Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism begins with a simple observation: the things that people need and want, food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, are produced through human labour. But in capitalist societies, most people do not own the tools, materials, and resources needed to produce these things, what Marx called the means of production. They must sell their labour to those who do own the means of production, capitalists, in exchange for wages.
The relationship between capitalists and workers is not equal. The capitalist pays the worker a wage that covers the worker’s cost of living. But the worker produces more value than the wage represents. The difference, surplus value, is retained by the capitalist as profit. This extraction of surplus value is the foundation of capital accumulation. It is, in Marx’s analysis, the fundamental economic relation of capitalism.
How does this apply to AI? In several ways that are immediately concrete.
AI as means of production. AI systems, the models, the computational infrastructure, the data, are means of production in the full Marxist sense. They are used to produce value. And they are overwhelmingly owned by a small number of corporations: Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, a handful of others. The concentration of AI capability in these entities represents a concentration of productive power with no historical precedent.
AI and the extraction of surplus value. AI systems are used by capitalists to extract more surplus value from workers, through surveillance, performance monitoring, algorithmic management, and intensification of labour. Warehouse workers whose every movement is tracked by AI systems, drivers whose routes, speeds, and breaks are managed by algorithms, call centre workers whose conversations are monitored and scored in real time, all are experiencing the application of AI to the intensification of labour exploitation.
AI and the devaluation of labour power. Marx analysed how machinery depresses wages by reducing the skills required for production and increasing the competition for available work. AI does this at unprecedented scale and speed, performing cognitive tasks that previously required educated professionals, entering sectors, law, medicine, finance, education, where workers had previously maintained relative economic security through the scarcity of their skills.
Key scholars: Beyond Marx himself, the following are essential for understanding AI through a Marxist lens: Antonio Gramsci on ideology and hegemony; Nick Dyer-Witheford on digital labour and cyber-Marx; Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism; Aaron Benanav on automation and the future of work.
Reflection question: Think about an AI system used in your workplace or industry. Who owns it? Who profits from it? Who provides the labour that makes it function?