The accompanying table lays out a schematic history of capitalist modes of production and their attendant general conditions of production. Like any chart which purports to grasp complex phenomena, it oversimplifies and runs the risk of appearing more rigid that it is intended to. The periods listed here overlap with one another and were and still are being passed through in different ways and at different speeds in different places around the world.
Following Marx’s theorization, we propose that a revolution in one branch of the economy could provoke the necessity of widespread AI adoption such that it becomes part of the general conditions. In Chapter 2, we suggest that a large part of the excitement about AI development responds to crises encountered by capital’s globalizing search for cheap labour, and in Chapter 3 we argue that the prospect that AI may overcome the fetters to an advanced form of capital left over from a previous period – the persistent fetter of human labour – needs to be taken seriously. But here we ask how generally available AI might be incorporated into capital’s inherently revolutionary dynamics. It is not difficult to understand why capital must rely, and how it relies, on physical infrastructures, such as roads and ports, to overcome the fetter of space. But what fetters to capital’s valorization might generally available AI overcome? And how might AI become generally available?
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inhuman power