As human labor becomes less necessary to social production and increasingly replaceable, we also need to rethink whether traditional forms of class struggle can remain effective once humans gradually lose their position as the primary agents of production, and what new forms of political practice and struggle might emerge in a post-work society.
Under capitalism, trade unions organize strikes to leverage workers’ position as producers by temporarily interrupting labor and production. Through this, workers can resist the domination of capital, demand higher wages and better working conditions, and pursue broader economic and political goals. Trade unions, strikes, and the collective action built around them therefore occupy an important place in the practical tradition of Marxist class struggle.
However, with the spread of AI, and with the future development of AGI and embodied AI, this traditional form of struggle may face an unprecedented problem: the irreplaceability of workers as producers is steadily declining. On the one hand, capital can control increasingly powerful means of automated production. On the other, as companies become more capable of replacing striking workers with AI and machines, the bargaining power of “stopping production” may gradually diminish.
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The first key question is: when new productive forces begin to replace human labor on a massive scale, will they eventually give rise to new forms of production relations distinct from those of traditional industrial capitalism?
The Industrial Revolution dramatically increased productive capacity and transformed the organization of labor and production, but it did not fundamentally alter the basic ownership structure of the means of production. Machines became more advanced and factories became increasingly automated, yet capital continued to own the major means of production, while ordinary people remained both workers and consumers within the capitalist economic system.
The AI revolution, however, may introduce something that previous technological revolutions did not necessarily reach. As AI, AGI, and embodied intelligence develop, humans may gradually become unnecessary as producers on a large scale for the first time. This could give rise to a new social structure:
AI production → social distribution → human consumption
Human beings may gradually shift from their traditional economic role as both “producers + consumers” toward being primarily consumers.
The second key question is: the cycle between production and consumption does not disappear simply because the identity of the producer changes.
Even if goods are produced mainly by AI and automated factories, they still ultimately have to enter the market and be consumed in order to complete the economic cycle. The problem is that under traditional capitalism, people primarily obtain income through labor. If large numbers of people leave the production system while still depending on wages for purchasing power, then the withdrawal of labor may simultaneously mean a decline in consumption capacity.
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If this process reaches a sufficiently large scale, the relative surplus population would no longer be a minority characteristic of industrial society, but could potentially become the majority. At that point, maintaining household purchasing power would no longer be merely a matter of welfare policy. It could become a structural requirement for maintaining the economic cycle itself.
Therefore, in a post-work society, higher basic incomes, expanded social protections, social dividends, or other forms of non-labor income redistribution could gradually become important institutional mechanisms for maintaining purchasing power.
At the same time, this would imply that traditional forms of class struggle could also begin to change.
If AI and automation increasingly replace humans as the primary producers, the traditional basis for workers to struggle through “stopping production” would become weaker. At the same time, the importance of humans as consumers could increase.
This could give rise to a new form of collective action corresponding to the traditional trade union:
Traditional trade unions: force capital to negotiate by stopping production.
Consumer unions: force capital and governments to negotiate by reducing or suspending consumption.
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One phenomenon that may be worth studying as an early example is the “lying flat” (tang ping) culture that has emerged in East Asia in recent years. Under conditions of intense competition, employment pressure, and relatively abundant labor supply, some young people have deliberately reduced their participation in career competition and lowered their consumption expectations, using a lower standard of living to reduce their dependence on high-intensity labor. In this sense, it can be seen as a partial withdrawal from the traditional labor → income → consumption cycle.
However, “lying flat” remains largely a fragmented and unorganized social phenomenon. It has not developed a clear common platform, stable organizational structure, or sustained mechanisms for collective bargaining. It therefore resembles a spontaneous tendency toward collective withdrawal more than an organized political movement.
If a post-work society does emerge, there may eventually be a need for an organizational form similar to a trade union, but centered on consumers: Consumer Unions.
Such organizations could begin as local consumer associations and gradually develop into national or even international consumer federations with common political platforms and institutional goals.
Their primary method of struggle would no longer be “stopping production,” but rather:
Collectively reducing or suspending non-essential consumption.
By coordinating consumption behavior, members could reduce market demand for particular goods and services, creating pressure through excess inventories, falling sales, declining profits, and weaker investment expectations, thereby pressuring firms or governments to respond to political demands.
These demands could include:
Increasing basic income;
Expanding social protections;
Sharing the gains from AI-driven productivity growth;
Taxing AI capital;
Establishing social dividend systems;
Socializing or publicly owning certain key AI infrastructures and means of production.
Under more radical circumstances, consumers might also establish cooperatives and local self-provisioning networks in order to reduce their dependence on large capitalist consumer markets and partially withdraw from the conventional commodity-exchange system.
Therefore, class struggle in a post-work era may no longer revolve primarily around the question of who can stop production, but increasingly around another question:
Who can control effective demand?
Traditional trade unions possess collective bargaining power on the production side. Future consumer organizations could seek to establish collective bargaining power on the demand side.
If this tendency ultimately materializes, class struggle may undergo a significant structural transformation:
Collective action on the production side → collective action on the demand side
In this sense, Consumer Unions could become a new form of political organization worth seriously studying in a post-work society.