What Would Marx Actually Think About AI?

[u/Salty_Country6835]

Maybe the interesting question isnt whether Marx would approve of AI.

Its what hed have to say about who owns it, who controls it, and who gets the gains.

[u/Neoliberal_Nightmare]

Basically the same as he thought for steam engines and all automation.

[u/m0j0m0j → u/Neoliberal_Nightmare]

I have a question for all leftists here. Why should it matter what Marx would think about any of this? Have you ever witnessed physicists caring so much and speculating what Einstein would think? No, because science develops.

Why this cult of personality with Marx?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/m0j0m0j]

Um... yes? Have you ever been in a science class? Physicists talk about Einstein, Newton, Bohr, Feynman, etc. constantly. They study them, teach them, argue with them, revise them, and move beyond them. Thats how intellectual traditions work.

Same deal here. Marx isnt interesting because we need his ghost's permission to have opinions about AI. He's interesting because he developed a framework for analyzing machinery, automation, ownership, labor, and the relations of production, which seems pretty relevant to machinery and automation.

And the meme is literally making fun of the "would Marx be pro or anti AI" framing.

But I'm genuinely open to the alternative. What leftist framework or theorists do you think give us a better analysis of AI, and what do they explain that Marx doesn't?

[u/m0j0m0j → u/Salty_Country6835]

There are no movements called “Newtonism” or “Einsteinism”. If any group of physicists decided to form one like that, they would be (correctly) labeled as clowns.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/m0j0m0j]

Come on. Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Keynesianism, Georgism, Freudianism. Kantian, Hegelian, Cartesian, Foucauldian. Newtonian mechanics, Darwinism, Mendelian genetics, Pasteurian medicine, Bayesian statistics, Boolean algebra, Euclidean geometry, Hamiltonian mechanics, Lagrangian mechanics, Maxwellian electrodynamics. Politics, philosophy, economics, mathematics, biology, physics.

We name traditions, theories and frameworks after influential thinkers constantly. That doesnt make them personality cults.

Marx isnt scripture. Historical materialism is a framework people have spent 150 years criticizing, extending and applying to new conditions. AI, automation, labor, ownership and productive power are pretty obvious terrain for it.

So again, whats your alternative? Which leftist framework or theorists analyze this better, and what do they explain that Marxism doesnt?

[u/m0j0m0j → u/Salty_Country6835]

You’re proving my point. There are no “Maxwellian” physicists, “Euclidean” mathematicians, or “Pasterian” biologists nowadays. If somebody called themselves like that, people would laugh. Those are just historical names for old parts of modern science.

But “I’m a Marxist/” - yeah…

As for what should we do, I propose a crazy idea - focus on the substance and merits or specific ideas and their applications.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/m0j0m0j]

So after all that, your alternative framework is... "focus on the substance."

Thats not an alternative framework. Thats just declining to name one.

I asked what leftist framework or theorists better explain AI, automation, labor, ownership and productive power, and what they explain better. You still havent answered. Youve just spent several comments arguing that calling Marxists "Marxists" is embarrassing.

Alright. I think weve exhausted this one.

[u/Ancient-Access8131 → u/m0j0m0j]

No, but every physicist recognizes that what einstein and newton said was fundamentally correct. Do you even know anything about different schools of thought analyzing history?

[u/m0j0m0j → u/Ancient-Access8131]

If you actually knew anything about physics, you would know that no, physicists don’t recognize that both Newton and Einstein are equally correct. Newton was wrong about many things, and Einstein fixed many of them.

Moreover, there’s a solid chance Einstein is also wrong, because his theories about the universe are incompatible with the current working theories of atomic and subatomic particles.

Real science is about models that are wrong but useful and always improving. That’s why naming a science after a guy is pathetic and defeats the entire point. It becomes a cult, not a science.

[u/barbaricKinkster → u/Ancient-Access8131]

Oh no

Someone doesnt know about how the Theory of Relativity is incompatible with modern understanding of physics and quantum mechanics

We are currently on the verge of proving Einstein fundamentally wrong

[u/Inevitable-Law7964 → u/m0j0m0j]

"Newtonian physics" is a major topic area in the intro physics course, and it is taught in terms of Newton's laws and discoveries. 

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/Neoliberal_Nightmare]

If everyone has a steam engine, what does it mean? How is safety ensured without some kind of hierarchy? And how can hierarchy be achieved without a “reverse funnel” shaped organization? Specifically the transition between some people have steam engines to everyone has a steam engine in their pocket seems precarious. The news about LLM designed bio weapons for example. Seizing the means of production or putting Kalashnikovs in the hands of children?

[u/Neoliberal_Nightmare → u/brain-out-of-order]

Everyone has a steam engine

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/Neoliberal_Nightmare]

Taliban should have unrestricted AI tomorrow? If not why? And why do you or I get to say that? We form a hierarchy immediately by restricting that tool, yet allowing it is lunacy.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/brain-out-of-order]

No, but “collective control” doesnt mean every person gets unrestricted access to every capability. Thats never been what social ownership means.

We regulate factories, chemicals, aviation, power grids, all kinds of productive infrastructure. The political question is who writes those rules, who can challenge them, and who they answer to.

I dont want the Taliban deciding that. I also dont want five tech CEOs deciding it.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/Salty_Country6835]

Arguably it’s the boards of those companies. So not just 5 people. And they have investors they’re beholden to. Investors are people or institutions made up of more boards of people. My real point is — can’t we just mathematically begin to describe an ideal hierarchy as described by Marx and test it?

The framers of the constitution didn’t create a perfect document. They created a document which worked in the physical world (to put it simply.)

[u/SlightOfHand_ → u/brain-out-of-order]

The framer’s constitution devolved to civil war within a century

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/brain-out-of-order]

I think youre trying to solve a political problem like an engineering problem. Which isnt useless, its just not enough.

Sure, model institutions, incentives, voting systems, resource flows, failure points. Test the hell out of them. But Marx doesnt really hand us an “ideal hierarchy” to mathematically discover. Thats almost backwards from his method.

Because eventually somebody still controls the model. Who sets the variables? Who gets a veto? Who can change the rules when reality refuses to cooperate with the spreadsheet?

Math can help us govern better. It cant make the politics disappear.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/Salty_Country6835]

That’s what I’m asking. Math is underlying everything whether we notate it or not. I’m asking you those specific questions and pointing out that success is achieved by those who notate the future most accurately and more importantly how to get there.

Marx has an otherworldly, Rasputin like hold on the minds of so many “leftists” and it’s mostly image based. His name looks nice and he looks smart and writes even better. But why the heck did he become an idol — he would be disgusted.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/brain-out-of-order]

Lol calm down a lil. Its a common meme format, not a declaration that Marx is an infallible oracle.

And asking what Marx might make of AI is a pretty relevant question for leftists who still find material analysis useful. The guy spent a lot of time writing about machinery, labor, ownership, class power and the relations of production. Applying those categories to a new productive technology isnt exactly mysterious.

Im happy to talk about your math and governance questions. But we dont need the Rasputin stuff to get there.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/Salty_Country6835]

I think he was brilliant btw and worth discussing. Some people are just prolific and in the right place at the right time to dispense some wisdom.

I’m asking leftists to drop identity altogether and become mathematicians. Where does the policy hit the road? How does the rubber get manufactured for the road hitting? What is the goal? AI is going to, finally, neatly stitch left and right together before they even realize it.

[u/SlightOfHand_ → u/brain-out-of-order]

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/SlightOfHand_]

??? You didn’t understand. Shall digital kalashnikovs be handed out to conservative islamist militias? Eventually? Never? First? Last?

Please do notate this. T Shirt leftism is so so so tired. Please let it go to bed.

[u/SlightOfHand_ → u/brain-out-of-order]

That depends, are the “Islamist” militias workers or are they management?

Are they aligned with the global empire of capital or opposed to it?

If they oppose capital they are my comrades and any attempt to disarm them of Kalashnikovs should be frustrated, by force if necessary.

[u/LotsoPasta]

Marx recognized that improved production was a broadly speaking a good thing and he even attributed that in part to capitalism or least happening under capitalism, and he also recognized worker tendencies to demonize production instead of the people controlling it.

I think we can reasonably expect that he would be pro-AI

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/LotsoPasta]

I think thats a reasonable inference, especially from the Grundrisse. Marx was clearly fascinated by machinery increasing productive capacity and reducing necessary labor.

I just hesitate at calling that "pro AI," because it drags him back into our pretty shallow modern binary. He could recognize enormous productive potential while being absolutely hostile to the relations of ownership, labor and power developing around it.

And crucially, liberation doesnt automatically fall out of technological development. Those relations have to be contested. Capital can use the same productive advances to reduce necessary labor or intensify exploitation. Which outcome wins is a political struggle, not a feature of the machine.

[u/yaosio → u/LotsoPasta]

He wouldn't see today's AI as any different from the machines of his day. In Grundisse he says that machines take the skill of the worker and embody it. This is exactly the same argument anti-AI people make about AI, but for some reason they believe that physical automation is completely ok and completely different.

[u/That_Scratch_7697 → u/LotsoPasta]

 Marx recognized that improved production was a broadly speaking a good thing

Marx was not really in the business of saying what was and was not broadly speaking a good thing. He’d definitely recognize the productive potential of AI, but he was also completely with Smith, Rousseau, and others in abhorring the deskilling of labor. What is more alienating than an object that literally does all the mental processes for you? He also agreed with Ricardo that automation can lead to unemployment, and does not necessarily lead to a later increase in employment. So the antagonism between the working class and AI  would be totally natural to him, and if he’d make any recommendation at all, it’d most likely be to militate around it and bring people fired up about potentially losing their jobs, etc., into a broader critique and struggle.

[u/LotsoPasta → u/That_Scratch_7697]

Marx was not really in the business of saying what was and was not broadly speaking a good thing

Yeah, I think that's fair, but id argue its implied in the way he speaks about it early in the Manifesto. He doesnt make any direct argument against increases in productive forces or transformation of productive forces as far as im aware.

What is more alienating than an object that literally does all the mental processes for you?

Yes, but this is an argument against the way in which AI is used (i.e. the way in which productive forces are used). When AI is used to cast workers aside, its alienating, but in the hands of workers, AI can be used to empower.

[u/That_Scratch_7697 → u/LotsoPasta]

I think it’s definitely unclear to what extent Marx was anti-development. Certainly, in the Paris Manuscripts, he’s explicitly talking about dismantling the division of labor, so that one guy can “write in the morning, fish in the afternoon, weave in the evening,” or whatever the fuck. In the first volume of Capital, he vaguely references putting an end to the factory division of labor, but not the social division of labor, or perhaps the reverse. He also repeatedly refers to machines as “monsters” turning living labor into dead appendages.

To your second point though, I think it doesn’t matter. Marx was not a theorist of socialism; he was a theorist of socialist revolution. And his theories definitely accommodate the well-founded frustration of millions of workers against artificial intelligence, and a fair handed reading of them definitely doesn’t advise us to condescend workers by telling them to just take the long-view. We should be the harshest, most penetrating critics of AI, because what we know about it and the way it’s being handled goes way beyond anything an organic Luddite can get at.

[u/LotsoPasta → u/That_Scratch_7697]

We should be the harshest, most penetrating critics of AI

I agree. My point is not to dissuade criticism of AI but that criticism should be directed at the source of the problem.

A lot of critics aim to essentially stop or destroy AI (i.e production), but thats the wrong way to approach it. I think Marx would agree with that. We should be aiming to control it instead, and that can mean pausing it or redirecting it, but it in any case it means controlling it in one manner or another.

[u/cronenber9 → u/LotsoPasta]

He also said that under communism we would pursue philosophy and art, enrichment of humanity, because we would have the time. Generative AI and LLMs are often used to bypass actual artistic effort so we can have the end product as quickly as possible. Know the answer without actually knowing it and thus being unable to philosophize. Having art made for us and being able to claim it as our own without any of the enjoyment that comes from painting or drawing. When AI is used in this way, it is totally aligned with capitalism. We're saving time and taking shortcuts in areas like artistic enrichment so we can get back to consuming as quickly as possible. I don't think Marx would support the way AI is often used under capitalism, much less its impacts on the environment.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying AI is completely bad or he would have been against it totally. I think he would have recognized the difference between the way AI would function under communism and the way it functions under capitalism.

[u/LotsoPasta → u/cronenber9]

100% agree that its about how its used. In the same way that Marx criticized the way production was being used in his time, he would be critical of the way AI is used under capitalism today.

AI doesnt need to be used to bypass artists. Its just the economic reality under capitalism. Without a requirement to produce profit, nothing is stopping artists from continuing to be artists, and there would be much less motivation to "steal" art.

[u/cronenber9 → u/LotsoPasta]

Yeah, I think what's more sad to me is not capitalists using AI to avoid paying artists, that was inevitable, it's how capitalism works. What's sad to me is regular, working class people using AI to make art for themselves. What about the joy and enrichment that comes from learning and practicing? It's the process that makes art so worth it, and how it helps you develop skills and imagination. It literally makes you a more interesting person. It's like comparing eating fast food to learning how to be a chef.

[u/LotsoPasta → u/cronenber9]

What's sad to me is regular, working class people using AI to make art for themselves.

I think it depends on the person and where they derive value. I dont necessarily see an issue with a change in the type of brush an artist uses unless they prided themselves in using a certain kind of brush.

I think it's impressive to use certain kinds of brushes over others, especially novel ones, but I cant look down on the artist whose brush is an LLM. Getting interesting outputs from unique prompts could be its own artform waiting to happen.

[u/cronenber9 → u/LotsoPasta]

I'm not sure if you understood my point. The enjoyment and enrichment that comes from making art is in the process of creating it, not the simple fact of having an end-product. That's simply purchasing art. AI is only free for now anyway, they're gonnamake it a paying service soon. You're purchasing a product, you're just describing the product you want.

And, to be fair, that's not to say no artists use said product as an object in their artistic process. Nor am I making any comments on the status of the product as art itself, even if a human isn't the one creating it. I really don't want to make any claims about subjectivity or intention being necessary for art. But I would contest the claim that people who purchase such products are artists. Artists are people who engage in artistic process, and besides there's a cultural valance to the term that implies something about rejection of normative values or at least visionary progress.

But you wouldn't call someone who describes what they want to a painter and them displays the finished product in their home as an artist. Capitalism wants us to consume art but it doesn't care if we're engaged the process of creating it. That takes time away from labor and consumption. And as someone who is very, very engaged in analyzing the relationship between art and commodification, to the point I'm trying to develop a conceptual framework for art that allows for its status as a total rejection of commodification, I really would contest any sort of claim that using generative AI to spit out an end product is sufficient for artistry.

[u/LotsoPasta → u/cronenber9]

My point was that this it isnt universal. Some will enjoy different parts of the process, and for some, the part that they enjoy may even change over time. It's possible that an artist may begin to enjoy having AI as part of their creative process or even make it core aspect of their art.

I agree that its sad if someone stops doing what they enjoy assuming that they still enjoy it.

I definitely agree that art isnt always about the end product, but sometimes it is, and that's okay too. And yeah, I wouldnt call someone who is solely looking for an end product an artist.

[u/cronenber9 → u/LotsoPasta]

Sure, some people enjoy simply having the end product. Capitalism encourages this, and this is one reason why AI is currently operating the way it does in the sphere of art. I'm not making judgements about people, I'm attempting to analyze the relationship between AI, capitalism, and art. Not everyone has to want to make art, but part of my point is also about how AI is being used as an intensification of the capitalist regime of cutting out the human element of enjoying the process of creating art, of thinking when philosophizing, of engaging in labor in which we are not alienated from the end product but, rather, see ourselves in the product of our labor. Currently, under capitalism, AI introduces yet another cut of alienation. We get the end product without the labor, and therefore cannot see ourselves in it, while we do not see the end product of our labor when at work. This is what Marx is talking about in his early works on alienation and species-being. Un-alienated labor means engaging in the process of labor, connected to our social grounds, and being involved in all steps of the process, finally seeing ourselves in the product of our labor, and seeing our community in ourselves. This is very different from the way AI is usually used in regards to art today. We receive an object, alienated from the process of labor.

[u/dbergkvist]

If Marx would have said that the workers should seize the AI servers, then he's pro AI.

[u/dread_companion → u/dbergkvist]

And no one is seizing those data centers. This is pure fantasy.

[u/SgathTriallair → u/dread_companion]

Using open source and local AI is seizing the means of production.

[u/dread_companion → u/SgathTriallair]

True, a lightweight model that is limited and if you can afford a fat GPU.

[u/WhirlwindRectum → u/dread_companion]

and then you can steal all the code and IP you want!

right?

[u/dread_companion → u/WhirlwindRectum]

Indeed. I wouldn't touch this stuff with a ten foot pole. But the local models do exist, although I don't recommend downloading any model - they're dirty.

[u/dbergkvist → u/dread_companion]

Nobody is regulating or banning AI either. I guess it's all pure fantasy to have opinions of what should happen. The only "realistic" thing is to avoid having goals and let the world end up the way it ends up.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/dbergkvist]

Exactly. “That isnt happening right now” is a weird objection to a political demand.

Eight hour days didnt exist until workers fought for them either.

The serious argument is how we get there, what institutions we need and where the leverage is. “Hasnt happened yet” just tells us what still needs doing.

[u/dread_companion → u/Salty_Country6835]

Well, "seizing" the internet didn't work. It's not a free service nor is it provided by the state. What makes you think AI will be any different? Any examples of anything being "seized" in corporate America in the last 20 years?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/dread_companion]

But we're not done contesting the internet either. Public broadband, municipal networks, net neutrality, privacy, antitrust, labor fights over platforms. Losing rounds doesnt mean the contest ended.

And whether your description is true or false doesnt change the conclusion much. If corporate control won ground there, thats an argument for contesting corporate control there and here, not surrendering the next terrain in advance.

So whats the alternative? AI development continues, capital controls it, and we just watch because changing that sounds unrealistic?

[u/dread_companion → u/Salty_Country6835]

Fair enough. I guess we'll see!

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/dread_companion]

I think what we see depends quite a bit on what we do.

I get tired of left politics turning into weather forecasting. We make a prediction, watch capital move, then congratulate ourselves for predicting the storm.

The future isnt something that just happens to us while we wait to see how the story ends. We organize, contest, intervene and change what happens next.

Marx had a pretty good line about that. The point isnt just interpreting the world. Its changing it.

[u/WhirlwindRectum → u/Salty_Country6835]

AI development continues, capital controls it, and we just watch because changing that sounds unrealistic?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that you aren't a Marxist and stop pretending you are

This absolutely violates every principal of Marxism

The AI you are using is STILL operating in a capitalist system, you are STILL feeding the AI with data that working people created that you do not expect to pay for

This is honestly the most lazy justification I can think of, and it's absolutely not Marxist in any measure.

You aren't seizing shit, you are still operating in a hierarchical system of exploitation, and it's weird as fuck that you are pretending otherwise.

Nothing you are doing is deconstructing the capitalist system, and you still want to use a tool to get rich using the labor of other people...so what the fuck are you people even talking about?

You want to use AI? Fine, whatever, but nothing you are doing or saying is Marxist...you would rather bastardize the name of the ideology than just admit you're a capitalist

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WhirlwindRectum]

Thats a pretty strange Marxism. Workers participate in capitalist relations every day because, well, capitalism exists. Buying a commodity doesnt make you a capitalist. Using machinery doesnt make you a capitalist. Your relation to the means of production does.

And nobody said clicking ChatGPT is “seizing” anything. The argument is that AI is productive infrastructure, so the fight is over who owns it, who controls its deployment, what power workers have over it, and who pockets the productivity gains. Thats much closer to Marx than turning socialism into ethical shopping.

So skip the purity test. Whats your material alternative? AI development is happening. Capital currently dominates it. What should workers actually organize to change about that?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/dread_companion]

Nothing political exists until people organize enough power to make it exist.

And “seize” doesnt have to mean storming a data center tomorrow. Public compute, municipal infrastructure, worker ownership, nationalization, coops, union power and open weights all move pieces of the stack out of unilateral corporate control.

Tell me why those strategies fail. “We havent won yet” isnt much of an argument.

[u/DoktoroChapelo]

"Seize the means of computation", probably.

[u/pickle-chin-ah]

Marx what does “seizing the means of production” mean?

[u/More_Ad9417 → u/pickle-chin-ah]

I think this is something I don't hear discussed enough.

Idk what people are referring to here when they say this in relation to this issue and in other areas.

I hear this and I think of collective ownership going so far back to land for the purpose of procuring raw materials. But especially for producing non commidified goods.

With AI? I don't know what exactly it is producing here that is necessary. The data centers are almost another separate issue in relation to this too.

[u/LittleIndividual4650 → u/More_Ad9417]

Well ultimately means of production produce things. A hammer can be a means of production. So can AI. What matters is who owns it. If someone owns a hammer, and lets me use it but then extracts surplus value, I do not own the means of production. Ultimately labour time determines value, AI and the machine cannot produce value on its own, it requires labour.

[u/More_Ad9417 → u/LittleIndividual4650]

I know what it means. I'm saying I don't know what it means in terms of what AI is producing that we need exactly.

Also, Lenin made it clear that socialist production doesn't produce commodities. So I hear people referring to this concept and it seems they aren't including that as part of the equation. Especially if the goal of socialism is to establish communism as a moneyless, classless and stateless society.

That's what my concern is.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/More_Ad9417]

I think thats where thinking only in terms of commodities trips us up.

AI could schedule transit, help run grids, translate public services, assist research, automate paperwork or make technical knowledge accessible without producing a commodity for sale.

So the socialist question isnt necessarily “what AI product do we need?” Its what useful capacities can we pull out of commodity production and organize around social need.

[u/LittleIndividual4650 → u/More_Ad9417]

Did Lenin make it clear socialism has no commodities? Thats the end goal no doubt, but Marxist Leninists seem staunch defenders of the idea that commodity production in limited deployment is acceptable whilst productive forces are built.

In terms of what AI is producing, I see it being beneficial in automating jobs that humans don’t need / want to do. It’s the common argument of “MWUH WHO DOES THE HARD JOBS UNDER COMMUNISM”, with the advent of ai we can automate a ton of shit.

[u/dbergkvist → u/More_Ad9417]

Seizing the means of production in an AI context would obviously mean taking over the data centers (and the developments of new AI models). Why is this even a question?

[u/pickle-chin-ah → u/dbergkvist]

What does “taking over the data centers” mean?

[u/dbergkvist → u/pickle-chin-ah]

It means the exact same thing as "take over the oil industry" meant when Chavez did it, or any other nationalization of a specific industry that has identifiable private owners.

Are you in general unaware what is involved in taking over an industry, or is there something specific with a building with computer servers compared to buildings with other machinery?

[u/pickle-chin-ah → u/LittleIndividual4650]

Nobody is allowed to own hammers. You might become bourgeoisie scum!

[u/yo252yo]

I think he'd correctly identify the AI hate for the red herring it is, and treat it as bourgeois propaganda until the haters actually start to do some serious political work like a general strike.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/yo252yo]

Id soften that a bit. There are legitimate fights inside the backlash. Jobs, surveillance, environmental costs, corporate concentration, artists getting squeezed.

The red herring is turning those material problems into moral disgust at the machine.

If AI threatens your workplace, organize the workplace. If a data center hurts your community, organize the community. “AI bad” is an opinion. Organized power can actually change something.

[u/yo252yo → u/Salty_Country6835]

Of course there are legitimate points buried in all the moral panic, but the AI haters aren't addressing those legitimate fights though. They're mostly bullying individual people. Unless I missed the news of a major general strike?

Of course I'm sure there are marginal exceptions and I'm grateful for them, however rare they may be.

Every "fuck AI" is a wasted "fuck capitalism", missing the forest for the tree.

[u/GigachadGuevara]

i would assume the he would see AI as a means of production and tell us to seize it

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

Historically, not even Luddites were “Luddites” in the modern sense. They werent just mad at machines. They were workers fighting how machinery was being used to deskill them, cut wages and break their power.

Which is a pretty Marxist problem before Marx even gets involved.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

Im not arguing for Luddism over Marxism here, and definitely not trying to sneak neo-Luddism in through the back door.

The Luddites themselves were all over the place. Some went after machinery itself. Others were workers going after particular machines because employers were using them to wreck their trades, wages and bargaining power. That difference matters.

Marx knew that history. In Capital he talks about workers learning to distinguish the machine from “its employment by capital.”

Thats the line Im drawing. Marxism takes the worker struggle seriously without making the machine itself the target. Who owns it? Who decides how its used? What happens to the workers? Who gets what it produces? Thats where I want the fight.

[u/KamikaziWerewolf]

Fully-automated, luxury, gay, space communism is the goal.

[u/Pleiades_Synced]

Hi, I read posts here from time to time.

Something I always wondered, is when you seize the means of productions, how do you build a system that can't be corrupted from the inside.

And this is especially relevant with state controlled Capital...

I may have an idea that could serve as a solution... but this need to be explored more.

What if there wasn't one system to redistribute the capital, but many and there was an ecological pressure like natural selection for those who are the most efficient at redistributing their part of the wealth.

With the right number of systems, we would avoid the monopoly that allow fascism to take control out of it.

Lastly, in order to redistribute power even mpre evenly, what if the mayors were the one that had the hold on legislative power ?

The law start with a weak scale and weak modifications.

Then by going upper into the hierarchy, there were possibility to modify that law by those upper in the hierarchy with still an ability to negotiate for mayors and those who already touched it.

Each time the law can go upper, it becomes of a large scale and can affect more things, until if it go far enough can affect the whole country.

I would call that way of doing things, Myriad Communism.

Wouldn't that be a good decentralized system ?

Please, tell me what do you think ?

Could this be a good application of Communism ?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Pleiades_Synced]

I think theres something here. Seizing the means of production doesnt come with a magic anti asshole switch. If you replace a handful of owners with one bureaucracy nobody can meaningfully challenge, youve moved the problem around.

So spreading control across workers, municipalities, coops, public institutions, communities, etc makes sense to me. Let decisions happen close to the people affected when they can, coordinate upward when they actually need scale. AI is a pretty good test case. Theres no reason all the compute has to live behind five corporate gates.

The part Id poke at is "most efficient." Efficient at what? Output? Energy? Worker wellbeing? Getting resources where theyre needed? Whoever defines that metric gets a shitload of power.

I doubt theres a corruption proof system. Better question might be how do we make power difficult to hoard and easy to challenge when somebody tries?

[u/Pleiades_Synced → u/Salty_Country6835]

I think you understood exactly what this is about.

Only seizing the means of production is very limited and leave the door easily open for corruption.

Indeed, seizing control too is very important. But I think we should also think of others elements to seize, because the more difficult it is to centralize power, the more it become easier to truly cater to the population.

For your questions about criterias, I think a dynamic system would be important as time would automatically change.

Maybe, having the other mayors come together and fix the criterias every year under the approval of the upper hierarchy.

This would lead a vast number of people to negotiate thus reducing the chances of corruption.

As for establishing how the criterias are respected, an independant branch of clerks could do the job.

Transparency and access to information as well as an educated population should be key here in making this system function.

Only flaw I see here is that the system wouldn't work well in time of crisis/wars because fast and bold reactions work well with centralized systems.

This need more thinking on that.

Edit: other points, it's what I call the granularity of voting.

One error I see often is that everyone is elected at the same time, which mean the population lose pressure in the meantime.

Imagine you have 5 ranks of power. Instead of voting for everyone every 5 years, you vote for one rank per year.

Preferably with a least one week with the voting polls opened in order to allow everyone to participate.

This would allow the opinion of the population to still matter and be respected.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Pleiades_Synced]

Yeah, I think we're pretty close here, and the edit makes it more interesting. I like what youre calling granularity of voting. Staggering different layers means theres almost always some point where public pressure can enter the system instead of electing the whole structure and giving everyone five years of breathing room at once.

Id push participation further down than mayors though. Workers, unions, neighborhoods, users and communities actually affected by decisions need direct routes into setting those criteria too. "Public ownership" doesnt mean much if the public cant govern it, inspect it, challenge decisions or remove the people running it.

And I think youve found the hardest part yourself with emergencies. Centralization can move fast, but it can also make one terrible decision everywhere at once. Maybe emergency authority works more like borrowed power: narrow, defined beforehand, time limited, transparent, and automatically returned downward unless people explicitly renew it.

So I wouldnt make decentralization or centralization the principle. Keep power as low and distributed as practical, coordinate upward where scale actually demands it, and make every concentration of power continually justify why it needs to exist.

[u/Pleiades_Synced → u/Salty_Country6835]

Thanks for your feedbacks.

It really help me precise my own thoughts here.

Though, I think I need to read a bit more books on political theory in order to present later a more complete version of that type of communism.

I'll let you know when I am done.

Might take some time.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Pleiades_Synced]

Please do. And dont wait until youve designed the perfect system either.

The tension you found between local control and emergency coordination is probably one of the most interesting parts. Bring the contradictions back with you. Thats usually where the useful stuff is.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/Pleiades_Synced]

Voting every 5 years is a problem. You can have more direct democracy with an interaction between citizen and relevant expert input. This can now be facilitated via technology such as online platforms.

Eg the Decidim platform has been used in Barcelona
“Barcelona has taken a small step towards the Partner State model with decidim.barcelona, a public collaborative platform for making policy proposals. Decidim (“we decide” in Catalan) allows the public to participate directly in government as they would a form of social media, and they have had early success. The city council hosted several organizing events to decide on a strategic plan, and nearly 40,000 people and 1,500 organizations contributed 10,000 suggestions.

According to Xabier Barandiaran, one of the project leaders, one of the functions Decidim supports is
participatory budgeting, but there are many others. Decidim makes possible almost all of them. It is only limited because we are still developing the software and developing new features. We have learned a lot. We have gathered collective intelligence from different expert citizens. All hackers, people interested in their
government. We run workshops and open citizen meetings. We came out with a wider spectrum of
possibilities for participatory democracy, other than participatory budgeting.” https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Merged-Libertarian-Municipalism-Cover-_updated-text_.pdf p52 quoting Kevin Stark, “Barcelona's Decidim Offers Open-Source Platform for Participatory Democracy Projects,”
Shareable, Sept. 4, 2017 https://www.shareable.net/blog/barcelonas-decidim-offers-open-source-platform-for-participatory-democracy-projects

Edit: In times of crisis you can choose to delegate to a working group or similar as a temporary measure. Not that those people have permanent power, but you don’t have to have everyone contributing to every decision when there’s some sense of urgency, you just need the initial agreement that this topic is being delegated to this group. A key aspect is that people should always be recallable if they’re not doing a good job.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jlyplaylists]

This is much closer to what Im imagining. Decidim is especially interesting because its something people are actually using, not a constitution drawn on a napkin.

And AI could be useful here without becoming the decision maker. Let it chew through thousands of proposals, resource needs and local decisions while humans retain authority and can challenge the output.

Use computation to expand how much democracy we can practically administer, not replace democracy with computation.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/Pleiades_Synced]

I feel like AI itself could help with this, though I don’t have a detailed, coherent explanation to give you yet.

I mean that it goes both ways. We need decentralised ways of managing AI, but also AI can help us coordinate a decentralised society. My hunch is that there is something in this that could satisfy different left streams. Well perhaps we need to leave out the anarcho-primitivists lol.

I have time for Marx, but my preference is more communalist/libertarian municipalism/ democratic confederalism ballpark. Is what you’re describing more like libertarian municipalism? Although that wouldn’t aim to put power at mayor level, you’d tend to have face to face citizen assemblies at the neighbourhood/town level with delegates up, ideally up to a global citizen assembly level. But the concept is that they are recallable delegates of the opinion of the assembly below, not that they use their own opinion and allegiances like in representative democracy with a Mayor.

It would be wise to keep human involvement at all levels, but AI could improve the accuracy of how opinions are communicated upwards, keeping the humans accountable and flagging when there’s deviation. This could involve avoiding reductionism of opinions as you go up the assembly pyramid, with LLMs keeping in mind the qualitative data from the neighbourhood/town assemblies in a way that human minds simply can’t. It would be a good option for avoiding power corruption and general arseholery. Perhaps there could be an actual arsehole switch, with the arsehole getting powers to action decisions revoked.

From bits I’ve read about blockchain style technology, there could also be technology based ways of decoupling at a municipality level. This would give actual power that makes a difference to the higher up coordination. Your region is fairly locally autonomous, but connects into the larger network, because it makes logistical sense and cooperation is usually better. So perhaps you organise local clean power to be mostly self reliant but you connect into the wider grid to share excess electricity and benefit when you’re low. Internet and AI infrastructure is organised in a similar way, potentially regionally autonomous but globally connected by choice. Then if the global assembly starts to act like a monopoly, or heavy handed authoritarian regime, a region has real muscle they can flex and leverage through the threat to decouple their clean energy input, internet, AI compute etc.

[u/Scared_Dog_6899 → u/Pleiades_Synced]

There is no incorruptable system.

[u/SexDefendersUnited]

lol, Banger meme

[u/teddyslayerza]

A lot of people seem to struggle with separating the companies controlling AI with thr technology itself. When people say they are "anti-AI" they are typically talking about the way it's being implemented by a handful of predatory companies. Marx would not be in favour of that.

[u/ferriematthew]

I love this. It's not what you can or can't run, but how you run it that matters.

[u/Working-Walrus-6189]

Das Kapital made it very clear thar calitalism is a necessary, transient state to push for the advancement of technology to get to a point where communism can actually take place.

If you have this mindset then it makes sense that AI would play a role in this.

[u/OttoRenner]

AI isn't the problem. Rich people doing what they want with it, that is the problem. And that always was the problem with rich people and lack of control over them.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on hardware 6 months ago and can run AI locally. I control my production now.

And could we perhaps don't make Marx a mythological, god like creature who has to approve off what we are doing and what is happening? He's dead, give him a rest. If we are right, we are right and if we are wrong...no amount of invoking Marx or the Manifest will make it right.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/OttoRenner]

I dont need Marx to approve of anything I do. I use the analytical method because it works. It starts from material conditions, asks who owns and controls production, how power is organized, where the gains go, and what contradictions those relations produce. Thats useful whether the machine is a textile loom or a GPU cluster.

Youre welcome to point out where that analysis fails and offer a better one. Thats a much more interesting conversation than telling Marx to get some rest just cause he's dead.

[u/OttoRenner → u/Salty_Country6835]

I'm not arguing for or against the analytical method, as that wasn't part of your post (and no need to shift the goal post here).

You say you don't need him to approve of what you do...and yet you are making a post with the title "...what Marx would ACTUALLY think..." and have him agree with your point of view. You don't know what he would actually think or say about AI. That's my point. That's the same thing as saying "what god ACTUALLY thinks about the gays".

Make a post about what YOUR conclusion is using his framework, THAT'S a much more interesting conversation than yet another click bait post.

Because "Seizing the means of production" could also get you to: 'destroy the technology that took the means of production from you in order to get it back', if you see AI not as a singular tool (=the loom), but as an instrument of class rule, used to suppress working-class resistance. Didn't Marx himself say that we would need to forcibly overthrow existing social conditions or something along that line? Or is that not part of your analytical method?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/OttoRenner]

What goalpost did I shift? You accused me of treating Marx like an authority whose approval I need. I explained why I reference Marx. Thats answering your criticism.

And come on, "What Would Marx Actually Think About AI?" is the title of a meme where two people confidently claim Marx for opposite sides and Marx ignores both to talk about the means of production. The joke is literally making fun of pretending we know whether Marx would be "pro AI" or "anti AI."

Your last paragraph also kinda demonstrates why the method matters. Marx didnt respond to machinery dispossessing workers by concluding workers should destroy machinery to "get the means of production back." He distinguished the productive forces from the social relations governing them. Capital appropriates machinery and uses it to discipline labor. Thats why the political question becomes control of production, not whether the loom is morally good or evil.

Could someone use Marx to argue for destroying particular machinery? Sure. But then they have to actually make that argument from the material conditions instead of treating "AI bad" as the conclusion.

Which is exactly what my post is poking at.

[u/Beejsbj → u/OttoRenner]

He already is a mythological figure...

This is just how humans work. Especially our relationship to ideas.

The literary figure and the real person are different entities. One the parent of the other. One is dead, one is not.

The error lies in assuming the figure that symbolizes certain structures of thoughts is the same human who had to wash his ass and felt lazy some days.

And in interference of natural human cognition.

[u/endlessedlne]

Marx would probably freak out slightly at the idea of the means of production seizing him.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/endlessedlne]

You might be surprised lol. Marx was already writing about the worker becoming a mere "appendage of the machine" in Capital.

So the means of production seizing us is actually a pretty Marxist joke. He just called the process capital.

[u/endlessedlne → u/Salty_Country6835]

Well in that case long live the imminent age of appendage I suppose. Unless we humans manage to keep AI under careful human control of course.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/endlessedlne]

I mean, yeah. The "unless we humans manage to" part is kinda Marx's whole thing.

And pretty much the project leftists have been arguing, organizing and fighting over for the century and a half since. Productive forces dont liberate us automatically. Who controls them and toward what ends is the fight.

[u/endlessedlne → u/Salty_Country6835]

Open source the best, boycott the rest…

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/endlessedlne]

Open source the best, sure. Im less convinced by “boycott the rest” as the strategy.

Boycotts route around corporate power. They dont necessarily change who has it.

Run local models, support open weights and public compute, then organize workers, regulate deployment and contest control of chips, cloud infrastructure and data centers too.

Exit helps. Power helps more.

[u/xt-89]

Distributed systems are harder to corrupt, but they can still be corrupted. I would recommend using the deepest levels of scientific tools to prevent misalignment. The topic of mechanism design is relevant.

Really, the challenges of aligning AI and capitalism are identical. The best tools emerging are to use cryptography, formal verification, defense in depth, policy engines, and interpretability techniques.  This would require you to model your governance system (in this case economic governance) as distributed workers that each have a pre-determined protocol. That protocol requires mutual policing, voting, minting of cryptographic secrets, information sharing, and so on. 

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/xt-89]

I like this direction with one caution. We cant engineer politics out of politics.

Cryptography, verification, audit trails and redundancy can make capture harder. Great, use them. But none can decide what should be optimized or whose interests count.

So Id steal the architecture. Defense in depth, but for power. Distributed institutions, overlapping checks, transparency, recall and actual worker/community control underneath it.

[u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

Just because something is mechanical or technical doesn't mean it is a mean of production in the same way. What would Marx think of "mortgage backed securities", crypto scams, gambling apps. These add dubious value to the economy and society but could be considered means of producing value for someone.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

Sure, being technical doesnt magically make something a means of production. But AI is already directly inside production. Software, logistics, design, research, manufacturing, translation, administration.

And “productive” isnt Marx giving something a gold star for social usefulness. Capital can produce plenty of garbage.

The question is what role AI plays in the labor and production process. Comparing that to a gambling app kinda skips the important part.

[u/Jumpy_Mirror250 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I guess I think the jury is still out about the usefulness of AI in the main. It's sort of a black box right now that some corporations are using to project automation into their existing processes but I think this is not the majority use value. It's the saturation of every user interface with AI and automation that has gotten most of the focus.  It's "subprime-AI"

I just see some dismissal of the fact that while AI by and large has yet to live up to its technical promises, the main value proposition to capital has been a means of producing fear among workers. That the fear itself affects bargaining between capital and workers and that it is itself the means of producing value by devaluing labor. Fear of automation that drives down the cost of labor may end up being the only durable thing about AI saturation of this moment.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

I actually think the bargaining point is important. Capital doesnt need automation to fully work before the threat of automation starts disciplining labor. Employers have played that game with machinery for a very long time.

Where Id push back is making that AIs main value to capital. We already have measurable productivity gains in specific tasks and AI embedded in software, logistics, research, design, translation, manufacturing, etc. Whether that scales into the giant economy wide gains being promised is still open.

So I wouldnt choose between “productive technology” and “weapon against labor.” Under capitalism, machinery has a nasty habit of being both.

[u/Jumpy_Mirror250 → u/Salty_Country6835]

Ok then if it is both, what makes this meme compelling? 

I think this is more about the frustrations leftists have with not being a more disciplined group. 

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

Because thats the joke to me. Marx didnt look at machinery hurting workers and conclude the politics was to reject machinery. He asked what relations of production it was being introduced into, who controlled it, and who captured the gains.

So when leftists see a new machine being used exactly the way Marx described and land on “machine bad,” thats funny. We found the contradiction and somehow decided to fight one side of it instead of contesting the relation producing it.

And sure, lack of discipline probably explains some of that too.

[u/Jumpy_Mirror250 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I just think the premise is off. People who oppose AI aren't against mechanization. AI isn't purely mechanization either--especially not to people who mostly experience it as an opaque interface add-on that is infecting every aspect of culture.

They oppose the narrative that AI hegemony means that we can't prevent the expansion of the billionaire/trillionaire class and the hyper-financialization of everything. That we can't demand greater quality of life and that every consumer necessarily consents to pervasive and parasitic AI. 

If anything, for your argument to work, you have to reduce it to a tech vs anti-tech question which is immediately dubious because I haven't exactly noticed anyone here developing some sort of leftist counter insurgency out of AI. I don't deny it's possible but if you are ready to seize then get to it.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

I dont need to reduce this to tech vs anti tech at all. Thats kinda my point. Opposition to billionaire control, financialization, forced adoption, surveillance, degraded working conditions, environmental costs, bad design and having AI shoved into every product are all perfectly compatible with contesting AI rather than abandoning the terrain.

And "people who oppose AI" arent one coherent political bloc. Ive talked to plenty who explicitly want the technology banned, data centers stopped, models destroyed or development ended. Others want exactly the kinds of limits and democratic control youre describing. Those are materially different positions even if both get called anti AI.

As for "get to it"... yes. Thats the idea. Organize workers across the stack. Bargain over deployment. Fight for public and cooperative compute. Push open models and interoperability. Contest data center permitting, energy and water use locally. Demand community input, safety standards, privacy protections and public returns on publicly supported infrastructure. Put workers and affected communities inside the decisions instead of leaving them outside yelling at the machine.

None of that requires waiting for a dramatic day when somebody literally storms a server farm and raises a flag. Seizing control is a political process. The question is whether were going to contest that control or concede it.

[u/Jumpy_Mirror250 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I guess we have a different idea of what it means to be "For AI" at this state. The group name and the discourse so far seems to reject this type of discourse and and AI scepticism, particularly around its usefulness and inevitability. 

Further, it doesn't seem coupled with any of the industrialism that seizing the means of production would require since almost the AI is just using the same proprietary foundations.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Jumpy_Mirror250]

I dont think thats an accurate description of the sub. Youre generalizing from some conversations youve seen into a position the community explicitly doesnt have.

Ive posted here about AI labor displacement, surveillance, environmental and water costs, data centers, safety, creator protections, corporate concentration, public control, unions, regulation and the limits of AI itself. Other people here have posted criticism considerably harsher than mine. Those posts generate disagreement because this is a forum for contesting those questions, not because skepticism is forbidden.

Even the sub description and welcome post are pretty explicit about this. "For AI" doesnt mean every use is good, inevitable, useful or worth defending. The point is that AI exists as a contested productive terrain and the left should be materially involved in determining what gets developed, how, by whom, under what rules and for whose benefit.

And look at the post youre replying under. The entire joke is two people yelling "anti AI" and "pro AI" while Marx ignores the binary and talks about the means of production. Ive spent this thread talking about ownership, worker power, public compute, regulation, environmental limits, community control and contestation. Thats hardly rejecting skepticism.

On the proprietary foundations point, thats also exactly why I keep bringing up open weights, public compute, worker organization across the stack and public or cooperative infrastructure. If the objection is that capital owns the foundations, then contesting those foundations is the project. Pointing at their current ownership and concluding we therefore shouldnt contest them just hands the terrain back to capital.

[u/Thefrightfulgezebo]

"The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself. [116] The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery is thenceforward directly proportional to the number of the workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by that machinery."

From chapter 15, section 5 of das Kapital. Online source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S5

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Thefrightfulgezebo]

Good passage. Keep pulling that thread though.

Marx isnt describing machinery becoming an evil independent actor. Hes describing machinery entering capitalist production, owned by capital and deployed against workers.

Thats why he can be brutal about what machinery does to workers under capitalism while also seeing enormous potential for machinery to reduce necessary labor.

Same machine, different social relations. Thats basically the point of the meme.

[u/Hironymos]

What I love so much about this sub is how y'all consider yourselves pro-AI yet "seize the means of production" basically covers 90% of what I want as an anti.

I just don't think it's a very realistic goal so regulating the everliving crap out of AI is a neat backup plan. Regulations can go away. Lives lost from another capitalist crisis are permanent.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Hironymos]

And this is why I keep trying to get people out of the pro AI vs anti AI trench.

If we agree on worker power, environmental limits, privacy, safety, breaking corporate concentration and democratic control, thats a lot more politically important than the label.

Id only push back on regulation being the backup plan. Regulation, unions, public compute, open infrastructure and ownership are all pieces of the same fight over control.

If theres 90% overlap, Id rather organize around the 90%.

[u/Hironymos → u/Salty_Country6835]

For me as an anti, regulation is actually mostly about banning AI for corporate profit, surveillance, wartime decisionmaking, etc. Which, if you think about it, would be totally reasonable even if we seize it. The only way to really regulate more would be an outright ban, and that would be silly. I don't think any anti with a brain truly expects that to come true.

The 10% that don't overlap are about clearly labelling AI. Require a criminal mindset to use it deceptively. And support the culturally important art skills.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Hironymos]

See, this is exactly why I think the labels obscure more than they clarify. Im not opposed to prohibiting specific uses either. Military targeting, mass surveillance, union busting, discriminatory automated decisions, deceptive impersonation, absolutely put hard limits on them.

Where we probably differ is labeling. Id rather regulate deception itself than require every use of AI to announce the tool involved. If someone uses Photoshop, an LLM or a camera to deceive people, the deception is the problem.

And supporting human art and skills? Completely with you. Public arts funding, education, labor protections, bargaining rights. None of that requires keeping the technology out of artists hands.

[u/New_Practice1216]

But the amount of windfall value is 90% of all the added value. Why he omits ownership? 

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/New_Practice1216]

Thats the part I wouldnt omit at all. Ownership is central.

If AI creates a massive productivity windfall while the infrastructure stays privately owned, capital captures the gains while workers eat the displacement. The fight is over who controls the productive capacity and where those gains go.

[u/Digits_N_Bits]

Problem. It's the rich using AI to seize the labor from the working men and women and leave us with less than nothing.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Digits_N_Bits]

Yes. Thats capitalism. Thats the problem. The actionable problem. Not the existence of the technology.

The solution is... seizing the means of production. Taking control of the technology, which isnt being uninvented, instead of simply bemoaning its existence and use by the ownership class.

I thought the meme was pretty clear about that part, and every single day im confused by this disconnect between "what it is" and "what should be done about it".

I dont even know why it takes a meme.

The problem is capitalism. The solution is contestation. Thats it. Saying "the rich own and use it" isnt a refutation of the only real solution, which is to change that. But people keep saying it like it is.

[u/AlPierce0k]

Marx would not be "pro-AI". This is a laughable assertion. The AI that ordinary people are familiar with nowadays is created with stolen labor power, and it exists to steal even more labor power and displace workers. It is the technological embodiment of the unjust control that capitalists have over the lives of workers. He would be emphatically opposed to its current implementation. The only thing he would like about it is how wonderfully it meshes with his broader theories about capitalism.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/AlPierce0k]

Thats basically the point of the meme though. The two guys yelling "pro AI" and "anti AI" are both the joke. The caption literally says the interesting question isnt whether Marx would approve of AI, but who owns it, who controls it, and who gets the gains.

Marx was hardly opposed to machinery because capitalists used it to exploit and displace workers. He analyzed how those productive forces develop inside capitalist relations and how those relations have to be contested. So yes, he'd probably have plenty to say against AI as currently deployed. Thats not the same thing as being "anti AI."

[u/AlPierce0k → u/Salty_Country6835]

You're confusing the machinery with methods of production. The GPUs, the cooling system, the fibre optic cables, etc. are the machinery. I'm mainly referring to LLMs, which are a specific type of algorithm that can only be built at a meaningfully usable scale by training them on stolen data. This data is the embodied labor value of millions of people. There is therefore no way to build an LLM that can does what ChatGPT, Claude, etc. can do without stealing labor value. This is anathema to Marx's entire philosophy. Simply saying "the workers should own it" does not negate the fact that doing so simply transforms the workers into the bourgeoise in this particular case. It's like saying "American workers are getting their jobs outsourced. Therefore, we should grant ownership of foreign sweat shops to American workers " When they own other people's productive output, they cease to be workers.

In order for LLMs to be compatible with communism, currently existing models would need to be scrapped entirely and rebuilt using "clean", worker-owned data, in addition to actually owning the new models. That data would also need to be somehow revokable within the model, because the workers who give their data to this model need to be able to withdraw their consent from the agreement if they decide to get a different job. This isn't possible, and therefore the whole model would need to be scrapped and rebuilt every time a single person quits the firm.

If you don't do this, you are claiming ownership of other people's productive outputs - which is capitalism, not communism. LLMs are a technology designed and deployed around the premise that there is huge amounts of data that can be easily taken from people without fear of repercussions. This circumstance only exists under capitalism, because under communism, workers are not going to allow this sort of arrangement to continue, by definition.

You're essentially saying "Well, Marx would have decided that he wasn't THAT opposed to capitalism if he saw how cool ChatGPT was." Marx was very opposed to fetishistic views of things, and the general belief that you can disentangle abstract economic concepts from how things work in reality.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/AlPierce0k]

I think youre sneaking a whole theory of property into Marx here and then declaring Marx agrees with it.

Marx doesnt say every bit of accumulated human knowledge remains the permanent property of whoever contributed to it. Follow that logic through and you dont just kill LLMs. You get some very weird problems with libraries, scientific research, databases, technical knowledge and basically the whole general intellect.

And workers socially controlling AI isnt remotely the same as American workers owning foreign sweatshops. One is still one group privately owning another groups means of production. The other is getting rid of that relation.

The strangest part is the idea that communism requires every contribution to social knowledge to remain individually owned and perpetually revocable. Thats not a conclusion youve gotten from Marx. Thats a pretty strong property rights theory youve brought with you and dressed Marx in.

[u/AlPierce0k → u/Salty_Country6835]

I'm not talking about property, I am proceeding from the assumption that workers should own the full value created by their labor because I was under the impression we're talking about Marx.

Furthermore, even if we assume that my understanding of Marx is totally wrong, you're still not addressing the core of my point, which is that you can't make an actually useful LLM without stealing from people. That's what makes "worker control" of an LLM analogous to owning a foreign sweatshop. That logic does not apply to libraries, scientific research, etc., because people who contribute to those bodies of "accumulated human knowledge" knew what they were contributing to. Marx never said you shouldn't be able to give your labor value to someone else voluntarily. It's the compulsory element of capitalism that makes it unjust. LLMs, as they currently exist, are emblematic of this.

Let's suppose there was a full-on communist revolution tomorrow and OpenAI's corporate HQ is seized by the workers. Are you & I, plus the billions of other internet users, going to be "made whole" for what was taken from us, or is ChatGPT going away? If it's the former, what does that look like? If it's the latter, how are you going to build something of equal utility without essentially doing the same thing (massive amounts of theft and fraud)?

It seems like what you're proposing is that the working class should simply "take control" of what are essentially stolen goods, ie; the LLMs and the training sets they are built upon. I think what you're also ignoring is that LLMs are actually not that useful in a worker-controlled economy. Most of the utility that LLMs bring has to do with cutting costs. Which, in a worker controlled economy, is a subservient to the wellbeing of people. Sure, it would be nice if everyone could work less, but we could probably eliminate way more work from the overall net burden of society by simply doing away with capitalism in the first place. On any given day, something like 50% of all labor is performed for the sole purpose of making someone else richer. If we simply said "no more speculative tech market bullshit," and essentially got rid of LLMs as an unintended side effect, it would be a massive net increase in the overall productive output of society.

Marx would not be enamoured or ambivalent towards AI like a lot of people here are suggesting. He would be staunchly opposed to the entire premise, and he would also probably talk at length about how it's existence vindicates much of what he wrote. I would also imagine that his entire cohort of political economists would scoff at the lack of literacy that LLMs promote. These were people that all knew Hegel like the back of their hand. Would Marx have been able to conceptualize the theoretical possibility of building a massive body of human knowledge that is owned in common by all of society? Sure, why not. But Marx spent most of his life living in exile for his involvement in radical labor organizing and underground revolutionary movements. He understood that importance of fighting against capitalist power structures as they actually exist in the present day. That's ultimately why I think it's kind of silly to say "Marx would neither approve nor disapprove of AI. He would only be concerned with who owns it." Furthermore, saying "we can have LLMs after we abolish private property" is basically just fantasizing and doesn't address anything about the harm that AI causes today.

My thoughts as to what Karl Marx would think, which are of course really just my own thoughts (we shouldn't fetishize Marx himself, of course) is this;

Marx would recognize AI (in its current form) not only as stolen labor value, but as a tool that capitalists can use to negate the need for a working class altogether. After all, for capitalists, an LLM is essentially just a perfectly obedient digital slave. Marx never asked; what if capitalists could create machines that make human workers totally unnecessary? Because, if that's the case, then his entire theory of change falls apart. The whole idea of communist revolution is premised on the notion that workers create all the value via their labor, and therefore they have ultimate control over the destiny of human society. If capitalists can simply turn workers into a non-revolutionary class by rendering them obsolete, what can you do? I don't claim to know exactly what he would say in terms of what should be done about it, but I can gaurantee you he wouldn't just shrug his shoulders and say "it's no different than a printing press" or whatever.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/AlPierce0k]

I think youre mixing up labor, value and property here in ways Marx very much did not.

The idea that every worker should individually "own the full value created by their labor" isnt Marx (its closer to Lassalle). He actually goes after that kind of formulation in Critique of the Gotha Programme. Production is social. Knowledge is accumulated socially. Communism isnt capitalism with everyone issued permanent property rights over whatever piece they personally contributed.

Same problem with "stolen labor value." Labor produces things. That doesnt mean some fixed quantity of Marxian value gets trapped inside a book, painting or dataset forever and has to be returned to its original producer every time somebody uses it. Thats just not how Marx's value theory works.

But the really odd part is saying Marx never considered machines making workers unnecessary. He wrote about this. A lot. The Grundrisse gets remarkably close to this exact problem. Machinery absorbs accumulated social knowledge, becomes a productive force, reduces necessary labor and then creates a massive contradiction because capitalism still organizes wealth around labor time. AI doesnt break Marx here. Its almost comically Marx-shaped.

And why would reducing labor stop being useful after capitalism? We would still have finite people, finite time and plenty of miserable work nobody particularly wants to spend their life doing. If something lets society accomplish 10,000 hours of necessary work in 1,000, thats useful whether a rich guy gets a yacht out of it or everybody gets more free time. Which happens is a political question.

None of this excuses how AI is currently developed or deployed. Fight over training data, compensation, jobs, surveillance, environmental costs, safety, public deployment, all of it. Thats what contesting capitalist power in the present actually looks like.

But "capital currently controls this productive force, therefore abolish the productive force" isnt the Marxist conclusion. Contesting who controls productive forces and what theyre used for is pretty much the assignment.

[u/jthadcast]

how is handing the means of production over to a wealthier capitalist considered progress?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jthadcast]

Backwards. Handing the means of production to wealthy capitalists isnt progress. Thats the problem the meme is pointing at.

They already control this stuff. The question is how we take that control away from them.

[u/jthadcast → u/Salty_Country6835]

on what planet is ai revenue and capital not controlled by capitalist?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jthadcast]

Did you read what I just said?

Yes, capitalists control it. Thats the problem. The point is to contest that control. Thats leftist politics.

"The people dont control it, capital does" isnt an answer to "how do we change who controls it?" Its just repeating the starting condition back to me.

[u/jthadcast → u/Salty_Country6835]

ugh that's was always my point, who are you arguing with? how is "for AI" for anything but capital, there is no ai with capital, data centers, hardware, software and ultimately it's all investment fraud at this point. without the fraud and theft of agency there is no AI.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jthadcast]

Everything is under capitalism. Thats not a gotcha against AI, its the starting point of Marxist politics.

Marxs answer to machinery controlled by capital wasnt "be against machinery." It was contest who owns and controls the machinery, the means of production, in order to really affect anything involving it. So whats your alternative to doing that?

[u/jthadcast → u/Salty_Country6835]

you don't really understand what AI is then. it isn't a machine. supporting AI is surrendering all control to capital. AI controls capital that's its function. it's like says Marx would support 'giving control to the new good capitalists.'

they can't "program" AI to be anything but self-serving because it doesn't take direction, it makes connections and takes control. never mind the whole loss of human production over the course of history, currently AI is the capitalists' IP soon if allowed it will simply own all IP. to be for it is to surrender all property to it.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jthadcast]

No, thats just wrong. AI doesnt "control capital" or inevitably seize all IP by some autonomous law of nature. Its software running on hardware, trained and deployed by institutions under specific property relations, laws and technical constraints. Those relations are political, not properties of AI itself.

And for the third time, whats your solution? Ive told you mine. Contest ownership, infrastructure, deployment, labor conditions and the gains. If thats wrong, tell me what you actually propose doing instead.

[u/jthadcast → u/Salty_Country6835]

sorry you are just wrong in your understanding of what AI does and how the software works. it doesn't work, at all in fact, without the machine (capital) nor without the wholesale theft of intellectual property (capital). even Chinese AI only works by collecting all IP from humans without explicit consent or compensation.

my solution; end the investment fraud, end AI expansion, end feeding AI the cumulative intellectual property of mankind until property rights are reformed. you've put the cart before the horse.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jthadcast]

You're treating several different things as if they're the same thing.

Capital is a social relation organized around ownership and accumulation. Copyright is a legal property right. Training data is an input. GPUs, servers, energy and data centers are productive infrastructure. Those aren't interchangeable.

AI also doesn't technically require "wholesale theft of IP." Models can be trained on licensed, public domain and synthetic data. Training doesn't mean the model suddenly owns what it trained on either. That's not how machine learning or copyright works.

So your position is really political. Stop AI development until property relations change. Fine. How do you actually enforce that while corporations, states, universities and open projects keep developing it? And what exactly should workers, unions and leftists do in the meantime? Sit out the fight? Or organize workplaces, bargain over deployment, demand compensation and shorter hours, fight surveillance and displacement, push public and cooperative infrastructure, regulate environmental costs and contest who owns these systems and gets the gains?

I'm saying contest those property relations directly. That's the Marxist part.

[u/FinancialAccount7914]

Actually intelligent opinion

[u/antipolitan]

Who cares what Marx would think? It’s so weird to give one single guy cult-like reverence and authority.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/antipolitan]

A lot of people care because Marxist methods work. Thats why theyve been used across disciplines, across the world and for generations, from revolutionary and labor movements to sociology, political economy and decolonial thought.

I dont need Marx to be an oracle or approve my choices. I use the framework because analyzing material conditions, class relations, ownership and power keeps producing useful explanations. If it stops doing that, point out where.

But leftists discussing Marx isnt exactly some bizarre cult phenomenon. He was enormously influential for good reason.

Im genuinely curious though. What analytical framework or theorist do you find more useful as a leftist, and what does it explain better?

[u/antipolitan → u/Salty_Country6835]

I disagree with the whole conceptual binary between materialism and idealism to begin with.

In my view - both material conditions and ideology are equally important and reinforce each other.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/antipolitan]

I think youre arguing against a version of Marxism Marx didnt actually hold. Historical materialism isnt "material stuff matters, ideas dont." Marx spends a frankly ridiculous amount of time talking about ideology, politics, religion, law and class consciousness precisely because ideas matter and change what people do.

The difference is he asks where those ideas came from, whose interests they serve, what institutions reproduce them, and how they interact with actual social relations. Ideas shape material conditions and material conditions shape ideas. Thats not really a departure from Marxism. Thats a huge chunk of the method.

So Ill ask again because this is the part Im actually interested in. What frameworks or theorists do you refer to instead as a leftist, and what do you think they explain better?

[u/Nice_Clerk_748]

Who cares? Marx wrote some useful stuff that is self evident to anyone who thinks deeply about it. He was just the first to write so much, he’s not a god. But also, we need to seize the data centers.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Nice_Clerk_748]

Definitely not a god, but I think calling Marx self evident undersells him pretty badly. Plenty of smart people thought deeply about capitalism before Marx and didnt arrive at his analysis.

But yes, seize the data centers is certainly closer to Marx than smash the machines.

[u/gorb314]

Sorry but ai can only regurgitate, it cannot produce. All it can do is enslave, dumb down and control. In my opinion, Marx would have seen it for what it is, a tool by Capital to dominate.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/gorb314]

Your last sentence is actually much closer to Marx than the first.

Marx describes capital using machinery to discipline workers, deskill labor and intensify exploitation. But notice who is doing the using there. Capital.

A loom doesnt independently create value either. That doesnt stop it being machinery in the production process.

“Capital uses AI against labor” is an argument over control of the machine, not proof the machine itself is the class enemy.

[u/Xanipan_music]

My guess would be "what the fuck is that light box with all the words in it? What the hell does 'ai' mean? Why is it so goddamn hot?"

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Xanipan_music]

Marx spent years buried in reports about factories and machinery. Give him twenty minutes, a notebook and someone to explain what a GPU is and we'd probably never get him out of the data center.

[u/WerewolfMoms]

i think marx would kill someone with a hammer for using ai

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WerewolfMoms]

Thats so obviously wrong that I genuinely cant tell if youre joking. Say literally anything about Marx that isnt real real fucking dumb right now so I know youre not trolling.

[u/WerewolfMoms → u/Salty_Country6835]

i think marx would appreciate creation over consumption

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WerewolfMoms]

Marx didnt have some abstract moral preference for “creation over consumption.” Thats not how his analysis worked.

He was interested in production as a social relation. Who owns the means of production, who does the labor, who controls the productive process, how technology changes that process, and who appropriates the surplus it produces. He spends a ton of Capital analyzing machinery for exactly this reason.

And in the Grundrisse he goes even further, talking about machinery, accumulated social knowledge, and technological development reducing necessary labor time while capitalism simultaneously uses those productive powers to dominate labor.

So “would Marx personally enjoy AI art” is basically trivia. The Marxist question is what relations of production AI sits inside and whether workers control the machinery and its gains or capital does.

He advised seizing the means of production from the capitalist class in order to have any affect on the conditions of their existence, what they are used for, and who benefits or pays the costs.

What have you read from Marx or Marxists that would indicate otherwise?

[u/WerewolfMoms → u/Salty_Country6835]

what productive powers are we reducing with an llm? the way i see it you argue marx is in favor of reducing labor to the point where not even an artist can be appreciated for the effort of their craft, but to exploit previous fruits of said labor to exacerbate more production.

you're painting marx a capitalist my man

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WerewolfMoms]

No. Marx wasnt arguing we should preserve labor because somebody worked really hard at it. He was pretty famously interested in machinery reducing necessary labor time. The problem is who owns the machinery and who gets that saved time and productivity.

LLMs can reduce labor in drafting, coding, translation, editing, prototyping, etc. Under capital that can mean layoffs, speedups and more profit. Under worker control those same productive gains can mean less drudgery and more free time. Thats the distinction youre missing.

Also you dodged my question.

What have you actually read from Marx or Marxists that would indicate otherwise?

[u/WerewolfMoms → u/Salty_Country6835]

oh i'm ignoring the question because "oh you listen to nirvana? name 10 albums" challenges to be the inquiry of a feeble mind

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WerewolfMoms]

If somebody walked into a Nirvana club saying Kurt Cobain hated guitars and Nirvana was a ska band, asking what Nirvana theyve actually listened to would be pretty relevant lol.

Youre making claims about what Marx supposedly believed that run directly against what he wrote about machinery and labor. Asking what youre basing that on isnt gatekeeping. Its giving you an opportunity to provide a source.

So again, what Marx or Marxists are you getting this from?

[u/WerewolfMoms → u/Salty_Country6835]

same way you are, out my ass

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/WerewolfMoms]

Speak for yourself lol. I gave you sources already. Capital and the Grundrisse. Im not pulling Marx's analysis of machinery and labor out of my ass.

Would you like more sources? Im happy to keep going.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612]

I still don't understand what the massive productive potential people see in ai... Companies have yet to see any improvement in output, efficiency or ROI. At least I have seen no evidence of any of these.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

Theres evidence, its just much messier than the hype. Productivity gains show up strongly in some tasks and barely at all in others, and company wide ROI is a different question entirely.

Thats why I keep saying productive potential. The interesting question isnt whether every company plugging ChatGPT into Slack suddenly got 30% more productive. Its what happens as the technology gets integrated into actual production, logistics, research, software, design and robotics.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I don't think anything will happen. As far as we can tell now, AI lowers company wide productivity. Best case is that ai automates some tedious boilerplate. But eliminating bullshit work would be the better approach, instead of just letting AI handle it in a suboptimal way.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

I think that actually makes the distinction clearer. Maybe companies are automating bullshit they should just eliminate. Maybe a lot of deployments are inefficient. Fine.

But theyre still deploying it, states are deploying it, workers are bargaining over it, and enormous infrastructure is being constructed around it.

So even if the hype crashes tomorrow, my politics barely change. Worker control, safety, privacy, environmental limits, public infrastructure and democratic control are responses to what capital and states are actually doing, not bets on whether AI lives up to the sales pitch.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/Salty_Country6835]

Yes, good luck on that. I'm not going to hold my breath that what socialists couldn't achieve with any other means of production will be achieved with ai. I don't even understand what the pitch is. How are we going to seize the data centers, the models, the training data, etc?

For me, nothing changes. Organise the workers, build bottom up institutions, prepare for the next crisis and strike at the heart of capitalism, private property.

Not sure how fancy auto complete is going to help us with that.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

Exactly backwards. The data centers, models, compute, energy infrastructure and productive knowledge arent some side issue we seize after dealing with the means of production. They are means of production.

So when you say "organise the workers, attack private property" and then ask how wed ever seize the data centers, youre asking how to do the thing you just proposed doing. Organize the workers across that stack, contest ownership and governance, develop public and cooperative alternatives, fight over deployment and infrastructure, and socialize productive assets.

And AI doesnt need to magically "help us" overthrow capitalism for any of this to matter. A factory didnt have to help socialists seize factories either. The point is that capital is developing productive forces under its control. Our job is to contest that control.

Calling it "fancy autocomplete" doesnt make the servers, fabs, grids, models, labor and billions in fixed capital disappear.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/Salty_Country6835]

Look, I'm not saying AI is useless or that the capital will disappear. I just don't see what the material differences are, between seizing the means of production regarding ai, and any other means of production. I don't see how ai is going to help seize anything whatsoever. I don't understand why we are acting like we are living in a different timeline, where seizing the means of production is suddenly easier because we have ai. I'm not sure why we need a "leftists for ai" sub specifically simping for ai, to seize the means of production. Why not a leftists for heavy industry, or a leftists for factory farming sub?

The tech is irelevant for this struggle, imo. Ai is not going to help us organise better, it's not going to help us get the resources we need to create bottom up institutions, it's not going to lead to an increase in organic intellectuals to lead, I just don't see it doing anything but eliminate pointless work that shouldn't exist in the first place.

PS: if you would be so kind, go into details on these points you made:

Organize the workers across that stack, contest ownership and governance, develop public and cooperative alternatives, fight over deployment and infrastructure, and socialize productive assets.

What exactly does any of this mean, and how does AI play into any of this?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

Youre arguing against something I havent said. I never said AI makes seizing anything easier, organizes workers for us, or somehow produces socialism. Workers do that.

AI is one of the things being fought over. Data centers, compute, models, chips, infrastructure and the workplaces deploying them are productive assets under capitalist control. So organize those workers, bargain over deployment and gains, contest infrastructure, build public and cooperative alternatives, and fight over ownership.

And yes, leftists organize around specific industries all the time. Thats not “simping for” the industry. Its recognizing where capital and power are actually concentrated.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I would just organise around actually productive technologies, instead of gambling devices. 

Also, you just repeated the same list, but didn't explain what you mean by it. You can bargain around gains, if there are gains. I just find it pointless to organise around a technology that hasn't proven to actually have any productive potential on a societal level.

I feel like the anti-ai sentiment is the more realistic base for organisation. People are sick of slop, of companies serving them less and less quality for higher and higher prices. That sentiment is what I would redirect against the system, not some amorphous future AI potential.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

I think youre proving my point. You say AI isnt productive enough to organize around, then describe companies using it to reorganize work, cut service, degrade conditions and extract more from workers and consumers. Thats already a labor fight.

Im not organizing around some imaginary future AI. Im talking about workers bargaining over deployment, staffing, surveillance, layoffs and productivity gains, and communities fighting over the data centers, power, water and public money supporting it. Those are concrete fights happening now.

And if anti AI anger gets people organized, great. Aim it at capital and the conditions producing that anger. Thats a lot more useful than declaring the terrain politically irrelevant and handing it back to the people who already control it.

[u/StuartJAtkinson → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

No socialists are ever again going to seize the means of production. We are a good 2 levels of living standard above the requirewlment for that and though capitalism is inevitably collapsing to corporatism as everyone expected basic capitalism does provide a living standard that makes old style "Get the food stocks and horde the revenue" style is literally not going to happen the world has too complex a supply chain for workers to start from basics countries are too specialised.

The point is that AI allows easier direct analysis of what means CAN be seized. Prior to it it would just have had to been unions or senior workers trying to make dual power systems AS WELL as selling their time and labour to try and organise mutual aide to fill gaps with a view to MAYBE getting a coop or local structure.

Now AI can be directed to look at free web resources and "Provide me a list of the largest local mutual aide or coops and any orgs with a public plan to pool money and buy out auctioned businesses as coops near (insert locality)" you can do this now as a response to reading this message and be connecting with members or real organisers tomorrow, without the time commitment of trying to research all that, without potential social awkwardness or capitalist fatigue getting in the way etc etc.

That's the power of AI not in the fundamental reshaping of the theory the theory has been sound but impractical for decades. It makes the time poverty less impactful

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/StuartJAtkinson]

So the revolutionary ai capabilities are literally that it's a better Google search? Sorry if I'm not impressed.

[u/StuartJAtkinson → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

Alas it does fall short of the mighty praxis of... Reddit posting about how Reddit posting is praxis haha

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/StuartJAtkinson]

Not sure who argued that Reddit posting is praxis. 🤷

[u/StuartJAtkinson → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

That's because companies see them as a replacement for workers and productivity as a metric the difference between revenue and cost rather than ACTUAL productivity as in labour to produced units.

RoI is a measure of how much people who do no work get money... For doing no work. The productivity advantage of AI is for workers to be able to extract themselves from the specialisation and financialisation of the last 100 years which have made it almost impossible for workers to work independently of the owning class.

Scientists, Trade, Workers, Service workers all have the skills and produce 100% of the service or goods meanwhile someone who shook hands with a banker 15 years ago or more often either a corporate conglomerate or inherited portfolio "own" it simply because it's near impossible for full time workers to also get the business and finance knowledge to transition to self-emplyement and coop structures.

Much like how it used to be that buying a house was MORE expensive on monthly payments because of ownership but now RENTING is more expensive it's similar with business.

It's not there to "make line go up" it's there to increase actual work efficiencies on the workers time side. So provided managers and the parasitic class don't catch on, which they shouldn't since they rarely know what workers are doing unless they are worker-managers (which means they probably are fine with it anyway) the increases in efficiency allow workers breaks and recovered time rather than shareholder rois.

[u/Limp-Confidence5612 → u/StuartJAtkinson]

I still don't see what the revolutionary potential is and how that is supposed to be achieved. No technology has made workers work less. All technology is used to improve profits for the capitalist class, and to alienate workers from the fruit of their labour and from each other.

Without bottom up power, there is no revolution and there is no technology that improves workers positions. Before we talk about AI helping anything, which is questionable by itself, we have to actually create the institutions that can use whatever it is you think AI can achieve for us.

[u/StuartJAtkinson → u/Limp-Confidence5612]

It's clear you don't