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Under the iron law of capitalism, all labor is exploited, yet not all labor bears the same weight in the machinery of society. The artisan, the artist, the small manufacturer—these individuals, historically, have occupied a liminal space between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They enjoy, for a time, privileges denied to the masses whose labor sustains life itself: those who till the soil, construct the dwellings, operate the machines, and keep the wheels of civilization turning. To elevate the struggles of these comparatively protected workers above those of the materially oppressed is to misunderstand the class struggle itself.

Many artists and creators have not opposed capitalism until it began to threaten their comfortable illusions of autonomy. Flexible hours, indoor work, the ability to choose one’s projects—these are conditions that capitalism itself has provisionally granted. Yet now, perceiving precarity, these artisans call for a recentering of the revolutionary struggle around their interests, demanding that the movement prioritize their liberation above that of the already homeless, the chronically underpaid, the imprisoned, and the dispossessed. Such a demand betrays a failure to grasp material reality. Exploitation is universal under capitalism, but it is not uniform. To fight for one’s own fragile privilege while ignoring those whose survival itself is at stake is not revolutionary; it is self-preservation masquerading as radicalism.

The commodification of personal expression further illustrates the contradictions of this class position. Copyright, intellectual property, and the marketization of art constrain creativity, producing legally distinct yet soulless copies and crushing projects that fail to satisfy the market’s logic. The systemic obstacles faced by artists—cease-and-desist orders, profit-driven cancellations, and the race to monetize passion—are the symptoms of a capitalist system in which even creativity must bow to exchange value. And yet, these are not obstacles unique to artists: the very same system produces goods through prison labor, forces the masses into wage slavery, and denies essential needs to millions. The struggle for systemic justice cannot begin with the preservation of the already privileged.

As Marx observed, the lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the artisan, and the shopkeeper, in attempting to defend their fraction of privilege, act conservatively, and even reactionarily, in the grand sweep of history. If they do become revolutionary, it is not from loyalty to principle, but because they are being swept into the ranks of the proletariat, and their struggle is redirected from defending their present comfort to defending their future subjugation. To attempt to lead a revolution from the standpoint of artisan privilege is to desert the material standpoint of the oppressed and to leverage the movement for personal security.

The revolutionary imperative, therefore, is clear: liberation must be pursued in accordance with material reality. All humans deserve freedom from toil, access to sustenance, shelter, water, and energy—fundamental rights that capitalism commodifies and denies. To fight for these is not merely charity; it is the structural dismantling of the chains that bind humanity to labor and exploitation. Measures such as universal basic assets, modest but progressive wealth redistribution, and the reallocation of resources toward the elimination of want are not utopian fantasies—they are the materialist path to post-scarcity abundance.

Art, intellectual work, and creativity are not to be dismissed; they flourish most freely when the material conditions of survival are guaranteed for all. But to treat artists as a separate revolutionary class is to invert priorities, to misread the material foundations of society, and to risk reproducing inequality under the guise of liberation. The struggle must be total, systemic, and aligned first and foremost with those whose exploitation is most immediate and absolute. Only then can the full flowering of human expression—artistic, intellectual, and communal—truly be realized.

The revolution is not a gallery of privileged grievances; it is the uprooting of the material conditions that allow privilege, oppression, and precarity to exist. Those who wish to join it must do so not to preserve their craft or comfort, but to emancipate all laborers, and through that emancipation, to free humanity itself.

https://redsails.org/artisanal-intelligence/