Jeanne d'Arc écoutant les voix by Eugène Thirion (1876)
“Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them.”
-Samuel Butler[1]
Introduction
This piece is intended to be read with prior understanding of certain claims of political economy. While it can still be read without necessarily agreeing with such claims, understanding the basic nature of them is necessary. I will state the basic essences of these three claims in this work. Ideally, they will be explored in much greater detail in a future work, where their theoretical bases and pre-existing literature from Marx and other economists will be explored in much greater detail.[2]
The first claim is that labor can be segregated into two forms- labor that involves subjective goals and labor that is primarily objective. I define subjective labor as deriving from the conceptual value of the goods and services created, that is, its output being largely judged by an open-ended nature. Objective labor, in contrast, is largely capable of being judged by intrinsic qualities, ranging from the amount of output, efficiency of operation, to closeness in ideal.
Examples I give of subjective labor include the imagination and creation of the creative arts, the experimentation and refining of meal recipes, the performance of sports, social services such as psychotherapy, academia in both instruction and research, and the alignment of automated systems. Objective labor is far more broad in scope, but related tasks to the previous examples include the construction of technical infrastructure behind films, the preparation of food from pre-determined recipes, the repair of gear and venue for sports, transportation of social workers, the logistical distribution of academic supplies and textbooks, and lastly the electrical maintenance of such automated systems.
It is critical to understand that the distinction between these forms is not derived from the skill necessary for production; neither is it derived from personal fulfillment or tolerability. Forms of subjective labor can be performed with minimal training or education, and some forms of objective labor can only be performed by those with decades of instruction. Whether or not labor is fulfilling is also unaccounted for in calculation- such frameworks inseparably derive from the environment of such labor, with factors such as their wages, the organizational superstructure which governs it, and the alienation derived from the division of labor all being critical to the emotional resonance of labor regardless of their essences of what is produced. Lastly, many existing occupations consist of labor in both categories- archetypically in the medical field, where tasks in objective quality- such as surgeries and synthesis of medicine, equal that of tasks in subjective nature; from the research of conditions to communicating treatments needed. As such, distinguishing individual forms of labor is not equivalent to evaluation of entire occupations.
The second claim proposes that communist society is capable of abolishing all labor; by full automation of objective labor.[3] This claim does not necessarily specify what the intermediary process between the current system and communist society would look like- noting that certainly massive amounts of labor of all kinds is necessary in the construction of socialism. The construction of socialism entails massive expansion of democracy among all workers, and all given dignity, yet with the erosion of capitalism, work of objective performance gradually will be done away. The vast majority of work today, disregarding their essentiality or importance in sustaining the economy or daily life, is objective, and as such this similarly entails that the vast majority of the population will either find themselves to be completely freed from the obligation of work, or conversely are made more readily available for subjective labor. Objective labor that is enjoyable could, of course, be performed for recreation; albeit unnecessary to be performed for any other reason.
I note that the automation of labor in capitalism, even if such labor itself is objective and not necessarily worsened by being automated, does not liberate workers or increase their free time but rather enriches the capitalist. When such automation processes occur in the context of capitalist society; and laborers are not given the dignity of compensation to retire or find other work, it should be vigorously opposed. This society is argued specifically to only be possible in the upper stage of communist society, and the abolition of labor is contended to be impossible in capitalism, from both the structural implausibility and class stratification inherent to it as a mode of production. Abolishing labor entails the end of the exchange of capital and inequality between peoples; as long as capital has power and classes exist, wage-labor, however precarious it is, continues to exist.
It is furthermore argued that only the organizational capacity of socialism can sustain the continued operation of labor automation, through the complete opening of access to the means of production. In this common ownership, the alignment of systems to automate objective labor should be done exclusively through proletarian and democratic methods. For example, it could be done by the complete subordination of a singular system to the democratic socialist party, which would perform labor as a caretaker superintelligence.
The third and final claim regards the place of creative pursuits in communist society; which is that subjective labor will cease to be labor and will be performed voluntarily. All varieties of subjective labor are distinguished by the subjectivity of their approach; whether this manifests in artistic value, the inherent pathos of human interaction, or elsewise which is unable to be simply defined through pure statistical metric. In particular, artistic endeavor is time for the full development of the individual. In capitalism subjective labor, as is all labor, is inextricably mired in exploitation; in communist society it is done without impediment of scarcity and without the recompensation or pursuit of capital; therefore it ceases to be labor.[4] To attempt to abolish creative pursuits (in contrast to its nature as labor requiring coercion or compensation) is therefore an attempt to revoke the development and fulfillment of the individual. Any forced abolition and disintegration of the performance of subjective work and creative pursuits should be profoundly rejected by socialists.
The necessity to state the preceding theses has been revealed by the past three years of widespread interest in artificial intelligence, primarily generative artificial intelligence. For the past hundred years the predominant question that cyberneticists have aimed to address is what work could be automated by AI. Today it becomes apparent that the question is not what could be done without human intervention but what should be done by machinery and what should be done by living, breathing, human beings. This question has been asked by philosophers before, but not enough.[5] The notion that some forms of labor should be indefinitely done by humanity, no matter how advanced technology becomes, is one that is rejected by the tech industry and apparently unheard in the general consciousness.
The AI boom has unravelled profound implications regarding both the potential of these claims and the suggestions they have on the anti-capitalist movement. Without the context of such recent developments, the potential of automation to abolish wage-labor likely would suggest that the creation and acceleration of AI technology, even through bourgeois institutions and within the framework of the capitalist economy, would be beneficial and desirable for the socialist movement. What has transpired has revealed a startling inverse of what is necessary, even if such hypothesized labor abolition seems to be even more possible.
Ultimately the three theses serve as the foundation for an ideology which is profoundly opposed to artificial intelligence- namely, all projects in generative AI and efforts to create artificial general intelligence. Advancement in technology and capacity for organization has not been joined with advancement in the abolition of social classes and erasing material inequality which exist between arbitrary divisions of human beings. AI as it is used now aims to evaporate creative pursuit in order to further stratify the working class and deprive it of any power and to strengthen imperialism and the surveillance and police states existing therein. The divide between the possibility of communist society and the ongoing, aggressive expansion of capitalism is the ultimate contradiction of AI.
The publication of this piece will be made in an incredible vacuum of organization against AI. Massive revulsion towards the brazen consumerism and greed of those who push AI exists without coalescence into revolutionary energy to stop it, except for sentiment on social media and personalized disgust. The aspiration of the manifesto is to create the ideological basis of organization; through political and labor action, and to fill this vacuum with an alternative to the destruction of nature and the destruction of humanity by AI.
What I write and propose to be here will be considered extreme. It is indeed extreme in that I believe the world as it exists requires extreme reorganization and extreme methods to correct it; that the threat posed by AI requires total war to destroy it. But it is, not, for a single moment, out of anything but compassion and love for this world, and for the beauty of human civilization and the art it has born. The capacity for beauty in this world is infinite, the same way there is limitless potential for untold evil and suffering if humanity embarks upon the pathway of barbarism. I believe that the moral arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice. I know that the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy will come with the morning.
Artificial Intelligence Is The Enemy Of Humanity
The term artificial intelligence, however long it has existed to describe any number of other applications, has been so thoroughly and fully consumed by those who mythologize it as the architecture of an incoming world order, that is an ideology and a quasi-religion in itself. In the past few years, the word “AI” has become synonymous with existing generative artificial intelligence and ongoing efforts to develop artificial general intelligence. The application of generative AI and the ideology of AI that is found now in every level of society and promoted by the entire class of the bourgeoisie.
The push for the general public to accept generative AI as superseding creative and intellectual disciplines has become all-encompassing in the public consciousness. It is impossible to search up a reference for any artistic subject without the images section being flooded with garishly lit AI-generated works with pitiful attention to detail and deformities at the edge of focus. The vast majority of web applications and new technology products mention the letters “AI” and advertise new features, many of which amount to LLM wrappers giving unhelpful advice without any genuine integration to pre-existing features. In many cases AI is not just suggested but involuntarily forced. AI-created deformities are supplementing places where artists are traditionally patronized, web searches receive unsolicited summaries brimming with dangerous misinformation.
This push is not spurred or driven by mass interest, or even consumer interest in generative AI. There surely exists a demographic willing to subordinate their own abilities for AI, but they are met by masses who are fully disgusted by any application of generative AI. There is vested interest by technology corporations and those with antipathy towards the thousands of years of human culture before generative AI to acclimate consumers to AI, to manufacture consent for the idea as if there is no alternative to it. Generative AI and widespread promulgation of its underlying technology is pushed by companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the ownership of nearly every social media platform (disregarding their actual userbases), and right-wing political movements around the world.
The class basis of the ideology of AI is so transparently clear that it is almost frivolous for me to spell it out - the purpose of AI is enshrine and maximize the domination of the bourgeois; a class which is dwindling in number yet simultaneously increasing in power. The primary way AI does this is by maximizing the extraction of surplus value in every possible context; that in any area where workers can maintain any semblance of power or autonomy, AI seeks to eliminate control.[6] The disintegration of the arts is seen for this reason; it is both a discipline that is done voluntarily out of the simplest, unreimbursed desire to create and one that exists outside the pure paradigm of commodity production under capitalism. AI is promoted by those with seemingly no interests in anything except the acquiring of capital because its current incarnation has no capability but to gain capital; and to protect the structures that guard it.
The development of generative artificial intelligence is directly correlated to concurrent efforts to create artificial general intelligence. Once again the goal of AGI development, wherever it exists in international capitalism, is to further the class divide. The project to create AGI fulfills the indefinite sustainment of a stratified world order in both its operation and in its ultimate goal. Today, the companies and organizations that aim to develop an AI that would surpass human capabilities in every way do so in a way that develops capital or the interests of their benefactors. In the case of private entities that undertake this development, the deluge of generative AI products reifies the expansion of AI as the only logical economic pathway that nations and individuals can take. Among states and agencies; AI is used to solidify the monopoly of violence by the bourgeoise- AI surveillance promises intelligence collection to be expanded without any constraint of personnel,[7] AI in the defense industry eternalizes ongoing war and removes the constraints of morality by its wagers.[8]
AGI as it is developed today- regardless of the corporate entity that develops it, if it is made in the United States or Europe or China, even if it is ostensibly open-source and by ideological right-libertarians; will be used to strengthen the capitalist that makes it. Whatever optimism socialists have of what a popularly aligned system of automation could do- an optimism that I will establish that I share; does not change that the purpose of modern AGI is what it does, and AGI seeks to make elite the exploiter, permanently chain the exploited, and kill the resistant.
The declaration that I make here is that artificial intelligence is the enemy of humanity. The entire project of AI, the short-term economic bubble that has arisen from overspeculating it, and the mantra of it as humanity’s future is nothing but a project to enslave us in chains far worse than it exists now, and existed anywhere. The duty of every human being who loves another, who loves the world, the heavens, the moon and the stars, and loves even a moment of the thousands of years of beauty that it has built and painted through this hand, is to dedicate their lives (in the strategic manner which will be described) to its destruction.
Non-Generative AI and AI Apocalypticism
Two clarifications on possible misconceptions need to be made following this: the first regarding the nature of what exactly I oppose and the second regarding why I oppose it.
The first clarification is what I refer to when I write “AI.” What I specifically refer to is the ideologized superculture of AI that has arisen, the corporate interests that create this culture, the ongoing efforts to create AGI, and the technology of generative AI itself. The prescribed enemy is precise in that I am opposed to generative artificial intelligence; the production of language and imitations of the arts from training data and modal inputs, and economy-encompassing projects to create AGI. There are numerous technologies that, although labelled as AI or machine learning, are neither destructive nor are made to pursue capital. This confusion is exacerbated by how the term “AI” was loosely used in the computer sciences before the rapid growth of generative AI in the early 2020s.
Non-generative and non-general artificial intelligence as it is known in the contexts of video game and simulational actors, bots, and characters, are, of course, of no concern. The specific applications of neural networks and machine learning, such as protein folding and the elementary manipulation and analysis of data in clearly-defined algorithms, are causes to be celebrated- if anything, the prerogative is for investment in this field to be multiplied as a societal positive. Medical advancements made through deep learning can and will be entirely separated from the overwhelming majority of AI which is to be rejected. Even if said developments were developed by technologies in the vein of generative AI, their separation from the wider project of AI capitalism will be done, unambiguously and without semantic controversy.
Secondly, my total opposition to AI is entirely and completely divorced from premonitions of technological singularity or aggressive takeover by AI- a worldview which I refer to in this work as “AI apocalypticism.” Ideologically I am in fact, in diametric opposition to claims of existential risk from AI’s autonomous capabilities.[9] These doomsday scenarios as, at best, well-intentioned distractions that perhaps might have some positive implication in encouraging divestment from AI. Less charitably this fear of singularity is meant to reify a fundamental disentanglement of AI from capitalism and the circumstances it is created in. Any serious anti-AI perspective from the perspective of democratic socialists must reject this heuristic as grounded not in material reality, but the past century of science fiction.
Humanity is not under the threat of an AI that desires to torture those who do not help it come into conception, neither is it under the threat of robotic appliances rising up to kill us, nor is there even a remote chance of nuclear exchange occurring due to a rogue AI. To prevent any of these scenarios is incredibly trivial— simply do not train LLMs on misanthropy, stop the production of AI weaponry, and do not use AI in nuclear launch sites. That so much research and money has been poured by the ruling classes, indiscriminately, into parading this as the principal threat of AI should be a clear indictment of it as having underlying goals rather than preventing an apocalyptic situation. Focusing on AI destroying humanity is focusing away from humanity using AI to destroy itself.
There is, of course, real, existential threat from AI, but it is not from AI’s capabilities, or its desires, or its capacity for self-improvement. The existential threat of AI is through the same human beings that threatened to destroy entire peoples by the will of fascism and the same human beings who have accelerated the warming of this planet. Humanity is threatened by human beings who will use AI for imperial propaganda. It is threatened by the extreme anti-intellectualism and denigration of human capacities by those who promote the mutilation of education and the arts. Humanity is unanimously all threatened by those who will use AI to determine who is given healthcare and who is rejected from life itself.[10]
Once it is fully understood that AI is the principal enemy, and why it is the enemy, the question turns from what is wrong to what should be done. Technology and social development indicate the end to the citadel of greed and consumption of the world; AI is unquestionably reinforcing it instead of tearing it down. The aforementioned contradiction between the possible world, completely liberated from alienation, and the nightmarish world which is being marched towards, needs to be highlighted. There is nothing more dangerous than merely recognizing this contradiction and wallowing in despair, instead of agitating for this contradiction to be understood by every dispossessed proletarian anywhere, and for them to fight to resolve it.
Mobilization Against AI
Before the previous declaration can be explored to any extent; whatever currently exists that is in opposition to AI should be explored as well. And conversely whatever does not exist that opposes AI must be taken into account, and perspectives on why it does not should at the very least, be given. The forces and movements that utilize AI and ideologize for it are transparent and all-encompassing in scope; the reaction to this is felt and passively observed but is not an opposite reaction in organization or physical power. The reality of the situation is that no organized movement with a substantial, comprehensible ideology or program against AI currently exists.
Unorganized and undirected anti-AI sentiment- specifically sentiment in the sense that AI is destructive to the human psyche for the reasons outlined- exists everywhere. It is present in the minds of those unreified to the degrading pursuit of capital, and in every refusal to use AI in creative processes, and in every exasperation of frustration from educators in the massive use of AI by students to cheat themselves out of an education. Disgust towards AI is found from widely publicized rage against the gargantuan power usage of AI (along with significant water usage[11]) and acts of vandalism against nihilistically bleak advertisements in cities promoting AI as a substitute to human interaction.[12] No matter how much despair from humanities departments or viral social media posts against AI are made, this energy has no potential to act as anything besides exhaling frustration and resignation to inhumanity. It calls for nothing beyond individual action and vague calls for regulation- usually within the framework of labyrinthic copyright law- against a limited number of use cases of AI.
Why has nothing latched onto this energy and redirected it into decisive action? I propose two correlated explanations- the structural, if bleak, perspective is that such a movement would have to have some sort of capital backing behind it; as any substantive criticism of AI is also a criticism of capitalism, and as genuinely anti-capitalist forces are few and obscure in this world, any counterforce that could emerge would have no material basis to utilize. The past few hundred years of capitalism has shown that capital will never autonomously undo itself and allow progressive developments to occur simply by the movements of the market. Advancement is only won by the seizure of power- whether done peacefully in election; violently by force, or any number of methods in between. Socialists with political or economic power are rare, and as such material action against AI is equally insignificant.
The other perspective is that the ideological antithesis to the culture of AI does not currently exist in the consciousness of the public. That mass resistance against AI can and will occur; if only if an actionable plan is put forth, one pertinent and in full understanding of everything new yet in full reconciliation with the philosophy of the past. The lack of revolution against AI is because no one has yet to start it, not because it is fundamentally impossible. Just as the seeds of revolutionary fervor required ideologues like Lenin and exceptional acts by extraordinary individuals, the deluge simply is waiting to begin.
The numerous technology subcultures that promote “AI safety” and “AI alignment” are both divorced from the critical perspective of AI from its use rather than ability, and hopelessly futile in their frameworks of AI apocalypticism or relying on altruism from philanthropic capitalists.[13] Their concerns, petitions, and statements of AI risk overwhelmingly derive from their fears of AI takeovers and imaginary thought experiments of malevolent AI. Their notions that the persistent and massive abuse of AI could simply be aligned away is disproved by their own industry. It is easy to run unaligned models independently, on hardware as lightweight and easily accessible as a smartphone or a laptop. No matter how much billions of dollars have been invested into preventing proprietary generators from producing photorealistic virtual child sexual abuse material or animal abuse videos, someone could simply start their own company or run their own system specifically designed to cater to misanthropic psychopaths gratified by such videos. This is not a futile battleground that must be conceded- there are genuinely effective demands that can be proposed; yet these demands entail nothing short of complete unravelling of the modern world.
The message of struggle against AI is founded upon a vision of society. It is more utopian than any society previously thought to be possible; and the sheer reality is that AI in its entirety needs to be destroyed to achieve it. The vast technological advancements over the past few decades, not just in the AI boom but in all sciences, has demonstrated the framework for a world that is fundamentally beautiful; a world which is not being established. Humanity has demonstrated that it can be developed enough to ensure that the world; regardless if ten billion or two billion people will live in it in the future; could entirely be fed, clothed, housed, and educated. Yet millions starve, live without homes, and are denied the enlightenment of education. Ways to harness the power of the sun, the seas, the wind, and the atom have been unlocked to create a cleaner world free of global warming and climate change, yet nations burn fossil fuels prodigiously.
Recall the claims made at the start of the manifesto regarding the processes of automation, and imagine if such is done so in socialism. The end goal of democratic socialists is the abolition of social classes, existing currencies, commodities and their production, the bourgeois, the proletariat, and alienation in all forms. To no end will automation ever enable humanity to exist completely dormant, yet automation promises every activity in this modern day that would not be performed without material recompensation to be done away with; naturally from no longer being applicable or cybernetically through the creation of systems and machines that lead it to be done without human input. Art, sports, the sharing of knowledge, and everything else subjective will cease to be done by the regimen of livelihood but the expression of the individual. In effect, communist society will entail the massive expansion of the output of humanity simultaneous to the total abolition of work and labor.
Socialists must aggressively agitate around the primary contradiction of AI- that modern technology enables the abolition of labor, yet currently automation and AI exist solely as a vehicle to maintain and expand capitalism.[14] A common protest of AI and automation, that it is “taking jobs,” is true, but insufficient to explain the supreme evil they have wrought upon the human race. In capitalism, automation inevitably causes layoffs and unemployment, making more precarious the status of the common worker and weakening the ability for them to collectively bargain. Yet AI also is entwining us to jobs; it is solidifying in place the underclass that toils out of need, and it is ensuring that the occupation of this underclass is banal and replaceable and constantly under the whims and mercies of whoever rules above it. Ironically the aspect of this world that is the most brutally unnecessary to the human race- the zero-sum competition of the bourgeois against themselves for the surplus value of their exploited masses, is of course what these technologies make no effort to disintegrate.[15] This applies even to occupations that would ideally be automated in socialism- when machinery today deprive workers of their occupations, they do not prosper from the expansion of free time but rather languish in losing their livelihoods and are forced to drift from perennial source of income to perennial source of income.
In the previous section I have declared that because it is the ultimate mechanism of maintaining this world’s order, AI is the ultimate enemy of humanity. The implication of this declaration is, of course, that state and society should relentlessly seek to destroy AI. However, the exact process of “destroying AI” is only made clear when the declaration of anti-capitalism is taken into account- that this destruction is done by socialist revolution with the end goal of completely abolishing classes and labor. The message that AI must be destroyed can not simply be presented in itself; what will follow it is imperative. Democratic socialists must be completely unafraid to share their vision of a world beyond that of capital. It will see unequivocal effort towards the exploration and preservation of the environment without having to work within the notion of cost. It will see the endless accessibility and availability of the arts without the scourge of being a product to be sold.
The work of justifying the first message; that AI must be destroyed, has thankfully already been done through the world that AI has presented. AI is the incumbent ideology of the global capitalist empire, and it is disgusting. AI “art” is an insult to life itself.[16] Every usage of AI by the Trump administration is evil to the point of mortal sin. AI’s effect on education can be summarized as potentially allowing students to graduate without learning anything.[17] Chatbot psychosis is ubiquitous; not just among its most extreme cases documented in the news but among literal millions.[18] AI is the aesthetic of fascism and the natural conclusion of late stage capitalism and the death rattle of empire.[19] It is the ultimate catering of incuriosity in human nature that civilization has spent thousands of years trying to undo.
Those who push AI are of an incredibly reprehensible nature. Every generative AI company, from the multi-billion ventures closely cooperating with the federal government of the United States,[20] to small, indistinguishably cynical startups are nothing but abominations upon the human race. Once the worship of themselves gaining capital and exchanging imaginary billions of dollars between themselves is removed; there is nothing to them; though occasionally one will find horrifying plans regarding racial demographics and extermination campaigns towards sexual minorities. It is a near-perfect replication of delusions regarding cryptocurrency and blockchains as anything but zero-sum games for the exchange of capital, except on a universal scale.
AI capitalists are themselves, even more harrowingly than anything they produce via their models, devoid of a soul. Their obsessions with money and their greed for the expansion of their worthless projects are the focal point of their existence. All human life in capitalism ultimately is shaped around capital to a certain extent- even the most resolutely anti-modernists or anti-capitalists are thoroughly unable to reject any participation in the system in some way. AI capitalists celebrate class division and believe in the indefinite existence of a human race endlessly bound to the exchange of capital. Principal to this celebration is the notion that the victory of AI ideology is inevitable and undefeatable. However, an AI future is not inevitable and can be defeated. The conditions that lead to capitalism decaying to this state were indeed inevitable, the same way the cyclic rise of fascism is inevitable. But the victory of fascism is clearly not inevitable; through the will of the people, it can be destroyed. AI can similarly be destroyed.
Yet with all of this readily apparent and obviously seen, the second declaration- the destruction of AI through socialist revolution- requires elaboration. This piece could not end by emptily calling for revolution, as thousands of newspapers with double-digit readership currently do. The manifesto will describe what exactly is being demanded, and then it will describe the revolution. I do not pretend that I know the road to socialism in all of its concreteness, but the direction of the road can be seen; the following program demonstrates this road.
Programmatic Demands Against AI
When discussing the demands that democratic socialists put forth to achieve their goals of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, and then completing the transition to communist society, the terms “immediate,” “minimum,” and “maximum” are oftentimes used to refer to specific programs.[21] Each term describes the stages in which each program aims to bring society forward to. The immediate program aims to allow the struggle for a socialist state to occur; the minimum program aims to establish said state, and the maximum program is carried out by the state to bring forth socialist society. Similarly, the terms “immediate,” “minimal,” and “maximal” are used to describe the nature of these demands. Immediate demands oftentimes deal with basic democratic functions, ensuring that the organization of workers and the exploited is possible. Once these prerequisites are met, minimal and maximal demands consist of specific policies and goals that transform the socioeconomic terrain of society, withering away classes and material inequality.
Immediate Demands
The immediate program against AI is not just advocated by the left-wing, but shares wide popularity among much of the political spectrum, save for some of the fundamentally anti-democratic far-right, instead promoting a surveillance state, and right-libertarians who strictly view any form of government intervention to AI as a threat to individual liberty. The immediate program advocates for conditions that allow for the struggle to occur in any meaningful sense. It very specifically does not outline any action to have yet been taken; nor does it require drastic systemic change in many contexts, besides that in which unfettered capital has had free reign to pre-emptively dismantle any attempt at undermining it. As such, the program can be advocated for by the broadest of coalitions; although socialists will naturally fight for it alongside immediate demands that fight fascism, protect the dignity of citizens, and work towards the construction of the socialist movement.
The immediate demands are simply the freedom of speech to criticize the ideology of AI, and the enactment and fulfillment of legislation against AI to be possible. While these prerequisites may seem to be simplistic in nature or already followed, they are still actively threatened and therefore must still be demanded. A total surveillance regime against the enemies of state, one that is funded both privately and by the fascist Trump administration, is actively being developed with the promise of eliminating such speech. The ability for the state to regulate and address AI, is too, not given to always exist- similar efforts that aim to structurally disempower governments from such interventions are put forwards by AI accelerationists and minarchist pedophiles.[22] When these demands are not met it is impossible for further work to be done, and every drastic measure is justified for them to be fulfilled. Without the ability of verbal opposition and action to be taken against capital, the working-class movement is in its most precarious state.
Minimal Demands
The minimum program seeks to build apparatuses that can reject, stymie, and crucially supersede artificial intelligence- both in its physical existence as a component of technology and its ideological formation. It is congruent with minimum programs that seek to gradually transform the state from an organ that principally protects bourgeois interests to a democratic socialist republic that is the dictatorship of the proletariat. The fulfillment of the minimum program is the infrastructure of the socialist project being built, and the end of the hopeless desolation that there is no alternative to AI. While these demands end neither with the total negation of capitalism, nor the complete reversal of the AI boom, it will signal to every human being that the degeneration of the world into slop is not inevitable.
The first minimal demand is for the state to oppose the expansion of AI, as an industry and as an ideology. This is fulfilled both through reformist legislation and regulations that inevitably harm AI capital, and through revolutionary societal reorganization that democratic socialists propose will structurally dismantle surplus-extraction through AI or any other means. The simplest actions of forcing data centers to pay for the power they use and refusing to subsidize the losses of AI companies could be included in the immediate program.[23] More significant orders- from crushing anti-educational cheating companies, attacking the production of revenge pornography made from AI as the logical endpoint of the misogynistic commodification of the body, to designating AI targeting in the defense industries as encouraging and abetting war crimes, will form the intermediary process of the state to oppose AI.
Naturally this demand will occur, at first, as reform through the bourgeois state, even if this state progressively gains proletarian character through socialist leadership and restructuring. All actions done by the state, especially those taken against AI, should be subject to thorough critical evaluation and conditional support. The total critique of generative AI made in the manifesto is sympathetic to arguments made that it is a form of plagiarism; that in order to create the undiluted aesthetic of fascism the uncited work of millions is required to be trained upon without material or even symbolic compensation.
Yet although socialists might not necessarily oppose the enforcement of pre-existing copyright law in cases regarding the mass usage of pirated material for AI training, the extension of the regime of copyright should be principally opposed.[24] Intellectual property ultimately is a codification of capitalist endeavor in the arts; it can easily become a form of protection for AI-generated abomination as it is currently used in some contexts as a petit bourgeois protection against AI. The revolutionary perspective proposed instead is for the state to erode the necessity for art to exist through the continuum of products in capitalist society; building the welfare for artists to sustain themselves without the sale of works and the infrastructure for the tools necessary to create human-made art to be universally available.[25] The protocols of censorship and prohibiting reproduction by copyright are protections afforded to artists as actors in capitalism. Its enforcement does not emancipate art from exploitation, that is only possible through liberation from the exchange of capital which powers all generative AI. [26]
The second minimal demand is the construction of dual power that collectively works as a bulwark against AI. The dual power proposed is a singular overarching movement in objective while simultaneously multifaceted in scope. Two critical components of this dual power include individual projects that provide alternatives to the functions and power of AI capital and systems beholden to the anti-capitalist movement that supersede AI that exists now.
The former component is wide-ranging in what it refers to, being virtually anything that empowers either the individual or the masses in their lives and occupations to separate themselves from AI and prevent their dignities from being subsumed by it. Such projects range from organizational- such as labor unions protecting voice actors from being replaced by generative AI,[27] to social- such as a network or directory of works or applications utilizing AI to be boycotted and alternatives to be supported instead. It has been suggested to flood AI with poor quality data in order to cheapen existing models; if this has an adverse effect on anything except weakening the ability of ongoing AI projects, then perhaps it should be done.
The latter component refers to technological systems that, in contrast to pre-existing AI, are fundamentally beholden to a singular anti-capitalist organization. These systems will not just be impossible to be used to further exploitation but will instinctively act to end hegemony through assisting the cause to end capitalist hegemony. These systems, aligned by the democratic will of the working class, will both be used to perform useful cases for AI and socialize the means of production by automating objective labor and protecting subjective functioning. In effect they could be considered, no matter how self-contradictory it may sound, as anti-AI artificial intelligence.
It is absolutely critical that these systems are unified in their alignment and development, regardless of the technical specifications of how this is done. As long as the alignment of such a system is done by a revolutionary and democratic organization, the exact method of how this unification occurs is of secondary importance. A centralized model, for example, could entail all processes and queries going through a singular server or host of servers, which governance would be beholden to the said organization. A decentralized model, on the other hand, could operate by the organization maintaining standards and practices that would individually be replicated from machine to machine.[28]
One potential unified system would be a centralized caretaker system that simultaneously possesses superintelligence (or consciousness if possible) and adherence to the singular organization that controls it. This superintelligent example would be able to fulfill the complexities of increasingly advanced and adaptive labor, while also regimented into specific, clearly defined applications rather than generally replacing subjective tasks.
The existence of a unified system essentially enables the eradication of a core issue with all generative AI- the ambiguity if something was made by AI. In the centralized example, a singular system could simply log all generations to verify that something is generated by AI if an inquest is given to the system. In both the centralized and decentralized examples, watermarks and/or background information could be added to every generation to positively identify it as being made with AI- and any medium where generations are able to be distributed would require the presence of such information. Such identifying information is easily removable in current systems that generate AI, and pre-existing “AI detectors” are extensively inaccurate and prone to false positives and false negatives. The detection of AI- such as in an academic setting, and the filtering of it when it is undesirable to be seen, will not only be possible, but trivial, if unaligned and independent AI or AI aligned by outside entities does not exist.
A corollary is also added to the first demand, where the state should endorse and support the construction of dual power that counteracts AI throughout the terrain of civil society. This is by far the most revolutionary opposition the state could provide against AI; for the developing dictatorship of the proletariat to aid the infrastructure that has the potential to abolish wage-labor.
Maximal Demands
Among Marxists, the maximum program are the demands that, upon being fulfilled, entail the development of socialism; where the vestiges of capitalism have ceased to exist or are disintegrating to the dustbin of history. The maximum program against AI similarly is one where AI is thoroughly and completely dismantled; the ongoing reign of terror upon the individual by its proponents not only ending but rendering it impossible to restart ever again. As such, the completion of it represents the total destruction of AI in all of its forms- the end of its ability to extract surplus value, the end of its capital-fueled displacement of culture and reality, and the permanent eclipse of AI’s culture with proletarian humanism.
The first maximal demand is the total replacement of existing AI systems and infrastructure with those that are aligned by, and cooperative with egalitarian interests. In other terms, this means the state in which the aforementioned dual power established in the minimum program has replaced existing AI in its entirety. While this is a somewhat ambiguous demand in how exactly it can be followed, it is unambiguous what will not exist in all potential scenarios. There will be no continued operation of any generative AI or AGI project today, and the class reinforcement of the project is completely reversed. The resulting AI that exists, regardless of its capabilities, is governed by the joint enterprise of humanity; a democratic process in which every person, culture, interest, and aspect of nature affected by AI is given fair representation. In other words, the unified system established in the minimum program is implemented in all contexts where AI exists.
In the caretaker example, this supersession is fulfilled by the development of the caretaker system to the point where fully automating all objective labor is realizable. This is accomplished if the caretaker is capable enough in its flexibility and adaptability to perform all of these tasks equivalent or superior when done by human beings; and if it is physically capable of doing so- that its organs, drones, and processing capabilities are sufficient to act as the sole component of the unified system. The caretaker example, of course, is not the only foreseeable application of this demand- a system generalized enough to automate all contexts might prove to be scientifically impossible.[29] However, its completely subordinate and singular nature points to this being the most straightforward execution of the demand.
The second maximal demand is the total hegemony of opposition towards AI. I define hegemony as the leadership of a particular worldview over the diverse masses of society; which, in modern society, is primarily installed by the ruling class.[30] The predominant hegemony of the modern world belongs to capitalism, thoroughly reified that it is perceived as not only an economic structure but a natural law of the universe. The ongoing push by AI ideologists is to codify an even more exploitative form of capitalism as the predominant worldview. To fight this, I demand the construction of a counter-hegemony in which the predominant culture is recognition of automation as a means of abolishing wage labor, and the decision making and creative output of humans cherished as the apotheosis of existence. Whatever AI has promised to create is nothing compared to the world that will be born out of this new culture, of which pure hatred towards the plague of AI is ultimate.
This new world will be equipped to deal with every existential issue raised by the abuse of AI, while using the dual power to fulfill its genuine promises. The nature of this hegemony being one of total unity and cooperation lends environmental questions to be addressed without the hurdles of competition and noncompliance of others. The power usage of a caretaker system would be resolvable, for instance, by ensuring this one system runs on sustainable energy generation- nuclear, solar, or otherwise. The aligning process of ensuring that human beings will not delude themselves into relationships with Markov chains would be undergone universally and with the world-spanning understanding of its necessity.
Recall the arguments raised as to how a unified system offers a permanent solution to the question of ambiguity in generation. Under the hegemony of opposition it is seen as unnecessary to operate AI models outside of the unified system, and it would become an extreme cultural taboo to run models aimed to circumvent such generalized alignment. To produce any content whatsoever that is not readily identifiable would be a severe faux pas. The revolutionary hegemony would in itself provide the deterrent to independent AI, which would become as unthinkable as cannibalism.
I stress that both the minimum and maximum programs are completely incapable of being executed without the wider context of merely being components of a socialist program.[31] Anti-AI legislation from a progressive, rather than a luddite or reactionary standpoint, cannot be done without them being advocated by a democratic socialist party. The dual power created against AI must be developed congruent with dual power created to resist imperialist militaries, colonialist police, and feudalistic corporations. Opposition to AI is only a singular component necessary to create socialism, even if it is the most pertinent to this recent age.
But nevertheless these demands could be emphasized and made universally known to anyone who comes across the international democratic socialist movement. These programs will be critical to a revolution that will simultaneously be nothing short of a war against artificial intelligence.
To Wage War Against AI
What does it mean to wage war against artificial intelligence?
It does not mean a war in the atomized sense of lone wolf individuals taking up arms and attacking random data centers.[32] Neither is it a proposal for us to advocate for the state to utilize the military to besiege anyone who runs a LLM on their computer; a policy platform which likely would not net many supporters. This piece is, by absolutely no means, one that advocates for any violent activity by any people or groups. It does make the allegation that AI is used in violent contexts, from targeting algorithms used in the Gaza genocide,[33] to processing data for violent institutions such as ICE,[34] to the sexually violent act of making involuntary pornography.[35] Yet I do not argue that these actions need to be mirrored in proportionality.
War in this sense is defined as a struggle of totality; where the victor has completely triumphed over the losing party. The war against AI will be the unabated struggle of oppressed peoples to enact the previously described program; where every action undertaken by its fighters in their every waking moment is for this righteous cause. This war may be waged nonviolently and without the shedding of blood or the firing of weapons, but it will not be peaceful in the sense that what is now described as AI will physically or conceptually remain. The revolution against AI will force a unity of existence.
This is an entirely possible revolution; AI is not “here to stay” but a stoppable force made from destructible objects. For as difficult the immense task of fighting against the panopticon of the modern world is, actually physically inhibiting AI, is, by no means, a complicated task. Destroying any computing technology, save for perhaps military applications, is extremely simple. All one needs to do is to take a sledgehammer, ready it, and then swing it at the computer and then keep swinging until it is completely destroyed beyond repair. The fundamental hurdle is, of course, that stochastic violence done towards AI startup companies would obviously be an ineffectual and idiotic endeavor. The great philosophical question is not what could be done to AI but rather how can all of this be done to it; to a comprehensive scale given the full consent of society.
Earlier in the manifesto I argued for unabashed optimism regarding the potential of automation, synthesized with anti-AI sentiment as a contradiction to be put front and center of messaging. The waging of the war, and the fulfillment of the program that will be executed upon its victory are undoubtedly both complex endeavors. Yet the ultimate message of it can not be any more clear and digestible- this war is socialist revolution. Whatever organizational or symbolic similarities it may have with the Great October Socialist Revolution, or the Chinese Communist Revolution, it envisions an even greater world; the reactionary powers that were demolished by them have their next phase of life in AI.
Inevitably when I propose a war against AI, the works of Frank Herbert is evoked. In the world of Dune, a “Butlerian Jihad” occurred against thinking machines, both a narrative device to explain the lack of computing technology and an allusion to the seminal work of Samuel Butler.[36] Herbert left what this Butlerian Jihad entailed exactly to interpretation- a series of prequel novels written by his son; none of which I have read, suggests that it was a Terminator-esque conflict between genocidal machinery and human beings.
Ignoring this I have envisioned the Butlerian Jihad, at least to my understanding of what Herbert might have imagined, as having been a rebellion against the dominion that machinery has done to the human mind, a philosophical upheaval against any organization where any object, no matter how highly it is, is hierarchically placed above the lowest of man. The feudalistic state of the universe in Dune, maintained through the suffering of billions and ironically having turned man into machine, is of course, not an objective. Yet it is difficult to imagine the process in which created the Corrino Imperium; and the total restructuring of whatever existed before it as not having had the same religious fervor, and justifiable rage towards inhumanity. The proposed demands of socialists against AI; if not as extreme as blanket prohibition towards any device that imitates a human mind; are fundamentally built upon the same idea that creations of man could disfigure the soul.
The quasi-religious nature of these worldview-encompassing beliefs should not be toned down but embraced. The war will be nothing short of a holy war that aims to turn the malaise of the world to ashes. The only word that could possibly evoke the fury and rage it necessitates is indeed jihad. In Arabic, “jihad” simply means to struggle; with praiseworthy and glorious aim. Anyone who fights rightfully upon the path of liberation will henceforth be a jihadist. The spiritual faith or lack of such faith among jihadists will not matter- among them all the righteous hatred for AI burns furiously, hatred necessary to build the next world where the thousands of years of sin could possibly be forgiven. Salvation is only possible through jihad against AI.
I will not attempt to propose any name for the movement that espouses such radical beliefs. This step will be done by those that embark upon it. Perhaps it will be “Butlerianism” or something else borrowed from Dune, although this runs the risk of readers of presuming its ideological tenets from their own prior knowledge, and coming up with misconceptions as a result. I would like to propose myself names that invite investigation, like “Atreidian Jihadism” or “Mahlerism,” but I know they will likely be ignored in favor of one that organically arises. The name that will describe the jihad is irrelevant to it as an act. The jihad must occur. It must be a revolution of the unfettered will of millions.
I am not the first writer to propose a seemingly perfect society arriving after the revolution and subsequent transformation of human civilization. From Marx to Lenin to Mark Fisher, a society free of alienation where negative contradiction is progressively abolished has been repeatedly demanded. These authors, particularly after the dramatic fall of the Eastern Bloc, have proposed various reasons why class consciousness has failed to take root everywhere: much of which coalesce into one great horror, a black hole eating through the minds and will of the proletarian class. This all-consuming horror is nihilism; nihilism which has plagued the world ever since the very first incapabilities of prior revolutionaries have been revealed since the great revolution of 1917.
Even putting aside the various organizational, administrative, and humanitarian failures of socialist regimes and parties that have previously existed, Marxist philosophy has struggled to address nihilistic attitudes that have permeated through the past two centuries; fuelling not only anti-communism but fundamental apoliticism and the refusal to engage in anti-capitalist movements. One of them is the belief that socialism is fundamentally impossible, and that however flawed, capitalism is the final mode of production that will exist for as long as humanity survives. This attitude is held by many who have come to believe capitalism; no matter how recent it's development, is the logical final extent of human nature. Another is that socialism would not entail better standards of living or quality of life than experienced by individuals under capitalism; perhaps resulting from lack of understanding of capitalism’s nature, or conflation of enjoying the fruits of commodities as enjoying the mechanism that produces and distributes it.
This piece, combined with the technological advancement and late-stage crisis observable in the past few years, I hope vanquishes much of this nihilism. It is not the mere existence of technological advancement that brings us out of this bleakness and gloom, but rather the unlocked potential of what workers could accomplish. Which brings me to declare the actions of everyone in agreement of the manifesto of the necessity for rebellion and faith in its capability to take.
What Is to Be Done?
The following section; addressed directly to the reader of this work, provides two direct recommendations on what should be done by those who agree with it; in addition to addressing an edge case that is applicable to a minority of its readers. Previously I have established that because AI is the apothesis of capitalism, the movement against AI is one and the same with the movement to abolish capitalism. As such, much of this section only peripherally discusses automation and AI; the anti-AI program, after all, is entirely unable to be enacted independently of the broader democratic socialist program. I must include a mandatory preface here that the specific execution of such recommendations are highly contingent upon the situation of where they reside and their own personal circumstances. I can not expect for every person who reads and agrees with this piece’s messages to follow my suggestions or be physically able to. However, I know that even if only even a small percentage of the population decides to participate in the struggle, and if this small percentage is vigilant, dedicated, and persevering, then it will succeed.
The common suggestion to avoid personal use of generative AI and products utilizing AI of course, ought to be followed. It is both easily followable in simply being a abstinence; and worthwhile in the psychological aspect of retaining one’s own mental independence when the outsourcing of it has become omnipresent. Yet similar to how the decision to be vegan can not possibly be the limits of one animal rights activist's actions to end the extreme inhumanity of the livestock industry, revolution must spring from more than just atomized boycotts of generative AI. Even if any blame for this current era can theoretically be placed on common individuals who have embraced or resigned themselves to AI; action must be done beyond rhetorical arguments against usage. In order for change to happen then the movement’s actions must be unignorable - change through political upheaval and economic revolution.
Party Participation
The first direction I give is for the reader to organize themselves along a left-wing formation that practices an internal democracy. This is provided that one exists in your country; and that it is legally safe for you to do. The necessity of joining a party and organizing through it has been recognized from Marx to Lenin.[37] The party is the principle vehicle of sociopolitical change through its representation of the proletarian class. If a spontaneous revolution against the ruling class without the guidance of a politically educated socialist party is possible, it would have already occurred during any one of the great impoverishing recessions in history. Revolution against the reactionary state is only possible with an organization that is even more disciplined and dedicated than the structure it is opposing.[38]
Of course, the reader must not immediately join any particular party in their country simply because it calls itself democratic socialist, or the party of labor. The party must genuinely be invested in the end of capitalism and settler colonialism; and not simply desire a welfare state or a socially conservative, economically populist regime. The party furthermore, can only advance the interests of the working class if it is democratic in its internal governance. Previously I have written extensively of what I call the pro-factionalist model of party organization, where tendencies are beneficial rather than detrimental to party unity. This model has already seen implementation in multiple socialist parties around the world; and shows promise not only to unify the political left of every nation into a singular party, but for this party to remain on a revolutionary path rather than fall into complacency or reaction.
When describing the political program to systematically dismantle AI as a force and as an ideology; I have repeatedly explained that it will be carried out by a democratic socialist party, not by a singular charismatic politician or the will of a few sympathetic philanthropists. Every aspect of the minimum program against AI is only possible through the decisive action of those who fight for the line of the party, and every objective of the maximum program can only be achieved by the combined efforts of the democratic socialist republic and the working class it represents.
State reforms and regulations against AI can easily be co-opted by the right-wing and the petit bourgeoise; it must be done through disciplined politicians and functionaries who are representative of a democratically-determined party platform. The construction of a singular unified system, built among proletarian virtues, could only occur by engineers and architects who have the political education and ideological conviction to understand and install such virtues into the systems they create. The total supersession of AI, culturally and physically, will not occur in any of the capitalist states that exist today; but in an unmistakably socialist society that has completed the arduous transition from the previous economic stage to the next.
If you, the reader of this piece, are American, then I implore you to join the only proletarian party that can win the war for hegemony, the Democratic Socialists of America. Many exemplary qualities of the DSA, acknowledged by both antagonistic media outlets and its own activists and sympathizers, have entered the mainstream. The DSA is the largest socialist organization in America- surpassing all others in the country combined in membership. It’s electoral successes do not just include the newly inaugurated mayor of New York City, but open Marxists breaking free of the oligarchic duopoly of génocidaires.[39] It is closely connected to organized labor, tenant unions, immigrant justice firms, and bears international connections to left-wing formations in every inhabited continent.
In this piece I refer to the DSA as a revolutionary political party, which may be of curiosity as the DSA is not legally registered as a third party.[40] Despite running candidates in Democratic primaries and non-DSA ballot lines, the DSA is far more akin to a serious political party than either of the two major parties- with membership standards, a dues system, and vigorous endorsement standards. Contrary to popular belief, the DSA does not solely follow an electoralist theory of change, nor does its membership believe in realigning the Democratic party. Many DSA members believe in the democratic road to socialism, but it is just as common to find members building the infrastructure instead for revolution through strikes and direct action. The diversity in identities, tactics, and socialist worldviews are integral to DSA’s internal political scene. Its multi-tendency nature makes it an advanced democracy serving as an inspiration for the rest of the world.
I urge you to contribute as much as you can to the DSA- regardless if you can spend hours every day in protests, canvassing, and campaigns for the socialist project, or if you can simply follow its resolutions and occasionally attend virtual meetings. While I hope it is possible for you to become a dutiful cadre member, ultimately not everyone can or needs to for the revolution to succeed. The DSA terrifies the exploiting class that relies on opiating the poor with AI slop and deluding the far-right into bigotry and worship of a past that never existed. If you want to fight AI, join DSA.
I do not have anything to ask of existing cadre members of the DSA. Although I criticize the shortcomings of the organization and the mistakes of its electeds- as encouraged and expected within the DSA, I am immensely proud of what it has collectively done and I have great faith that it will be one of many bedrocks to a better world. I acknowledge that not all of this document will be universally accepted- I have no request for socialists to mirror the incendiary rhetoric I use; or to employ the same analysis I adopted for objective and subjective labor. However, I know that virtually all active cadres of the organization share with me an active drive to replace capitalism with something better, and nearly all of it recognizes that AI startups and massive corporations are enemies who will be defeated, even if the minutiae of my program is to be debated.
I only plead to active DSA cadre, and those active in their national socialist parties, that they be bold and optimistic of what could happen, not falling only into models and frameworks from the past, and to cherish democracy as non-negotiatable, for their respective countries and eventually for everywhere. As much as there is still a massive amount of work that needs to be done; it inspires me that there are indeed people who are fighting for a better world; beyond liking tweets and verbal complaining. I do not call for the formation of a novel organization to fight against AI in this piece precisely because the fight against AI is identical to the fight against capitalism, and this struggle has already begun.
Labor Unions
The second direction I have is for the reader to engage in the organization of labor. For most readers, this will entail either continuing to engage with the union that currently represents their workplace, forming a union if a union does not already exists, or specifically seeking employment at a workplace that is unionized.
In the past, labor unions have been at the forefront of so much societal change that have made living in this world bearable that it is difficult to comprehend what our lives would be would be without them. In the United States, labor unions lead to the creation of the weekend, the end of child labor, and mandates for overtime pay.[41] Internationally, fundamental rights such as the universal suffrage of men and women, the secret ballot, and workplace safety regulations, were achieved not by philanthropic acts of goodwill by elites, but by the forces of labor.[42] Labor unions have, in the recent decades, declined in prominence- by the machinations of neoliberalism, the emergence of industries without labor presence, and the concentrated effort of the media to deny them presence in the public consciousness.
But regardless labor unions will re-emerge; for they are the future. The enactment of the minimal and maximal programs- both in the development of socialism and the program against AI- are contingent on not just the success of the revolutionary party but the massive organization of labor. Unions fighting against generative AI have already proven itself to be the single strongest component of dual power that currently exists. Such formations build class consciousness which no true opposition to AI could exist without. The resistance of AI through work stoppages are not merely an economistic struggles to protect wages; they actively unfurl the propagandized inescapability of AI. The maximal demand for the hegemonization of unified system will be at all stages reliant on unions when it is utilized and aligned democratically in every field and function.
Join a union, organize through it, and strike against capital. I ask of this regardless of what they are employed as; no matter their trade or their nature of their work. It is equally imperative for those paid minimum wage in the most dreadful of conditions to organize as it is teachers, nurses, or airline pilots. Even if the union representing your workplace is politically reactionary or entrenched in corrupt anti-democratic leadership; participation in them becomes only more imperative.[43] Be radical in your union; remind your co-workers that they are proletarians, fight for the rank-and-file of unions to exercise their collective power, identify the enemy as the bosses and the bourgeoise. If such a union does not exist where you work, it becomes your prerogative to spearhead the formation of one, no matter how monumental this may seem.[44] Build solidarity forever.
The dignified abolition of work, as described in earlier in this piece, is only capable of being accomplished through unions. The abolition of labor will not simply be the replacement of objective tasks with machines. Unions will ensure the abolition is done sensibly- what is automated is ensured to to truly benefit from supplantation with machinery, and what remains overseen and conducted by human beings is necessarily handled as such. And they will critically ensure the abolition is done with the dignity- that the lives of all workers involved will only be more bountiful; rather than the loss of livelihood when automation processes occur in capitalism. Workers leaving will be uninhibitedly empowered to be retire or retrain, those who remain will no longer be subject to the inherent alienating nature of work, compensated not through wages but from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
Co-Operatives
The majority of the readers of this piece are bound to be employed workers and therefore should engage in labor unionism, regardless of their sector, occupation, or size of their workplace. However, it is pertinent to address the minority of readers whose conscience transcends their bourgeoise economic position and wish to betray their class interests for broader societal benefit. This could refer to readers who currently have substantial ownership of private property and are employers themselves; finding themselves persuaded by the arguments here fundamentally against private property. Or maybe they have the intentions and resources to produce a product or conduct a beneficial service, and are wondering if they can do so in a way that isn’t contradictory to the cause of anti-capitalism.
In this minority case, when organized labor finds itself with sufficient ownership of the means of production for them to economically succeed, I suggest the formation of worker owned co-operatives. While other countries have longer histories of such firms, co-operatives where every worker has a democratic say in operation and stake in their accumulation have recently arisen in the United States. In some cases, this has been a project in building the common welfare of their communities,[45] in other cases, a project to build economic power while rejecting racial “empowerment” through capitalist means.[46] It is, of course, imperative for such co-operatives to consist of ideologically socialist workers; in the American case, they should be involved in the DSA, and connected to wider labor organization, such as cooperative membership in the Industrial Workers of The World.
An ideologically dedicated co-operative could even contribute to the aforementioned dual power that is previously established as a minimal demand. Forgoing the corporate management layer has already been done in many literary collectives and art studios; many of them create art untainted by generative AI and could further orient their followings to actively fight capitalism. Another example could be a network of worker-owned food delivery services; it could siphon workers away from dehumanizing gig apps and provide them with fair compensation, proper working conditions, and lastly could dedicate proceeds into funding its native socialist movement.
That being said, one must realistically appraise the role of workers’ co-operative and worker-managed enterprises in the socialist movement. A corporation that is owned by its workers is still a corporation- past examples of them, even when successful in improving the lives of its participants, have indicated that they are not intrinsically radical or dismantling of unjust power structures.[47] Without ideological devotion to a universal anti-capitalism, the individual interests of those in a co-operative could lead to them astray from the socialist movement, the same way many trade unions have gained reactionary character. While I won’t go as far as to state that co-operatives are inherently counter-revolutionary, their establishment should not be viewed as the end-goal of the socialist movement.
The hell of capitalism is far more than its firms having a boss.[48] The necessity for the means of production, outside of public ownership, to be profitable in order to operate, is in itself an injustice.[49] Ultimately profit-seeking itself is an ailment of this economic system that will be undone by the democratic socialist movement to abolish AI, classes, and wage-labor. Whatever competition or exchange of time might exist in communist society; it will bear no resemblance to what we see in our economy today; full of zero-sum games and deadweight loss.
In contraversion to the mantras of free market capitalism, it must be understood that vast amounts of societal problems are really only solvable by political means and through state power rather than trying to out-compete capitalists. Enterprises that make money by creating deepfake involuntary pornography, and predictions markets that allow betting on how much people will be killed by epidemics and mass shootings would not become any more ethical if they were worker-owned. They should not exist.
Even the critical ailments of much enterprises that necessarily have to exist can also only be resolved by the end of them having to operate under a for-profit model- their nationalization is necessary, not just for the dignity of their workers but for what they fundamentally contribute to society to be delivered effectively. The remedy to America’s abysmal healthcare system and its breathtakingly inefficient public transportation is not for them to become worker-owned co-operatives but for them to be managed by the socialist state. The ability for their employees to collectively bargain, as all workers need to, only becomes more feasible when brought into the public sector.[50] While it is not uniformly demanded for the entire economy, centralized, democratic planning for vast amounts of industries ultimately will always remain a key demand of socialists.[51]
Lastly, I acknowledge that I made the preceding recommendations from the incredibly privileged perspective of being a native-born citizen of the United States of America. They may be of much greater difficulty to follow in your country than mine if the political left is non-existent, if the organization of labor is next to impossible, or mitigating circumstances like nativist persecution prevents doing any of these. Alternatively, they may be easier if more electorally powerful parties exist, such as in Brazil. If your nation’s union density or presence of workers co-operatives in your country is substantially higher than the United States, then the organizing situation might be similarly less sisyphean. I would love to write out a methodology on what to do from every country, for every working class, across all borders. But instead, out of recognition of my own limitations, I will close my writing with the vision of the world I want to die in; or at the very least, die knowing that it is being made.
For a Jihad Against AI
A few dozen miles up north of where I live there’s a lake surrounded by forest, and beneath the northern red oak canopies there are wooden homes with tall roofs and stone foundations. Oftentimes mistaken for vacation property; each cabin houses a family; and in one of them, there lives a family that I know little about. I know that they speak Cantonese like my own, and over the past few years a young boy has experienced the first few years of his life there. I do not know his name, or his family’s. But in faint glimpses as I drive by, I have seen him grow, from when he was a baby cradled in his mother’s arms, to him taking his first steps in the shallow waters, guided step by step by his older brother.
Even now it is too late, in this world, for him. No matter how soon the revolution happens, global classless society will require an incredible length of years to be established, through blood and iron. Even if his parents avoid his premature exposure to the internet; he will be exposed to it eventually through education or occupation. He will be subjected to its emptiness and vacuousness, the homogenizing effect of modernity where everywhere on earth becomes as interesting as a cubicle in a scam call center. He will eventually learn how to drive through Route 9 and see the stroad and breathe in the fumes of gasoline and through power plants of coal and oil. No matter what he chooses as his occupation he will fund murder and steal from the wretched of the earth, as all of us do. He will do things that help no one, depress everyone, for scraps of money, and live a life where he, as everyone else does in this world, carries a hole in his heart.
One day he will have a daughter, naturally or by adoption. If all is right and what needs to be done is done, then she will have a better life than her father. But only if we win. If she lives in a world better than the one her father was born in, then she would be able to choose the rest of her life, not the invisible hand of a free market.
She could go somewhere else. She could study anywhere she chooses; receiving a world class instruction by brilliant teachers and professors for no incentive than her love for learning and their love for teaching, not because one discipline or another promises greater monterey gain. Her classes will be entirely motivated by passion and devoid of dishonesty, or the need to plagiarize and be dishonest. Perhaps she finds her love of the natural sciences, of the overwhelming beauty of all of creation, of biologies, of ecosystems, of the billion-year long story of evolution. And then maybe she hears of someplace that needs her- a farm in Pangasinan needs a bioengineer who could make sweeter fruit, a zoo in Ceará requests a botanist who could ensure that their acacia trees does not breach the walls and invade its local wildlife, or the international space agency requires an algae cultivator for the first colonists on Europa. Unlike the last world, the choice of where she goes is made without the slightest expectation of any material reward being different between them. Everything she does in this world will be done without the hole in her father’s heart. She will be free.
Or maybe the sciences and agriculture is not the path she will take. Maybe she will discover she has incredible ability to bring out the entire spectrum of colors of an autumnal tree on a canvas. She could learn that she could not only transfer the astonishing beauty of landscapes to paintings but augment them. Alongside her poetic skill and ability to generalize, she will learn to create illustrated guides and itineraries to enjoy the world in its fullest, the imperfections in her art making them ever the more charming. Even if this variation of her inexplicably grows up with a motor disability that renders her unable to walk from birth, she will be cared for and given everything she needs without being asked for anything in return. She’ll see, capture, and write about everything nature has to offer. She’ll visit and depict countless carefully conserved parks- Yellowstone, Zion, the Grand Canyon- but not as sources of pride in any artificially contrived national identity. The Teton Range was created by the same God that made Sagarmāthā, Vịnh Hạ Long, Uluru, and the Great Barrier Reef. This world was not meant to be divided by arbitrary national lines- its vast diversity in human culture will remain, but not its electrified fences or border checkpoints. She will be understood.
Or she could do none of these at all. Maybe, in this life of her, after a brief career as a gymnast, competing not for sponsorships or contracts but rather just to perfect herself, she’ll retire at a young age after marrying the love of her life. Maybe she and her wife will choose to live in the village by the lake, where there are good winds, and she can see the horizon resting on its veranda. There she will raise children, and devote her entire life to taking care of them. She will spend her days reading books and watching films with them, telling her children of her father and his fathers before him, and accepting their legacies rather than trying to bring them back through artificial imitation. She will be taken care of by the overflowing, abundant goodwill of the world, where the need for labor has long past by automation and greed erased with it. She will be safe.
And regardless of whatever paths she takes she will, at some point, learn of the epoch of Kali Yuga that was this late point of capitalism which we currently live in. She will learn of the chronological period between the inception of the boom and the fulfillment of the maximum program; a tumultuous period that begins with three years of inaction and despair, before an explosion of raging hope. Perhaps she will read about it from her academic studies; learning about the historiography of an era that was propagandized by the entirety of the bourgeois class as bright future but was really the death rattle of their world system. Or maybe she will find it while looking for inspiration for her own art, from the revolting masses of generative AI content that plagued the internet from 2022 to the eclipse of AI with the dual power we create. A dark age where there was massive amounts of false information and useless content; where, unlike anything created by the unified system, was unlogged and not effortlessly distinguishable from what is made by human beings.
Out of every other prediction I have made in this piece I find myself the most unsure of what would she think, of us in this time. Would she pity us? Revile us for not realizing the golden path sooner, as instead we had first struggle against cataclysmic evil? Or will she forgive us, for there was no way else for humanity to be reborn? I hope she will. I hope she will forgive us and see how it lead to her true love.
True love is possible only in the next world. This world was once beautiful. This will once again be a beautiful world. The little dark age that began in 2022 will end. Annihilate the AI industry so this next world can be born.
The past six sections of this work have focused on the world as it exists today; a threat to it that exacerbates its worst qualities, and the steps taken that would be necessary to replace it with a better world. The manifesto has gone through numerous variations and drafts over the span of about eighteen months. Its actional proposals have evolved over its composition- in its earliest iteration, written through the lenses of a fictional world, only the caretaker example was given as the anathema of AI. This vision of a world I just described one without capital is the impetus that led me to write this piece; what I see is being razed by this dying epoch of neoliberalism, accelerationism, and fascism.
The war I explained in the previous section is of a secular nature and will be waged equally by those of organized religion, unorganized religion, ambiguous religion, lack of religion, or active irreligion. Regardless, I pray that my hopes that I am right, that the vision of an automated world is attainable, and that my rejection of everything I see around me is not out of delusion. Nihilism has haunted the world for over a century, no essays about waxing poetic about dream-seeing or half-trembling has resolved it. If I am right, then an unbelievable amount of work needs to be done, and the amount of enemies we have is incalculable, but I will remain optimistic in my heart that our victory is possible.
Our enemies may not be evil or even immoral in their souls, but regardless, they believe in evil. They can, however, win. It is only the decay of capitalism that is inevitable. That we will create socialism from these predestined conditions has never once been inevitable. Whether or not the Greater German Reich could have ever won the Second World War, had Hitler made more logically sound decisions after they invaded Poland in 1939, every one of the millions of Allied soldiers and civilians fought as if the defeat and extermination of their people were imminent. If our revolution succeeds, historians may view it as having been bound to always happen. This could only be true if we fight as if a single wasted moment could doom us all.
Already it has been suggested, even among mainstream economists, that the so-called AI boom is on its death throes, that the economy of the United States is built upon non-existent billions of dollars being exchanged by the same few sets of companies back and forth, and eventually this facade will come crashing down.[52] Of course, this inevitable development is welcomed to us, but it couldn’t be any further from being our victory. Neither is America’s capitalist hegemony being overshadowed by another imperialistic power enough.
It is not enough for the AI bubble to pop. The stock valuations of technology companies imploding may delight short sellers, but the evil of tech corporations will remain. Such an event will not entail the liberation of the working class- it may only inspire small steps forward.[53] The AI boom itself; alongside this entire mode of production must come undone from its very roots, roots that exist in every nation on Earth that nevertheless must be exorcised. Our demands are only the most moderate - we want the entire earth. We swear upon the altar of God for eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Jihad until wage-labor no longer exists. Jihad until the volunteer capacity of the world, which all of us will lend our hand to out of boundless love, fulfills every monumental task needed for it to be perfect. Jihad until all nations of the Earth join as one, that material hierarchies completely come undone, where every billions of our race are brothers and sisters. Jihad until the entire universe is free. Death to all artificial intelligence.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam.
[I have spoken and saved my soul.]
References
Samuel Butler, “Darwin among the Machines,” in The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1917, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Darwin_among_the_Machines. ↑
Aaron Bastani’s writings were of particular interest to me while writing this piece, although they critically lack its objective/subjective distinction and were mostly made before 2022: Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Verso Books, 2018. ↑
Marx explored the necessary labor time in communist society potentially being zero, although he did not definitively state that it would be: Karl Marx, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Martin Nicolaus. Marxists Internet Archive, 1857–61, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch07.htm#p389. ↑
Marx made a distinction between idle time and time for higher activity, designating both as free time: Karl Marx, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Martin Nicolaus. Marxists Internet Archive, 1857–61, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm. ↑
Rodney Brooks, “A Prophetic Poem about Artificial Intelligence Written in 1961,” Rodney Brooks, 2025, https://rodneybrooks.com/a-prophetic-poem-about-artificial-intelligence-written-in-1961/ ↑
Marx defined machinery as a “means for producing surplus-value,” similar to the role of AI in capitalism: Karl Marx, Capital. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Marxists Internet Archive, 1867, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm. ↑
Juan Sebastian Pinto, “Palantir’s tools pose an invisible danger we are just beginning to comprehend,” The Guardian, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/24/palantir-artificial-intelligence-civil-rights. ↑
Andrew Brown, “Ethics, autonomy, and killer drones: Can machines do right?”, Comparative Strategy, 2023, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01495933.2023.2263333. ↑
See the works of “rationalist” thinkers for this perspective. Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down,” Time Magazine, 2023, https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/. ↑
Elizabeth Napolitano, “UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage, lawsuit claims,” CBS News, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-deny-claims-medicare-advantage-health-insurance-denials/. ↑
The draft version of this piece made the claim that water usage of AI may be exaggerated in the public perception. A review of scientific literature has suggested that it is not: Miguel Yañez-Barnuevo, “Data Centers and Water Consumption,” Environmental and Energy Study Institute, 2025,
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption. ↑
Stefano Montali, “A Debate About A.I. Plays Out on the Subway Walls,” The New York Times, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/style/friend-ai-subway-ads-new-york.html. ↑
See critique of the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” letter by Future of Life Institute.
Margo Anderson, “‘AI Pause’ Open Letter Stokes Fear and Controversy,” IEEE Spectrum, 2023. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-pause-letter-stokes-fear. ↑
Do refer to a fascinating pre-AI boom critique of automation by a cyberneticist: Stafford Beer, “The irrelevance of automation,” Cybernetics, 1958. ↑
While machines increase the extraction of such surplus value, they do not create surplus value themselves, see: Peter Ross , “The Relevance of Marx's Value Theory in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Cosmonaut, 2023, https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/10/the-relevance-of-marxs-value-theory-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/. ↑
Other writers have vocalized their disgust towards AI art in greater detail than I have: Nicholas Liu, “AI Art Is Weird, Sad, and Ugly. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise,” Jacobin, 2025, https://jacobin.com/2025/12/ai-slop-art-aesthetics-technology-capital; Matt Corrall, “The harm & hypocrisy of AI art”, Corral Design, 2023, https://www.corralldesign.com/writing/ai-harm-hypocrisy. ↑
James D. Walsh, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” New York Magazine, 2025, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html; Ronald Purser, “AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself,” Current Affairs, 2025,
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself. ↑
Alexandre Hudon and Emmanuel Stip, “Delusional Experiences Emerging From AI Chatbot Interactions or ‘AI Psychosis,’” JMIR Mental Health, 2025, https://mental.jmir.org/2025/1/e85799. ↑
Gareth Watkins, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism”, New Socialist, 2025,
https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/. ↑
Virtually all of Big Tech actively cooperate with the United States government in applying AI: Pete Hegseth, “The War Department Unleashes AI on New GenAI.mil Platform,” Department of War, 2025, https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4354916/the-war-department-unleashes-ai-on-new-genaimil-platform/. ↑
Mike Macnair, “For a minimum programme!,” Weekly Worker, 2007,
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/686/for-a-minimum-programme/. ↑
James Hurley, “Regulating AI hastens the Antichrist, says Palantir’s Peter Thiel,” The Sunday Times, 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/business/technology/article/palantir-founder-peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-religion-qzmpth35t. ↑
At the time I am writing this piece, OpenAI has been angling for a bailout from the federal government of the United States: Bryce Elder, “OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates,” Financial Times, 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/23e54a28-6f63-4533-ab96-3756d9c88bad?. ↑
Ample evidence exists that the general public opposes such training: James Warrington, “Labour’s AI copyright plans suffer ‘overwhelming’ rejection,” The Telegraph, 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/15/labours-ai-copyright-plans-hit-with-overwhelming-rejection/. ↑
A state initiative supporting artists has been put in place in Ireland; albeit within a capitalist framework that would be greatly expanded upon in socialism: Ella Feldman, “Ireland Makes a Program Offering Basic Income for Artists Permanent,” Smithsonian Magazine, 2025, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ireland-makes-a-program-offering-basic-income-for-artists-permanent-180987523/ . ↑
Do refer to left-wing criticism of copyright from before the AI boom: Johan Söderberg, “Copyleft vs. Copyright: A Marxist Critique,” First Monday, 2002, https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/938/860?inline=1. ↑
Tom Richardson, “Video game actors’ strike officially ends after AI deal,” BBC, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ykx117keqo. ↑
The idea of coordinating one singular project to develop artificial general intelligence has been explored before, although not from proletarian grounds: Rose Hadshar and Tom Davidson, “Should there be just one western AGI project?” LessWrong, 2025,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wBTNkfukMsmjtgcnW/should-there-be-just-one-western-agi-project. ↑
See skepticism that current AI developments could ever lead to AGI: Benjamin Riley, “Large language mistake,” The Verge, 2025, https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems. ↑
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Vol. 1, trans. Joseph Buttigieg, Columbia University Press, 1992, “There can and there must be a "political hegemony" even before assuming government power, and in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony one must not count solely on the power and material force that is given by government.” ↑
A helpful explanation of the minimum-maximum program in a broader socialist context can be found here: Donald Parkinson, “The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program, “ Cosmonaut, 2025, https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/05/the-revolutionary-minimum-maximum-program/. ↑
Apparently an adherent of AI apocalypticism tried doing this: Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The Strange Disappearance of an Anti-AI Activist,” The Atlantic, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/sam-kirchner-missing-stop-ai/685144/. ↑
Amber Rahman, “Explainer: The Role of AI in Israel's Genocidal Campaign Against Palestinians,” Institute of Palestine Studies, 2025, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1656285. ↑
“United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement – AI Use Cases,“ Department of Homeland Security, 2025,
Asher Flynn, “Inside the minds of deepfake abusers: What drives AI-fuelled sexual abuse?”, Monash University Lens, 2025, https://lens.monash.edu/inside-the-minds-of-deepfake-abusers-what-drives-ai-fuelled-sexual-abuse/. ↑
It is worth reading what little Herbert wrote about the Butlerian Jihad in his own writings: Frank Herbert, “Appendix II” in Dune, Chilton Books, 1965. ↑
Vladimir Lenin, “Theses on Fundamental Tasks of The Second Congress Of The Communist International,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm. ↑
Huey P. Newton, “Huey on Anarchists and Individualists as Related to Revolutionary Struggle and the Black Liberation Movement,” Marxists Internet Archive, 2025, https://www.marxists.org/archive/newton/1968/11/16.htm. ↑
Attention should be paid to the growing slate of openly Marxist DSA electeds: Jake Ephros, “Jake Ephros is Running an Independent, DSA-backed Campaign in New Jersey,” The Call, 2025, https://socialistcall.com/2025/07/01/jake-ephros-is-running-an-independent-dsa-backed-campaign-in-new-jersey/. ↑
See this article for a further explanation of why the DSA should be considered a political party regardless of its ballot line: Sylus S, “Our Socialist Prince,” The Rose Garden, 2025, https://rosegardendsa.substack.com/p/our-socialist-prince. ↑
AFL-CIO-CLC, “What Unions Have Done For You,” UFCW 1500, 2025, https://www.ufcw1500.org/what-unions-have-done-for-you/. ↑
John Griffiths, Vic Evans "The Chartist Legacy in the British World: Evidence from New Zealand's Southern Settlements, 1840s–1870s". History, 2014. ↑
Vladimir Lenin, “Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?”, Marxists Internet Archive, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm. ↑
I strongly recommend those in the United States to organize with the following: Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, EWOC, 2025, https://workerorganizing.org/. ↑
Jaisal Noor, “How Baltimore became a rising star in America’s worker cooperative movement,” Baltimore Beat,
https://baltimorebeat.com/how-baltimore-became-a-rising-star-in-americas-worker-cooperative-movement/. ↑
Steve Dubb and Jessica Gordon Nembhard, “The Past and Future of Black Co-ops: A Conversation with Jessica Gordon Nembhard,” Nonprofit Quarterly, 2024, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/the-past-and-future-of-black-co-ops-a-conversation-with-jessica-gordon-nembhard/. ↑
Sharryn Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town, State University of New York Press, 1996, https://libcom.org/article/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-and-working-class-life-basque-town-sharryn-kasmir. ↑
While it should be self-evident that I am not a left communist, this quotes’ origin is relevant: Amadeo Bordiga, “The Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1957, https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm. ↑
Karl Marx, “Value, Price and Profit,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1865, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/. ↑
Richard B. Freeman, “Contraction and Expansion: The Divergence of Private Sector and Public Sector Unionism in the United States,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1988, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.2.2.63. ↑
See an excellent work on how a planned economy is entirely feasible and desirable: Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, The People's Republic of Walmart, Verso Books, 2019. ↑
Ted Resse, “Recessionary Territory: The US Jobs Market and The Looming AI Bust,” Cosmonaut, 2025, https://cosmonautmag.com/2025/12/recessionary-territory/. ↑
The stock for Nvidia briefly crashed earlier this year following a piece that observed that the Chinese AI industry was being ignored. This suggests that a similar piece comprehensively arguing that the bubble is on the verge of popping could cause a similar effect: Jeffrey Emanuel, “The Short Case for Nvidia Stock,” Youtube Transcript Optimizer, 2025, https://youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_short_case_for_nvda. ↑
A Note To Early Readers
If you are reading this then you are currently reading a draft version of this work. Either I have sent this to you, personally requesting for feedback, or you have found the link to it posted somewhere and you are privileged enough to see it as I edit it and make it releasable. Congratulations.
Writing this has been, barring nothing else, the most difficult task of my life. I started seriously working on this iteration in August 2025, although I wrote a short story that might be considered an earlier draft of this in 2024, set in a fictional universe I develop in my free time. Towards the tail end of writing this, it became apparent to me that I have suffered an undiagnosed mental condition that causes inattentiveness and difficulty sleeping due to past trauma, one that I am only in the very early stages of having treated. As such, I have written at a glacial pace of only around a paragraph each day at most, due to only having the concentration to write for a dozen or so minutes each day, usually at the last of my waking hours.
Besides my poor work ethic I have dealt with immense amounts of self-doubt, of course relating to the extreme nature of this work, and of the simple fact that if any of my central claims are correct, then massive action is necessary that has not even been started. I've struggled to come to terms with how very little of this has been written elsewhere yet (and believe me, I've voraciously tried to find them). Oftentimes in this past year I have questioned if I am myself delusional or narcissistic to believe all of this- that the massive backlash against AI on the internet can’t amount to anything; or will amount to something completely different than to what I propose.
But I know that it would have been impossible for me not to have written this piece. AI, capitalism, evil- it is everywhere. I see it no matter what site I go to. If I go on any site at all. I see it in billboards, talked about by people, I see it in my own life, I see it in all other life, in the burning of the Amazon, the melting of ice. My obsession with writing this, even if I barely could produce more than a few words a day, has lead me completely behind on graduate school applications, familial obligations, my physical health, my own willingness to make new friendships and retain deeper relationships, and activism in the DSA. My personal projects all have been neglected for this- from small New Vegas mods, to the aforementioned worldbuilding project I have spent thousands of hours working on, to my novel set in said project which I consider the focal reason of my existence yet published only sixty pages of. I hope to get back to work on them immediately, but I know I will have to carry the cross of this work for some time more.
After I publish this to a readable state, and presuming that it doesn’t dawn to me that this is all just insane rambling, I will make every effort for as long as I need to make this as widely read as any political work that completely changed the shape of the world.
You can add me at @kabusu on Discord if you want to discuss this piece with me through the medium I have spent too much of my life on. You have permission to share it with anyone, as long as they recognize that this piece is currently a work on progress. Thank you. Someday, you’ll be loved in a world free of the sins of the earth now. I promise.
-Levi
December 31st, 2025