#anticapitalisme

"Replace capitalism with a good nap"

"L’expression publique d’une défiance envers le système capitaliste occasionnera même, la plupart du temps, un bénéfice symbolique, une valeur ajoutée dans le champ social. Elle pourra être considérée comme une manifestation de conscience ou d’altruisme et procurera à celui qui l’exprimera un surcroît de ce que Witold Gombrowicz nomme "le sex-appeal moral". En revanche, s’attaquer directement au gauchisme, et même peut-être en prononcer le nom, vous assigne à la mort sociale - voire vous expose à la violence - dans la plupart des milieux culturels, intellectuels, artistiques, médiatiques, bref, à travers tous les canaux de diffusion de la pensée dominante. Je suis d’ailleurs bien informé de la nature des risques que me fait encourir la publication de cette étude."

J'ai vu le tweet de la meuf qu'arrive plus à faire des e-mails sans chat gpt, et j'ai repensé à un truc, car quelqu'un a dit que l'ia gen était un outil permettant de se réapproprier les outils de production (un putain de crayon de papier et une feuille, mon gars...). Alors, mes deux centimes:

1. L'IA gen se base, s'approprie le travail des autres. Déjà, dans l'idée du patron qui s'accapare le produit de la main d'oeuvre (même si bon, là, on est dans le domaine du vol), là, on est bien.

2. Que ce soit pour l'écriture ou l'art, le fait de produire quoi que ce soit en si peu de temps entre dans le cadre de l'aliénation par le travail: alors oui, certes, on pourrait dire que c'est la même chose avec une image véritablement créée par les doigts de fée d'un artiste employé. Sauf que là, la personne qui fait appel à l'ia gen, même si elle utilise ce que j'appelle une base de données dans laquelle il y aurait tout un lot d'oeuvres de sa main, elle ne met plus en oeuvre le processus de création en lui-même. Elle se retrouve une fois de plus dépourvue de ce qui fait d'elle un être humain au lieu d'un énième écrou. Effectivement, on part un peu dans un domaine philosophique, mais hear me out.

3. Le gain de temps occasionné est au profit de l'employeur bourgeois, pour produire encore plus, toujours avec la même rémunération pour son employé. Il n'est pas pour le salarié, qui se retrouve dépossédé d'un temps supplémentaire pour être qui il est avant d'être un travailleur.

Voilà. Bon je suis pas sûre d'avoir cook, mais j'ai tenté un truc. Ça me saoule de voir des gens pro IA à gauche, donc je voulais partager ma réflexion sur un réseau moins anxiogène que twitter.

Manual for Revolutionary Leaders

Michael Velli

chapter 1 [part 1]

Plunder and war continue to spread across the world. They are stuff of past and present history. The greater the material product of society the greater the plunder; the larger the stock of productive forces the more extensive the destruction.

It is not the task of this manual to examine the plunder or the destruction, but to treat contemporary forms of resisting them. Among forms of resistance only two will be examined: a form which has become established as the modern model of revolution, and resistance which takes the form of a continually changing response to continually developing productive forces.

It is the task of the manual to apply the twentieth century model of revolution to the conditions created by the development of productive forces. By its successes, this model has proved itself the quintessence of revolutionary political activity in modern times. Its processes have so far been limited to conditions characterized by a low level of development of productive forces. At a high level of development of productive forces, responses to the dominant social order take the form of attempts of individuals to realize their self-powers, their capacities, to the level made possible by social development. Social relations that have played out their historical role come into conflict with the possibilities opened up by the productive forces. Suddenly, people who have come on the scene, who have become disenchanted with the entire system, who have become disillusioned over the system and who are ready now and willing to do something about it. The possibilities of the productive forces cease to be the subject of prayer, the promised land to which a saviour will someday lead mankind.

The attempt of individuals to realize their self-powers to the level made possible by contemporary productive forces is a threat to the stability of the dominant social order, which tries to purge itself of rebellious elements. However, in spite of the repressive character of the social context in which they appear, at a high level of development productive forces, rebellious responses to the social order do not avail themselves of the modern model of revolution. The attempt of individuals to live at the contemporary level of development of the productive forces does not give rise to activities consistent with the quintessence of revolutionary political practice, namely to revolutionary organizational ideology, leadership and the struggle for State power. On the contrary, distinct moves in the opposite direction can be observed.

Although the aim of the manual is to apply the modern model revolution to conditions of highly developed productive forces, a brief overview of responses which move outside the boundaries of this model will be given because these responses are themselves the field out of which leaders emerge, and because the field itself becomes a raw material which leaders attempt to shape and transform.

Responses to the social order have been conditioned by the available means for human development and by the form of the dominant social relations. In modern times, the material instruments as well as the social relations have served a specific historical function: the accumulation of Capital. The period of accumulation of Capital consists of an expanded reproduction of productive forces accompanied by a constant reproduction of social relations. At a low level of development of productive forces, the means of survival are scarce, there is little surplus, and society is constrained by this material scarcity to expend its productive energy, ensuring its survival. Productive activity is forced labour. It is enforced by a security apparatus whose level of development corresponds to the possibilities of productive forces. Producers create an industrial technology which eliminates the material necessity for forced labor while reproducing the social conditions of forced labour. Productive forces, which eliminate the material conditions of scarcity, become social instruments for the maintenance of scarcity. Paucity ceases to be a function of nature and becomes a function of social relations.

It is said that the strength of the Ottoman Empire resided in a peculiar social relation. Children of victimized communities were kid-napped by an occupying army. The children were taken abroad, given military training, and a generation later they returned to their own communities as the occupying army. A similar but more refined characterizes the process of accumulation of Capital. It takes two distinct forms, depending on the two different historical sources of accumulated Capital: pre-capitalist communities and capitalism’s own wage laborers.

The Empire of Capital attacks pre-capitalist forms of productive activity, peasant economies, and transforms them into sources of primitive accumulation, into external and internal colonies of capitalism. Crude Ottoman methods of coercion are abandoned, not for moral reasons, but because refined capitalist methods prove historically more effective. Brute force gives way to the more civilized form of economic coercion. Kidnapping takes the more humane form of alienation, or sale, of the surplus product of the pre-capitalist community. The return of the children as a foreign occupying army takes the subtler form of a return of the alienated surplus product in the shape of foreign Capital, a foreign administration, a foreign army, plus an assortment of educators and missionaries. The bewildered invaded community cannot possibly recognize its alienated surplus product in the transformed shape in which it returns, incorporated in Capital, administration and army, even in the weapons, teachers and priests.

The other, predominant, and proper capitalist form of accumulation supercedes the peculiar institution of the Ottoman Empire as a method for turning the life of a community against itself. In this type of Capital accumulation, kidnapping takes the unremarkable form of a normal, uneventful capitalist working day. During the regular course of an average day, what is alienated by the producer is not a child; it is the producer’s own self, the productive power, the producer’s labor. This productive power, this living activity materialized in products of labor, does not return to the community of producers in the form of a foreign occupying power. On the contrary, it surrounds the producer from birth to death. It is the environment. It is home, work, play, and the spaces in between. The producer’s estranged activity turns against the producer in the form of the dominant institutions of modern social life: the State, commodity production and the division of labor. The communities occupied by the Ottoman army reproduced the next generation of oppressors in the act of reproducing themselves. The wage laborers of capitalism reproduce the State, commodity production and the division of labor in the act of reproducing themselves.

The two different forms of capital accumulation — estrangement of pre-capitalist producers’ surplus product, and estrangement of industrial workers’ labor — have led to two different historical situations for the human beings who are the sources of this accumulation. In one case the producer is excluded from the contemporary level of humanity, in the other the producer is deprived of human self-powers.

In the case of a pre-capitalist community transformed into a source of accumulation of Capital, a colony, the stable and comforting harmony of the traditional ways is destroyed, but not replaced. The colonized is severed from the form of humanity that had previously corresponded to a pre-industrial level of productive forces — a form of humanity made coherent and meaningful by the reenactment of cycles of social activity which responded to natural cycles: seasons, births, ages and deaths. The accumulation of Capital destroys the static harmony of the community without making the community dynamic. It destroys the necessity of the cycles of social activity without removing the dependence on nature. It destroys a harmonious, ceremonialized, mythologically justified struggle for survival mitigated by traditional feasts and familiar festivals, and leaves behind an anachronistic, hard, no longer justified, unmitigated struggle for survival. The oppression of the colonized does not lie in the destruction of the previous form of social relations: this form becomes a local anachronism at the moment when the productive forces of humanity make its transcendence possible. The oppression lies in the exclusion of the colonized from the humanity made possible by the development of productive forces; the oppression is experienced in the gap between the colonized and the “humanity” of the colonizer. The magnitude of the gap between the colonized and the colonizer is determined by the extent to which the colonized are deprived of the productive forces available to the colonizer. In other words, the smaller the Capital of the colonized community and the greater the exclusion from contemporary productive forces, the greater the gap between the situation of the colonized and the “humanity” of the colonizer.

On the other hand, in the case of the industrial workers integrally tied to the contemporary productive forces, the greater the social fund of accumulated Capital, the embodied labor stored in means of production, the greater the power of the social class that controls the accumulated Capital, the productive forces that confront the producer is the property of another class. The portion of expended living labor not necessary for the survival of that labor, the surplus labor, takes the form of Capital, the form of a material force that turns on the producer as the power of another class, as an alien force. Thus the greater the power of the productive forces, the product of labor, the greater the power of Capital, the power of the class that rules, the smaller the power of producers over the product of their labor, their self-powers in the environment their labor creates.

Labor power is estranged under duress; it is sold in exchange for a living wage; its estrangement is a condition for survival. In the form of Capital, the estranged power is appropriated by a class which, by “owning” it, personifies it. The power conferred on this class by the simple formality of “ownership” is the power to decide, and to order or decree, everything that is done with the productive forces which it personifies. Since what is done with these productive forces determines the shape of the environment in which contemporary human beings live and the activities in which they engage, the power of the class that personifies Capital is virtually absolute.

The powers estranged by the producers and personified by the rulers are divided and subdivided. Specific powers are delegated to specific offices or departments. The occupants of the offices are representatives in a representative democracy; leaders, heads or chiefs elsewhere where. Whether they reach the office by election, appointment or conquest, they wield the specific powers delegated to the specific office; they personify a specific fragment of the power estranged by society.

Among the personifications, embodiments, representatives of society’s estranged powers, by far the most important is the hierarchy of offices collectively known as the State. The State is the personification of the power of community, the estranged power of individuals to decide collectively the methods, means and purpose of their social activity. It is the specific office of the State to use all available means to ensure that the power of community remains estranged.

Since the productive power of society is estranged by producers, appropriated by another class, and represented by “persons” who occupy the offices to which the power is delegated, it appears to the producers that it is not the producers but the personifications who produce. This is an appearance, a hallucination, but it is difficult for one to see through the hallucinations of one’s own age, since one is born into them. In an earlier age, when it was said that France conquered Burgundy in a field, the real event was a military encounter between two armies recruited from among the populations of France and Burgundy, but the statement described the encounter between two individuals, the personification of France and the personification of Burgundy. In other words, it appears that the capacities, the powers, are not in the individuals who wield them, but in the personifications.

This hallucination could not arise if the assumed power of the personification rested on brute force, on coercion. If the power of the personification had rested on brute force in the case of France’s conquest of Burgundy, the history of the earlier period would have been remarkable since, in order to conquer the Duke, the King would first have had to conquer France — one individual against a multitude of peasants. If this had been the case, the King’s conquest of the peasants would have been so much more spectacular than his conquest of the Duke that the latter event would not have reached the history books.

But in this case the King would have had to be described in terms of his own self-powers, however great these might have been, and not as a personification, as a King, as France.

The power of the personification lies precisely in the hallucination, and not in the individual who occupies the office. Certain words pronounced by a specific individual are not a statement of policy or a declaration of war unless that individual is seen as the authority who has the right to state policy and declare war; the words of this individual cannot have consequences unless other human beings submit to this authority and consider it their duty to obey. The personification is able to wield the power delegated to a specific office only when the legitimacy of the office is accepted. Legitimacy is not a property possessed by the office or by the specific occupant of the office. Legitimacy is a property conferred on the office and its personage by all other individuals.

Although many of the commands of a personification are enforced by violent means, the granting of legitimacy is not the result of coercion. If the power of a personification rested on violence alone, the personification would not need to be legitimate to realize its commands. Furthermore, if the physical power of an individual was great enough to enable the individual to enforce commands, the individual would not need to personify estranged social powers. Violence accompanies the power wielded by a personification, but does not make the personification legitimate. The office and its personage become legitimate only when the authority of the office and its occupant is internalized by all other individuals. By accepting the legitimacy of an office to wield a specific social power, individuals abdicate their own power over that part of social life. As soon as individuals abdicate this power, the office to which the power is abdicated becomes an “authority” which has the “right” to wield that power; an individual who does not abdicate the power becomes a “criminal” who has no “right” to wield it; all others are obedient, “good,” and “law-abiding citizens” to the extent that they exert no power over that part of social activity. The abdication is not a historical event that took place at a specific time in the past; it is a daily event that takes place every time people submit to authority.

By transforming the productive power of society into an alienable commodity, into labor sold for a wage, capitalism extended the personification of estranged power into all realms of social life. As soon as an individual consents to sell productive energy for a given sum of money, this sum of money becomes the “equivalent” of the productive energy, the money possesses the potency of the productive energy. Money becomes the representative of productive power, instruments of production, and product. As soon as all individuals consent to sell their productive energy, money becomes the universal representative of society’s productive power. It is at this point that society’s productive forces become Capital, which is only another name for the power of productive forces represented by a given sum of money. And as soon as the productive forces take the form of Capital, possessors of large sums of money are Capitalists, personifications of the productive power represented by their sum of money, personifications of society’s productive forces. It is the sale of productive power that makes money the universal historical agent. At this point cities are built and destroyed, environments are transformed, history is made, by the spending of sums of money. At this point individuals or even communities have abdicated their power to build environments which suit them. Only investors, personifications of all social building, whose power resides in the creative potency of their money, are able to construct environments.

By abdicating their power of community to the State and their productive power to Capital, human beings alienate virtually all their golf-powers. Furthermore, by internalizing the power of the personifications by conferring on them the legitimacy of Authority, human beings simultaneously internalize their own powerlessness. Every act which lies within the sphere of influence of a personification is out of bounds for on individual. Individuals not only view the wielding of their own powers over the environment as illegitimate, morally wrong; they come feel themselves unable to wield these powers: the personifications are able to do everything; the individual is unable to do anything.

This much is common knowledge. However, it is a peculiarity of modern social life that the precise opposite is also common knowledge. In other words, it is obvious to everyone that these totally powerless individuals are the very same individuals who do the building, the transporting, the operating, the repairing, the thinking. Under the rule of personified powers, individuals simultaneously engage in productive activity and do not engage in it, or rather, it is the productive individuals who do the producing and at the same time it is not the productive individuals who do the producing. This paradox is the great wonder of the Western world; it is Europe’s singular contribution to world culture. The paradox resides in the fact that, as soon as individuals abdicate their self-powers to personifications of these powers, the individuals fall victim to the personifications; they become instruments, or media, through which the powers of the personifications are exercised. Thus it is possible for the same individuals to poison the air during the working day and to breathe the poisoned air while resting at night, since it is not these individuals who poison the air; it is General Motor. Thus it is possible for the same individuals to produce weapons in peace time and to slaughter each other with the weapons in war time, since it is not these individuals who produce the weapons or fight the wars; the weapons are produced by General Dynamics and the war is fought by General Eisenhower, Field Marshal Rommel and Marshal Stalin.

However, the creation of universal powerlessness is not capitalism’s only historical accomplishment. The other side of the picture is a truly representative democracy in which each individual is able to participate in at least a fragment of the personified power of society. This democracy is made possible by two characteristics of the universal representative of society’s productive power: it is liquid, and thus can flow from hand to hand regardless of rank or social office, and it is infinitely divisible, enabling everyone to have it. Thus while everyone is deprived of self-powers over the social environment, no one is excluded from a share in the personified powers.

What this hallucination could not arise if the assumed power of the personification rested on brute force, on coercion. If the power of the personification had rested on brute force in the case of France’s conquest of Burgundy, the history of the earlier period would have been remarkable since, in order to conquer the Duke, the King would first have had to conquer France — one individual against a multitude of peasants. If this had been the case, the King’s conquest of the peasants would have been so much more spectacular than his conquest of the Duke that the latter event would not have reached the history books.

But in this case, the King would have had to be described in terms of his own self-powers, however great these might have been, and not as a personification, as a King, as France.

Un des premiers films fait avec des vidéos générées par Intelligence Artificielle en téléchargement gratuit ici http://horsnorme.org/666999/ (il y a aussi une nouvelle de fiction psychotique qui l'accompagne) Maybe the first feature film made with videos generated by Artificial Intelligence, surely the first release free here http://horsnorme.org/999666/ (and there is also a short novel)

Paris, 2023.

"Débarassons nous du capitalisme ! Construisons l'anarchie."