The Potentials and Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist Planning (original) (raw)
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Revista Eptic, 2024
Marx’s analysis of capitalism gives central place to machines. Machines are one of capital’s primary means of increasing the productivity of exploited labour in order to extract as much surplus value as possible and thus serve as “weapons against working-class revolt” by degrading, devaluing and controlling labour (Marx 1990, 563). Marx held that continual competition between individual capitals compels those firms towards the introduction of machinery and replacement of human labour, tending over time, towards an increasing “organic composition of capital” (Marx 1990, 762). While the dynamics of the organic composition of capital are more complex than can be adequately portrayed here, they do not imply a linear transfer of work from human to machine, as the introduction of machines has been shown to often generate a need for new categories of labour (Gray and Suri 2019). That being said, Marx held that there is a fundamental identity between capital and machines. He clearly calls machines the “material foundation of the capitalist mode of production” as well as “capital’s material mode of existence” and (Marx 1990, 554). Thus, for Marxist analysis machines and capital may be understood as the antithesis of the human being. Machines are “dead labour” (Marx 1990, 342) while capital is an “alien power” (Marx 1990, 716). It seems that Marx found the new steam-powered automatic machines of his time especially troubling, if one is to judge from his poetic language on the topic. He describes dead labour “in the automaton and the machinery moved by it” as stepping forth and “ acting apparently in independence of [living] labour, it subordinates labour instead of being subordinate to it, it is the iron man confronting the man of flesh and blood” (Marx 1994, p. 30). Yet it would be inaccurate to say that this pessimistic appraisal is the sole Marxist perspective on technology. According to Marx’s dialectical thought, machines can assume a positive role insofar as their evolution is a component of the revolutionizing of the productive forces and the socialization of labour. The most extreme reading of this perspective on Marx’s work is drawn from the “Fragment on Machines” in the Grundrisse, where Marx appears to speculate on a highly automated future capitalism in which “the means of labour has not only taken the economic form of fixed capital, but has also been suspended in its immediate form … and the entire production process appears as not subsumed under the direct skillfulness of the worker, but rather as the technological application of science (Marx 1993, 699). This scenario, Marx contends, expresses precisely the contradiction at the heart of capital. As capital strives to “reduce labour time to a minimum” it simultaneously “posits labour time … as sole measure and source of wealth” (Marx 1993, 706). By introducing so many machines, capital eventually cuts itself off from exploited labour, the source of surplus value, and thus “works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production” (Marx 1993, 700). While the precise import of this passage is highly debated (Fuchs 2016; Heinrich, 2013, Marques, 2022) it, in any case, indicates that the analysis of machines from a Marxist perspective is not simple – indeed several more dimensions could be elucidated, including the oft-repeated charge of Marx as technological determinist (Mackenzie 1984). It is worth noting that, as Marx explains, technology can assume different social forms, not only the specifically capitalist social form which currently prevails. This fundamental understanding led him to point out that workers should avoid revolting against machines. The real enemy to be fought, he explains, is the social form of technology which bends it to exploitation. In Marx’s words, “It took both time and experience before the workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of production to the form of society which utilizes those instruments” (1990, 554). Contrary to charges of determinism, Marx explicitly advocates for class struggle against the subsumption of labour under the capitalist social form of technology. This special issue of Eptic is focused specifically on the technology of artificial intelligence (AI). For all his technological acuity, Marx could not have foreseen the rise of the contemporary approach to AI called machine learning (ML). And while there is a long tradition of Marxist research on technology, there is, of yet, relatively little on AI specifically. Marxist research on AI goes back to the 1980s, and the first era of the AI industry. Machine learning had not achieved demonstrable success yet and instead the industry based its hopes on “expert systems” or programs in which the captured knowledge of experts could be implemented and made available on demand (Myers 1986). From this early era, three broad threads of Marxist research on AI were already visible. The first thread saw in AI the extension of previous automation technologies and Taylorist practices of labour deskilling (Cooley 1980; Morris-Suzuki 1984; Berman 1992; Ramtin 1991). The second thread saw AI as perhaps more hype than substance; as an ideological weapon for capital to intimidate workers. As Athanasiou (1985) put it, AI was best understood as “cleverly disguised politics”. The third thread focused instead on the potential of the advanced data processing capacities of AI for the implementation of socialist economic planning (Cockshott 1988). We can see these same themes in more recent Marxist research on AI – as well as new ones. The first thread remains a prominent line of thought. Dyer-Witheford et al. (2019) and Steinhoff (2021) offer book-length studies which investigate AI as, primarily, an automation technology with novel capacities for capturing the skills and knowledge of labour. The second thread also retains interest. Authors such as Benanav (2020) and Smith (2020) argue that AI’s capacities for the replacement of labour are overblown, serving mostly to distract from a stagnating capitalist economy. Third, Cockshott (2017) continues to pursue the use of AI from socialist planning. Somewhat related is research which advocates the use of AI to produce a “postwork” socialist society (Srnicek and Williams 2015; Bastani 2019). Beyond these three threads, there is a relatively small but growing diversity of Marxist research on AI (several collections now exist: Moore and Woodcock 2021; Fehrle, Lieber and Ramirez 2024). The contributions collected here fall within the three threads but also without. We hope the inspiring and thought provoking articles published in this special issue can shed light on the dialectics of artificial intelligence. Enjoy your reading!
Modern Philosophy, 2007
On Capitalist Technological Development & Marx's Ambitions for Production & Consumption under Communism (1) Introduction. G.A. Cohen claims that it is now time for Marxists to junk two traditional articles of their communist faith. The first article centres on a belief in the revolutionary role of the proletariat. This maintains that, at some point in time, a mass of industry-based wage-workers will rise up and revolt against the capitalist mode of production. A dramatic struggle will take place between capitalists and workers and the workers will usher communism into human society via a "D-day" revolution. The second article of faith centres on a belief about the role of technology in a functioning communist economic order. Here Cohen maintains that Marx believed in the coming of a "Technological-Fix" in which developments in technology will be so great that a condition of abundance in material goods will become available to human society. Cohen claims that history has showed Marx"s beliefs about class and technology to be ill-founded. Cohen also claims that there is no prospect that such political and economic developments will occur in the future. On the redundancy of the two articles of faith, Cohen writes: The proletariat did, for a while, grow larger and stronger, but it never became, as the Communist Manifesto foretold, the "immense majority", and it was ultimately reduced and divided by the increasing technical sophistication of the capitalist production process that had been expected to continue to expand its size and augment its power. And the development of productive 1 I thank Andrew Mason and James Wilson for reading a draft of this paper and the highly useful written comments and suggestions which they provided for me. I also thank Jonathan Wolff for the opportunity to test some of the ideas contained in this paper in discussion with him some years ago.
This paper proposes a reading of Marx's exposition of the forms of the real subsumption of labor to capital -in particular, the system of machinery of large-scale industry -as constituting the dialectical presentation of the determinations of revolutionary subjectivity. The proposition that real subsumption constitutes the ground of revolutionary subjectivity is the concretization of that insight about the most general determination of the process of "natural history" constituting the development of humanity that Marx expounded in the Paris Manuscripts in 1844. According to that early text, the content of the history of the human species consists in the development of
Automation and Labor: Is Marx Equal to Adam Smith?
The qualifications for employment within the modern microelectronic-based, automated systems can be understood as a negation of the Marxist claim that work would come to demand less skill as technology developed. This paper attempts to criticize this interpretation by seeking the work-deskilling concept in the writings of Marx himself. The result is the proposition that that which is observed in the modern factory*/ that is, the radical dispensability of living work*/ really mirrors work deskilling according to Marx. The more usual idea of work deskilling, attributed erroneously to Marx, is in reality Smithian in nature. Based on this analysis, a critical analysis is made of Labor and Monopoly Capital by Braverman, which has become accepted as the definitive interpretation of the ideas of Marx on the subject. The sole cause for confusion arising from equating the Marxist and Smithian analyses concerning technology and work should be attributed to an incorrect understanding of Taylorism and Fordism. Here we propose that recent technological developments in reality signify an end to the mistake of equating Marx with Smith, and also indicate the great relevance of Marx today.
Technology: a tool in the hands of a few A contemporary marxist approach
2021
This essay presents a brief survey on some of the basic questions concerning the Philosophy of Technology, including the different historical perspectives regarding the part played by technology in human life and societies. From the historical debate between the more pragmatic and the more skeptical sides, the optimistic and pessimistic views, an answer is proposed, finding support in a sociological point of view in what can be interpreted as a contemporary marxist approach on these problems. This work was developed in the context of the course An Introduction to the History of Science given by Professor Luca Maria Possati, part of the Philosophy degree at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of
A Marxist analysis of the role played by developing technologies in intimating a shift from capitalism to a new mode of production. In this essay I will examine the role of technological development in Marx's theory of history, and apply this focused analysis to contemporary capitalism. My central thesis is that developing technologies; specifically in the area of automation, such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) play a central role in transforming the mode of production beyond capitalism. However I wish to qualify against a "technologically determinate" interpretation of Marx's theory, and emphasise the role that class antagonisms play in the motion of history. As such I will not be predicting the end of the capitalist mode of production, due to these technologies, but rather highlighting the opportunity they present for change. The first section of this paper will detail Marx's theory of history, often called historical materialism. The second section will examine the role of technology within this theory, and explore the fundamental contradictions automation and mechanisation present to capital. The third section will propose automation and information technologies as radical changes in the productive forces, of sufficient scope to induce a radical change in the mode of production as a whole. Section four will examine the applicability of the contradictions noted in section two to these technologies, as well as examining limitations to the role played by these technologies in a movement towards post-capitalist society. In concluding, I will review the extent to which Marx's theory holds explanatory potential when applied to contemporary capitalism vis-à-vis the role of developing technologies, as well as interrogating how far this analysis can take us in trying to understand or predict any forthcoming changes to production relations as a result of this technological evolution. Marx inherited from Hegel a conception of history as working towards a purpose. Whilst for Hegel this was the realisation of Mind, for Marx this purpose was the emancipation of humankind from alienation. By alienation is meant the loss of ability by people to determine their relationship to 1 others, to determine the course of their own life, to own the products of their own labour and so on, Singer, 2000. 56-57.
Capitalism, Automation, and Socialism: Karl Marx on the Labor Process
In this essay, I will argue, basing myself on Marx’s critique of political economy, that the automation, including robotization and the rise of the “gig economy,” is the historical tendency of the capitalist mode of production, deeply rooted in the dynamic of capital accumulation and the labor process. In Section 1, I will outline Marx’s theory of automation that flows from the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. In Section 2, I briefly discuss how Marx’s theory of automation relates to his theory of socialist revolution. In Section 3, I would note some aspects of the development of socialist history and theory of automation which largely represent a retreat from Marx’s critique of it, with the notable exception of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974). I conclude in Section 4 with some key questions raised by Marx’s theory of automation about the effort to develop a theory of ecological socialism which envision an integral theory of human society as part of the planet’s ecosystem and not its dominion.