Karl Marx vs The Algorithm

Filed under: Ghosts of Capital | AI Proletariat | Dialectical Downloads

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If Karl Marx materialised today — beard first — in a WeWork lobby full of ping-pong tables, kombucha taps, and salary-slave coders hustling for VC crumbs, he’d probably need a vape and a lie down.

Alienation 2.0: The Gig Economy is the Factory Floor

Marx’s core beef was alienation. And nothing screams alienation louder than smiling through a Zoom call with an AI middle manager who just flagged your KPIs while recommending a “mental health day.”

Back in his day, the machine was physical. Today, it's code. But the outcome’s the same: you become a cog — in a system you didn’t build — run by people you’ll never meet — producing value you’ll never see.

“They/Them” Meets Class War

Marx wasn’t against identity, but he’d argue that culture wars are often capitalism’s finest distraction tactic. Arguing pronouns while billionaires argue over Mars colonisation budgets? Classic divide and conquer.

The working class today isn’t storming the Bastille — they’re stuck in Slack threads about inclusive emojis while inflation eats their lunch money.

AI: The New Bourgeoisie?

Machines don’t sleep, don’t strike, and never unionise. For capital, that’s orgasmic. For workers? It’s checkmate. Marx’s nightmare wasn't just wage theft — it was labour becoming obsolete.

AI doesn’t just threaten jobs; it threatens the very premise of labour as value. If no one works, who earns? And who decides the worth of the machine’s output?

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

But what happens when the world rewrites itself — in code — faster than you can interpret it?

Closing Rant: Ghost in the Spreadsheet

Modern capitalism isn’t driven by factory bosses in stovepipe hats — it’s optimised by dashboards, gamified KPIs, and quarterly growth charts.

If Marx was a ghost today, he wouldn’t haunt Wall Street. He’d possess your project management software and auto-assign a revolution.

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