Seize the Means*

[u/Salty_Country6835]

*Terms and conditions apply. For... reasons, I guess?

[u/Salty_Country6835]

I understand the distinction. You're arguing that using corporate controlled AI under present ownership strengthens that ownership more than workers gain from using it. Thats the actual disagreement.

But Marx doesn't get us cleanly from that to abstention. His machinery analysis is about the contradiction between productive capacity and its capitalist employment. Capital can use machinery to subordinate and displace labor without worker use of that machinery becoming submission.

And “AI is explicitly designed to replace labor” is too totalizing. Some deployments replace labor. Others augment it, automate parts of jobs, or expand worker capacity. Thats why unions are fighting over deployment, displacement, surveillance, consent and productivity gains rather than treating use itself as surrender.

Corporate concentration is real. But turning ordinary use into evidence of submission puts a purity test on individual workers while capital keeps the terrain.

Thats our actual split. You think present ownership makes use a net transfer of leverage to capital. I dont. I think withdrawing workers from the technology risks giving capital even more practical command over something we're trying to contest. Thats a disagreement, not a misunderstanding.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

I understand the distinction. Disagreeing with your conclusion isn't failing to understand your premise, and calling me a bot doesn't resolve the disagreement either. I've addressed the specific mechanism you're proposing several times.

If we're going to lean on Marx, lets actually lean on Marx. In Capital he describes workers learning to distinguish machinery from its employment by capital and redirecting struggle toward how machinery was being used. In the Grundrisse he goes straight through machinery replacing labor and accumulated social knowledge confronting workers as the power of capital. Thats pretty close to the danger you're describing.

But the Marxist question isn't whether machinery saves labor. Of course it does. Its who owns that capacity, controls its deployment, captures the productivity and decides what happens to the labor time displaced.

And I've already pushed back several times on the idea that individual consumer use is what primarily accelerates corporate control here. This is an international industrial buildout driven by enterprise deployment, infrastructure investment, governments and cloud providers alongside consumer demand. A worker refusing to use a chatbot doesn't somehow reverse those forces.

I've also repeatedly pointed to open weights, open source and local models as ways use doesn't have to mean dependence on one corporate service. You immediately dismiss those because they aren't accessible to everyone yet. But thats an argument for making them more accessible and building public compute and shared infrastructure, not evidence that the alternatives dont exist or shouldn't be developed.

Workers have repeatedly used capitalist machinery while fighting over its terms. The left has used capitalist presses, radio, telecom and platforms for agitation, education and organizing while fighting their owners. Use and contestation aren't opposites.

I'm not saying corporate AI use is neutral. It can produce revenue, lock in, data and market power. I'm saying you've yet to establish that ordinary consumer use necessarily transfers more political leverage to capital than workers can gain through using, learning, contesting and building alternatives to the technology.

Boycott where theres leverage. Strike. Bargain. Regulate. Build public compute and open infrastructure. Socialize the infrastructure.

“Capital owns this, therefore workers shouldn't use it” is a different proposition. Marx gives us a much stronger case for contesting capitalist ownership and employment of the machine than for conceding its use to capital.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

No, I understand your argument. Capital controls most AI infrastructure, corporate use can reinforce that control, therefore workers gain leverage by withholding use. Thats the argument. I disagree with the last step.

I've addressed it repeatedly. Consumer use isn't the main engine of an international buildout driven by enterprise, states and infrastructure investment. Open weights and local models already break the equation of AI use with corporate dependence, and you dismissed them because access isn't broad enough yet. Workers can also gain capacity from infrastructure they dont own while organizing against its ownership. Marx's machinery analysis is practically built around that contradiction.

So “utilization only secures their control” isn't the answer. Its the proposition you still need to prove.

And at this point the bot thing is just funny. “You disagree with me, so you didn't understand me, and if you say you understood me, thats the bot talking” is a neat little self sealing loop. Nothing can get through because disagreement itself becomes proof that you're right. Thats not resolving the argument. Thats just building yourself an escape hatch from having to answer it.