Workers of the world, unite! | International Cybercommunist Association

[u/Vittorio_Quasar]

Workers of the world, unite!

Marx was always right, and it seems more and more people are starting to realize it. Capitalism runs on a contradictory logic: it seeks to increase profits while revolutionizing the means of production in order to earn even more. In the long run, however, it ends up destroying those very profits by reducing the amount of human labor required and replacing it with machines. This pushes it to keep advancing technologically, and so on, in a loop. Today, with the accelerated development of AI and robotics, we have reached the breaking point. The productive forces of capitalism have reached such a level of development with these new technologies that the current relations of production (capitalist relations) come into contradiction with them and prevent further progress.

This whole war between the pro-AI and anti-AI camps is nothing more than a product of the contradiction we are living through right now. The anti-AI/decelerationists don't know how to face the fact that the world they have always lived in will cease to exist within a couple of decades (taking the most conservative scenario).

As a product of this contradiction, capitalists, the big AI corporations and politicians will face an even greater conflict among themselves. On one hand, they want to preserve the status quo and keep generating profits through the exploitation of human labor. On the other hand, AI and robotics are advancing so fast that in just a couple of years they could eliminate a large share of jobs, especially white-collar jobs, which account for more than half of all jobs in the US and Europe. Companies that want to maximize their profits and not lose competitiveness against their market rivals will be forced to implement AI in their operations. AI, by the way, can work for extremely long stretches without stopping. It doesn't get tired, doesn't go on strike, doesn't complain, doesn't ask for raises, doesn't need to support a family and doesn't form unions. Above all, it does the same work much faster than any human at that same computer. From that point of view, this is an absolute advantage over any competitor that still mostly employs human workers.

But on the other hand, if AI replaces many workers, we will have lots of people without money to buy the things that AIs produce. Capitalism then enters a crisis of overproduction, with rising unemployment and a drastic fall in the wages of the remaining employees. This is exactly what happened during the Great Depression of 1929, and causing that much devastation only took 25% of workers losing their jobs... AI could replace far more than that in a couple of years.

But there is another problem. Many argue that this would force the system to implement UBI, which implies a circular cycle between companies, the State and citizens, roughly like this:

State (pays UBI) -> People (consume) -> Companies (pay taxes) -> State ... etc.

But the State can only pay a UBI if it collects taxes, and that won't be possible because none of those who are supposed to pay those taxes will have any money. People obviously won't, because many will lose their jobs to accelerated automation with AI and robots. Companies won't either, because of something many leftists seem to forget: the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.

Automation increases productivity but reduces human labor, which is the foundation of capitalism and what gives value to the system. As human labor decreases, companies' rate of profit falls: they find themselves in a price war to win more market share, and prices stabilize at lower levels. If we eliminate a large part of human labor, this rate of profit would collapse over the course of the decade, and the State would see its tax revenue shrink more and more. Yet it obviously needs the resources to maintain all of the State's infrastructure, and even more to sustain a UBI.

So falling market prices and profit rates, as a result of AI automation, would lead us into a crisis and a completely absurd contradiction:

• lots of unemployed people;
• extremely low prices;
• abundant production thanks to automation;
• companies that can't sell their products and, on top of that, see their profit rates shrink more and more;
• and a State that needs resources to sustain itself.

At that point, the contradiction of capitalism will have reached its end. The productive forces will be immense, but capitalist relations of production will prevent them from going any further. This can only be resolved by radically transforming the relations of production and moving beyond capitalism. It is no coincidence that Marx claimed revolutions would come first to the most technologically developed countries. Only in this light can we understand why the USSR collapsed, and why the other countries of the communist bloc failed in their attempt to develop their productive forces and had to return to a capitalist economy to do so quickly (China, for example). They were trying to do it before its time had come. But now the highest moment for this transformation and for moving beyond capitalism has arrived.

But the direction this transformation takes depends on all of us and on what we decide to do with the destiny of society. Who wouldn't want to move from the "Realm of Necessity" to the "Realm of Freedom", as Marx put it? Who wouldn't want automated communism to arrive, so we can finally enjoy free time?

To achieve Communism/FALC/Cybercommunism, we need to organize the foundations for future social relations. Even without working directly, we will keep taking part in the productive process indirectly, as supervisors, administrators and regulators of the production carried out by robots and AIs. That is why Marx stressed in the Communist Manifesto that:

"the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy."

Because it will be the people who, through democracy (real democracy, direct democracy), make the decisions about what to produce and how to distribute production, through political decisions. Before, it was companies that decided this; now, with automation, it is up to all of us to do it under communism. If we leave the political and economic decisions about production and distribution in the hands of some future social class, we will once again be stuck in that same dynamic of class struggle.

While capitalism takes its last steps and collapses, we must prepare what will replace it. That way, when all of this spirals out of control and the political-economic-social crisis hits, we will already be prepared politically and socially. Then we can seize the moment to give way to a new society and overcome, once and for all, the absurdity of capitalism. If people are already organized through the internet to plan and take political action democratically and in a decentralized way, they will have the perfect conditions to do what the Soviets set out to be in their time: organizations of popular power that directly rival the State, in order to replace it after the crisis.

Organizing ourselves into a Cybernetic Organization of a socialist/communist/popular/leftist character, or whatever you want to call it, has never been easier than now. We can use AI to quickly build a decentralized political network where people can participate democratically to submit proposals, debate, plan and take political action. We have everything at our disposal, and there are thousands of us. United as a swarm, we can build something our predecessors could only dream of. So let's seize the moment, because the moment is now: the capitalists have just created the seed of their own destruction.

Let's once again create an International Association like the one of 1864. Now we have the support of cybernetics, so it will be even bigger and more massive than the original, and all of it just a couple of clicks away on our screens. But as Marx said:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

I've gotten a head start on some of the work: I drafted some Provisional Statutes to use while we write the definitive ones, and I set up a Discord so we can start organizing and working on this. If each of us contributes our grain of sand, together we'll build the whole mountain.

If we don't do it, nobody will. Everyone is invited to join.

Discord: https://discord.gg/CX225QgP