New 3D printer methodology builds using liquids.

[Stirnerian]

I'd have used the "as inspired by the T-1000 from Terminator 2!" bit from the article in my headline, but it strikes me as clickbaity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/03/16/this-new-technology-blows-3d-printing-out-of-the-water-literally/


In an iconic scene in the movie "Terminator 2," the robotic villain T-1000 rises fully formed from a puddle of metallic goo. The newest innovation in 3-D printing looks pretty similar, and that's no mistake: Its creators were inspired by that very scene.

The company Carbon3D came out of two years of stealth mode Monday night with a simultaneous TED Talk and Science paper publication. Their new tech, which they say could be used in industrial applications within the next year, makes coveted 3-D printers the likes of those sold by MakerBot look like child's play.

"We think that popular 3-D printing is actually misnamed — it's really just 2-D printing over and over again," said Joseph DeSimone, a professor of chemistry at University of North Carolina and North Carolina State as well as one of Carbon3D's co-founders. "The strides in that area have mostly been driven by mechanical engineers figuring our how to make things layer by layer to precisely create an object. We're two chemists and a physicist, so we came in with a different perspective."

Just as the evil T-1000 rises from its puddle of metal alloys, objects created by the new printer seem to ooze into existence from the ether. They come out fast, too: 25 to 100 times faster than anything on the market now, according to the study published in Science.

DeSimone and his colleagues call their new process "continuous liquid interface production technology," or CLIP.

CLIP places a pool of resin over a digital light projection system. A special window between the resin and light allows both light and oxygen to travel through (much like a contact lens, DeSimone explained).

To create an object, CLIP projects specific bursts of light and oxygen. Light hardens the resin, and oxygen keeps it from hardening. By controlling light and oxygen exposure in tandem, intricate shapes and latices can be made in one piece instead of the many layers of material that usually make up a 3-D printed object.

Those layers are defects, keeping the object from being a smooth surface. To minimize them, designers have to spend even longer printing the objects out.

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Personally, I'm quite bullish on the prospects of emerging desktop manufacturing technologies to materially advance the position of the working class, which is what ultimately matters.

A great many leftists will feel threatened by these as they become more readily cost-effective, fearing (rightly so) that they will further reduce demand for manufacturing jobs. However, in this instance these technologies have the potential to turn the tables: they're cheap enough that it's feasible for workers to own them themselves.

I have often dreamt, and if I ever get enough money together to afford one I intend to, of buying a 3D printer and experimenting with it socially the way an engineer would experiment with it mechanically. It's obviously not a panacea for socialism - they're limited by hardware like everything else - but, in a very real sense, these technologies have within them the potential to achieve part of our demand that the working class itself own the means of production. At the very least they could enable workers to become less dependent on wage employment and to enjoy a modicum of self-sufficiency.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm sorry in advance for doing this :( but methodology is the study of methods, it's the study of looking what research method is the most appropriate for a given research question, not the actual method as implied in the title.

[Stirnerian]

Sorry, I'm sleepy. Sue me. =P

Anyone want to talk about the implications these have for socialism?

I'm quite enthusiastic about it. Like I said, when I get a job I mean to save up and purchase one (not this unit in particular, as it'll be too expensive, but an older one), then try to form a collective and see if it works on a small scale.

I think any practicable socialism, and indeed all schools of political philosophy, are going to have to integrate desktop manufacturing into their views. It might be worthwhile, for instance, for left reformists to begin encouraging subsidization of the technology for the working class. Of all developments on the horizon, this looks the most promising to me.

[Slavic]

Sorry, I'm sleepy. Sue me. =P

Anyone want to talk about the implications these have for socialism?

I'm quite enthusiastic about it. Like I said, when I get a job I mean to save up and purchase one (not this unit in particular, as it'll be too expensive, but an older one), then try to form a collective and see if it works on a small scale.

I think any practicable socialism, and indeed all schools of political philosophy, are going to have to integrate desktop manufacturing into their views. It might be worthwhile, for instance, for left reformists to begin encouraging subsidization of the technology for the working class. Of all developments on the horizon, this looks the most promising to me.

This technology does not empower the working class. It is a tool that can be used to become a small business owner.

In the context of a socialist society, this technology is great, it reduces manufacturing material and energy waste by a large degree. In a capitalist society though, you are just producing a commodity that will be sold on a market.

[Stirnerian]

To an extent, I think that the proletariat acquiring some of the roles and traits of the petit-bourgeois might be a good thing in the long term.

At present the Western middle classes are facing tremendous economic pressures, as Capital begins submerging them back into the lower strata of the generalized working class. The lines between workers and middle-management and small owners, which were so clearly defined in the past two centuries, are and will be drawn increasingly finely today and tomorrow. This technology will serve to further erode the position of the petit-bourgeois.

What I think necessary on a short-term basis is for the proletariat to be as self-sufficient as possible. That sounds populist, and to an extent it is, but there's a revolutionary rationale to it: if workers can be made less dependent on big business for at least some of the goods they consume, then as a corollary they may become less loyal to the institutions that buffer those businesses.

[Sewer Socialist]

they're cheap enough that it's feasible for workers to own them themselves.


I mean to save up and purchase one (not this unit in particular, as it'll be too expensive, but an older one), then try to form a collective and see if it works on a small scale.


I think that the proletariat acquiring some of the roles and traits of the petit-bourgeois

You do not envision the general social ownership of these? This enthuses you, not for socialism, but for some petty-bourgeois commodity production? What a great gift this could be to society; goods that cost nearly nothing to produce, with no labor involved in their manufacture, and the best you can imagine is the least radical usage possible.

I fear we have witnessed the Proudhonian overcoming the Stirnerian in you.

[Stirnerian]

I do indeed envision the establishment of communism in the long-term, but it must be something that arises from the organic conditions of the proletariat.

Tell me: what year did the Capitalist Revolution take place in, in which the bourgeoisie liquidated the feudalists once and for all?

Not 1776, and not 1792. Each of these revolutions simply codified the recognition of pre-existing conditions into law, and for a long time these revolutions were themselves incomplete (indeed, I dated the start of capitalism as a hegemonic system in the United States as recently as 1896).

I do not say that this machine will itself make the Revolution. I say that it will help us to lay the groundwork for a Revolution you and I will never live to see.

We must learn to play the long game.

[Sewer Socialist]

Why not 1640, 1776, and 1792? What happened in 1896 in the United States; are you suggesting the USA was feudal for the majority of the 19th century?

If I am reading you correctly, you are saying this machine will empower the petty bourgeoisie, and disempower the haute bourgeoisie, which will bring us further to socialism. How? What makes you think the petty bourgeoisie are a progressive force? They have always taken the side of reaction every time socialism manages to threaten capitalism.

[Sewer Socialist]

The petty bourgeois private ownership of such automated production, with one uncontested owner, may indeed answer "barbarism" to the old question, "socialism or barbarism?". It is not a given that this will lead to socialism, but it would be absolutely a great tool for socialist societies.

[Stirnerian]

Why not 1640, 1776, and 1792? What happened in 1896 in the United States; are you suggesting the USA was feudal for the majority of the 19th century?

I am suggesting that large portions of the United States retained a feudal character until the political realignment that coincided with the election of William McKinley, around which time elements of the American agricultural sectors began supporting left-liberal politics. Certainly capitalism was not uncontested before 1865; I think the best word to describe Southern chattel slavery is 'post-feudal', but certainly not capitalist.

It's entirely possible for different economic systems to co-exist. The Soviet Union was (ostensibly) socialist, yet significant parts of its economy were pre-capitalist. There are few neat divisions in history.


If I am reading you correctly, you are saying this machine will empower the petty bourgeoisie, and disempower the haute bourgeoisie, which will bring us further to socialism. How? What makes you think the petty bourgeoisie are a progressive force? They have always taken the side of reaction every time socialism manages to threaten capitalism.

No; I am saying these machines will lead to a formation of the proletariat more like the middle classes today, in that they will be somewhat more self-sufficient and less dependent on the haute bourgeois for material goods. This will especially be true if consumer electronics like circuit boards ever become desktop manufacturable (we are not there yet).

This will not make them 'middle class', but it will cause them to have characteristics we associated with the petit-bourgeois, just as I am a lumpenproletarian but have characteristics unknown to all but the wealthiest of capitalists a century ago in instant communication and effective combustion engine-powered travel.

[Sewer Socialist]

American slavemasters accumulated capital, (a large portion of which was ownership of human lives and land, both acquired on the market), for the purpose of producing commodities, which were sold on a market by an appropriating master, which was reinvested into more capital, did they not? Is that not capitalism?

And what do political positions have to do with modes of production? Modes of production are not defined by the ideas people hold - "the politics they support", but the real class relationships between them. I'm not sure why you assume we agree that not only was slavery not part of a capitalist system, but also that the Soviet Union was socialist.

You're still not explaining how you see these machines being used privately for personal usage will lead the way to communism and social ownership. If the cost of a proletarian sustaining themself goes down, the cost of their compensation will also go down. I can find free electronics, including the computer I am using right now, all over town; I still spend my days working for a wage.

[Stirnerian]

American slavemasters accumulated capital, (a large portion of which was ownership of human lives and land, both acquired on the market), for the purpose of producing commodities, which were sold on a market by an appropriating master, which was reinvested into more capital, did they not? Is that not capitalism?

It was a kind of capitalism, but I'm not comfortable suggesting it belongs to the same species of economic development as the classical industrial capitalism of the Northern States.

To whit: chattel slavery emerged in the future Confederacy in the early seventeenth century, well before even England had broken out of mercantilism and embraced free trade.

We have to be careful about ascribing every system that entails capital accumulation as 'capitalist', or else we arrive at the position that capitalism is as old as Asia's Silk Road. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but Southern slavery looks to me like a dead-end branch of feudalism that tried and failed to adapt to a new industrial capitalism than something innately capitalist.


And what do political positions have to do with modes of production? Modes of production are not defined by the ideas people hold - "the politics they support", but the real class relationships between them. I'm not sure why you assume we agree that not only was slavery not part of a capitalist system, but also that the Soviet Union was socialist.

This is vulgar materialism, and has only a passing relationship with the real world.

The class structure of a society is reflected within its political structure, and the two have a symbiotic relationship: it is possible for one to alter the other. The classic example is that of women in America during and after the Second World War - by using women to replace the factory workers who'd gone overseas, the American political structure deeply changed both the economic function of its proletariat and it's consistency, in ways which remain with us today.

One finds something similar in the progressive agrarian politics of the 1880s and 1890s, when for the first time in the American South large numbers of impoverished white agricultural workers and black freedmen began finding common cause through the vehicle of the Populists. My suggestion is that this is the result of a rupture in Southern society - the final abolition of feudalism and the advent of an agricultural capitalism - that reflected in its politics.

And I said that the Soviet Union was ostensibly socialist.


You're still not explaining how you see these machines being used privately for personal usage will lead the way to communism and social ownership.

Who said anything about private ownership? My idea, and I thought I made this obvious, is to encourage their ownership on a collective small-scale: probably they're too expensive for an individual to own them in isolation, but a community might get a much better function out of them.

I live near East Saint Louis, Illinois, one of the poorest cities in America. I've often thought about trying to get support there for a community-based three-dimensional printer facility, ideally free to use except for the replacement cost of materials.

I have no idea whether it will do anything to alleviate the conditions in the city. But it's certainly preferable to the endless do-nothingism of orthodox Marxists.


If the cost of a proletarian sustaining themself goes down, the cost of their compensation will also go down.

And, with it, the central place of the wage system.

Orthodox Marxists play at being radical, but I've come to find that they're basically conservative in certain essential ways.


I can find free electronics, including the computer I am using right now, all over town;

Translation: "Do nothing."

You sound very much like a member of the AFL-CIO - "don't do anything to rock the boat; I might take a haircut on my paycheck." Of course, if the idea is to get rid of wage labor, I'm fine with that.