's call them, ultra-efficient machines that would abolish labour altogether is sabotaged by the capitalists to mantain the status quo.
If that is the case, abolishing capitalism would mean that the posibility of creating a self-repairing, self-refueling, self-reproducing machine could be a possibility (just theoretical, we don't know if it'd be thermodinamically possible). If it is a posibility, then it's the ruling class the agent that replicates the cycle of capitalism, not the machines, as machines wouldn't need human input
Bentley Sanders
well nick land says that if the destiny of capital has been understood, then we should accelerate the processes of production for the sake of reaching it's limits, for it's own sake. He points to how China produces capital, but also stabilises it through authoritarian government, he says that this is the future of the liberal government - Zizek also agrees that this state organisation is a probable future for the west.
This is the understanding of deleuze, in how capitalism deterritorialises all things, and how these factors lead to it's own destruction, but also, deregulation is chaotic and dangerous, whereas land takes a particularly anti-anthropocentric take on it.
Carter Young
explain how the fuck is the development of tools equal to capitalism if we developed tools under under several methods of production that were, objectively, not capitalism
Brandon Bailey
ok, that makes a lot of sense
HOWEVER
How the fuck was an Homo-Habilis a capitalists if there was no written law, no property rights, no state and no commodity production for exchange because barter was not invented yet?
Benjamin Price
Ah.
I don't mean that the development of tools is equal to capitalism, but rather that capitalism is a stage of tool self-development that co-exists with, drives, and even surpasses the development of human society.
I have genuinely been thinking of the idea of development towards an entirely new type of capital for the sake of ending capitalism by making what I was describing as "lightweight capital", for the specific purpose of acceleration. Although I was planning on implementing it in a market system to end the market system.
Gabriel Murphy
ok
but you still can develop tools under a method of production that is literally, not capitalism
Henry Gonzalez
Yes, I don't disagree, the point I'm making is that if we take historical materialism seriously, we're not looking at the development of human society, we're looking at the development of tools.
Elijah Powell
it's both tbh fam
base-superstructure
develop tools to satisfy demand, demand increases, develop tools to satisfy demand, demand increases….
Christopher Bell
also, to prove my point, look at those stupid boxes whose only purpose is to turn themselves off, like those boxes where you hit a switch and a hand or a stick comes out to turn itself off
aside from being a toy, this machine cannot be used to produce commodities, in a way, developing tools for the sake of developing tools would not reproduce the capital cycle, we would need to satisfy demand found on the market
Oliver Ortiz
Oh, sure, I absolutely agree, but the point there if we start seriously looking at it is that humanity ends up forming the superstructure of this cycle and that the base of unliving machines do not actually need us as an absolute.
Christopher Evans
yes, theoretically the cycle of capitalism could be reproduced by any intelligent lifeform, and they would need to develop machines to increase profits but grug making machines isn't capitalism per se
also, instead of developing machines you could just demand workers to work harder. The development of machines wouldn't happen in this case yet the capitalist mode of production still reproduces itself
Owen Reyes
My dude, you are too caught up in looking solely at capitalism. That is not the point here. The point is to take a look at historical materialism in a long term sense.
Brandon Campbell
Put another way, if you are looking solely at how capitalism operates, yes, what you are describing happens. However, if you look at human history as it is developed by its own usage of tools, capitalism is now just a stage of the continuous material base of machinery self-replicating through living beings.
