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Here's the cite: http://thenewobjectivity.com/pdf/marx.pdf

"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"




I don't think it makes much sense to say this is a state of affairs Marx would want to see in a communist society; to be honest, I have no idea where you get the idea that Marx envisioned a totalizing AI controlling society from. The Fragment on Machines is highly debated and analyzed in Marxology, but it doesn't imply what you think it implies. Marx's description of communist society is actually quite the opposite (from his TGI):

>He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Post-Marxist authors and other Marxists have quite a lot to say on machinery and totalization of society to administered control (which they view as a negative thing) - see Marcuse for instance.


Wouldn't having an omnibenevolent AI providing for everyone's needs free everyone from having to be a laborer, so anyone can choose to be one thing one day and another thing another day? I see my passage and yours working together.

From what I understand, Marx didn't see communism as subverting capitalism, but as the end result of capitalism. He just wanted to hasten the process along towards an outcome which he saw as already predetermined by economic forces.




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