Large factories with machines operated by workers represented the cutting edge of technology when Marx was writing in the middle of the 19th century. To Marx, they were the end of history. Europe, led by the UK, would see more and more of them; the advent of the factory created a new class division between the owners of the means of production and the people who ran the machines; the owners would exploit the workers; the numerically superior workers would ultimately rise and throw off their chains; and the classless society would be the end game.
Marx, like most of us, was a lousy prophet. He didn’t foresee the extension of the franchise to workers, progressive taxation, the creation of the welfare state, or the shift towards services in advanced economies. As I’ve noted before, the means of production for the wealthiest men in the world is now a laptop computer. Factories filled with masses of burly workers are a relic of the last century, and nobody really believes in communism today–not even the Chinese or the North Koreans.
But AI puts a new twist on an old question. Marx argued that an economy dominated by factories and mass production inevitably led to the exploitation of the working class by a handful of capitalists. AI, on the other hand, could cause inequality to soar by making tens of millions of workers irrelevant. What happens then? Do we see a revolution led by the newly unemployed workers, a vast expansion of the welfare state, or something else? What would Marx say today?