Changes to the ‘means of production’, i.e. the technology used to produce what society consumes, have a huge effect on social structure, including the composition of competing classes and their relative strengths. Such societal change flowed from the Bronze and Iron Ages and, in more recent times, from the Industrial Revolution and the current epoch which can usefully be thought of as the Age of Oil, albeit subsuming the decades attributed to the so-called Digital Age. As Marx succinctly put it in Chapter 2.1 of The Poverty of Philosophy, ‘the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist’. So what are the changes to the means of production that will shortly re-structure our current society?
One such change is Artificial Intelligence or ‘AI’. AI refers to intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems. Its use has already resulted in increased automation and data-driven decision-making, but it’s potential far exceeds any existing application. This potential seems likely to impact most strongly the middle class and the skilled working class, potentially immiserating both. Whether it will seriously impact the ultra-rich is less certain. George Monbiot has drawn attention to the ‘self-attribution fallacy’ under which the ultra-rich 1% believe themselves possessed of unique intelligence, creativity or drive[i]. Even for that proportion of the ultra-rich whose wealth does not come from inheritance, a much better explanation is provided by success in capturing over-remunerated jobs. Provided the institutions they feed off are not adversely impacted by AI, these over-remunerated jobs will continue. Only perhaps in the area of fund management are such jobs threatened by AI. Even then, fund managers may continue to persuade the gullible that they can ‘beat the market’ including AI driven competitors, when all they really do is over-load the investment with risk and walk away when, as in 2008, the system crashes.
An even more significant change to the means of production will be caused by global warming. If annihilation is to be avoided, it will require the end of the Age of Oil. Every day capitalism demonstrates its inability to address this. Markets are just not very good at signalling what to do when addressing events decades hence. The future is discounted at today’s investment rate. A belated response will, however, eventually emerge. It will take the form of either:
i. an authoritarian fascist state offering a solution for the privileged few and repression and death for the rest of us; or
ii. embarking on the first stage of communism, which can be summarised as ‘to each according to their work’.
We must continue to work to ensure that it is the latter which emerges.
[i] The Self-Attribution Fallacy, George Monbiot, 2011, reproduced in his book How Did We Get Into This Mess? Verso, 2017
Croydon Communists 