Another reminder that technophobia is nothing to do with socialism
Another reminder that technophobia is nothing to do with socialism
USSR was technophilic and invented space travel.
DPRK is technophilic.
PRC is technophilic and is the world leader in many advanced technologies.
Marx analyses technological progress deeply. The increase in productive power that results from the creation and rollout of new technologies (including AI) is what raises material standards of living.
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Engels in "The Conditions of the Working Class in England" responded to this point better than I could, though written in 1844 Marx fully endorsed the analysis in Capitol Vol. I
Let the wise bourgeois ask the people who sweep the streets in Manchester and elsewhere (though even this is past now, since machines for the purpose have been invented and introduced), or sell salt, matches, oranges, and shoe-strings on the streets, or even beg, what they were formerly, and he will see how many will answer: “Mill-hands thrown out of work by machinery.” The consequences of improvement in machinery under our present social conditions are, for the working-man, solely injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive. Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a “surplus population,” to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. And what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it! To escape despair, there are but two ways open to him; either inward and outward revolt against the bourgeoisie or drunkenness and general demoralisation. And the English operatives are accustomed to take refuge in both. The history of the English proletariat relates hundreds of uprisings against machinery and the bourgeoisie; we have already spoken of the moral dissolution which, in itself, is only another form of despair.
The advance of industry, in the hands of a Communist society, will be a tool for the improvement of all. But in a society ruled by the Bourgeois, such innovation will facilitate more oppression, exploitation, and unemployment, if doing so is the most profitable. You can look at the immiserating consequences which followed the invention of the cotton gin to see that; not even accounting for genuinely awful inventions like leaded gasoline, credit card scores, and nuclear weapons.