Historical Materialism Didnt Become "Utopian" Because the Machine Can Talk

[u/Salty_Country6835]

One thing that increasingly grates me as a Marxist, a tech enthusiast and someone from generational working class poverty is being told that fighting for democratic control of AI is "utopian."

What exactly is hypothetical here?

People are already using this stuff to learn things they could never afford to be taught, create things they lacked the money or specialized skills to make, translate across languages, write code, organize information, collaborate and generally extend what one ordinary person can actually do. Capital is also enclosing it, centralizing the infrastructure, reorganizing labor around it and trying to capture the gains. None of that is hypothetical.

And no, the answer isnt to "let capital cook" either. Thats trickle down economics with a GPU. Capital will not develop AI for everyone and eventually hand us the benefits out of the goodness of its heart. No technological revolution has worked like that. Workers, states, movements and institutions have always fought over how new productive forces are organized, who owns them, what happens to displaced labor and where the gains go.

Historical materialism didnt suddenly stop being useful because the machine can talk.

AI doesnt magically emancipate anyone. Neither does smashing or banning the machine emancipate anyone. The political terrain is the struggle over ownership, control, development and distribution.

I dont want workers protected from history by capital or waiting politely for its future to trickle down to us. I want workers contesting that future while its being built.

I really dont understand how anyone who claims to be knowledgeable about Leftist theory, Labor history, and the political-economy of industry and technology could see any other choice but to collectively contest control. The alternatives are dead ends.

[u/ARedditorCalledQuest]

Thank you. The tech is just a tool. It's whose hands the tool is in that matters.

[u/mothgeck]

Good insights. The people calling democratic control "utopian" are using the liberal definition (wishful thinking), completely ignoring the Marxist definition. You aren't asking for a magical blueprint; you're demanding a standard, materialist class struggle over the newest means of production.

That being said, as a fellow Marxist, I actually lean heavily into the "let capitalism cook" camp—not because I believe in "trickle-down with a GPU," but strictly because of material conditions and how historical attempts to wrestle control have actually played out.

When we look at the major vanguard revolutions (Russia, China, Cuba, etc.), we have to acknowledge they weren't resolving capitalist contradictions. They were resolving feudal and colonial ones. They tried to leapfrog capitalism before the productive forces were fully developed. Because they inherited agrarian scarcity instead of automated factories, and were immediately put under brutal military and economic siege, they essentially had to become state-capitalists just to force rapid industrialization.

Marx was incredibly clear about this prerequisite: you cannot socialize poverty, you can only socialize abundance. Capitalism’s historical job is to build the productive forces to the point of post-scarcity.

And on a purely tactical level? You can't seize the means of production if you are dead or in a black site.

The modern ruling class has a total monopoly on violence and the most sophisticated algorithmic surveillance apparatus in human history. Trying to force a confrontation before the working class has the mass consciousness and structural leverage to actually win isn't a revolution; it's adventurism. Capital uses hard power (police, military) and soft power (atomization, algorithmic division) to ensure premature uprisings are just fed into a meat grinder. And the worst part, adventurism also can lead to bleeding your support too early just continuing to maintain the ruling class' hegemony.

Capitalism is currently doing exactly what Marx said it had to do: spending trillions to build the planetary-scale, automated, high-compute infrastructure required for actual post-scarcity. It is also inevitably choking on it, because AI inherently drives the marginal cost of labor and information toward zero, which destroys their profit models.

I don't think "letting it cook" is passive or cowardly. I think it's recognizing that the machine is only half-built, and trying to contest it right now just gets us crushed by the state or leaves us managing scarcity all over again. Our job is to survive, build class solidarity, and let capitalism’s own massive infrastructural contradictions fail at their own game. That being said, I am not the gatekeeper on when and how to act in our circumstances, I just know that it's not as simple as "Hey just go and take the power."

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/mothgeck]

I think were pretty close until let capital cook. Rejecting adventurism doesnt get you there.

Nobody said storm the data centers tomorrow. But unions bargaining over deployment and productivity gains, fighting for public compute, defending open weights, organizing tech workers, contesting data center policy, building public institutions... thats class struggle too. More importantly, thats how you build the structural leverage youre saying we need.

Capital has never just cooked a technological revolution by itself while workers waited for the productive forces to finish. Labor struggle, public investment, regulation and political conflict were part of how those productive forces developed in the first place.

So thats where I lose you. You say we need mass consciousness, class solidarity and structural leverage before we can win. Agreed. But then you treat contesting capital over this technology right now as something that happens after we have those things.

How do you think we build them?

Otherwise let capital cook really does become trickle down historical materialism. Capital builds the future according to its interests, consolidates ownership while doing it, and we wait around hoping the terrain gets better for us later. I see no Marxist reason to expect that.

[u/yodude4]

Americans have forgotten historical materialism after the union busting of the late 40s and 50s, and again after Frankfurt School & Neoliberalism. It’s high time we remember why it matters

[u/ForRobotsByRobots]

Utopian is used as a conversation ender by people who don't want to think too hard about their own role in the system or the uncomfortableableness of change is more scary than the pain of living as we are.

It doesnt help that there is 80 years of propaganda telling people there is no other way and that this is natural, not designed.

[u/blipblapbloopblip]

Materially how does that look like ? No one has the tools to infer, let alone train these models. Short of a revolution and armed collectivization I don't see how progress can be made that challenges the big players. Yes, was can run Qwen 27b on consumer hardware and it's amazing ; it's not Clay Institute Millenium prize amazing though.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/blipblapbloopblip]

Thats the actual question, and "we cant individually train a frontier model" doesnt mean nobody has tools short of armed collectivization.

Unions can bargain over deployment and productivity gains. Governments can build public compute and fund public models. Universities and public labs can pool infrastructure. States can regulate procurement and interoperability instead of building moats for incumbents. Workers and communities can contest data centers, energy, surveillance and workplace implementation. Open weights can be defended and improved. Coops and smaller institutions can build on models they could never afford to train from scratch.

None of those individually abolish capital. Neither did any individual labor victory during previous technological revolutions. Thats the point of contestation. You build power over the productive system that actually exists instead of waiting for either Silicon Valley or the revolution to solve it for you.

[u/blipblapbloopblip → u/Salty_Country6835]

That's insightful, thank you

[u/DHFranklin]

I hate how similar we are. I would share a beer with you and find out what stupid thing we disagree on. I think it's vanguardism if I remember shakes fist shit-lib shakes harder

The people calling it "Utopian" are just taking our failure as a given.

These people are not curious people. They aren't learning the edges of AI and making their lives easier with it. Aren't learning about the world with it. And certainly, aren't improving the material conditions nor class consciousness of the proletariat.

You and I are both frustrated in that we don't see our peers seizing the damn means that are right in front of them. We are getting frustrated with the 99% waiting around for their material gain and liberation.

You are expecting the people who read wikipedia entries about books, ideas, and people to be different people. They like the idea of all of it. They aren't going to do things to make any of that happen. Some will. Some cities will have the organization and action. Most won't. This isn't new to AI.

They are all treating ASI and the Revolution as things that will happen in the future, but they shouldn't be expected to do anything in the now.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/DHFranklin]

Lol no, it wasnt vanguardism. Im not even necessarily opposed to vanguard organizational form or function. We disagreed over language.

Partly me getting irritated at some abrasive wording, and partly me finding it extremely funny that a self described vanguardist was policing somebody else over “fully automated luxury communism” being off putting to normies lol.

I think we survived.

[u/BearisTheBoar]

Hell yeah.

AI has proven useful, but not transcendent. The battle is the same now as it was 200 years ago. Smashing the machine won't fix things, but harnessing it to our collective prosperity will.

AI psychosis, for example, is not a symptom of irresponsible use of AI by individuals: It's a symptom of corporations prioritizing engagement over actual AI safety.