political technology

posted on 2022-02-04

some communists like to claim that one of the problems with capitalism is the requirement for people to work. liberals can counter-argue that this is a fact of the state of technology and automation being not quite there yet, rather than what political system is in place: even under communism, someone would have to make the stuff.

similar claims can be made about other material conditions such as scarcity or the meat industry.

while not necessarily an unreasonable point, i feel like the liberal counter-argument misses a point and suggests an overly narrow view. indeed, part of the work of achieving communism is bringing about the technologies that enable communism to exist. the work of moving towards communism isn't as narrow as "what policies do we apply to the material conditions of today"; they extend to the transformation of these very material conditions.

some works of construction, while they might seem like innocuous new pieces of liberal society or even successes of that system, can in fact be steps on the road to overcoming capitalism. in fact, the last two ideas are not incompatible: it is to be remembered that communists have historically seen the move from feudalism to capitalism as a step of improvement, from which we can yet improve forth even more.

and technology is not an ever-forward-moving sequence of inevitable innovations; it has real directions that can be influenced and can even decline sometimes.

posted on 2022-02-04