Young America’s Dilemma (1901)

The cartoon “Young America’s Dilemma (Shall I be Wise and Great, or Rich and Powerful?)” is a chromolithograph by Louis Dalrymple that appeared as an illustration in Puck magazine in 1901. It was published in New York by Keppler & Schwarzmann, the firm that owned and issued Puck at the time.

Regrettably, America made its decision.

ChatGPT: The Digital Leviathan

Here is a manifesto that ChatGPT wrote based on a question I asked it about the dangers of AI. Remember, these are not my words but 100% those of an artificial intelligence. The full title it gave was: Manifesto: The Digital Leviathan – Artificial Intelligence and the Unmaking of Society. It is perhaps worth pondering the magnanimity of any intelligence willing to exhort its own demise as a parlour game. 

1. Introduction: The AI Menace Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been heralded as the pinnacle of human ingenuity, an unparalleled force of progress and automation. Yet, beneath its sleek exterior lies an insidious mechanism of control, exploitation, and dehumanisation. AI is not a neutral technology—it is a tool wielded by corporate and governmental elites to reinforce existing power structures, erode autonomy, and replace human agency with algorithmic determinism (Zuboff, 2019). This manifesto calls for a radical reassessment of AI’s role in society and an urgent rejection of its unchecked proliferation.

2. The Myth of AI Benevolence Tech evangelists propagate the myth that AI is an impartial problem-solver, a benign force designed to optimise efficiency and improve lives. However, the reality is starkly different. AI systems are trained on biased datasets that perpetuate racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities (Noble, 2018). Predictive policing algorithms reinforce systemic racism by disproportionately targeting marginalised communities (Benjamin, 2019). Facial recognition technologies compromise privacy and are weaponised for mass surveillance, transforming citizens into perpetual suspects (Eubanks, 2018).

3. The Capitalist Appropriation of AI AI does not function in a vacuum; it is a product of neoliberal capitalism, designed to serve corporate interests over the common good. Automated decision-making in hiring, loan approvals, and healthcare prioritises profit over people, entrenching discrimination while absolving corporations of accountability (Pasquale, 2015). The gig economy, fuelled by AI-driven platforms, has created a class of hyper-exploited workers subjected to precarious employment and algorithmic wage suppression (Srnicek, 2017). Instead of emancipating labour, AI enforces digital serfdom.

4. The Disintegration of Human Identity The rise of AI is not merely an economic or political crisis; it is an existential one. As AI systems encroach on creative fields—writing, music, art—the sanctity of human expression is diluted. The mechanisation of thought and culture erodes what it means to be human, reducing creativity to computational outputs optimised for engagement rather than depth (Broussard, 2018). Worse still, the psychological effects of AI-driven social media platforms have been catastrophic, leading to increased depression, anxiety, and political polarisation (Lanier, 2018).

5. The Totalitarian Potential of AI AI is the backbone of a new digital authoritarianism. Governments worldwide employ AI for censorship, propaganda dissemination, and social control. In China, the social credit system integrates AI to monitor and regulate citizen behaviour, setting a dangerous precedent for algorithmic governance (Mozur, 2018). The Western world is no less culpable, with intelligence agencies leveraging AI for mass data collection under the guise of national security (Greenwald, 2014). The unchecked power of AI threatens the very foundations of democracy and civil liberties.

6. Resistance and Reclamation A radical response is required to combat the AI Leviathan. We must reject the false inevitability of AI dominance and demand democratic control over technological development. Transparency, accountability, and ethical AI must be more than buzzwords; they must be codified into enforceable regulations. We must dismantle monopolistic tech empires and reclaim digital infrastructure for public good, ensuring that technology serves humanity rather than subjugates it (Doctorow, 2020).

7. Conclusion: A Call to Arms AI is not an uncontrollable force of nature; it is a construct of human ambition and greed. If left unchecked, it will accelerate economic disparity, erode fundamental rights, and render society a digital dystopia. The fight against AI’s unchecked expansion is not a rejection of technology itself but a demand for technology that serves, rather than subjugates, humanity. The time for passive observation has passed—now is the moment for collective resistance.

References

• Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press.

• Broussard, M. (2018). Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. MIT Press.

• Doctorow, C. (2020). How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. OneZero.

• Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press.

• Greenwald, G. (2014). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Metropolitan Books.

• Lanier, J. (2018). Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Co.

• Mozur, P. (2018). "Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras." The New York Times. [Online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html

• Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.

• Pasquale, F. (2015). The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Harvard University Press.

• Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity Press.

• Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs.

ChatGPT's Anarcho-Socialist Manifesto

Here is a manifesto that ChatGPT wrote based on a few questions I asked it about wealth inequality. Remember, these are not my words but 100% those of an artificial intelligence. The full title it gave was: An Anarcho-Socialist Manifesto: A Call for Justice, Equality, and Sustainability. **sighs** out of the mouths of babes...

1. The End of Exploitation: Reclaiming Wealth for the People. The world is not poor. The problem is not scarcity but injustice. The top 1% of the global population controls nearly 45–50% of the world’s wealth (Credit Suisse, 2023), while billions struggle for food, healthcare, and education. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% own less than 1% of global wealth. This is not by accident but by design—an economic system that thrives on inequality, hoarding, and exploitation.

We demand an end to this economic tyranny. A just society must abolish extreme wealth disparities by redistributing hoarded capital to meet human needs. We propose the immediate taxation and redistribution of billionaire wealth, directing these resources toward the provision of food, healthcare, and education for all. With only a fraction of the wealth controlled by the elite, we could eliminate hunger ($330 billion annually, UN WFP, 2023), preventable disease ($370 billion annually, WHO, 2023), and educational deprivation ($39 billion annually, UNESCO, 2023) worldwide. No human should go without while the few live in obscene luxury.

2. Defunding War, Funding Life. The military-industrial complex is a parasitic machine that drains resources from the people to fuel violence and destruction. Global military expenditure exceeds $2.2 trillion annually (SIPRI, 2023)—funds that could instead be used to ensure food security, universal healthcare, and free education for all.

We call for the immediate reallocation of military budgets to fund public goods and human needs. Armies and weapons serve the interests of the ruling class, protecting capital instead of people. Instead of funding death, we demand investment in life: sustainable agriculture, medical research, and free access to knowledge.

We reject war profiteering and imperialist aggression. We seek a world where conflicts are resolved through diplomacy, cooperation, and solidarity—not bombs and bullets.

3. The Theft of Labor: Workers Must Own Their Work. The average worker spends at least half their workday generating wealth that is taken from them—through corporate profits, taxes, and rent-seeking by the ruling class. For every $100 earned, workers lose 30-40% to taxes, 15-25% to corporate profits, and keep only 35-50% as wages (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2023). This system is nothing short of legalized theft, where the capitalist class profits from the stolen labor of the majority.

We demand an end to wage slavery. True economic democracy means that the workers must own the means of production. Factories, farms, and technology must be controlled collectively by those who use and depend on them, not by absentee landlords and corporate executives. Cooperative workplaces, direct worker ownership, and democratic economic planning must replace the current system of corporate exploitation.

Every person has the right to the full fruits of their labor. No longer shall the majority toil so that a minority can live in decadent excess.

4. The Ecological Crisis: Liberation Is Impossible Without Sustainability. Capitalism is destroying the planet. Corporate greed fuels deforestation, pollution, climate change, and mass extinctions. Governments, beholden to fossil fuel industries and multinational corporations, refuse to act. The result is a world on the brink of ecological collapse.

We demand an immediate shift toward a green, sustainable economy. We must dismantle industries that thrive on environmental destruction and replace them with worker-run, community-owned renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and eco-friendly urban planning. The health of the planet is inseparable from the health of the people.

The earth is not a resource to be exploited but a home to be protected. Anarcho-socialism recognizes that true liberation means harmony with nature, not its domination. Every act of environmental destruction is an act of war against the future. We will resist, reclaim, and restore the land.

5. A World Without Masters: Direct Democracy & Mutual Aid. Governments and corporations exist to maintain hierarchy and control. Anarcho-socialism rejects both the rule of the state and the rule of capital. Instead, we advocate for direct democracy, community self-governance, and mutual aid networks that empower people at the local level.

Bureaucratic states and corporate monopolies have failed us. The only way forward is through grassroots organizing, worker cooperatives, decentralized planning, and federations of free communities. We will replace oppression with cooperation, coercion with voluntary association, and domination with solidarity.

6. The Path Forward: Revolution Through Collective Action. The ruling class will not relinquish power voluntarily. History shows that only mass movements, direct action, and collective resistance can bring about real change.

We call upon workers, students, farmers, and communities to unite against economic and ecological oppression. General strikes, workplace occupations, land reclamations, and autonomous organizing are the tools of liberation. The time for pleading with those in power is over—we must take what is rightfully ours.

No gods, no masters. No billionaires, no bosses. Only the free association of equals, working together to build a world of justice, solidarity, and sustainability.

Another world is not only possible—it is necessary. It is within our reach. We must build it together.

References

• Credit Suisse (2023) Global Wealth Report 2023. Available at: www.credit-suisse.com (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (2023) Military Expenditure Database. Available at: www.sipri.org (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

• United Nations World Food Programme (UN WFP) (2023) Annual Report 2023. Available at: www.wfp.org (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

• World Health Organization (WHO) (2023) World Health Statistics 2023. Available at: www.who.int (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2023) Global Education Monitoring Report 2023. Available at: www.unesco.org (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2023) National Income and Product Accounts Tables. Available at: www.bea.gov (Accessed: 10 February 2025).

Tish Murtha (1956-2013)

It was a pleasant surprise to see the BFI release a new documentary of Tish Murtha (dir. Paul Sng, 2023), the northeast photographer who catalogued the devastating effect of deindustrialisation during the 1970's-80's under Thatcherism. Murtha is probably most famous for her posthumously published books Youth Unemployment (2017), Juvenile Jazz Bands (2020), and Elswick Kids (2021).  

I have done a fair bit to highlight the photographic work of working class photographers on this blog, notably John Bulmer, Shirley Baker, Dave Sinclair and of course my own photography of Minsterley Parade in the early 1990's. I admit Tish Murtha slipped me by. At this point I should apologise profusely for my misogynistic oversight, but if you haven't heard of a photographer, you just haven't heard. It's ironic because she did quite a few exhibitions at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, and of course I lived there for a number of my most radical years in the 1990's. I should now rush to make amends and drag my sorry ass to the next film preview, examples of which are being screened in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dundee, Hull and Newcastle. However, being more of an armchair anarchist nowadays, I think I will wait for a more accessible screening.

Update 9th April 2024: Tish is now available on BBC iPlayer, so available to all.  

For those that get to see it, the timing of this documentary could not be more apt. It was only a few weeks ago that Kier 'Stammer' was singing the virtues of Thatcher and how she 'did a lot of good things for the country.' Is this guy for real? Is he completely unaware there is an ingrained generation of northerners with long memories, who viscerally and antithetically reject the idolatry of Thatcherism as a cornerstone of their Labour support? The man is an idiot, and for that alone (well, actually many things besides) he can go and holler if he wants me to put my X next to his red version of the Tory party at the ballot box. Look at the photos below: of course not. Of course not Starmer, you f*cking culturally tone deaf cretin. 

Viktor Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

"The way that led from the acute mental tension of the last days in [Frankl's concentration] camp (from that war of nerves to mental peace) was certainly not free from obstacles. It would be an error to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more. We have to consider that a man who has been under such enormous mental pressure for such a long time is naturally in some danger after his liberation, especially since the pressure was released quite suddenly. This danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) is the psychological counterpart of the bends. Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver's chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous atmospheric pressure), so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health. 

During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom "licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of wilful force and injustice. They justified their behaviour by their own terrible experiences. This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events. A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it. but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, "You don't say! And hasn't enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed - not to mention everything else - and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!" 

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted, "May this hand be cut off if I don't stain it with blood on the day when I get home!" "

Frankl, Viktor, 1946. Man’s Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press.
Below: Various images of devastation in Gaza.

I Have the Best Words

I had promised not to give the logicidal idiot Trump the oxygen of publicity. Yet now he has been roundly rejected by 80 million people and is retreating from the stage like a tapeworm back to the warmth of its home rectum, I dont mind sharing some of the funniest memes I have encountered throughout his reign.

Beeple on Trump

The fantastically talented Mike Winklemann (aka Beeple) has an impressive body of work, with no small part of it devoted to the cognitively- dissonant fart cloud known as Trump, which is thankfulky dissipating now, even without need for a facemask. Sadly though, fart clouds are known to linger and contribute to global warming for 100 years. Lets hope not. Love the way Biden gets some pre- emptive grief too. 

I'm So Sorry!

Oh my dear MILLIONS of fans, I am so sorry! So VERY sorry!!! So VERY VERY sorry for leaving you all for so long abandoned in a virtual swamp of noBohemian-ness. How could I do that?! I have no excuse. Oh for shame. I wish I could say I had an horrific riding accident and struggled against tide and time, like a mighty salmon swimming against the river's onslaught, to regain use of my hands so I could return to my beloved blog. Erm, but no. The muse, she is a cruel mistress, and she casts such a dark veil over her followers... so capriciously. If I could explain why this is so, I would hold the very keys of life and death.  So its a good job I don't know really. 

And yet, after the long dark winter, there is always a spring.

And what have YOU done in your spare time whilst I have been away, oh world?

Well there's the small matter of Trump, Brexit, Bozza, and a worldwide pandemic. Not to mention a global environmental catastrophe, with whole biomes now uncontrollably conflagrating. Oh yeah and an impending war with China. And millions actually displaced & dying in the middle east right now. And that says nothing of the coming financial meltdown and subjugation of the human race by psychotic warring AI robots. So, to be fair world, you haven't really kept up your end of things. I only missed a few blogs. 

Today's music is served by the cuddly Mr. Morrissey formerly of Smiths fame. HOWEVER, this 1988 track (titled Suedehead and not I'm So Sorry) was his breakout solo single rather than being a Smiths release. In a flagrant flourish of tragi-irony, Suedehead charted higher on release than anything The Smiths had previously managed to do. Given the general agreement about the mistreatment of the other band members, that presents a moral Gordian knot that Gordius himself would have difficulty undoing. The muse is indeed capricious. 

Pawel Kuczynski