Cowbee [he/they]

Actually, this town has more than enough room for the two of us

He/him or they/them, doesn’t matter too much

Marxist-Leninist ☭

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • The political compass does more damage than it helps, ultimately. Left vs right is usually about collectivization of some form vs private ownership, but things get weird when you get to “libertarian vs authoritarian.” Neither of those really mean anything when the size of the state is related to the class character of society, the size of state isn’t really something people pick so much as it is something that is shaped by the mode of production.

    Differences among the left and right are far more nuanced and can’t be distilled into “libertarian” vs “authoritarian.”



  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoComic Strips@lemmy.worldInfighting
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    15 hours ago

    Yes, after all of this I hold to the Marxist understanding, you haven’t offered any compelling reason to abandon it, and have, to the contrary, shown a poor understanding of Marxism on both your’s and Anark’s parts. I’ll correct a few of your misclaims about my stance here, though, for any popping in afterwards:

    The state is an extension not of its people. The state is an extension of the ruling class, and the ruling class is determined by the base mode of production. A bourgeois state is one where private property is the base mode of production, and a proletarian state is one in which collectivized ownership is the base mode of production. As all property gets collectivized, class disappears, and so too does the need to oppress other classes, as everyone has equal ownership, leaving only instruments like social planning, administration, management, etc in place. That’s the economic and historical basis of the elimination of the state.

    As for delegates vs representatives, I understand the difference you claim they have, I just don’t hold them as foundationally different to the point that one or the other invalidates the entire social basis of production.

    Thanks for the Birmarck correction. Doesn’t invalidate my points, but I’ll make the correction regardless. If you have more questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer.


  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoComic Strips@lemmy.worldInfighting
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    21 hours ago

    I did watch it, just posting a 4 minute video from an anarchist YouTuber doesn’t mean I immediately need to agree with it. Anark coats it as a Marxist critique, but it’s thoroughly an anarchist critique attempting to claim higher and universal legitimacy by invoking Marx and Engels, but what Marx and Engels described as state capitalism was Bismarck’s Germany, which had the large firms and key industries absolutely privately owned with minor exceptions like railways.

    The state in Bismarck’s Germany played a hand in directing the private economy, while retaining class relations. It wasn’t because they had a state, it’s because the base of production was capitalism, subject to the M-C…P…C’-M’ circuit. Anark’s critique is ignorant at best to dishonest at worst. Here’s Engels directly speaking about it:

    For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has become economically inevitable, only then — even if it is the State of today that effects this — is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism. If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III’s reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

    Instead, what needs to happen is proletarian revolution, and gradual appropriation of property into the hands of the new, proletarian state, until all property is collectivized and the proletarian state is no more:

    When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

    So yes, I did watch it. It’s one of those videos that only really makes sense to people that haven’t put in the time to take Marxism seriously, and just want to quotegrab Marx and Engels to give their points higher legitimacy. Even Anark’s examples of Chile and Yugoslavia were more market-focused and less collectivized, Yugoslavia in particular relied on IMF loans to keep going. Anark’s mislabling of socialism as intrinsically worker-ownership and not collectivized ownership pretty much leaves only anarchism and anarchist adjacent ideologies as socialist. And, the USSR and PRC, Cuba, etc. do have worker democracy:

    I’m sorry I took your video seriously, I guess? I dunno, were you just wanting me to concede the point outright?




  • I said from the consumer’s point of view, it doesn’t matter unless the process is the commodity, ie art. I said that if the process isn’t the commodity, then from the consumer’s perspective, they are roughly equivalent if both are identical end-products.

    From the laborer’s point of view, throwing a few prompts into an LLM is hardly an expression of artistry, art has use-value when the medium is intimately grappled with as a form of expression, whatever form that may be. If the laborer is just trying to show a floor plan, for example, they don’t need to draw it by hand, the information is the goal. AI is fine if advanced enough to help with that.

    That’s why it’s important to correctly analyze tools, their limitations, and where they could have potential use, rather than insisting on avoiding tool usage for not making us “struggle” as hard.


  • Then this is even less clear, what on Earth is “my particular orthodoxy?” And further, the calculator is absolutely an apt comparison. A calculator is a system designed with logic by human hands to shortcut the process of someone, say, multiplying two numbers, that they otherwise would have had to do by hand. The calculator isn’t thinking, and neither is AI, it’s simply a system that mimics its inputs and weights them towards its prompts. Neither the calculator nor the AI thinks, but that doesn’t mean they are harmful to use, nor does it mean that neither has no use-cases.

    As for being reactionary, glorifying struggle and using it to oppose the forward progression of technology on the basis of it harming a metaphysical “human spirit” is reactionary. I don’t mean it as an insult so much as to point out that it quite literally is reactionary. Labor should be centered, not struggle, and thus any tool that can be used to assist labor should be understood properly, including its limitations, like your article stated.

    Either way, if you want to stop this, then be my guest.



  • This is just an argument against all tools like calculators, though. I haven’t deflected anything, I’ve answered you at your arguments. I disagree. Further, AI does not remove “what makes us human” any more than a calculator does. It can’t replace cognition, as you said. Your point’s natural conclusion is that, since “struggle is what makes us human,” tools that alleviate that struggle in some ways take away our humanity. It’s a deeply reactionary viewpoint, it glorifies the past and justifies suffering.

    Marxism isn’t “clearly insufficient to describe this moment in history,” Marxism has evolved and adapted over the years. It fully encompasses AI, in that AI is nothing truly new. You don’t really understand what you’re trying to argue against, and you disagree with the base purpose of articles you use in place of your own arguments.

    And as for following you around, I sort Lemmy.ml by new usually. If you make a bunch of posts clearly gesturing towards interactions we’ve had, I’ll respond.






  • Alright, regarding your edits:

    1. I never once said you said AI is capable of thinking. I said the article is intended at de-mystifying AI dogmatists, as in dogmatic supporters, that think it can. Further, you’ve only supplied evidence that misusing and misunderstanding the purpose of AI and its limitations can be harmful, not how it is intrinsically damaging. The article you supplied disagrees with this idea.

    2. This is silly. Now that it’s clear that the article is more in line with what I’m saying, that we need to be careful and understand its limitations and not confuse it for cognition, but that we can still use it, you’re just calling it a mental off-ramp. Here is the actual text:

    Computers don’t actually do anything. They don’t write, or play; they don’t even compute. Which doesn’t mean we can’t play with computers, or use them to invent, or make, or problem-solve. The new AI is unexpectedly reshaping ways of working and making, in the arts and sciences, in industry, and in warfare. We need to come to terms with the transformative promise and dangers of this new tech. But it ought to be possible to do so without succumbing to bogus claims about machine minds.

    It directly states that there is transformative promise in AI, and that it’s changing how we work and make in arts, sciences, industry, and warfare. Message the author if you want to check if they were just providing a mental off-ramp, but I’m going to take the author at the text, as written, directly having a more grounded and materialist analysis than yours.