deleted by creator

^100% this.

Even in the most idealistic of scenarios fully automated luxury gay space communism is something maybe our great grandchildren could see. As for us: oh dear fucking god there is just so much fucking work to be done and automation and AI ain't gonna cut it. The benefit of revolution for us should be the knowledge that our labor will be less alienated and directed towards things that benefit the whole of society rather than a few rich capitalists, and perhaps the establishment of a new social contract and list of rights.

"Then Crispien went on to talk about high wages. He said that conditions in Germany were such that, in comparison with workers in Russia and Eastern Europe in general, workers there had a reasonably good standard of living. He says that a revolution can only be carried out if the workers do not suffer ‘excessive’ impoverishment. I ask myself whether it is permissible to talk in such terms in a communist party. It is counter-revolutionary. We in Russia certainly have a living standard that is lower than in Germany, and when we set up the dictatorship the result was that the workers were even hungrier and their living standard dropped still further. The victory of the workers is impossible without sacrifice, without the temporary worsening of their conditions. We must tell the workers the opposite of what Crispien says. To wish to prepare workers for the dictatorship and to talk to them about ‘not excessive’ impoverishment is to forget what is most important, that is that the labour aristocracy arose by helping their ‘own’ bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle the whole world by imperialist means and by thus being able to secure better wages. If the German working class want to do revolutionary work now they must make sacrifices and not shrink from it."

:lenin-da:

I actually disagree with this quite a lot, especially in relation to the US and most of the first world. The amount of overproduction that happens so that there can be 100 different varieties of potato chips and breakfast cereals in your typical western grocery store alone is staggering. 30% of the food Americans buy ends up spiling before it's used and that isnt evem counting all the perfectly good stuff that's thrown out because it didn't sell. The productive forces which have been built up in the west are probably enough to feed, clothe and house the entire planet 2-3x over. I understand that a lot of work needs to go into unfucking ecosystems, but I think you're underestimating just how much overproduction happens in the west, and specifically the US.

I dunno, atleast 30% of all work today is complete and utter pointless bullshit, another big chunk is bullshit that only has purpose because of value extraction under capitalism. When you account for the fact that a lot of valuable work, especially I the third world, isn't automated solely because it is more profitable not to, I think we could get by with a great deal less work. And this isn't accounting for the lessened capacity we need to deal with the negative externalities of keeping capital functioning.

For historical precedent - you have subbotnik