eng tit
Until generative AI (genAI), the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) who manage labor and the artists who generate and critique culture haven't had much in common. Organizing them together was really hard. Much in human resources Taylorizes the free thinkers. Much art critiques the organizers of routine.
These two classes also didn't have much in common with the seminal revolutionary agent: industrial labor. Engels explained labor's preeminence in 1845, "factory-hands, eldest children of the industrial revolution, have from the beginning to the present day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement..." their primary place in the movement coincides with their replacement by machines. As more classes are mechanized, more people are conditioned for revolutionary class consciousness by their changed material reality. Engels continues, "...others have joined this movement just in proportion as their handicraft has been invaded by the progress of machinery..." Today, genAI is capable of doing the jobs of both managers and artists. It is reminiscent of the assembly line and robots who out-competed industrial workers.
Engels specific critique, echoed by Marxists today, is not about becoming a hermit or Luddite. Instead, it is about creating a society that survives technological changes in the mode of production without condemning the workers who have been outmoded to despair and poverty.
America's industrial labor movement wasn't destroyed by inventions like the assembly line or robots. It was destroyed by the implementation of these principles by management. This was probably inevitable. But other actions--the offshoring of manufacture by ownership, hollowing of the social safety net by government, rejection of the union label by consumers--made the transition to a new mode of production painful.
source:
"The Industrial Proletariat" The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) English Moscow ed. trans. Florence Kelley-Wischnewtsky, 1887.
These two classes also didn't have much in common with the seminal revolutionary agent: industrial labor. Engels explained labor's preeminence in 1845, "factory-hands, eldest children of the industrial revolution, have from the beginning to the present day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement..." their primary place in the movement coincides with their replacement by machines. As more classes are mechanized, more people are conditioned for revolutionary class consciousness by their changed material reality. Engels continues, "...others have joined this movement just in proportion as their handicraft has been invaded by the progress of machinery..." Today, genAI is capable of doing the jobs of both managers and artists. It is reminiscent of the assembly line and robots who out-competed industrial workers.
Engels specific critique, echoed by Marxists today, is not about becoming a hermit or Luddite. Instead, it is about creating a society that survives technological changes in the mode of production without condemning the workers who have been outmoded to despair and poverty.
America's industrial labor movement wasn't destroyed by inventions like the assembly line or robots. It was destroyed by the implementation of these principles by management. This was probably inevitable. But other actions--the offshoring of manufacture by ownership, hollowing of the social safety net by government, rejection of the union label by consumers--made the transition to a new mode of production painful.
source:
"The Industrial Proletariat" The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) English Moscow ed. trans. Florence Kelley-Wischnewtsky, 1887.