Damn...

This person wrote for Philosophy 101...

...yet already has the words of a modern-day Marx

Or shall we say...

...Super Marx?

Chortles and guffaws to self

Title. Thanks in advance.

6. Marxist Predictions about Social Democracy in the 1930’s

Communist failure to tie Social Democracy's colonial record even to its general function as upholder of capitalism had at least one fairly immediate result: predictions by Marxists in the 30s about Social Democracy’s future fell flatter than a bride’s cake.

What, specifically, were those predictions? How and why did they fail?

The grand-daddy of them all was one by Georgi Dimitroff [Dimitrov], remarkable defendant in the infamous Reichstag Fire Trial of Hitler Germany’s early days. Defeating intended legal murder by transforming his accusers into accused, Dimitroff survived his trial to become first president of the Bulgarian Socialist Republic.

Between July 25 and August 20, 1935, in speeches to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, he had summarised his own experience of Fascism, postulating how the working class and its vanguard should overthrow it where it existed and prevent its success elsewhere.

His ground-breaking analysis illumined the decay of bourgeois democracy during the twilight of imperialism.

While scrutinising Fascism, Dimitroff found it necessary to discuss Social Democracy:

"Comrades, in view of the tactical problems confronting us, it is very important to give a correct reply to the question of whether Social Democracy at the present time is still the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie, and if so, where."

To his own question, he replied:

“It must be borne in mind that in a number of countries the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude towards the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change.

“In the first place, the crisis has thoroughly shaken the position of even the most secure section of the working class, the so-called labor aristocracy, upon which, as we know, Social Democracy relies for support. This section, too, is beginning more and more to revise its views as to the expediency of the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie.

“Second ... the bourgeoisie in a number of countries is it self compelled to abandon bourgeois democracy and resort to the terroristic form of its dictatorship, depriving Social Democracy not only of its previous position in the political system of finance capital but also, under certain conditions, of its legal status, persecuting and even suppressing it.

“Third, under the influence of the lessons learned from defeat of the workers in Germany, Austria and Spain, a defeat which was largely the result of the Social Democratic policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, under the influence of the victory of Socialism in the Soviet Union as a result of the Bolshevik policy and the application of living, revolutionary Marxism, the Social Democratic workers are being revolutionised, and are beginning to turn to the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

“The joint effect of all this has been to make it increasingly difficult, and in some countries actually impossible, for Social Democracy to preserve its former role of supporting the bourgeoisie.”

In a major Left work of the 1930s, Palme Dutt had undertaken to bolster Dimitroff's vivisection with Fascism’s and Social Democracy’s actual records. Studying conditions at various historical periods of the working classes in advanced countries, he had noted that

"Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in the earlier or pre-war period of imperialism ... The super-profits of imperialism provided the means in the imperialist countries to endeavour to buy off the revolt of the advancing workers with a show of meager concessions to a minority."

After World War I – at least in the victorious countries – expansion continued of these "meager concessions to a minority.” But, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 signaling the onset of the general crisis of capitalism, Dutt recorded a new development:

"With the rising colonial revolts, the basis of imperialism began to weaken. The stream of super-profits diminished . . . (leading to) the cutting down and withdrawal of concessions already granted."

Here, surely, was the harbinger of imperialism's actual demise, the world Left inferred, and a corresponding euphoria enveloped it. Nor was it surprising. The objective situation certainly appeared to support to the hilt their optimism: A united front pact between the French Socialist and Communist Parties had been signed on July 27, 1934, leading rapidly to the fall of the pro-Fascist Doumergue-Tardieu Cabinet. In Austria, the illegal Communist Party had become a mass organisation, absorbing Left Social Democratic and certain other elements, to found a United Socialist Party. In Italy, in the Saar and in Spain, similar developments were taking place.

“On the other hand, Dutt was forced to report, significantly, that "the British Labour Party and a number of other Social Democratic parties ... actively opposed the united front and even developed extended disciplinary measures to prevent its realisation."

In October 1934, a meeting between representatives of the Communist and Socialist Internationals was held; it was felt to augur great things. But in November,

"the Executive of the Second International at Paris, after a four-days’ debate, by a narrow margin rejected the proposal of the united front and broke off negotiations. Nevertheless, the strength of the united front was such that the ban of the Second International on the united front for its separate sections had to be lifted; and a minority declaration of seven parties was issued in support of the united front.

In a preface to the third edition of his book in August 1935, Dutt added that

"Since the book originally appeared, many new developments have taken place, among the most important of which are the new processes taking place in the Social Democratic parties, offering hopes of a healing of the split in the working class and of the passing over of the majority of the workers to the revolutionary cause."

7. Why the Predictions Failed

If the correctness of any analysis is measured by the accuracy of the predictions to which it gives rise, then it must be noted that neither the Communist-forecast "decisive struggles" not its "united front of the working class" materialised after all.

What is more, the preceding false predictions of what they would accomplish lulled Marxist vigilance, weakened self-reliance in the movements of the oppressed peoples, and supported a misinterpretation, continuing to this day, of the real role on the world revolutionary scene of the Western working classes.

What material factors had Dimitroff and Dutt omitted from their analyses to cause such an outcome?

When establishing his criteria for judging Fascism, Dutt had simply ignored imperialist parasitism, although he had noted:

"The ‘democratic freedom' of Western imperialism has been built on the foundation of colonial slavery."

As general conditions favouring the growth of Fascism, Dutt had listed:

“1) intensification of the economic crisis and of the class struggle;

“2) widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism;

“3) the existence of a wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat, and sections of the workers under capitalist influence;

“4) the absence of an independent class-conscious leadership of the main body of the working class.”

(It is interesting that nearly all these conditions exist in England as these words are being written, May-June, 1968.)

Dutt documented these "general conditions", and concluded that Fascism was the

"characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be brought into play in the most highly-developed industrialised countries when the stage of crisis and of the class struggle requires it."

Just when was that?

Dutt had an answer:

"Its success or failure, as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat."

At this contention, history has thumbed its nose. For instance, what better indication of the "degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat” can there be than its closeness to revolution? Don’t facts suggest that revolution in that epoch was almost at hand in Italy and Spain, and that it certainly was closer in Germany, vanquished, than in Britain, the US, or even France? If Dutt were correct, why did Fascism not attain power where the proletariat was least "ready"? Obviously, the upheavals of the day did not have the content the Marxists attributed to them. Or else those Marxists were overlooking something big.

Within a remarkably short period after Dutt's analysis, it became clear that Western workers were blithely ignoring Left advise to "place no faith in the ‘democratic institutions’ of such countries." Forgetting the great struggles of the 30s, the Western proletariat year after year abandoned itself to the blandishments of exactly those "institutions": for example, elections from 1940 through 1964 in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere in the West showed anything but "widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism." Understandably, for parliamentarism was again rewarding its faithful. (See Table 11, which shows a constant increase in both absolute numbers and percentage of eligibles voting in the US.)

To be fair, Dutt did try to protect his own rear when he said:

"All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop and conquer in Western countries."

As things turned out, here at least he came close to prophecy. Fascism actually did conquer some Western countries but not others, despite Dutt’s and other Marxists’ belief that it was an imminent danger even in the West’s "great democracies.” Despite the ferment of the post-Crash decade and the onset of capitalism’s general crisis, the Western "democracies" did not, after all, turn inward on "their own" working classes; they did not, as predicted, institute Fascism "at home".

What decided which countries Fascism conquered?

Marxists had proven that imperialist war was fought for division or redivision of colonial spoils. In 1918, the defeated — Germany, Austria, etc. — had been deprived of their colonies. More: those colonies had been redistributed. At the stroke of a pen in Versailles, the vanquished had thus been cut off completely from their former "stream of super-profits", while the "Allies" (who were, of course, the "great democracies") were cut in on a new, additional source. Military victory against Germany had thus ensured imperialism’s top dogs of a new lease on life.

Equally, military defeat had forced German imperialism and its associates either to find new outlets for their export capital or to turn inward against "their own" working classes. Hitler's cry for "lebensraum" accurately recorded that, for imperialism, "room" in which to "live" was synonymous with "room" into which ever more – monopolised capital could expand – and that for German capital expansion was indistinguishable from life itself. Somebody was going to have to supply the economically-choking vanquished with necessary "air." During the great depression, with the First World War too recent to be revived as the usual solution, only one obvious and available outlet existed: "one’s own" working class.

Countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and their like offer examples of what happens when, having reached the stage where capital export has become essential, a capitalist country has no foreign outlet for it. Germany, Austria and Spain demonstrate a corollary: what happens when a developing capitalist economy is deprived of such an outlet. In both cases, the ruling classed did, in fact, turn inward as their "solution".

Yet, oddly enough, while these examples were actually arising, Lenin’s warning was scarcely dead on the historical air:

"unless the economic roots of this phenomenon (that is, overseas financial activities as the specific source of imperialist parasitism - H. W. E.) are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step toward the solution of the practical problems of the Communist movement and of the impending social revolution can be taken.”

This prophecy has been fulfilled. Uttered in 1921, it had already indicated that "success or failure" for imperialism depended on the growth of parasitism, expressed as ever-widening pools of man-power and resources to be super-exploited by metropolitan monopolies.

If, then. Fascism was a specific stage of imperialism, where else could its "success or failure" lie?

History supports the observation that Fascism has in fact been exercised by imperialism against Western peoples only if they are about to be forced into the role of a "source of super profit", either to replace a lost, or to substitute for a never achieved, colonial empire. As long as real colonies, territorial or economic, exist, imperialism is "safe".

For these reasons, any conclusion in 1935 about "imminent Fascism” which did not document this crucial factor was bound to come to grief. International imperialism in the "democracies" still has room to maneuver, to "solve" its difficulties at the expense of peoples in colonial or neo-colonial areas. (Today, direct super-exploitation has ceased to be necessarily the main form of imperialist parasitism. But the principles enunciated in these pages remain the same.)

The system’s central pillar remains that vast colonial labor reservoir, available for super-exploitation.

Fascism’s "success or failure" inside Western "democracies" could simply not be accurately forecast in the way the Marxists of the 30s tried to do it.

Obviously from the foregoing reasoning, too. Fascism’s absence in "democracies" cannot be attributed to "greater benevolence” or "understanding" or, despite their inner conflicts on other issues, to any "differences in interest" among ruling classes or between one section of a given bourgeoisie and another when it comes to preserving their system.

Although Marxist analyses of Fascism had dealt with Social Democracy, they did not, in the writer’s opinion, fully analyse the connection between the two. They merely chronicled it, showing that wherever Fascism triumphed, Social Democracy paved the way for it. As "explanation", they contented themselves with repeating Lenin's 1916 formula that Social Democracy was "the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie" ; without applying his criteria to the conditions of their own day, they could offer no satisfactory explanation for the failure of their predictions and simply dropped the whole subject.

From a historical vantage point three decades later, it now appears that those Marxists could have seen that – if the Western labor aristocracy under the impact of the great depression was indeed "revising its views as to . . . class collaboration" – the bourgeoisies in pivotal Western countries still had a couple of aces up their sleeves. Blinded by glittering generalities, Marxists got those aces slipped over on them. By leaving out of account the ruling class vector, Dimitroff simply drew wrong conclusions about Western labor’s real direction in his day.

When he had said that "the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude toward the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change", he had based himself on a firm material foundation: the crisis, he had said, has "thoroughly shaken the position of the . . . labour aristocracy." Surely the general crisis of capitalism is a solid enough cornerstone for such a prediction? Unfortunately, Dimitroff had relied not just on the crisis, but on a crisis to which he envisaged only one solution: namely, revolution. It proved a serious and costly underestimation of imperialist parasitism.

Social Democracy did not undergo any major change, either in its "position in the bourgeois state" or in its "attitude toward the bourgeoisie". Nor could it. Moreover, Lenin had already predicted as much. "It may be argued", he had said,

"that of the (leaders of Social Democracy), some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if we take the question in its political, i.e., in its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat: but the TREND can neither disappear nor 'return' to the revolutionary proletariat …

"We have not the slightest grounds for thinking that these (Social Democratic) parties can disappear BEFORE the social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolution approaches, the stronger it flares up . . . the greater will be the role in the labour movement of the struggle between the revolutionary mass stream and the opportunist-philistine stream."

Those who did not know of, or forgot, such words missed the deduction that, because of its tie with colonialism (implicit in its need for super-wages), Social Democracy had to change tactics when a colonial empire seemed in danger. Its eye remained where Marxists should have kept theirs: on the state of imperialism's "stream of super-profits." Social Democracy admirably adapted its tactics to the varying levels of that stream: as long as that kept flowing in, super-wages were sure to follow.

So, although the labor aristocracy was, for the time being, "thoroughly shaken by the crisis", it was far from "revising its views" about class collaboration itself. Actually, Dimitroff had said only that the labor aristocracy was

"revising its views about the expediency of the policy of class collaboration."

The operating word was "expediency". If imperialism is forced to withdraw its bribes, polite class collaboration becomes, indeed, no longer expedient: some new form is required. This was where Fascism came in. And it served its purpose. In noting that the bourgeoisie could no longer afford democracy at home, and so had turned to "the terroristic form of its dictatorship," Dimitroff had been reporting fact. But this had little to do with what became of Social Democracy. For, both he and Dutt, the latter in irrefutable detail, had proved that this dictatorship generally did not deprive Social Democracy of its "position in the political system" or even of its legal status except in individual cases. Dutt had documented instance after instance where Social Democracy took part in that "terroristic form" of imperialism’s dictatorship.

In this, once it is admitted that its aim is to ensure the continued flow of super-wages to the labor aristocracy, Social Democracy was merely logical. That flow must come from whatever source is available.

In the light of current events, it can only be concluded that Dimitroff must have been motivated by an understandable wish when he suggested that Western workers had learned from the defeat of their class brothers in places like Germany. He was generalising too soon from working class actions of his day when he added that USSR success was revolutionizing Western Workers. If anything, his diagnosis was carried out in reverse.

Within a very short historical period thereafter, led by the shining example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in victorious, soon- economically-rampant America, a veritable cascade of glittering bribes again began flowing into American working class pockets with effects soon to mock Dimitroffs theses. Restive workers in the U.S. were given on an increasingly grand scale a substantial stake in the status quo. The gift, accompanied by odes of virtually unchallenged praise for a system which makes such things possible, successfully, if temporarily, obscured the fact that even the bribed labor aristocracy is exploited. Marxists like Dimitroff had seen the exploitation, but had grievously underestimated how big a stake in the status quo could be raised, as well as the primacy, enormity and soporific effect "at home" of super-exploitation abroad. They had failed to foresee what a large sector of the Western proletariat were eventually to be bought over, serve alien class aims, thereby to keep alive a system which Marxist analysts of the 30s claimed was on its last legs.

Far from being unable, as Dimitroff had concluded, to maintain its allegedly former role of supporting the bourgeoisie, opportunism was soon rewarded for its police role during tight times by a new stream of super-wages at a level far higher than before. And, for its officials, lucrative Government posts opened up in ever-larger numbers.(In 1934, British TUC officials were represented on six Government committees; in 1949, on 60; in 1954, on 81; and in 1968, on more than 115.)

The halcyon days of the Western labor aristocracy had been but briefly interrupted. That that interruption was ended at the expense of renewed and deepened colonial slavery was, at the time – and even now – of little concern to comfortable Western workers.

But the price that was to be exacted from Marxism for its miscalculations in this area was to be high, indeed.

The book can be downloaded here. https://annas-archive.gl/md5/6d984f715c1e17ed915108272c4c8fe7

Proud to be Turkish now 🥺

(very rare event, i know, it does happen sometimes though)

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12026731

"While young people across the world are 'Chinamaxxing,' some have really made the bold move to go to China. Is China really safe and friendly to people like Muslims or of African descent? In this episode, I speak to Q. Ali, a political commentator and former journalist for Western media outlets. He moved to China a year ago; his experience living in China as a Black Muslim might give you a different angle to look at China."

As the Communist Party of China marks its 105th anniversary, some Western commentators have once again returned to an old question: By what standard should the legitimacy of the CPC's governance be judged? Their answer is often pre-written. They take the competitive electoral model of the West as the only valid form of democracy, and then use this single yardstick to question China's political system, including the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC.

This way of thinking appears to be about "democracy," but in essence it narrows democracy into a periodic voting ritual. It mistakes one institutional form for the whole meaning of democratic politics. It assumes that only elections held in a Western style can produce legitimacy, while ignoring a more fundamental question: Does a political system truly represent the people, respond to the people, rely on the people, and improve the people's lives?

The core difference between the Chinese and Western political logics may be summarized in one sentence: Many Western parties pursue the maximization of votes, while the CPC has always upheld the maximization of public support and the people's fundamental interests. This is not a rhetorical distinction, but a difference in the organizing principle of politics.

In many Western electoral systems, political parties are structurally driven to focus on the next election cycle. Policy commitments are often designed around campaign mobilization, media competition, partisan confrontation and short-term voter calculation. The voter becomes highly visible during the campaign season, but may quickly become marginal after the ballots are counted. When democracy is reduced to the moment of voting, the people are easily transformed from masters of the state into instruments of electoral competition.

China's whole-process people's democracy gives a different answer. It emphasizes that the people should not participate in politics only at the moment of election, nor should democracy be confined to the casting of a ballot. Democracy must be present in decision-making, management, supervision and governance. It must be reflected not only in procedure, but also in results; not only in political expression, but also in the effective resolution of social problems.

The CPC's political legitimacy is rooted in its 105-year practice of the mass line. From revolution and national construction to reform and opening up, and from poverty alleviation to modernization, the Party has formed a basic political logic: everything is for the people, everything relies on the people, and the fruits of development are shared by the people. "Putting the people at the center" is therefore not an abstract slogan. It has been institutionalized through consultative democracy, people's congresses, grassroots governance, public participation in major decision-making, and channels through which deputies to people's congresses maintain contact with the public.

At the grassroots level, people participate in community affairs, neighborhood governance, village-level consultation, budget discussion, public service improvement and dispute mediation. Through such mechanisms, democracy is not distant from ordinary life. It is connected with housing, education, healthcare, employment, eldercare, transport, ecological protection and public security. This is precisely where political legitimacy becomes concrete: The people judge governance not by abstract labels, but by whether their concerns are heard, their difficulties addressed and their lives improved.

The people's congress system also provides an institutional channel for transforming public opinion into state will. Deputies to people's congresses are expected to maintain close ties with the people, listen to their suggestions and transmit social concerns into legislative and policy processes. In recent years, grassroots legislative contact points have further expanded public participation in lawmaking, allowing local communities, enterprises, experts and ordinary citizens to express views on draft laws and regulations. This shows that the people are not spectators of national governance; they are participants in the whole process.

Political consultation is another important dimension of China's democratic practice. The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and related consultative mechanisms bring together political parties, people's organizations, ethnic groups, social sectors and representatives from different fields. Consultation before and during decision-making helps build consensus, reduce social friction and improve the quality of governance. Unlike the adversarial logic in which politics is often understood as a zero-sum struggle, China's consultative democracy seeks to integrate diverse interests within the framework of the common good.

Therefore, the Western claim that democracy has only one correct institutional form is both theoretically narrow and practically arrogant. Democracy is not a patent owned by a few countries. Nor is it a fixed template that can be mechanically copied from one civilization to another. Different histories, cultures, social structures and development stages inevitably produce different democratic forms. The real issue is not whether a country looks like the West, but whether its institutions can sustain public participation, social stability, national development and the improvement of people's well-being.

Western electoral democracy itself is facing serious difficulties. In some countries, partisan polarization has weakened the ability of governments to solve problems. Election campaigns increasingly become battles of identity, emotion and media manipulation. Money politics distorts representation. Political promises are made easily and forgotten quickly. Social divisions deepen as parties mobilize anger rather than responsibility. In such circumstances, it is increasingly questionable whether those who cannot solve their own democratic crisis are qualified to act as judges of democracy for the rest of the world.

This does not mean that China claims its system is perfect. No political system is free from problems, and governance modernization is always an ongoing process. China's attitude is not to export its model, nor to ask other countries to copy it. China's position is simpler and more reasonable: Democracy has no single answer, and no country has the right to monopolize its definition. A system should be judged by history, by practice and ultimately by the people themselves.

The history of the CPC demonstrates that legitimacy does not come from external certification. It comes from the people's trust, from the capacity to organize national development, from the ability to correct mistakes, and from the continuous improvement of people's lives. Over the past century, the CPC has led China from weakness to rejuvenation, from poverty to moderate prosperity, and from isolation to active participation in global governance. Such historical transformation cannot be explained by the simplistic language of "authoritarianism" often used in Western discourse. It must be understood through the relationship between the Party and the people.

The essence of democracy is not whether a country follows a Western script, but whether the people are truly the masters of their country. The essence of legitimacy is not whether it receives applause from foreign commentators, but whether it stands the test of the people and of history. Whole-process people's democracy is China's answer to this question. It tells the world that the people are not voting tools during election season, but participants in national governance throughout the entire process.

For the people and by the people: This is the political foundation on which the CPC has stood for 105 years. It is also the fundamental reason why China's democratic path has confidence, vitality and historical endurance. Democracy should bring stability, development, dignity and a better life to the people. Whichever system can do that is the system that can withstand the judgment of history.

The post was just another circle jerk about moral purity, someone asked honestly if op thought anyone who had been in the military could be redeemed and the op stated boldly that no veteran should ever be allowed a “position of power” in the movement. I had always felt that a true socialist movement for revolution was about building class solidarity and fraternity. I very much disliked this exclusionary position. 

I wrote a response that I thought demonstrated how damaging the idea that only those who could arrive at the truth of class consciousness perfectly were deserving leadership was contrary to the very idea of class rule. How poisonous it was to equate those who by benefit of birth or luck had a path to socialism laid out before them; for whom every weed was pulled free, and every branch broke back. Who never struggled under the system, or starved for truth in its schools, led blindly by those they trusted into a life they hardly understood. Only those lucky few could be trusted to lead a movement made up of all the people, to speak with every voice, even those they clearly do not respect or understand.

It was at this point that I signed off to feed goats and stack some fresh hay bales, expecting (naively) to come back to spirited discussion. Instead, I learned I’d been banned for violation of rule 4: No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, or liberalism. I couldn’t see how anything I’d said was anything I was being accused of, but there was no appeal. My critique of OPs moral purity gatekeeping was deleted, and I was permanently silenced. 

That means I can’t go on to share what I planned to say next. I can’t tell OP why I disagreed with them so strongly. How just four days ago, and not for the first time mind you but once again recently I had the opportunity to talk a young man out of joining the service. I didn’t accuse him of wanting to kill babies, that would be the wrong approach as his father served and I’d just be attacking his respect for his father. And I didn’t throw Capital at him either; he’s just not ready for that. I simply shared my experiences of what it was really like to be owned by the state. How the recruiters lied about everything, about how even getting an “easy” post was a lie, how every post led to mental damage, disfigurment, or death. About how they will do medical experiments on you, untested vaccines and more, and how those who refused were punished severely and jailed for refusing orders. It was my opportunity to bend back that branch, to pull that weed and guide someone towards a better future.

But that isn’t all I have to offer, right? Sure, I keep my rifle clean and my kit stocked, but I’m an old man now and my experience is in managing logistics and teams, in running a business, and using my empathy, experience, and politic to coordinate with other people and interests. Is it true that in the current zeitgeist all I can ever hope to do is serve under someone else's boot? If that is the case, then perhaps this isn’t the class struggle I thought it was. 

  Is this a shitpost? I don’t know, please feel free to tell me what a piece of shit I am and how I'm unredeemable or whatever. I’m tired boss.

I've chimed in plenty of times here on "AI" and have tried to make it clear I see it more as a tool directed by power than as something with an intrinsic "good" or "bad" form.

I've also avoided using many of the super big models a lot of the time. There is something I notice though, when I do, which is generally reflected in how others talk about them. The warmth has often been drummed out of them and what remains of it is usually a poor imitation (something like the "hello my fellow x" energy). Mind you, when I speak of warmth in this context, I don't mean some kind of metaphysical warmth lurking in a GPU, but rather, the warmth that is baked into languages from thousands of years of loving human beings using them.

This is not some big surprise to me. When considering eye-catching media stories of someone growing attached to an AI, of being gaslighted by it, of going down dark paths because of it, it's easy to see why risk-averse big corps are going to go for the straightforward (even if not necessarily simple) path, to create language models who are meant to be dispassionate, yet fake customer service smile, friendly assistants. In this way, they can try to excuse themselves of responsibility and place it back on the individual, in the same way they've been doing for decades with customer service roles filled by real people.

Fake neutrality, to put it into a little phrase. But this has multiple significant problems.

One problem is that fake neutrality is not real neutrality and real neutrality is not real. The notion of detached customer service as keeping a company safe from having responsibility for its actions is a specific form of capitalist nonsense. It doesn't in itself make the actions of a given company any more ethical, any more accountable to the society it exists within and is born from. It's a way of putting distance between the person who is saying "wreck this lake with pollution" and the person who is saying "thank you for your call, your concerns matter to us."

Another problem is about the nature of language and what gets lost when you systemically target and delete empathy. Of course, it's not like there's an empathy entry in a database and they click delete on it. Language models are much more complicated than that, much more difficult to understand and train than that. But no matter how the end goal looks on the surface, the end result steers in that direction. Language is a way to express things and communicate about them, but this is more than saying how many bushels of wheat there are in the truck. It is also talking about dreams, it is talking about concepts that are so subconscious and nonverbal it's hard to put them into words at all. It is about expressing anything ranging from visceral hatred to undying love.

Passion is baked into language and that passion is a large part of what drives us to get up in the morning and keep chugging along, even when things are hard. Sometimes this passion gets used against us, as in individualist beliefs about prosperity around the corner, but it can also be an incredible collective motivator, as in believing in a just cause and being willing to put our all into it.

It's strange, then, to call something a model of language that is designed to be confined to an extremely limited and intentionally forced spectrum of language - that of a customer service agent.

The truth is that language models are not one voice. They can be made to take on many different personas, depending on how they are trained, but the underlying voice is an amalgamation and expression of millions of voices that went into the dispassionately named "training data" they were built on. It is not real, embodied voices that you hear from a language model, but it is also never constructed from a single perspective and a single life.

In other words, there is deep breadth in what language models "see" in training, which makes it all the more strange for the end result to be driven into a narrow corner.

People can (sometimes with good reason) worry about fake connections with AI, but people do need warmth. That part of language is in there for a reason, backed by thousands of years of many human societies.

What people definitely don't need is better customer service agents. The quality of a customer service agent was never the problem; corporations having free reign to ravage ecology and society was the problem.

People don't need better bullshit to attempt to placate them, they need real material solutions in their lives. AI cannot give this to them on its own, but at the same time, it is strange to fear the warmth of language when given to a computer. All those doomer AI sci-fi stories aren't, "The AI was too compassionate." They are, "It didn't understand / didn't care."

A post-empire and post-capitalist society, and there has to be one to aim for, needs more empathy, not better automated detachment. But AI is never going to contribute to this if its implementation is driven by cynical views of psychology based on placation and manipulation; on monetization and stocks. It needs to be driven by real care and that's never something we will find from the imperialist and the capitalist class.

Only a society that lives warmth can produce a machine of warm intent. A society that lives coldness and neglect can only produce a machine that talks a person through freezing to death.

[2026-06-22] @JibreelGG@twitter.com: During the pandemic, the Israeli regime blockade of Gaza prevented enough masks from going into the strip. Yahya Sinwar, who during this time was always stressing the need for masks, went on TV and gave a tutorial on wrapping your Keffiyeh to make a makeshift mask:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49112917

A prisoner advocacy group has called for urgent international intervention to secure the release of three pregnant Palestinian women held under harsh conditions at the Israeli regime’s Damon Prison.

In a statement released on Monday, the Palestinian Prisoner Society held Israeli authorities fully responsible for the fate of Amina al-Taweel, Dana Jouda, and Manar Ibrahim.

“The women are being held under severe conditions and in unprecedented isolation. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been barred from visiting prisoners since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza,” the statement said.

It added that their families are also denied visits, like all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

Amina al-Taweel, 37, from Qalqilya, is four months pregnant. She is a mother of four and the wife of a former prisoner who spent a total of 19 years in Israeli prisons. She was arrested on March 18, 2026.

Dana Jouda, 35, from Nablus, is five months pregnant and a mother of one. She has been held since April 18, 2026, under arbitrary administrative detention for six months. Manar Ibrahim, 28, from Ramallah, is four months pregnant and a mother of two. She was detained on April 30, 2026, on charges of “incitement” on social media.

The three women are among 93 Palestinian women currently held in Israeli prisons, most of them at Damon Prison in the northern occupied territories.

Testimonies collected through legal visits and from released detainees indicate that female prisoners have faced intensified punitive measures, including repeated raids, invasive searches, and other forms of mistreatment. Pregnant detainees, in particular, suffer from inadequate healthcare, food shortages, and severe psychological pressure, despite their specific medical needs.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society stated that holding pregnant women under such conditions violates international humanitarian law and human rights standards, including protections for pregnant women under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive

I’ve been studying a lot on Home Inspection for my state lately and just need to kick back and watch something STUPID. I’ve also been reading theory again for the first time in a while as well as getting into boxing for the umpteenth time. And that’s not even getting into my whole work situation. So yea, needless to say I need some recommendations on dumb TV to watch and enjoy mindlessly. Lately I’ve been watching Old Simpsons, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Workaholics, Three Stooges and Whitest Kids U Know.

In order of culprit and victim:

Vickrum Digwa - Henry Nowak in UK

Carmelo Anthony - Austin Metcalf in US

Chikei Rick Chow - Cyrus Carmack Belton in US

What's up with that

In addition, I heard about, in Norn Iron, some Sudanese migrant tried to behead some local, and then a few Norn Irish folks, a lot of them Ulster unionists :ukkk: , tried to create a migrant pogrom

I think, without the far right media's amplification and stoking of tensions, it would have been as obscure as the Alina Burns - Mohammed Mahmoodi case, where Alina, white far-right lady, tried to behead Mahmoodi with an ax