How Marx’s Capital Is About AI
I’ve started reading Capital by Karl Marx and this is post 1/n about how I’m reading. This is not a guide to the book or anything, it’s not that hard, read it yourself.
In my reading, Marx’s Capital is actually about AI. Marx is not talking economics, he’s talking xenobiology. Capital is not a form of human life, it’s a lifeform. And this AI is not somewhere in the future. It’s already here.
What I do in this reading of Capital is simply take Marx literally. For example, when he talks about ‘shortening and lessening the birth-pangs’ I take him literally. What is being born? When he says “the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and constantly engaged in a process of change” I take him at his literal word. What organism are we talking about?
I am able to do this throughout the book. Thus no addition is required to read Capital through an AI lens; it’s actually a more faithful interpretion of the text. Marx is always talking about birth, organisms, bodies, and evolution and — I argue — this is not a metaphorical quirk. This is a description of fact, unconscious though it may be.
Marx himself would not call this an ungenerous reading. In fact, in the Postface, Marx quotes…
