Thought experiment

Hey leftypol, I want to do a small thought experiment with you all.

Say you knew for a fact that in the future your ideal version of the future came to fruition. Whatever ideology you hold, that has become the governing ideology. I use the word governing loosely, but I think you get the picture.

Timeframe doesn't matter, could be 1000 years into the future, could be a week from next Thursday. Just give a coherent series of events that would lead to this situation, don't just be dismissive and say "the revolution happened hurr durr". Doesn't have to be too specific.

WWIII leads to nuclear destruction of major cities and supply infrastructure, rapid escalation of oil use uses up all readily accessible oil and the neccessary infrastructure to get shale and deep oil cannot be produced in time. Global transport fails, governments become empty shells with little projection power and concentrated military might. Billions starve and die due to all of this, technology is permanently rolled back to 18th century level and stays there.

If I knew what could possibly work, I would be trying to make it happen.

The only thing I can think that might rock capitalism enough is the climate change/resource crisis in the coming decades, but even that is very uncertain and risky, and all the destruction that will happen to humans and nature is just so sad. I wish there was some other way to avoid it.

Can't remove cancer without chemo.

Chemo has a pretty shitty success rate with potentially terminal cases, sadly.

Interesting, but I've got two questions. 1, how do you think WW3 would start? Because of something happening right now, or some foreseeable future reason? 2, why do you think technology would stay at that level? Do people widespread believe that it was the main cause of the war?


Yeah, I recognize the sentiment in your first statement. But in regards to the climate/energy crisis, how do you think governments and people might react and how would that cause some leftist future?

We've already seen that capitalism cannot really solve any kind of serious environmental issues, despite the clear and present threat to human civilisation next to nothing has been done by the West to avert the crisis, and the carbon reduction targets which we never meet anyway are pathetically inadequate. The US President is a denier for gods sake. The failure of the system to act will lead to a collapse of globalist capitalism and the world economy as we know it, all of luxuries of modern capitalism will evaporate and massive population displacement will occur putting more pressure on the undamaged areas. When people's basic needs are not meet that is when there can be a radicalisation of the general public. When the rich hoard their wealth while the people starve there can finally be the impetus to seize the state and industry. Then again, the rich might just slowly kill us off. Truthfully I think this scenario is more likely. All my hope is gone. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The necessary conditions for WWIII are all ready, they just need to be triggered. I personally think it could happen within 5 years. But if this lead to an inability to further mine and refine oil well, even coal requires petroleum byproducts to be moved. Without oil based transportation the majority of electric power would soon fail. Cities would quickly be abandoned, and there would be massive riots in large cities.

Carbon is a meme. Pollution from industrial chemicals, ocean acidity and destruction of water ecosystems, deforestation (new growth planted trees are not true forests), etc. are the real problems

Anyone who focuses on the crafted environmental narrative and not reality is a useful idiot.

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Nice idea for a book, too bad it will always be fiction.

The scenario that "the rich might just slowly kill us off" is definitely interesting, just purely analyzing it. Yeah, I definitely agree that this scenario is far more likely, especially with the pure firepower that's been made in recent years. I went to a few talks specifically on military advancements, and the guy giving the speech was talking about the new F-35 with legitimate fear. He said something along the lines of "the US will have complete air domination", and any look at history will tell you that a force with planes vs a force with infantry doesn't end well.

It's weird too, because I don't even think the people designing these things are fully analyzing the moral consequences. The only time I can remember is when the designers of the SR-71 tried to destroy all the plans for it.

I got off topic near the end, but my main point is that the technology the rich control would probably be able to destroy most revolution.

I'm thinking on the scale of the next 500, possibly 1000, years. I am sure this is what the future holds.

Nice religion fam, I'd rather wait for jeebus to return on a white horse if I'm gonna swallow the delusionpill

Your certainty that automation won't eliminate work is far more unfounded.

😹😹😹

Even if they did, you realize work would still be eliminated, right?

How exactly will there be a rapid escalation of oil use after a nuclear war?

Why do you assume a resource crisis will destroy capitalism? As resources become more scarce people will become a lot more greedy. We need ample resources for the success of communism. Nobody is going to want to equally share bread crumbs.

Do you really think capitalists would want everyone to starve in that scenario? I know that sounds stupid, but hear me out. Wouldn't they rather try to attempt to keep the majority alive to profit off them?

In my mind, they might actually try and push something like basic income (which they wouldn't have to fund of course) to keep people alive but still dependent and under them. Since nobody is working for more money besides the capitalists, nobody could gain more capital outside of revolution.

This doesn't really undermine your theory or anything, just an idea of what might transpire.

This is why silicone valley fucks need to get the bullet sooner rather than later. You don't think that some fuck like Elon Musk won't either try to be our god emperor or just straight up enslave mankind? These are nerds with near-infinite money, and that is legitimately terrifying.

The nukes won't drop until the war is in the middle stage.

They are all problems of course but carbon etc has the potential to severely damage the ecosystems of the entire planet. It's not a meme by any stretch of the imagination. Don't listen to the denialist propaganda.


Yep, it's pretty crazy the military technology that can be brought to bear now. And I'm sure that the jet fighters and tanks will be kept stocked with gas long after the people can no longer afford electricity or transport. All we can really hope for imo is a quick mass takeover that a divided and destabilised military doesn't stop, an actual civil war will just end in our destruction.

Carbon is a symptom of environmental destruction. Keep drinking the look-aid.

I'm hopeless tbh.

At least we'll have driverless cars in 10 years.

Capitalism relies on infinite growth, it cannot handle the rapid decline in economic activity that will result from the crisis. The free market is irrational and easily panicked, it is not capable of efficiently distributing resources to try to keep things going, speculators will hoard goods while the systems collapse and it will be a matter of probably only a few years before things have completely collapsed.

Not everyone. But they aren't capable of simply giving their goods away, or of allowing the government to redistribute them without a fight. They're agents (like the rest of us) of an irrational system; this scenario simply pushes the irrationalities to the fore to such an extreme degree that they can no longer be papered over.

Yes, but they point is that it's impossible at that point; hardly anyone is working, which means hardly any wages are being paid, which means hardly anyone can buy the goods being produced. It's the classic crisis of overproduction and underconsumption, taken to an extreme from which it can never recover due to technological advances.

I doubt it. Even if they did, it's inevitable that one of the first things that would happen is that a large group of people would band together, pool their basic incomes, and purchase some automated production capacity in order to operate it for the public good–they may even do this through a municipal government, rather than directly. This permanently frees them from the capitalist's market grip, and so they would either oppose it, or (less likely) simply ignore it; either way, it's a one-way trip, since this capacity isn't going to go away.

Anyway, all this I kind of glossed over when I said "eventually, through both reform and revolution," that people would take control of these systems.

Obviously deforestation etc doesn't help but humans are releasing far more greenhouse gases than are natural, it's no surprise that they will have an effect. It's not just a symptom.

Honestly I agree with you though. The way I hear people talking about Musk and Zuckerberg like they're deities is pretty disgusting.

As an extension though, I really do hate the fact that in Silicon Valley they have a massive industry on providing literally nothing of real value, just bullshit apps and the startup culture that has taken over and ruined every programmer under the age of 27.

Deforestation is fucking meaningless, all our oxygen comes from the ocean.

→ Capitalist crisis we are living through continues to worsen
→ Political party advocating for market socialism emerges
→ Most people don't even consider this ideology as related to the ML experiments so it doesn't have those negative connotations, also workplace democracy is easy to understand and has an intuitive appeal to people who desire personal autonomy
→ Party thus begins to gain mass working class support
→ As it gains support sets up new unions and takes over existing ones making them less bureaucratic or more focused on rank and file participation and direct democracy
→ Set up party militias and other militant organization
→ Part begins to win majority support as crisis worsens
→ Political crisis where the party is barred from competing in the system on some pretext or democracy is suspended (I think this is pretty much inevitable)
→ General strike and rioting
→ Police can't restore order
→ Armed gangs begin going house to house liquidating political class, counter-revolutionaries, and Bourgeois elements
→ Soldiers refusing to restore order
→ Revolution
→ Nationalization of telecom, natural resources, infrastructure, and financial system the rest of economy converted to coops
→ State banks make investment to improve means of production and start new coops with the goal of achieving full appointment
→ MOP in coops are owned by the state and effectively "rented" by them through some tax
→ This provides a large pool of money for the arts, education, science, infrastructure improvement,
→ Also implement policies which appeal to Burgers (right to bear arms and form militias, devolution of political power and direct democracy in the bookchinite sense) and otherwise try to set a good example
→ Set up educational institution meant to develop anti-capitalist versions of Islam and Christianity and provide funding for schools shilling this ideology (like a good version of the Saudis)
→ No socialism in one country bullshit world revolution or nothing which is hopefully made possible by the aforementioned policies and interventionist foreign policy. Especially if the burger army flips to the socialist side early.
→ Massive state directed investment in A.I., automation, renewable energy, and improved information technology ongoing during this process
→ transfer to system of labour vouchers and planed production for use when technology permits
→ Worldwide FALC

I think this could happen over the course of the next 15-80 years.

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By the time this happens there will already be a robot army much stronger, much more efficient than you.
The best thing about a robot army aside from how easily they will be replaced when everything is fully automated, there only needs to be one human controlling all of them. Any revolutions and any uprising will immediately be squashed.
The world will bow down to whoever wins the automated Robot wars which will inevitably be the richest person who can afford the largest army in the beginning.
This world dictator will feed you if he feels like it. He will hunt you down if he is having a bad day.
Why would we send humans into outer space? Robots don't age, don't disobey orders and they don't even need oxygen.
Assuming your Utopia comes true, this would be super fucking boring. What would you do all day? Humans need purpose in their lives that doesn't revolve around smoking weed all day like lazy cattle in a meadow.
Maybe in the future they will genetically lower everyones Autism Level so that we can in fact enjoy being cattle all the while robots take care of us like babies.

pls pls be bait

Talk to /k/. Real, broad enforcement requires agents that can go into homes, conduct searches, effectively interrogate people, develop relationships with local spies and turncoats, search door-to-door, etc. In other words, men with guns. Robot armies can be used for destruction, not for rule.

Your inability to fathom a fulfilling use of your own time is not my problem. Given 80 years and no work obligations, you would do more than smoke weed, unless you were braindead–even then, actually, you probably would.

But where might large scale support for a market socialism party start? A specific country, a region or worldwide? I'm not so sure it would happen in many of the larger "first world" countries, given the extremely negative connotation of even the word socialism.

Phones and internet history would make this on the ground work largely irrelevant. It is almost certain that somewhere in the world sits a psych profile that understands you better than you know yourself.

Can we stop with the automation meme. I mean it doesn't matter what ideology you are, all futures look bleak.
There is no such thing as Utopia, its all just disguised dystopia.
Nothing is real.
Humans have no purpose. All activities you do that involve creation is useless as robots will do it better than you anyway. Even if that thing is writing music or a book the robot will be better than you.
Unless we discover other intelligent life its just plain boring. And humans won't even likely get to discover the other intelligent life forms. It will just be proxy robots.
Are there any other hopes and dreams for the future here that I can crush?

They already don't, you dip; purpose implies an intentioned creator, and humans are evolved, not created. Freed from the obligation to produce, we use our time and effort in whatever way best fulfills us–there is literally no better use for it.
You and that robot-fetishizing nihilist can both fuck off.

What would I do? Wood working? A robot already does that better than me. Paintings? Robots. Writing stories? AI. Learning to play an instrument? Robots.
Scientific experiments. Robots and they will be able to do much more than me since i'm only a weak fleshy mortal.

Seriously, what would you do with yourself with all these free time, knowing that no matter what you create will be utterly useless and has already been created by a robot.

I'm Canadian so I was thinking of this on the context of my country. "Market socialism" honestly pretty much totally contradicts orthodox marxism though people try to deny this.

There is no real reason to call it socialism and people wouldn't associate the ideas with what they think socialism is if you didn't. I would call it democratism or something vague that placed emphasis on the democratic element. By the time you started transferring to labour vouchers and planning some people might recognize the marxist elements, but at that point there would be no going back.

I'd disagree with that, specifically based on the "it doesn't matter what ideology part". If some country became [insert ideology here] and were to gain nuclear capabilities, it is plausible that they would be able to grow into a world power. Yeah maybe its not likely, but its definitely realistic that fear of nukes and allying with other leftist states with nukes could allow for growth into a world power.

What do you want to do?

So? If you enjoy doing something, you enjoy it. I have a brother who enjoys sculpting. The fact that a machinist with a lathe can sculpt more accurately than him doesn't mean that my brother suddenly stops enjoying it. Are you legitimately autistic?

I'm a market socialist, and whenever this gets brought up and I respond by telling people that I'm not a Marxist, they get triggered as fuck. Especially leftcoms.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. I totally forgot the mass amount of people still think socialism means anything that isn't supply-side economics

Purpose doesn't imply a creator at all. A purpose can be anything serves and makes you of use. Humans need to feel useful in some way. Whether thats donating to charity, fighting for communism or creating robots. Those things all give purpose to your lives.
How can you call me an nihilist then say there is no purpose in any of our lives?

Again, i'm genuinely curious. What the fuck would you do with yourselves? Especially if you aren't really into socializing.

If all your enjoyment of hobbies is derived from being better than other people you should probably rethink that. I'm being honest here, that isn't healthy in the long term. Do things because you enjoy them

Yeah I've read a bunch of convoluted attempts by people like Schweickart to try and argue that Marx would have endorsed a market socialist transitory stage but I never found them very convincing.

Marx had a great critique of Capitalism that explained why transcending it was necessary, but I don't see why we need to take his whole program as gospel. The way people study Marx's writing like religious texts and base all their beliefs off what socialist society should look like on random sentences and excerpts always struck me as really cultish.

What is the purpose of rain?
I think you're confusing purpose with function.

True. But that use, unlike all other objects and processes in nature, can be social. Even a self-serving activity is social, in its own way.
People want to be self-directed, they want to actualize themselves. Even if you deny this, the very act of denying it and striving to be different is in itself proof of your desire for self-direction. Being freed from having to labor in order to live maximizes the potential for self-direction.

Tons of things. I would finish learning C (the programming language). I would get back into writing and performing music, which I haven't had time to do in years. I would learn more about architecture, because it fascinates me. I would read all the books I haven't gotten to yet. I would spend more time with friends.
I honestly can't understand people who imply that a shitty job in an exploitative system is somehow the only thing that they can imagine doing. I don't believe it.

What do you want to do?
Have a purpose for doing something that isn't futile.
Maybe I want to try raping somebody. I'd only get to do that in the matrix future though.

Really? Your brother is going to spend 14 hours a day every day sculpting. And that will never get boring.
I'm guessing you don't believe in Maslows Hierarchy of needs.

Answer my question.

If you enjoy it, it isn't futile. Some other animals are more efficient at respiration than you–are you going to stop breathing now?

I'm not sure why you would think that. Most people aren't monomaniacal autists. He has other interests. Even if he didn't, having enough free time would allow him to develop other interests. If it gets boring, he can always just do something else.

I'm well aware of it, and I don't think you understand it. Do you remember what was at the top? Self-actualization.

Of what you would do? Whatever you want. I already said that.

To feed the plants and give animals a drink. Rain however isn't a conscience being.

You will never actualize in this society. To actualize you need to be able to achieve goals. In this society there are no goals.

I was right, you're confusing purpose with function.

People self-actualize all the time, though most don't engage in it nearly as often as they could or should, because they don't have the time or resources. Every time I've written a song, and rewritten it until I got it just how I wanted it, I was engaging in self-actualization.

I'm not. A persons function is to live. His purpose is to benefit society.

Thats not self actualization.

The current era would be dystopic to anyone living before the 19th century in most ways. You're just a luddite trying to sound deep.
You can go be a heideggarian gangster looking for struggle all you want, just don't put my living standards at risk.

Elaborate.

read about agorism, its happening right now.

I don't understand what are you arguing here.

Planning a world wide revolution like some suggest while it is romantic, if you take for example what happen in Syria last week, it seems like an armed revolution is not that easy. The other way to seize power is by democratic means and that would require to start or join social movements with leftist ideologies and basically agitate, which it's also required to start a revolution anyway.

You think Lenin recruited all those workers by sitting in his couch posting hot maymays in an obscure imageboard?

1. Which is it?
2. Where did you get this idea?
3. Why does rain automatically fulfill its "purpose," but humans have to satisfy some conditions in order to do so? Is it possible for rain to fail in fulfilling its "purpose"?
No, you really are confusing function and purpose.

No.

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Electoral success in the united States, provokes a counterrevolution, The Party Of Everything Satananon Agrees With using the civil war as an excuse to institute Full Communism Now, then promotes such throughout the rest of the world.

Rocks fall, everyone dies. Nuclear war, climatological disaster, biological warfare gone wrong, whichever one you prefer. The survivors reestablish primitive communism.

Super-human AI is developed.
By a lucky miracle it ends up being benevolent.
After some time it has eliminated all suffering.

Admittedly it's a bit of a deus-ex-machina ending, but it's more plausible than any successful revolution.

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The lucky miracle being it being built that way in the first place?

Yes. Most humans wouldn't know what "benevolent" meant even if they were slapped in the face with it, so I would consider it a miracle for humans to successfully implement benevolence into an AI.

But we know what hormones and parts of the brain are associated with empathy and compassion. It would be stupid not to take this into account in building a neural network. If we're going to have sentient AIs and synthetics running everything it's a good idea to build them as if they were constantly on MDMA.

CHINA takes USA, implements Communism with a Capitalist face.

You mean the other way around

–full automation of production: all mass-produced goods can be made by robots and other industrial machines, and that includes the robots and industrial machines themselves. So robot factories become self-replicating, a capitalist who can afford one robot factory can program it to build copies of itself for no costs other than raw materials, energy, and land.

–As a result it's impossible for capitalists to make any significant profit from manufacturing; in Marx's terms this is because there is no surplus labor to exploit, but another way of putting it is that if it costs the capitalists nothing more than the price raw materials and energy to replicate any given good, then market competition will drive the price of the goods down to little more than the raw materials and energy that went into them.

–One way around this is to have an artificial monopoly on a given type of good via intellectual property laws, then you don't have competition and can set the price to whatever you want (although there may be close-enough knockoffs, like iphones vs. androids). And even in that case, the only profit comes from owning the intellectual property itself, there's no advantage to capitalists of owning the factories that make the product as opposed to just something like patenting a product design and then outsourcing production. So, capitalism adapts by specializing pretty much exclusively in the creation of intellectual property, like product designs or software or entertainment. The robot factories are either a kind of public utility, or they are still owned by "private" companies but these companies depend on government subsidies to stay afloat and are so heavily regulated that it's not much different in practice from the government owning the factories outright.

–And incidentally, ultra-cheap production of solar panels and CO2-absorbing machines helps us avoid climate disaster

–The combination of cheap robot-made goods and there not being enough good jobs to go around due to automation creates strong political pressure for a universal basic income. And because of the cheapness of most goods, the necessary tax rate on people who do still have high-paying jobs is a lot lower than it would be today, so there isn't that much pushback from the porkies, it's a better deal for them than having to deal with the constant risk of uprisings by unemployed masses.

–Since workers don't need to own expensive means of production to be involved in the creation of intellectual property (a programmer can work on his home computer for example), and also don't need a regular salary to avoid poverty (a programmer can work for years on designing some new software even if no money will be made on it until it's done), over time more and more workers prefer to get shares of profits on whatever they help create, instead of working for a salary.

–So gradually you get an erosion in the concentration of capital in the hands of capitalists who pay others to make things they sell for a profit, and the system evolves into something resembling market socialism.

–Eventually, with self-replicating robots mining asteroids and shit, there's so much abundance that more and more workers don't even bother asking for either salaries or profits, but just work on freeware projects. Their motives would be some combination of wanting the creative satisfaction or working on something they like, and wanting the social status you get from having contributed to something popular. Fully Automated Luxury Communism achieved.