A common view is that Karl Marx did not propose a specific vision of a communist utopia, which allowed for significant flexibility in how real-world socialist revolutions did and might shape socialism and the eventual transition to communism. This lack of a concrete vision often resulted in disastrous outcomes, with few successful examples. China is sometimes cited as an unexpected success, although many observers classify it as a form of capitalism.
However, one of Marx’s texts, the well-known “Fragment on Machines,” offers a different Marxist perspective on the potential for transforming capitalism from within. Some commentators have referred to it as “science fiction” and a kind of utopia, a concept that Marx generally criticized. Rather than envisioning a utopian society, he suggested more “scientific” approaches, which, however, failed. I believe that revisiting this document provides strong inspiration for developing a new institutional framework that harnesses the powers of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Thus, while the fragment could be seen as “science fiction” in Marx’s time, today it presents a “concrete utopia” that can be realized through realistic yet bold institutional transformations of our current economic systems. I firmly believe that the fragment outlines a Marxian alternative to socialism as it is traditionally understood. This concept is not new, particularly within Italian Marxism; however, what is new is the contemporary context of the explosion of AI and the high, if not utopian, expectations surrounding its impact on the economy and society.
In the following, I will quote from the fragment extensively since I do not assume that non-Marxist readers are aware of the text. To begin with, the fragment is likely the first description of the technosphere, who diagnoses the emergence of a comprehensive system of machines that becomes gradually autonomous while relentlessly enhancing productivity. Marx writes (I quote according to the page numbers of the linked file indicated above):
“But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form,and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages. In the machine, and even more in machinery as an automatic system, the use value, i.e. the material quality of the means of labour, is transformed into an existence adequate to fixed capital and to capital as such; and the form in which it was adopted into the production process of capital, the direct means of labour, is superseded by a form posited by capital itself and corresponding to it. In no way does the machine appear as the individual worker’s means of labour. Its distinguishing characteristic is not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker’s activity to the object; this activity, rather, is posited in such a way that it merely transmits the machine’s work, the machine’s action, on to the raw material — supervises it and guards against interruptions.” (692)
In this growth of the Marxian technosphere, workers become subordinate cogs in the machinery and increasingly lose their autonomy. However, at the same time, automation makes their work increasingly superfluous, positioning them as the weakest part of the chain of production. As a result, humans risk becoming unnecessary unless they occupy the remaining roles available to them: the designers, monitors, and controllers of the machines. These individuals ultimately determine how the machines are utilised and drive the societal processes by which the machine system is further developed, both in terms of capacities and functions, as well as societal uses. However, this is not simply a transformation of the quality of labour. Marx concedes that one of the foundational aspects of his theory of surplus value collapses. This is because value no longer depends on the individual surplus labour extracted from each worker; instead, it is determined by the collective stock of social knowledge that influences labour productivity.
“The exchange of living labour for objectified labour – i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour – is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting on value. Its presupposition is – and remains – the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. (The development of this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter, is itself in turn related to the development of material production.)” 704
Marx is a genuine Hegelian in all his reasoning, and we could easily interpret the previous paragraphs as describing technology and science as the unfolding of objective spirit. The important implication is that individuals can no longer be seen as “natural” but as “social” in the sense that their capacities are deeply embedded in the societal process of knowledge production, dissemination, and storage. From this follows another significant step that challenges standard Marxian theory i.e. the idea that market valuation (or “exchange value”) dominates use value.
“No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. 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.” (705)
At this point, Marx famously used the term “general intellect”:
“Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature,or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.” (706)
Finally, this represents Marx’s vision of a utopia, which arises from a transformation of surplus labor time generated by capitalist accumulation. Only surplus labor time can be appropriated for value creation. This creates a kind of capitalist treadmill: on one hand, increases in productivity free up labor time, but this free time does not result in idleness. Instead, individuals are compelled to continue working through various means. This pressure to work may stem from the fact (not discussed in the quote) that their consumption aspirations grow alongside productivity, leading them to remain in the factory in pursuit of a higher standard of living. Generally, a utopia consists of the growth of freely disposable time, while autonomous technosphere evolution generates productivity enhancements.
“The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it suffers from surplus production, and then necessary labour is interrupted, because no surplus labour can be realized by capital. The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. This transition requires that humans use their superfluous time to develop their knowledge and skills in ways that complement the evolution of the machine system. The productivity of the machines provides them with the necessary resources to do so.” (708)
In a general sense, the machine fragment describes a scenario where the economic process and capital accumulation unfold almost autonomously through the evolution of the technosphere. Society retains ultimate control and enjoys the benefits of continuously growing productivity. The fragment does not mention class conflict or revolution; instead, transformation occurs gradually, in line with the growth of the Marxian technosphere.
I think that reconciling Marxism with standard economics is of utmost importance, and current developments in AI serve as proof of this idea. Marx confronts the technosphere with the realm of human ideas and knowledge, which he refers to as “Wissenschaft,” or the “general intellect.” AI is a very peculiar kind of machine, as it automates the processes of collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing knowledge, making it accessible to human users. These users provide feedback to the AI, and eventually, they can use AI to design their own creative and productive activities. This process increasingly creates a human-machine assemblage in the generation of knowledge, which enhances the capacity of the techosphere to become autopoietic with human mediation.
This constellation Marx could not envision. In this sense, can we say that a Marxian revolutionary scenario beckons? Currently, two main themes dominate the debates over AI. First, the consequences for labour, and second, the issue of intellectual property and data theft.
Regarding the first theme, the Marxian perspective offers a different view compared to the common emphasis on potential unemployment. Similar to Marx’s account of automation, workers are effectively liberated from alienating labor. In simple terms, if a robot can do your work, be happy—you no longer need to work like a robot. Freeing humans from the constraints of machines can recreate their autonomy and overcome alienation. However, and this is a significant point: how can they earn a living? Marx’s masters of the machines seems to highly educated and a societal elite, how can everyone assume that role?
One solution that has been suggested is the robot tax, but we need to think more boldly. The concept has been proposed multiple times that the anticipated high-powered AI revolution in productivity could fund a universal basic income, provided that the resulting profits are taxed adequately. While this argument is correct in principle, it is somewhat shortsighted, as it does not address the institutional framework surrounding AI. Moreover, a familiar specter often looms: the social divide between the masters of the technosphere and the leisure society, who are seen as compliant sheep. How can we avoid such a dystopian scenario? This leads to the second important aspect: intellectual property.
The conflicts surrounding AI primarily occur in two fields. The first involves training AI by utilizing various resources, mainly from digitalized web repositories. The second aspect focuses on how users interact with AI. Regarding the first field, there is a noticeable tension within the current institutional framework of capitalism, which increasingly relies on intellectual property to control assets and profit flows. In this sense, AI violates the established rules of capitalism. While Marx did not specifically address this issue, we can apply his arguments about the growing contradictions between the productive forces and social relations of production—here, the legal framework.
AI is a revolutionary technology that allows humans to access vast amounts of knowledge independently of their own intellectual capacities. In fact, AI transforms this knowledge into a public good since it can be utilized at nearly zero marginal costs, and there is no rivalry in consumption. However, a significant portion of this knowledge is protected by IPR. Therefore, a Marxist conclusion would suggest that this situation calls for the nationalisation of both AI and the knowledge stock. Indeed, AI is already being deployed to publicy appropriate the knowledge stock, because users, after paying a user fee, can access it freely. This is a Robin Hood on AI: AI grabs the data and turns them into a free good. Why not scrap the IPR in the first place?
This idea is truly radical and revolutionary. If we abolished IPR protection, AI could explore all that richness freely, allowing us to enjoy the benefits without restriction. However, as long as the profits generated from AI are appropriated by the owners of AI companies, we find ourselves in a catch. Therefore, the only solution would be to turn AI into public infrastructure. This does not necessarily mean nationalization; we could follow the Wikipedia model, for example. This approach has the advantage of fostering competing communities of AI producers, probably catering to specific user needs.
I don’t want to discuss the question of scrapping IPR here in detail, as this issue has been well-argued by many economists, by no means left-wing. Both libertarian and left-wing scholars often agree on radical critiques of IPR. The institutional combination of free knowledge and AI would closely approach the Marxian utopia of the machine system, aka the technosphere.
That leads me to the user side. If uses of AI are also liberated from the constraints of IPR, every user can become a creator, leveraging their own skills and knowledge. This means new kinds of independent work, such as AI-enhanced arts and crafts (combined with 3D printing), will emerge in society.
I think there are also intermediary ways to move toward a more concrete post-capitalist utopia. One such method is to implement a tax on AI within the current institutional framework. Beyond the conflicts over IPR, it is evident that AI exploits a vast domain of knowledge without providing compensation. We can view this situation as a knowledge commons, which has the potential for a tragedy of the commons: AI extracts knowledge, while humans are less incentivized to invest effort in producing new knowledge. There is a risk of degrading the quality of the knowledge pool with low-quality contributions and even fraudulent materials. Therefore, if we do not want to take political action to transform AI into a public utility, we can consider taxing its use of knowledge. A simple approach would be to tax the energy throughput that correlates with the amount of data processed in data centers, according to the fundamental thermodynamics of information. Instead of nationalising the AI companies, they would pay a substantial tax, earmarked for funding the production of knowledge by humans, such as supporting schools and universities.
Beyond these specific themes, the argument remains that the anticipated productivity explosion should provide sufficient funding for a reasonable Universal Basic Income system. This would eliminate the issue of alienated labour, allowing people the freedom to choose between dependent employment and independent work, potentially as AI-empowered creators. However, this scenario can only avoid the dystopia of an emerging new class of masters of the technosphere if the abolition of IPR permits unrestricted access to all forms of creative endeavors enabled by UBI. This vision could resemble a Marxian utopia, also known as communism. It would still be based on human labour, augmented by the autonomous growth of the technosphere, while maintaining a state of individual freedom.
Interestingly, we wouldn’t necessarily need a revolution, contra “the other” Marx. However, considering the close association between tech entrepreneurs and MAGA fascism, we may have reasons for pessimism. If this ruling class continues to uphold the institutions of capitalism that obstruct the emergence of a concrete utopia adumbrated in the “fragments,” a peaceful transition may be out of reach.
The technosphere, our agency, our planet 