AI will turn Marxism on its head - Opportunities for the Left.

Or better: It will turn the world on its head. Once we have AGI (»Artificial General Intelligence«) - that is, AI on a human level—most of our labor will no longer be needed. We are quickly moving to a so-called »post-labor economics«. This turns most of Marxism, which is mostly built on analyzing the relations of labor and capital, on its head. While you find a lot of people who use the term »post-labor economics,« most of them have no understanding of even the current economics. Still, an astonishingly high number of people are completely ignorant of what is coming. AI Denial is still a thing, but in this article, I will not argue this any longer. Instead, I want to focus on what the left should do.

Also, there are a lot of issues that AI brings besides the potential to make 100% of jobs obsolete. Basically, any problem we have now could be made even worse. If you think media manipulation was bad, and social media even worse: wait until you have an AI which produces tailor-made conspiracy theories for each individual. Etc.

In the »Maschinen Fragment« (»The Fragment on Machines« - a section of »The Grundrisse«), Marx speculates about a development where almost all work is done by machines. E.g.:

»The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific, etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.« -- Grundrisse, Marx

Yet in the end, we do not find much answers. It is a bit of a shrug of the shoulders. It »breaks down« and hopefully, we all have a good life afterwards.

Yet in another part of Marx's writings, we find a hint about »post-labor economics.« In »Capital, Vol I« he writes:

».. undermining the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the worker.”

So, besides labor, there is another source of value: the soil. Now since soil was rather abundant in his time and most work was extremely labor-intensive, it was a reasonable simplification to treat the production of value as dominated by labor. (See the »Labor Theory of Value«). Marx even explains that the price of precious metals is mostly determined by the labor necessary to get it out of the ground and refine it.

Now, the more that we are producing beyond the ecological capacity of our planet, and the more that we have automation that reduces the necessary labor, the less this simplification holds. In the limit, when AI can do 100% of the jobs, the only value is in the soil. It is obvious that the rich and powerful have read their Marx more carefully than most on the left did, since people like Bill Gates is buying up massive amounts of land.

The cost of running an AI data center is mainly determined by the cost of electricity.

Even without AI, there would be plenty of reason for Eco-Socialism, or even better, an Eco-Communist movement. Even with the automation we have now, we would need much less labor for producing all the goods and services that we need. The reason we still have a 40-hour work week is because capitalism has learned to produce a lot of artificial scarcity. Marx already writes about this in the Communist Manifesto:

»In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.« - Marx, Communist Manifesto

These days, we still have periodic crises, but for the most part, capitalism has learned to handle the overproduction. Advertisement for short-lived products we didn't even know we would »need« them. »Financial products«. So-called »Intellectual Property«, where something that could be shared with almost no cost will be made scarce by law, just so that it can be traded as a commodity within the capitalist system. Then there is the extensive bureaucracy within big corporations. All in all, it is fair to assume there are way more than 50% »bullshit jobs«: jobs that serve no useful purpose in society or even create more harm than good (especially if we take the ecological footprint into account). And then there is war and military:

»Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars, now wars are manufactured to sell weapons.« -- Arundhati Roy.

War is certainly the most »effective« way to create artificial scarcity: first, you sell weapons; then, you destroy whole countries with them, which you might then rebuild. If we combine this with the fact that our labor power will soon be no longer needed, then this gives rise to the picture of an extremely dark dystopian future.

There is not much room between a future where we can all have a good life and the robots doing all the work, and an absolute dystopian horror show. What kind of future we get is still open, and we can still fight for it. This is the part that most people who talk about the »post-labor economics« completely forget: All the good things that we take for granted are things that we had to fight for. In labor movements and struggles. We did not get them »just because they made sense.« Most of these naive post-labor economists assume that in our world we get the things that make sense. That intelligent people are planning a good future for all of us. Now, if you need any proof that this is not the case, just look at climate change and how our society deals with it. Since decades we know that climate change is coming, but CO2 emissions are still rising.

This is where we need to step in: We need to bring in the experience of 150 years of struggle against capitalism. The »good life for all« is something that we have to fight for. And we have to fight for it now. Yuval Noah Harari noted: When our labor power is no longer needed, we cannot even threaten to go on strike. We lose the most powerful weapon. So there is a high degree of urgency: We need to fight for the future now and not at a time when we are no longer needed, and we need to start cultivating a climate of solidarity, where those who still have jobs will fight for humanity. So far, the picture looks rather bleak. But there is a spark of hope: Currently, most people are stuck in their lives. They cannot really think »outside the box«. They cannot imagine a life outside of capitalism. They are afraid of radical change because they are worried that they could lose the little that they have. Decades of neoliberal propaganda have convinced them that they live in »the best of all possible worlds«. Already, a growing number of people suspect that »we cannot go on like this«, but often they do not understand what is wrong and what to do about it. Right-wing propaganda has successfully given them some scapegoats to blame.

So as soon as a larger number of people start to realize that they will indeed lose their jobs, there is a historical window of opportunity: A large number of people will be open to the idea that all of society could be organized in a totally different way—because they can see for themselves that »no stone will be left upon another.« Everything changes anyway, so why not start thinking about how we can make it right?

This is the moment we need to prepare for. When everyone wakes up and starts to ask: »What now?«, then we should have some good answers before the media gives them some bad ones. We need to ask the right questions—that will lead to good answers.

This short window of opportunity might as well be our last, as AI has the potential to consolidate absolute power.

What to do?

As explained above: Capitalism as we know it (as a »system that lives on the exploitation of labor«) will no longer exist once we have AGI. What will replace it, whether it is techno-feudalist dictatorship, accidental annihilation of mankind, or a utopian paradise, is still an open question. This article is not meant as a comprehensive answer on how we use this window of opportunity, but is more like a call for action: We need to prepare. But from my point of view, here are a few key aspects: Ideally we would get rid of capitalism as soon as possible before AI gets developed further, but realistically it will be the other way around.

Open the Window of Opportunity

We do need to communicate that this is not a normal technological development. This is a unique turning point in history. Only if people really understand that this is an ordinary situation will they excpet that this nees exceptional measures. Once their own job is on the line they might see it anyways but it is important that people understand this as soon as possible.

UBI

UBI - Universal, Unconditional Basic Income. This is a simple and obvious answer to the question: How can we live when we cannot get any jobs? And it is also obvious that this would work: Even the people who cannot see the number of »bullshit jobs« that we already have will not ask »but who would do all the work.« After all, this is what the robots and the AI systems that took your job are doing. Free services (sometimes called »Universal Basic Services« (UBS)) are also an option, but that would be a less attractive one, as it would mean a considerable loss of personal freedom.

The main problem here is that many on the left have not understood UBI and are still opposed (half of them because they think the idea is too radical and half of them because they think it is not radical enough).

Progressive Taxation of Resources

As explained above: »soil« will be the dominant source of wealth. So we need to fight for a progressive taxation of land ownership and high eco-taxes (e.g., CO2 emissions).

Democratic Governance of Tech Corporations

With the extreme risk that is inherent to AI, it should be easy to argue that these corporations need to be put under strict public governance.

Open Source - Open Weights

Often we see discussions about the so-called »intellectual property« that these LLMs are using for their training. So it should be easy to argue that these AI systems and their »weights« (the parameters that are generated by the training) need to be open source. They encode the knowledge of humanity and thus need to belong to all of us. While there are some that argue that it is way too dangerous to have these systems out in the open, this is the only realistic way in which we can have public control over these systems. (The »governance« approach described above would have its limitations; the governance approach is still necessary in addition to the »open source / open weights« demand.)

Thanks to Trump, many countries are now waking up to the fact that all of their IT is controlled by US tech giants. The demand for »digital sovereignty« got some traction lately. Even if we do not succeed with the demand that all AI needs to be »open source / open weights,« if some players are releasing capable models as open source (like China did with »DeepSeek«), this can damage the business model of the players that do not want to open source it. So this would be some point where Europe could do something (if it were not in the hands of the conservative/neoliberal/right-wing mafia).

Internationalism and a Strong Peace Movement

As explained above: War is the most »efficient« way to create artificial scarcity. Geopolitics, war, and nationalism are also used as arguments to justify the AI arms race. We need a strong peace movement and we need a new internationalism. Listening to Peter Thiel, it seems there is nothing that frightens the tech oligarchs more than the vision of a »one world government.« Again, it seems the right has read their Marx more carefully than most wannabe revolutionaries on the left. As long as nations are fighting against each other, the tech oligarchs have free rein.

Conclusion

AI will quickly change the world in a radical way. Most likely not in a good way, but there is one spark of hope: With the change, there comes a window of opportunity where the public will be open to accept radical changes to our society. We need to prepare for this window.

Franz Schaefer (Mond). September 2025.