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The Robotic Revolution Under Capitalism
by AGinsberg
09-20-14 (UTC)

The self-destruction of Capitalism is near. Capitalists are constantly
trying to maximize profit, one of the ways in which they do this is by
automating more things so they have to pay less money to wage slaves.
As technology becomes more advanced there will be less jobs for the
common people. Google and Amazon are working on drone-delivery
programs that will deliver goods with drones, getting rid of the need
for people to do that job. It is the nature of capitalism to keep
advancing the means of production, automating more things and
therefore getting rid of more jobs.

Soon enough the only people being paid will be people like lawyers,
doctors, engineers, software developers, etc. The proletariat will
become even more oppressed than it is now. They will not be able to
get any food, clothing, etc. The vast majority of people will not be
able to work and therefore not be able to buy common goods.
Eventually, the proletariat will surely get fed up with this and
revolt. If the capitalists were to make some welfare program in an
attempt to stop the revolt they would only end up making almost no
profit. Capitalism would be defunct.

I don't think this will at all lead to a utopia though, in fact quite
the opposite, despite Capitalism being a bad system. Instead, it will
lead to a technocracy, in which the only people with any power are
people who still have a place in society. But even the lawyers and
doctors, etc.  will be at the mercy of a new ruling class, the ruling
class of the engineers and the software developers. Everyone will rely
on the robots to make their food, clothing, etc. Whoever is in control
of the robots is in control of society. But even if we get rid of the
idea of private property, it won't matter, because the robots are
controlled by software. Although no one owns this software if you
aren't able to modify the software, the software developers are still
in control. This transition from capitalism to a non-capitalist system
was not done in hopes of freedom or equality, it was done because of
the greedy bourgeoisie's desire to make more profit. Because of this
fact the software developers and engineers probably won't be too
worried about the end-user. Most likely, these people will not let you
view the source code [1] and will make restrictions in the hardware
that disallow you to put your own program in. This leads to practical
ownership of the means of production, the means of production being
the robots. In this system the means of production will be controlled
by a even smaller minority than it is now. The software developers
might decide to put a backdoor in the software, something that would
let them remotely access the robot. If they did this then they could
remotely shut off the robots when they wanted to, you can probably
imagine how horrible this would be if we relied on the robots. If for
instance, a city is home to sexual deviants and the new bourgeoisie
don't like that they could decide to shut off the robots and only turn
them back on if the people hide their sexual deviancy. They could go
even further and demand that they be killed but considering the power
they would have they could just kill them themselves.

The new bourgeoisie will not just be in control of the means of
production but also in control of many home appliances, as well as
the means of movements. Google is already working on driver-less cars,
imagine if someone had remote access to your car, they could do things
like make your car drive off a cliff if you're a political dissident
or use your car to kill somebody else. Since these cars will make use
of cameras, they will also probably use them as spying devices.

How might one prevent this dystopia from happening? We must create a
new economic system to replace capitalism before it self-destructs and
turns into technocratic state socialism. I propose a system [2] where
the people who are actually using the means of production be the
owners of it. A gift economy system where people give material goods
for people in exchange for nothing. In the proposed system, people can
choose if they want to have robots automate the work or not. By the
time we do get to the robotic revolution, the profit motive will
probably be long gone and instead the main motivations for working
will be enjoyment, contributing to society, etc. Unlike in the
technocratic state socialism system as described above, where the
main incentive to work is power.

In the technocratic socialist system a gift economy will exist but the
means of production will practically (although not technically) be
owned by the software developers and engineers, in the proposed system
it will be owned by the workers of their respective workplace. There
is already a movement which aims to let people have control of
computers, called the Free Software Movement. [3] This movement aims
to let everyone have 4 essential freedoms of software, the freedom to
run the people as you wish, the freedom to study how the program works
and change it, the freedom to redistribute copies, and the freedom to
redistribute modified copies. In the proposed system, it will be
people like this making computer programs instead of greedy people
interested only in power. Most of these freedoms will be allowed if
copyright is abolished. But there is one freedom that won't be
guaranteed, that is the freedom to view the source code of the program
(study it). Anybody could decide to release a program and not give
access to the program's source code. This is why it might be a good
idea to require under law that if somebody wants to release a computer
program that they also release the source code. Some may think it's a
violation of individual liberties to require people to do such a thing
but as we become more and more reliant on computers it is becoming
more and more important that we have control of them. Since the profit
motive will no longer a consideration, it's a good chance that if
somebody doesn't want to release the source code they want to use the
program to gain power. Now, of course, we should presume them innocent
until proven guilty as far as the law goes but we should also not let
them have unjust power. You could say that people could just choose
not to use computers and then it won't matter but you could also tell
someone not to use a hammer. A hammer is more important than a
computer but computers are becoming more and more important in our
everyday lives.

It's possible that in the proposed system we may choose not to
completely automate things at all, The manual labor kind of people may
feel less needed and have less of a place in society if we do.
Although, it's also possible that these people will excel in some
creative activity. But unlike in Capitalism there is more of a choice
about this.

If you don't want to live in a world controlled by a monopoly composed
of the technocratic elite, then we must abolish Capitalism here and
now!

Notes:
[1] Source code is the human-readable format of a computer program.
[2] Please read 'A Critique of Communism' for more information on the
system I propose.
[3] See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy for more info.

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