The Democracy of the founding fathers was Greek Democracy, predicated upon a slave society, and restricted to only the elite. This is the society we live in today, even with our reforms towards direct representation. The system is inherently biased towards the election of elites and against the representation of the masses. Hamilton called it “faction” when the working class got together and demanded better conditions, and mechanisms were built in (which still exist to this day) that serve to ensure the continued dominance of the elite over the masses. The suffering of the many is intentional. The opulence of the wealthy is also. This is the intended outcome.
3d printing is cool, and i agree, it is great for reclaiming things from the capitalist profit incentive structure. I print pretty much everything I can instead of buying it, and it’s great for fixing things that manufacturers don’t want you to fix.
It’s not really much in the way of reducing the exploitation of the working class though, nor its reliance upon coerced labor in order to maintain basic human living conditions. It’s also primarily being used by corporations to further increase profit margins.
There’s not many Vorons or Prusas. There’s a lot more profit seeking printing services than there are Print it Forward programs. This is inevitable under our current system. The resources available to those seeking to help humanity are far fewer than those seeking to exploit it.
Technology itself is not a solution. Technology only matters as much as how you use it. If the dominant forces in society are utilizing technology for profit, rather than to increase human dignity and freedom, then what you get is what we have; Machines that do the work of 1000 men, not so that 1000 men can focus on other things, but so that ONE man (or realistically, a group of shareholders and board members) can extract super profits from those workers. If technology was used in service of humanity, the majority of humanity would be working very little, and things like starvation and homelessness would only be possible under unexpected circumstances like droughts and after wildfires.
this i agree with, but i don’t take that all shapes of technology are equally susceptible to serving profit instead of people. in our case, the factory systems which allow for 1000:1 production are huge and costly and beyond the reach of the average individual or family or community. but that same technology in a different form could be made to be within reach of smaller communities.
if a machine within the reach of your everday person could have that same 1000:1 production factor, then you don’t need the dominant forces in society to be directed at human dignity. you just need them to be tolerant of benign alternatives, and only 0.1% of society needs to go along with you to allow that alternative to be reality. the bigger thing is that we’ve had 100+ years in which technology has been developed for that factory system with far less development catering to any alternatives, so the alternatives available legitimately do not have that same 1000:1 production. there’s no way to get that outside of factories without playing catchup on the technology front. but catchup is possible without destruction because factorized production does incidentally create generalized tools that make the alternatives easier (your typical hammers and saws and all that).
Why does it matter that these machines are in factories? They should still be used for the benefit of mankind, or at the very least, the benefit of the workers at the factory. Currently, we have no democracy in the workplace, and no say in how new technologies are implemented.
A machine costing a lot of money, only matters when most of the money is hoarded by a few individuals. Had we workplace democracy, those same machines, in those same factories, would be used for the good of the workers, rather than the good of the shareholders.
The factory is part of the community. It’s emissions effect the community, it’s output and profits effect the community, it’s size effects the community, it’s investment or lack of investment in the community effects the community. In fact, I can’t think of a single aspect of a factory that does not directly rely upon or impact the community immediately surrounding it. And yet, people in suits a thousand miles away in board rooms in skyscrapers, get to determine how that factory effects that community, and the community gets no say, because “private property”.
We don’t need to take the machines out of the factory to make them help people. We need to return the factories to the people and allow them to help themselves.
alright, you’ve made a pretty solid case there. one single nit:
“power corrupts”, as it goes. if there’s a single lever that could be pulled to enrich the few, then they will try, and the many have to remain vigilant. better many small levers than a handful of large levers where possible, since that’s just more difficult for any small self-interested group to control. but i’ll take democratic workplaces over the existing.
so: how to get there? like, what do you or i do, aside from just considering these things as we navigate our careers? if someone else has done a good job with the deeper writing here before, i’ll take a book rec. there’s space on my non-fiction shelf.
Well, I’m not sure this will get a good response, but I highly recommend reading the works of successful revolutionaries. Guevara, Lenin, Mao, Nkrumah, etc.
Those peoples books fucking blew my mind. They enacted revolution, and then spent a long time reflecting upon them. There’s decades of works from each, except Nkrumah :(
I’d say the first thing to do is to join a local socialist organization and get active in organizing in your community. Direct action groups are good too, but mostly serve to cauterize wounds inflicted by capitalism, rather than actually healing them, so they’re best used in tandem with direct organization. Unionize your workplace if you can. If we get massive union movement again, those unions can collaborate to massively extend our power. A hundred individual unionized factories mean little, but 100 unionized factories acting as one, that will get some movement. You can look to the UAW for the power of collective unionism. It’ll be even more powerful if we become so unionized that we can use solidarity strikes regardless of the oppressive laws against it.
Know that nothing will be won without blood though. You cannot ask a man to give up his immense privilege without expecting him to try to stop you. People died to win us the 40 hour week. People died to win us Overtime. People died for the 8 hour day and unemployment insurance and an end to company scrip. We will have to be willing to make that same sacrifice in order to win our current battle. Nothing will be won tomorrow either. This is a struggle. Every day, for as long as it takes. Take the concessions when you win them, but do not be satisfied, for they are only that, concessions, and concessions can be taken away as easily as they were given. We must continue through, until we reach the finish line. And once we do, the real race starts. We have to avoid the mistakes of movements in the past like the CNT, and USSR, and various other countries, while still looking to their successes with a clear mind.
Cheers.