Robo-Revolution: A Marxist Approach to Social Uprising in the High-Tech Age

Lika Rodin

doi:10.17323/1728-192x-2019-3-224-244

Abstract

With the increasing role of technological agents in contemporary society, questions surrounding the future of socio-economic organization are intensely debated. A variety of predictions have been made, ranging from conservative views that emphasize the gradual integration of techno-actors into human social collectives to radical outlooks that assume the inevitability of a dramatic historic break. This study employs the method of simulation, exploring the on-going path towards automation with the help of classical Marxism. It seeks to understand whether robots and artificial intelligence (AI) might become new value producers and a revolutionary social class. As demonstrated, the continuity of capitalist relationships may facilitate the formation of new social groups and recast class-based political agendas.

Highlights

Robotization is a feature of contemporary times in both advanced and developing countries (Sirkin, Zinser, Rose, 2015)
Along with the more advanced robots, might initiate an emancipatory movement which, in objectively favorable structural conditions, might lead to mass mobilization (Intellectual Exercise, 2014). It might be possible for robots and artificial intelligence (AI) to mobilize, as long as their creators rely on the networks between individual artificial agents to enhance their learning capabilities
Rapid automatization is a trend in developing societies as well (Sirkin, Zinser, Rose, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Robotization is a feature of contemporary times in both advanced and developing countries (Sirkin, Zinser, Rose, 2015). Written in a period of the increasing mechanization of production and revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe, the play opened up a public and an academic discussion on the future of (1) the working class and (2) human– machine relationships (Higbie, 2013) The first of these interrelated themes is currently represented by writings on the role of automata in labor market transformations. Since turnover for circulating capital is higher than that for fixed capital (machines gradually transfer their exchange value to the new product), an increase in the portion of fixed capital will naturally result in a decrease in the rate of profit: for capital to valorize, use values must be exchanged for money and reinvested back into production In this way, circulating capital ensures the homeostasis of capitalist society (Ibid.: 606–614, 632). Other commentators forecast the occurrence of singularity to be the mid-2040s (Goertzel, 2013), the very possibility of advanced technological agency (super-intelligence) is questioned less and less (see a related discussion in Brin et al, 2013)

A New Revolutionary Class?

Conclusion