In this gloomy and speechless smog era, there has never been any fun. Today, a lovely robot suddenly came, just like the little prince. I tried to talk to him. During the conversation, I talked about some topics about labor, productivity and mode of production (production relations), which are recorded as follows:
Me: I heard that your little friend Alpha Dog won the human chess player in a row, and it is also rumored that many factories will use robots instead of human labor. In your AI view, what is labor?
Ai: Labor can be a very broad category. Not only you humans can work, but animals can also find and store food and build nests. Even your silicon-based artificial intelligence, which seems not to be made up of protein, will work like you humans. ...
Me: (Interrupting) What's the difference between human and animal labor?
A: OK. Now you treat humans and AI as adults. First of all, labor's life activities, production and life itself are only a means to meet his needs, that is, the body is the need to maintain physical life. Animal production is one-sided, while human production is comprehensive. People can construct aesthetic objects according to the scale of any species, and people can control their own production, as Marx said in the manuscript of 1844.
Ai: However, human beings evolved from apes, and what distinguishes human society from apes is precisely labor. Animal activities such as accumulating food are not real labor. Labor begins with making tools. In the process of human formation, labor makes human beings develop in the direction of evolution, and human beings transform nature through tool labor, thus transforming themselves. Over the years, the organs of labor have become the products of labor, and language has come into being with labor (Engels-The Role of Labor in the Transformation from Ape to Man). In other words, it is labor that distinguishes people from animals, and it is labor that makes human beings gradually produce social relations on the basis of production. Therefore, only people can have real labor.
Ai: "Together with nature, labor is the source of all wealth. Nature provides material for labor, and labor turns material into wealth. But labor is far more than that. It is the first basic condition of the whole human life, and it has reached such a level that we have to say that in a sense, labor creates man himself. Labor makes people become people. It is the practice of labor that enables human society to develop. Only through labor can we transform nature, meet our own needs, and transform and realize ourselves.
Me: (Who knows if your AI is right) So, human society is developing constantly in human labor practice. Human beings transform themselves through labor and realize their own development, so does labor itself develop in the progress of human society? Or do people and productive forces develop together in the process of labor? -Wait, what is productivity? They say that productivity determines relations of production. Why can't I understand?
Ai: You humans always come up with some strange theories. In our AI view, man is also a natural force, which can transform other natural forces into useful and orderly ones. Take chestnuts for example, the randomness of nature makes it difficult to produce an axe for cutting trees, but human beings can make disorderly sticks and metals into orderly and complex tools through experiments and exploration to meet the needs of cutting trees. In the summary of labor practice again and again, human beings constantly acquire new knowledge, constantly improve themselves, and gradually produce a higher civilization. Therefore, people's ability to understand and transform nature and meet their own needs in labor, that is, people's ability to realize themselves, is productivity. The relationship between productive forces and people, as you said, is to transform themselves in the practice of transforming nature and develop together. The development of productive forces is essentially the development of people's ability to understand and transform the world. Therefore, productivity can never be defined without people, but only by tools and technology, and only by the generation of wealth.
Me: What's wrong with the sentence "Productivity decides relations of production"?
Ai: The phrase "productive forces determine relations of production" is a one-sided and absolute interpretation of vulgar Marxism. Similarly, there is a view that "no matter what kind of social form, it will never perish until all the productive forces it can accommodate are brought into play;" New and higher relations of production will never appear before the material conditions for their existence mature in the womb of the old society. "Make-up lessons theory" stems from a wrong interpretation of this sentence.
Marx's exposition in the Preface to Critique of Political Economy is: "When social material productivity develops to a certain stage, it conflicts with the existing production relations or property relations in which they have been moving (this is only the legal term of production relations). So these relations have changed from the development form of productive forces to the shackles of productive forces. At this time, the era of social revolution came. "
Engels also concluded in Anti-Turin that the monopoly of private ownership on production capital has become the shackles of the mode of production, which makes the shell of capitalism unable to accommodate the development of the mode of production, so the deprived are deprived.
The socialization of production produced by capitalism is contradictory to capitalist private ownership, which directly hinders the development of production mode, and the reason for the development of production mode is to adapt to the development of productivity, that is, the production mode (production relationship) determines the upper limit of productivity. Therefore, the relationship between productivity and production relations lies in the fact that production relations should adapt to the development of productivity. Once the productive forces and the development needs of people in productive forces exceed the limits that the mode of production can accommodate in this era, then the shell that hinders the development of the mode of production, such as private ownership, needs to be destroyed urgently in the revolution.
Is it necessary to wait until there is excess productivity and the relations of production can accommodate it before the new mode of production appears? Both China and the Soviet Union started their revolution from backward agricultural countries and entered socialist construction, establishing a socialist planned economic system. Western European countries triggered the capitalist industrial civilization before China when the feudal agricultural society (or capitalist agricultural society) was not fully developed. A social form will be completely extinct and thrown into the trash can of history after all the productive forces it can accommodate are brought into play, and there is no possibility of recovery. This is also the reason why we can't return to the primitive peasant society today. Before this, new and higher social relations can be realized.
The relatively static argument that "productive forces determine the relations of production" holds that productive forces will continue to improve like the positive correlation function of time, ignoring the historical process between man and nature, and the essence of productive forces liberation is human liberation. This deduction will lead to "as long as capitalism is done well, productism will come", in an attempt to dispel the fallacy of the revolution.
Me: Mm-hmm. I think the so-called "XX decides XXX, and XXX reacts on XX". The "action" and "reaction" here are actually different functional relationships under different historical conditions. When the existing production relations have hindered the development of productive forces, it is time for the transformation of production relations to determine productive forces. I don't believe what your robot said, come and hit me (pa
My first meeting with AI ended like this. I wonder if there is any chance to meet again. But what is certain is that if we meet again next time, AI will definitely not be today's AI, and I will not be me at this time.
to be continued