The position was never “individual artists should not own their work”, the position was “Perpetual copyright is bad”. You act like that’s the same when it absolutely isn’t.
AI isn’t touching Disney because those companies know Disney has teeth. So they copy from all the individual artists who depend on their art to survive and act like that’s not bad. I have seen people on this site argue for that actually, because ‘it’s like pirating a movie’. To which I say: Fuck off. It’s not the same because one case takes from a rich as god company while the other takes directly from a worker. Sure, the worker might be providing furry porn but so what? They are fulfilling that societal demand and should be fairly compensated for it. If these AIs were taking exclusively corporate art and shitting out their slop, I would have no problem with that.
I’m specifically not making a moral claim. I’m making a strategic claim. I can agree morally with you, but thats a different subject. The point is that these contradictions are there and building and we should choose the side that strategically helps. Is your argument that our fighting for artists will lead to better chance to succeed in bringing about socialism? I’m willing to hear such an argument but am entirely unconvinced that it’s not just Petit-Bourgeois
And I’m amazed I have to spell this out for you: are you trying to fight for artists who benefit from copyright (definitionally non-proletarians in that action) or strike a pillar of capitalism at it’s base?
You’re just circuitously defending some of the exact same, and a much larger, set of wealthy corporations: those that benefit from copyright as it is. I’m defending absolutely no capitalist company, I’m arguing to strategically push for their intercompany fighting to bring us closer to an end of capitalism. And right now that means not needlessly fighting for Disney against the AI companies.
Who are these artists who need to be defended from proletarianization above the fight for communism? In what way is that advancing our cause?
Proletarization? So in your view, making art is not productive labor? I am talking about normal-ass people that make ends meet by doing art for other people that pay them to do it. Who are you imagining does most of the art you see out there?
Also, if you think that AI companies will defeat copyright, I have a bridge to sell you. The current lawsuits etc. will neither end copyright, nor will they end AI companies. These entities will come to an agreement where one gets rent from the other, copyright law will not change meaningfully, except to fuck over normal people ever the harder. Siding with capital against capital never ever works. They know who they are and who isn’t in the club.
This is why I am on team Fuck Ai, shut it all down. Is that pie in the sky? Yea sure. But so is your idea of the left siding with OpenAI to defeat Disney and that somehow ending well for the left.
Art produced for a wage, for a capitalist, is productive labour. Art produced by an individual sold as commissions is not productive, I.e it produces no surplus value, the artist is paid the full value of their labour by the commissioner.
The artist hired by a capitalist already doesn’t own the outputs of their labour, and never has. Quit moralising and go and read a book.
So by your logic, a plumber isn’t doing productive labor if they fix the toilets of workers, got it. Or cooks, they don’t do productive work if they feed anyone but capitalists.
Sterling fucking logic with no holes in it. You read the book and fuck the fuck off with your high and mighty bitching.
You fundamentally misunderstand. If a wage worker is paid the exchange value of labour-power I.e the cost to reproduce themselves, at the behest of a capitalist (the work could be in the service sector, like a chef, an artist; it could also be a plumber, and they could ultimately be doing work for consumers like other workers), they produce more value than they are paid for I.e. they produce surplus value.
A self-employed plumber or a live-in chef working directly for someone with no capitalist middleman, or an artist working for commissions do not produce surplus value. They sell the final product of their labour, not their labour itself, and they charge the going market rate for the product of their labour, not the going market rate for their labour-power by the hour.
An artist can be proletarian or petit-bourgeois. A chef can also be either, as can a plumber.
Your time would be better spent reading and studying Capital than professing your shoddy home-baked anti-capitalism online.
Yeah turns out, (pretty much) everyone disagreeing with me doesn’t know how to do a class analysis. I thought the opinion was going to be an argument for collaboration with creative PB, not just a complete incomprehension that artists benefitting from copyright are definitionally benefitting as PB
To begin: you’re literally doing the petit bourgeois argument that Marx spent books discussing the failures. I think you should read some theory on this. Either you are asking for class collaboration with petit bourgeois artists (again, make the argument, I’m genuinely open to hearing that this is necessary), or you are just arguing for petit bourgeois interests with no class analysis.
You’re siding with capital against capital, don’t act like your side is high and mighty. I’m arguing to let capital destroy itself strategically by not defending copyright Giants and letting whatever carveout is created be used to undermine capital further
I am kinda done arguing this, because it is not worth my time to argue with people who don’t know what the proletariat even is. But since you seem a bit more charitable, one last attempt before the block:
So please explain how most or all artists are petit bourgeois without pointing out they don’t all work directly for capital. If you believe that is how you define it, you are too stupid to actually be on the left. You can see that argument debunked nearby.
Are there a few artists who are petit bourgeois? Sure. There are also a few plumbers who founded plumbing companies and there are cooks who own restaurants. Doesn’t make the whole job anything else but proletarian.
As for capital fighting capital: the winner of that fight will be capital. Capital fights itself all the time without our help. I have yet to see you explain how your idea of getting the left involved helps anything.
Lol you’re gonna block me because you responded to me and you don’t like that I think you’re wrong?? Then go ahead I guess, but seems pretty petty lol
You really just don’t understand what proletarian means, and are trying to push me into a vulgar Marxist position. Proletarians are defined by having to sell their labour time, not selling the products of their labour. Anything about whether they work or not, or whether their work is hands-on or not is a useless distinction when push comes to shove, and history bares that out. It’s a distinction that seems unimportant until cases like this where the desired policies are opposed. Take the 18th Brumaire, where the petty bourgeois were mostly tradesmen who made and sold directly their own products. Marx writes about how they feared the loss of their land and small properties moreso than they feared any dictatorship of Napoleon, and so they supported Napoleon in the hopes that he would stabilize their society and put down the proletarian revolution. Up until then, many in France had mistakenly thought that they were in an alliance with the petty bourgeoisie.
In this case, the distinction is whether or not someone owns the work they produce/the service they sell directly to a customer. Om the opposite side are those who are paid for their time and just have to fill that time with work which someone else will own. Sure, for many artists that means that they just have a computer and sell drawings or something, but the fact that they own that image, instead of ONLY owning their own labour time to sell, makes them not proletarian IN THAT PROCESS. And the legal distinction is who owns the copyright. Proletarians never do for their work.
Now, this doesn’t mean they’re immediately an enemy or something, that’s just a super limited view of such things. Someone isn’t immediately bad for having other interests. And people can have mixed interests, where they work mostly as a prole and then on the side do PB work. Claiming otherwise is some vulgar Marxism. It just means that we need to understand that their material interests aren’t fully aligned with proletarianism and we must consider that and the possibility of betrayal in making decisions. In this case, I’m trying to sus out whether PB artists fighting for copyright actions against AI companies are actually working against the benefits to proletarians, and the more we talk the more convinced I am that they are. The proletarian artist works for a capitalist and is paid for their time and owns none of the produce, and so has absolutely no reason to support copyright. The PB artists wants to be allowed to own the copyright. It’s an argument for stability in the legal realm exactly like in the 18th Brumaire.
Reconsider your ableist words. If we weren’t on a dead thread I’d report you for calling me ‘stupid’.
Stop acting like you’re not also supporting capital! You absolutely are! We’re just talking about if it’s worth all this effort that I see people pushing against AI companies. Fuck AI companies for all the other stuff, but hurting copyright is just a good thing for us. Every loophole allows for people to weaken capital through use of copyrighted stuff. Whatever legal distinction is made for AI companies to get to continue will be used by China, Niger, Burkina Faso, as cover to use intellectual property owned by western companies and not face sanctions.
It really is wild that like 5 years ago Marxists wanted copyright abolished, and now they defend it like copyright somehow protects them to make their own art, when it never allowed it, only prohibited you from publishing certain works because a dead dude’s estate said no.
I think the division of labour and the distinction of artist should die and that involves a socialism that involves everyone including what passes for artists these days doing work outside of art as required of them. So that everyone can do art instead of having a privileged few (relative to the global majority) that can while away their time making fan art commisions and shit YouTube videos.
Then what are you arguing for? You’re pro artist but not pro copyright, and you express that by defending copyright from the legal battle from AI companies?
I also want AI as it exists to die off. Bug I’m asking to strategically support it in it’s fight against copyright while pushing for its destruction or cooption for the other, more legitimate reasons to want them gone.
The position was never “individual artists should not own their work”, the position was “Perpetual copyright is bad”. You act like that’s the same when it absolutely isn’t.
AI isn’t touching Disney because those companies know Disney has teeth. So they copy from all the individual artists who depend on their art to survive and act like that’s not bad. I have seen people on this site argue for that actually, because ‘it’s like pirating a movie’. To which I say: Fuck off. It’s not the same because one case takes from a rich as god company while the other takes directly from a worker. Sure, the worker might be providing furry porn but so what? They are fulfilling that societal demand and should be fairly compensated for it. If these AIs were taking exclusively corporate art and shitting out their slop, I would have no problem with that.
I’m specifically not making a moral claim. I’m making a strategic claim. I can agree morally with you, but thats a different subject. The point is that these contradictions are there and building and we should choose the side that strategically helps. Is your argument that our fighting for artists will lead to better chance to succeed in bringing about socialism? I’m willing to hear such an argument but am entirely unconvinced that it’s not just Petit-Bourgeois
I am amazed that I have to spell this out for you: Would you rather fight for the artists, or the richest corporations in the world?
And I’m amazed I have to spell this out for you: are you trying to fight for artists who benefit from copyright (definitionally non-proletarians in that action) or strike a pillar of capitalism at it’s base?
You’re just circuitously defending some of the exact same, and a much larger, set of wealthy corporations: those that benefit from copyright as it is. I’m defending absolutely no capitalist company, I’m arguing to strategically push for their intercompany fighting to bring us closer to an end of capitalism. And right now that means not needlessly fighting for Disney against the AI companies.
Who are these artists who need to be defended from proletarianization above the fight for communism? In what way is that advancing our cause?
Proletarization? So in your view, making art is not productive labor? I am talking about normal-ass people that make ends meet by doing art for other people that pay them to do it. Who are you imagining does most of the art you see out there?
Also, if you think that AI companies will defeat copyright, I have a bridge to sell you. The current lawsuits etc. will neither end copyright, nor will they end AI companies. These entities will come to an agreement where one gets rent from the other, copyright law will not change meaningfully, except to fuck over normal people ever the harder. Siding with capital against capital never ever works. They know who they are and who isn’t in the club.
This is why I am on team Fuck Ai, shut it all down. Is that pie in the sky? Yea sure. But so is your idea of the left siding with OpenAI to defeat Disney and that somehow ending well for the left.
Art produced for a wage, for a capitalist, is productive labour. Art produced by an individual sold as commissions is not productive, I.e it produces no surplus value, the artist is paid the full value of their labour by the commissioner.
The artist hired by a capitalist already doesn’t own the outputs of their labour, and never has. Quit moralising and go and read a book.
So by your logic, a plumber isn’t doing productive labor if they fix the toilets of workers, got it. Or cooks, they don’t do productive work if they feed anyone but capitalists.
Sterling fucking logic with no holes in it. You read the book and fuck the fuck off with your high and mighty bitching.
It’s Marx’s logic actually.
You fundamentally misunderstand. If a wage worker is paid the exchange value of labour-power I.e the cost to reproduce themselves, at the behest of a capitalist (the work could be in the service sector, like a chef, an artist; it could also be a plumber, and they could ultimately be doing work for consumers like other workers), they produce more value than they are paid for I.e. they produce surplus value.
A self-employed plumber or a live-in chef working directly for someone with no capitalist middleman, or an artist working for commissions do not produce surplus value. They sell the final product of their labour, not their labour itself, and they charge the going market rate for the product of their labour, not the going market rate for their labour-power by the hour.
An artist can be proletarian or petit-bourgeois. A chef can also be either, as can a plumber.
Your time would be better spent reading and studying Capital than professing your shoddy home-baked anti-capitalism online.
Yeah turns out, (pretty much) everyone disagreeing with me doesn’t know how to do a class analysis. I thought the opinion was going to be an argument for collaboration with creative PB, not just a complete incomprehension that artists benefitting from copyright are definitionally benefitting as PB
To begin: you’re literally doing the petit bourgeois argument that Marx spent books discussing the failures. I think you should read some theory on this. Either you are asking for class collaboration with petit bourgeois artists (again, make the argument, I’m genuinely open to hearing that this is necessary), or you are just arguing for petit bourgeois interests with no class analysis.
You’re siding with capital against capital, don’t act like your side is high and mighty. I’m arguing to let capital destroy itself strategically by not defending copyright Giants and letting whatever carveout is created be used to undermine capital further
I am kinda done arguing this, because it is not worth my time to argue with people who don’t know what the proletariat even is. But since you seem a bit more charitable, one last attempt before the block:
So please explain how most or all artists are petit bourgeois without pointing out they don’t all work directly for capital. If you believe that is how you define it, you are too stupid to actually be on the left. You can see that argument debunked nearby.
Are there a few artists who are petit bourgeois? Sure. There are also a few plumbers who founded plumbing companies and there are cooks who own restaurants. Doesn’t make the whole job anything else but proletarian.
As for capital fighting capital: the winner of that fight will be capital. Capital fights itself all the time without our help. I have yet to see you explain how your idea of getting the left involved helps anything.
Lol you’re gonna block me because you responded to me and you don’t like that I think you’re wrong?? Then go ahead I guess, but seems pretty petty lol
You really just don’t understand what proletarian means, and are trying to push me into a vulgar Marxist position. Proletarians are defined by having to sell their labour time, not selling the products of their labour. Anything about whether they work or not, or whether their work is hands-on or not is a useless distinction when push comes to shove, and history bares that out. It’s a distinction that seems unimportant until cases like this where the desired policies are opposed. Take the 18th Brumaire, where the petty bourgeois were mostly tradesmen who made and sold directly their own products. Marx writes about how they feared the loss of their land and small properties moreso than they feared any dictatorship of Napoleon, and so they supported Napoleon in the hopes that he would stabilize their society and put down the proletarian revolution. Up until then, many in France had mistakenly thought that they were in an alliance with the petty bourgeoisie.
In this case, the distinction is whether or not someone owns the work they produce/the service they sell directly to a customer. Om the opposite side are those who are paid for their time and just have to fill that time with work which someone else will own. Sure, for many artists that means that they just have a computer and sell drawings or something, but the fact that they own that image, instead of ONLY owning their own labour time to sell, makes them not proletarian IN THAT PROCESS. And the legal distinction is who owns the copyright. Proletarians never do for their work.
Now, this doesn’t mean they’re immediately an enemy or something, that’s just a super limited view of such things. Someone isn’t immediately bad for having other interests. And people can have mixed interests, where they work mostly as a prole and then on the side do PB work. Claiming otherwise is some vulgar Marxism. It just means that we need to understand that their material interests aren’t fully aligned with proletarianism and we must consider that and the possibility of betrayal in making decisions. In this case, I’m trying to sus out whether PB artists fighting for copyright actions against AI companies are actually working against the benefits to proletarians, and the more we talk the more convinced I am that they are. The proletarian artist works for a capitalist and is paid for their time and owns none of the produce, and so has absolutely no reason to support copyright. The PB artists wants to be allowed to own the copyright. It’s an argument for stability in the legal realm exactly like in the 18th Brumaire.
Reconsider your ableist words. If we weren’t on a dead thread I’d report you for calling me ‘stupid’.
Stop acting like you’re not also supporting capital! You absolutely are! We’re just talking about if it’s worth all this effort that I see people pushing against AI companies. Fuck AI companies for all the other stuff, but hurting copyright is just a good thing for us. Every loophole allows for people to weaken capital through use of copyrighted stuff. Whatever legal distinction is made for AI companies to get to continue will be used by China, Niger, Burkina Faso, as cover to use intellectual property owned by western companies and not face sanctions.
It really is wild that like 5 years ago Marxists wanted copyright abolished, and now they defend it like copyright somehow protects them to make their own art, when it never allowed it, only prohibited you from publishing certain works because a dead dude’s estate said no.
Just wild how they swapped sides.
Petit Bourgeois sentimentality bullshit.
Copyright should be destroyed, end of.
I am not pro copyright. I am pro artists being able to live off of doing art.
You are a stinky little larper if you cannot see the distinction.
I think the division of labour and the distinction of artist should die and that involves a socialism that involves everyone including what passes for artists these days doing work outside of art as required of them. So that everyone can do art instead of having a privileged few (relative to the global majority) that can while away their time making fan art commisions and shit YouTube videos.
Then what are you arguing for? You’re pro artist but not pro copyright, and you express that by defending copyright from the legal battle from AI companies?
I also want AI as it exists to die off. Bug I’m asking to strategically support it in it’s fight against copyright while pushing for its destruction or cooption for the other, more legitimate reasons to want them gone.