Artisan capitalism

In modern, capitalist society, there are proletarianized writers, ie contracted writers paid piece-wages or even hourly wages, and there are the petite-bourgeois writers that generally work with a publisher, or even self-publish. These do near identical labor, but the class character is different, and it manifests in the ability for the rare petite-bourgeois writer to pull a J. K. Rowling and strike it big, to use an example.

The artisan that owns their own labor and means of production holds a precarious position, the vast majority are being proletarianized or live worse lives than the higher paid proletarian occupations. However, their class character often gives them a highly individualist outlook, believing themselves deserving of a privledged position in society next to the big names like Stephen King.

The median artist doesn't live such a life, they struggle to live off of their skills and are forced into proletarian occupations. This tension and desparation is the basis of reaction for the artisan. It isn't a moral judgement, artists aren't the enemy. This is just the naked consequence of art as a commodity, and artistry typically taking a high amount of training but a low price amount of outlay in materials and tools compared to other fields to produce art.

Many artists whether they’re musicians, authors, illustrators, etc. find themselves in situations or industries where they don’t have that much control over their own work through being forced to take extremely unfavourable publishing deals.

I agree, many are proletarianized. In the US film industry for example, directors are workers for their company: they work on a brief, with the movie having to be made a certain way in a certain deadline etc. Though they still make royalties if they're a big enough name (and with hollywood accounting you count on the spinoff products for that, so it also means they have an incentive to make sure the movie succeeds commercially.)

But the question is what do they want to improve their conditions? Do they want to work for themselves and cut out the employer, or do they want to work socially? This is the separating line. One leads to petite bourgeoisie (whose wish is to become big bourgeoisie), the other leads to socialism.

In that case, for someone who is attempting to make a living from selling their books and the publisher sells them on Amazon, why and how is this qualitatively different to being an Amazon delivery driver?

I think this is a good question to ask. After typing a first answer, my ultimate answer is who owns the product in the end? We are alienated because we get no say in what we make and where it ends up. We own none of it. There are writers, e.g. journalists, who write on contract: they get told which story to write on, how many words it must be, etc. Then an editor takes it and decides on the headline, rewrites everything they want, and most of the time the original writer is completely removed from the process at this stage. The article then belongs to their employer, like any other proletarian work. There are also book writers working on this spec.

So the question would be, what is their answer to that? Do they want to cut out the middleman and own their product? Do they still want capitalism? Would they be open to being salaried workers in socialism? Do they recognize this for what it is? That's the class relation.

(Edited above sentence for clarity ^)

https://redsails.org/stalins-shoemaker/

I'm really talking about people like in the screenshot, who make their living trying to work "by themselves" as if it was purer than working in a group, or being a writer on contract (i.e. alienated from their labor) - while it's not directly said in the screen tweet, it's deducible that this is how this person makes a living.

My topic is really about those who make a living off this type of labor and then bemoan that they can't make a living anymore. But instead of turning towards capitalism, they turn towards how capitalism expresses itself as a mode of production - there's been the mechanical loom, the steam machine, computers, and now AI.

But criticizing artists for their choices in a capitalist system is kinda chauvinist so I would probably keep calm and remind them of their class

So with all that, regarding the class lines, there are proletarian artists (of all sorts, not just illustrators - but it often gets reduced to that). They work for a company and are alienated from their labor because they get told what to draw, write, or produce. Yet there is also a belief that art can be extirpated from society and somehow exist outside of it, as if it was neither labor nor work.

What AI has done is not introduce the notion that art is actually part of society and subject to its ebb and flow, because it's always been the case, but revive the topic, because now things that were once thought to be 'creative' and only possible by a human can be done by a machine. Before that time it was only a thought experiment. Again, it doesn't matter what quality the output from the machine is - it exists. It's already being used and we can't even tell, because using the output as the machine gives it is a terrible idea. Instead it's reworked as part of a workflow.

just because someone wants to draw doesnt mean they have to be able push out lazy copies of world class art

I don't disagree that people should learn skills. However like I said, before AI people who wanted an illustration but couldn't do it themselves, so they just gave up.

Like I like writing, I am a designer by trade (not particularly visual design), and I don't necessarily tell people to learn design or to take courses on writing because I know not everyone is interested enough to do it. This is more personal but a lot of the "do it yourself" AI discourse I see revolves entirely around illustrating work and how everyone should somehow learn to draw. Since we made our first tools there has been division of labor, not everyone is going to be employed as an artist. There is also an implication that AI prevents learning, but the user decides if they want to shut their brain off or not.

The essay I linked makes a point on this:

Against the idea that artists were just "born with it", many took much pain to explain that all art forms involve a lot of specialized training, that you get good at drawing not through natural luck but through hard work. This reaction responded to an anxiety about being seen as a legitimate field of industry, to be on an equal basis as specialized workers such as engineers, doctors, etc. - and deserve the same compensation.

Since AI art came in to displace artists, the tune has suddenly completely reversed. Art is now an inherent capacity of the soul, and anyone can do it. Why use these AI image generators when "anyone can pick up a pencil and draw"? Doesn't even a bad drawing "have more Soul and Meaning" than a result generated from the recombination of other art pieces? Suddenly the notion of arts as a skill with technical components flies out of the window. Both attitudes reflect anxieties about seeing your work respected as such, while also refusing the industrial implications of art being a form of work, and subject to the same market forces as all other fields.

Telling people "just learn to draw it's gonna be better" when my drawing is a shitty stickman figure exposes internalized hypocrisy that we all share in to an extent. For example you said the AI copy is 'lazy', which is a qualitative adjective. I'm not criticizing the choice of word, I find it interesting. What makes an AI output lazier than three lines I draw hastily on a piece of paper? Is it the human component? I think what AI has forced us to contend with is that what was traditionally made by humans is actually not so unique. A lot of artists say AI art is "soulless", but as materialists we don't believe in the soul, so clearly they mean something else - they just don't seem to have a clear idea of it.

Can someone really look me in the eye and say this is 'better' than anything AI makes because it was made by a person?

Or is it rather a way to prevent putting art back into its social character, subject to capitalism? Nobody would hire me to draw this figurine over and over again. I can still make it for myself, sure, just like I could also prompt AI art for my own enjoyment (if I enjoyed it).

Again my problem is with petit-bourgeois artists who see themselves closer to art than to the class struggle, like anyone who sees themselves closer to their job interests than the class struggle. But my question to them I guess would be, how would they like to see their artwork handled in socialism and communism? In the USSR artists were employed by the state on salary to produce artworks, when it came to specific exhibitions or government campaigns. Would they be opposed to that? Art they produced through the artists' union was typically bought by the state for a fixed one-time payment. Would they be opposed to that? The petit-bourgeois artists would.

I'd say, "lazy" people deserve to be able to create good stuff too. Especially as putting one's thoughts into images is probably important to most people's mental health.

Artisans that own their own means of production and produce at their own behest, but must perform this labor themselves, are petite-bourgeoisie. They are not bourgeoisie proper, but they live by their own labor and means of production. They are constantly at risk of proletarianization, because they generally can't compete with the bourgeoisie proper, but they as a class are generally more assured than the proletariat. Obviously edge-cases exist, but as a class this is generally true.

This petite-bourgeois relation is why as a profession it is more common to become mega-wealthy than, say, the upper-paid skilled proletarians like doctors or engineers, even if those skilled proletarians have it better on average. Sanderson, George R. R. Martin, J. K. Rowling, etc. all made their vast wealth from royalties, because they own the IP they created. It isn't a proletarian wage that they recieve, they have a different class character than proletarians.

Now, the merits/demerits of AI is a different question, but if your only objection is to the correct identification of artisans as petite-bourgeoisie then that should settle that critique.