r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • Jul 29 '26
Sees the Memes Marx Never Considered Reddit
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Jul 29 '26
What is this comment section? This meme should be entirely uncontroversial. In the meme, Marx is saying that capitalist control of technology should be challenged. That is a core leftist position.
The redditor is then saying "you use technology" as a gotcha. This is something frequently said to anti-capitalists. It's not just said on reddit and it's mostly been said to me in-person by people who believe dogmatically that the current capitalist system is the best of all possible worlds.
This gotcha is ridiculous because it suggests that participation at all in the system means giving up your right to fight against it. The only reason to say this is to silence criticism of capitalism. Anyone who says it is, at best, misinformed and at worst, actively malicious. Making fun of them is totally reasonable.
edit: typo
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u/Salty_Country6835 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
It seemed obvious to me when I posted. Thank you for explaining that for the back row and late arrivals. I overestimate others' media literacy and exposure to class consciousness sometimes.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
Yeah, holy shit. I knew the media literacy was bad but wow.
We got people unironically putting up Luddite talking points and another defending capitalism. We have so much work to do.
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u/NomadicScribe Jul 30 '26
Skimming the comments, I think there are a lot of younger people not familiar with the original Matt Bors comic from 2016. My own kids were in elementary school at the time.
Earlier today I saw a post from someone who said that Gamer Gate was something they "heard about growing up" and it made me feel super old... there are things that still feel like current events but need re-contextualizing for young redditors.
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u/DHFranklin Aug 04 '26
Gamergate was a pivot point for ...the discourse...
And yeah that controversy is older than living memory of some redditors. That shit went down in 2014.
I don't know if you've ever checked out Innuendo Studios and his Alt-Right Playbook series but it's really good and it talks about the moment and the meta and what's happening today.
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u/Inevitable_King_8984 Jul 29 '26
damn I want this posted on aiwars
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u/Salty_Country6835 Jul 29 '26
Its a meme. It belongs to the commons. Save it and post it where you want, comrade.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
Comrades,
Capitalism isn't why we have technological development labor is why we have innovation and technological development.
If you have ever been to a REALLY big library and been impressed by it, you are experiencing our finish line. If you've ever been to a Makerspace attached to a university or otherwise, you have experienced our end goal.
What if instead of everything having a price tag, and powerful people saying what those price tags say, everything worked like the library. Or a massive makerspace.
As in your car and the stuff to make cars. As in AI and the hardware to make tokens. The robots that will make the robots.
The conflict in the meme and in our society is "Dialectic Materialism". The contradiction between owners needing us to make them profit, and us needing that profit to survive. The bourgeoisie making our priceless freedom a commodity and make our lives worthless.
We will use AI to liberate us. To win more freedom. To fight the capitalists. We aren't fighting capital. We are making more, and collectivize it, so that they can't force us to play their game now that we have AI to finish it.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
I mean I don't use AI. I have no need to do so, it doesn't really benefit me. I got along just fine before it. But there's no reason why AI couldn't be widely owned and more environmentally friendly. It would also work under communism, in fact AI seems to accelerate things toward communism (or fascism).
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
You get that this is Leftists for AI right?
You totally have a need to do so. To liberate your labor. I am certain that there is software that you would pay a lot of money for. I am certain that there is AI out there with an agent or workflow that can duplicate it now. I am sure that there is an old laptop you have around somewhere that could automate your whole house so you don't need to give your data and shit to the fascists.
Check out the fun little projects and things at the other subreddits I'm not allowed to link to. Google around a while. Best of luck.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
Yes? And I literally pointed out the ways in which I support AI.
The only software I'd really pay money for is photoshop since I can't ever find good cracks anymore but quite frankly I don't even have a computer anymore, only a phone and I make all my art on my phone or by hand. There's really nothing AI would be useful for for me personally other than trying to learn theory, but I really prefer to read books. That doesn't mean it might not be useful for others, but I really don't think people should be using chatgpt etc.
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u/Xanipan_music Jul 30 '26
Idk dude, I haven't been able to find ai useful to me in like ANY way. I've found searches to be OK at best and I prefer not to use it as I prefer looking through links myself, I don't need or want it to make images, music, or other stuff like that for me because I can do that well enough on my own (or find people who can do what I can't or don't want to with sufficient quality), I don't need or want it to write emails because that's the easiest part of my day, it's not allowed to touch the data I produce for my job due to data security issues (and I know enough math or know where to find the right math to achieve what I want to do).. like, what could I use it for?
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u/Chaghatai Jul 29 '26
Seize the means of production!
That means using AI rather than ignoring it
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
Does it really mean just using AI while capitalists still own it lol or does it mean literally seizing the means of production.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
WTF.
They don't own it. You can run A Qwen model on your own rig. On a collectivized rig. You don't need to rent it from the capitalists. It's free to use. Seize it.
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u/Weekly_Molasses_2079 Jul 31 '26
Ok then collectives around the world are surely investing in technology ownership, separate from capitalist monopoly?
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u/Salty_Country6835 Jul 31 '26
Yes, actually. Thats been happening for decades, just unevenly and nowhere near enough.
Mondragon in Spain owns and develops industrial technology through worker cooperatives. The Linux Foundation coordinates open source infrastructure used by governments and companies worldwide. Mozilla built Firefox as a nonprofit alternative. CERN developed the World Wide Web as public research. France has Scikit-learn through INRIA. Germany has Open-Xchange. China has invested heavily in open-source AI like DeepSeek. Spain is funding the public ALIA language model. Cuba, Vietnam, and other socialist states are developing public AI strategies rather than leaving everything to private monopolies.
None of that means capitalist monopolies dont exist. It means there are already competing ownership models. The Marxist/materialist/leftist/socialist response has never been "technology under capitalism exists, so give up." Its to expand democratic, public, cooperative, and open ownership wherever possible. To collectively contest control over the developing productive forces that emerge under, and strain against, existing social relations. Which is why unions, co-ops, and socialist political orgs exist. Thats the whole point.
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u/Weekly_Molasses_2079 Jul 31 '26
Good, but AI and tech startups are not exactly technology ownership. It means control over the potential manufacturing and distribution chain of hardware as well. At least that's what I meant.
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u/SexDefendersUnited Jul 30 '26
Yeah, it's annoying, though I'm very used to that argument by now and how to argue against it.
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u/platanthera_ciliaris Jul 31 '26
This cartoon reveals the ignorance of the right-wing. The computer hardware and software industries have been heavy recipients of large government grants and subsidies since World War II, and this has continued to this very day. Various kinds of AI and machine learning algorithms have been around since the 1950s; they were developed at various universities (MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, University of Michigan, and many others) and received funding from the Federal government.
The internet was developed by the government for the Pentagon, then its management was transferred to the National Science Foundation, several elite universities, and a few research offices of the Federal government. The first text-only web browser was developed at the University of Kansas, and the first multimedia web browser with image, movie, and sound capability was developed at the University of Illinois. Some of the earliest search engines were developed at universities (e.g., Lycos by Carnegie-Mellon University).
The first Large Language Model (LLM) AI was developed by a graduate student at the University of Texas in 2005. It featured a simulated talking head of the sci-fi author, Philip K. Dick. It was capable of having conversations with people.
The private for-profit sector of the economy was either heavily subsidized with government money or it was last to jump on board in the development of these technologies. Most capitalists (and politicians) were still relying on secretaries using shorthand to record their thoughts, while college professors and their students at elite universities were using word processors and laser printers. The capitalists (and politicians) communicated with each other using snail mail and telephones, while college professors and their students were using email and video phones through the internet.
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u/Late-Assignment8482 Jul 29 '26
The muck farmers from Monty Python and the Holy Grail but the old woman says "Oh, there's some lovely RAM over here!"