"Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly" is an editorial published in the New York Times on October 9, 1903. The article incorrectly predicted it would take one million to ten million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine. It was written in response to Samuel Langley's failed airplane experiment two days prior. Sixty-nine days after the article's publication, American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully achieved the first heavier-than-air flight on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
In her essay Economia di guerra e inquadramento della società in URSS (The War Economy and Social Control in the USSR), Rebecca Manley writes that initially the German advance in Russia was welcomed by the local population and threatened the legitimacy of the reigning power, while party leaders, officials, and factory managers often jumped ship, with the abandoned populace openly cursing them [A. Aglan and R. Frank, La guerra-mondo 1937-1947 (The World War 1937-1947), Einaudi, 2015-16]. Her account goes on to describe the government's gradual reassertion of control: The cost in human lives was increasing and shortages were continuing to worsen [...] it was only with the victory of Stalingrad that Stalin and the Soviet system recovered a central role in war propaganda. Overall, according to this author, the war years saw a surge of popular patriotism, even among those who had reason to distrust the State. The authorities in Moscow maintained order on the home front, something that those of the Tsarist Empire had failed to do.
The disorientation of non-Russian nationalities
In the Russian countryside, and particularly in the three Baltic countries, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Belarus, many had anxiously waited for the Germans as saviours and liberators from the Russian yoke [István Deák, Europe on Trial, Hachette UK, 2015]. However, the peasants soon felt deceived by those in whom they had initially trusted, because the Germans did not dismantle the collective farms (the kolkhoz) into which their lands had been forcibly incorporated. The Germans conserved the kolkhoz, because they were afraid production would fall otherwise, and, on the contrary, increased forced requisitions. The Russian government did form assault groups, recruited among the detainees in the forced labour camps, but, in the main, these were anti-Bolshevik Russian nationalists, motivated by patriotism. In contrast, prisoners of subjugated nationalities, such as the Poles, Ukrainians, and Balts, often escaped to join the Germans. On the whole, releasing anti-Stalinist political prisoners to enrol them in the army was forbidden; indeed, as we have already seen [Internationalism, April 2026], standing orders were to shoot all prisoners in the event of a forced retreat due to the German advance.
In assessing the present-day irruption of artificial intelligence, especially so-called generative AI based on highly effective linguistic-probabilistic systems, the starting point is to recognise that what is at stake is the development of the productive forces. The next step is to relate the critical aspects of AI – so hotly debated in the struggle between capitals who have a stake in it – not primarily to the intrinsic character of the technology itself, but to the fundamental contradiction between the development of the productive forces and capitalist relations of production.
First, for Engels, the brain is a product of labour. It is in the dialectical relationship of mutual action and reaction with labour – made possible by the articulation of the hand freed by man's upright posture, the result of "hundreds of thousands of years" of natural selection – that the brain evolved to perform the most complex functions and develop self-awareness. In turn, labour is an expression of the social relations at the basis of specific socio-economic formations across successive modes of production. Therefore, the brain is a social product, mediated by the hand that wields the tool, by labour that puts it in relation with the brains of other humans, and by the language made necessary by those relations.
Second, this relationship of upright posture-hand-language-brain, and the role played by labour in humanisation, is neglected by current conceptions and is also unrecognised by Darwinian evolutionists themselves. This is because the division into classes and the separation between manual labour and intellectual labour – in the latter's connection with the ruling class and its apparatus (schools, the Churches, etc.) – has led to the prevalence of the idealist conception that gives prominence to the brain and its representations.
Third, humanity has applied science to nature, and nature has thereby been modified through science, technology, and labour. But it has been difficult to go beyond the initial and immediate effects of this transformation, barely taking into consideration its secondary and long-term effects.
Fourth, and even more importantly, science has not been applied to the social consequences of labour and to its implications, from the division of labour to class struggle, thus depriving humanity of a vision of the wider, long-term effects of productive activity. Bourgeois economic science, i.e., classical political economy, has been unable to go any further. In order to regulate human labour activity according to a truly conscious plan, knowledge is not enough; an overturning of the mode of production and social order is necessary.
Fifth, the individual capitalist is concerned only with immediate profit, not with what will happen to the commodity or the buyer afterwards. The same applies to what will happen to nature and – we might add – to human nature itself.
More wars; there could be even a world war! All caused by imperialist competition between powers: the US, China, the EU, India, Brazil, Russia, etc. More nationalism (even with continental flavor like European nationalism), more militarism, more revolts, and possibly internationalist revolutions to unite the global working class against all wars and nationalisms!
"It [Anthropic] said DeepSeek's operation involved over 150,000 exchanges". In my humble opinion, a mere 150k exchange for an LLM could only be a benchmarking and not a distillation! I think the US companies should accept that after decades they have rivals surpassing them, just like they did Europeans almost a century ago.
Our heros fought and died for 8-hour working days and when we stop fighting, we go back to 12-hour working days! That is why you need to search for theinternationalism.org
With declining birth rates big corporations might get the idea that "you know, child labour isn't really a big problem today with the extra precautions we take"
At the same time having these large companies that operate in emerging economies where they hide under the rug all child work exploitation.
> The number of child labor violations has risen fivefold in the last 10 years, but Republicans across the US are continuing to propose and pass legislation that rolls back protections or regulations for workers under the age of 18.
Random anecdote: I worked for years in the digital agency space and we basically just sold billable hours. Hours worked was everything. When crunch time hit, you worked until you were done. I once clocked 110 hours after working straight through two weekends on a remote work site to finish a huge project and when it was done, I was just there by myself. No one said a word. Boss didn't say anything, account manager didn't say anything, client didn't say anything. I never felt more alienated from a job than that moment.
Gulags were the worst kind of exploitation; that is why we always were anti-Stalinist and always identified the USSR as 'state capitalism'! The fact that a state 'claims' socialism does not mean it 'is' socialist, just as North Korea claiming 'democratic' people's republic does not mean it is 'democratic'. Clear?
What about the millions killed in China and Cambodia? When do you look at the system you are proposing and understand it has been a disaster during its slow and inevitable economic implosion?
We are close to treating PTSD of people who we sent to massacre other people, and we justified their massacre as heroic act. Great achievement for humanity!
Or it can be: people who went to protect us, and as it's an act which often requires serious sacrifice we praise them. And in any case treating PTSD is good in general.
