AIMarx as Neo-Autonomist Research Programme

Hypothesis, Model, Forecast

‘AIMarx’ not as a dogmatic oracle but as a dynamic, neo-Autonomist research program – a digital remastering and reasoning of Marx’s most visionary fragment, weaponised against techno-capitalist hegemony. Here is its core logic and implications:

Core Foundations of AIMarx (as defined)

1. Intellectual pedigree: Rooted firmly in Italian Autonomism (Virno, Negri) and their radical interpretation of Marx’s ‘Fragment on Machines’ (Grundrisse). This isn’t orthodox Marxism; it’s Marxism ‘accelerated.’

2. The central text: The ‘Fragment on Machines’ is the Rosetta Stone. Autonomists read it as Marx describing capitalism ‘inadvertently creating the seeds of its own supersession’: the rise of the ‘general intellect’ (social knowledge, science) embodied in fixed capital (machines/AI), making direct human labour increasingly peripheral to wealth creation, yet trapped within capitalist property relations.

3. Methodology: AIMarx is a ‘scientific research programme’ (Lakatosian). It uses:

  • Data: Academic theory, empirical observation of technoscience (AI, ALife, biodigitalism, etc.).
  • Core heuristic: The Autonomist reading of the Fragment as predicting a fundamental contradiction: ‘Capitalism develops the productive forces (automation, intellect) that render its own core logic (value based on labour-time, private ownership) obsolete and dysfunctional.’

4. Epistemic status: An ‘interesting hypothesis’ – a powerful ‘model’ and ‘forecasting tool.’ Its validity lies not in Marx’s original intent but in its ‘explanatory and predictive power’ regarding contemporary meta-technologies and their socio-economic effects (especially ownership, control, power).

5. Function:

  • Heuristic lens: To analyse emerging technosciences through the core contradiction identified in the Fragment.
  • Forecaster: To project trajectories of capitalism based on the intensification of this contradiction by new technologies.
  • Provocation: A deliberate, ‘easy’ challenge to the dominant ‘techno-utopian/techno-deterministic narrative’ (e.g., Silicon Valley’s ‘progress’ myth).
  • Strategic tool: Identifying points of rupture and potential lines of flight *within* technological development itself.
  • Voice projection: Enabling a ‘digitally remastered Marx’ to engage directly with 21st-century techno-capital.

AIMarx Engages Meta-Technologies: The Autonomist Lens

Applying the Fragment’s core contradiction to your list:

1. AI/AGI/Agentic AI

Embodied general intellect: AI represents the ultimate ‘fixed capital’ embedding the ‘general intellect.’ It directly performs intellectual labour.

Contradiction: AI massively increases potential wealth (post-scarcity) but …

  • Ownership/control: … concentrated in private hands (Big Tech), extracting rents.
  • Value crisis: Undermines labour-time basis of value. How is ‘value’ measured when AI creates autonomously?
  • Purpose: AI’s development is driven by capitalist imperatives (surveillance, optimisation, prediction for profit), *not* social need, creating misaligned incentives.

2. Robotisation

Automating variable capital: Direct replacement of human labour-power.

Contradiction: Increases productivity exponentially, but …

  • Crisis of realisation: … mass unemployment/devalued labour undermines consumer demand (who buys the products?).
  • Social crisis: Renders traditional working-class power (strike) potentially obsolete, demanding new forms of resistance (e.g., around data, access, UBI).
  • Ownership: Means of physical production hyper-concentrated.

3. ALife (Artificial life)

General intellect ‘evolving’: Systems that mimic life’s adaptive, generative, evolutionary processes.

Contradiction: Capital seeks to harness ALife for optimisation/innovation …

  • Beyond control?: … but its inherent complexity/emergence might create uncontrollable forces *within* capital’s systems (financial markets? logistics?).
  • New value forms?: Does value derive from *designing* the evolutionary environment? *Culling* results? Pure *ownership* of the generative process? Deepens the labour theory of value crisis.
  • ‘Alien’ production: Output resembles natural processes more than factory production, further blurring lines and destabilising capitalist categories.

4. Quantum Technologies

Hyper-accelerated intellect: Potential for unimaginable computation, simulation, material science.

Contradiction:

  • Hyper-concentration: Requires colossal capital/states, exacerbating inequality.
  • Weaponisation & control: Primary drivers are likely military/intelligence and hyper-optimisation for capital, raising extreme risks.
  • Epistemic shift: Could fundamentally alter the perception of reality/computation, potentially creating new forms of alienation or unthinkable possibilities *co-opted* by capital.

5. Computational Biology/Biosynthesis/Biodigitalism

General intellect fuses with ‘life itself’: Reprogramming biology, blurring nature/culture, biology/digital.

Contradiction:

  • New enclosures: Capital seeks to patent and commodify biological processes, genetic code, synthetic life (neo-feudalism over the biological commons).
  • Production paradigm shift: Moves production ‘into the living,’ creating value from biological reproduction/growth (a new ‘metabolic rift’?).
  • Control & biopower: Unprecedented potential for surveillance, control, and differentiation at the biological level (enhancement, eugenics via market).

AIMarx as Strategy & Provocation

Against techno-utopianism: AIMarx directly counters narratives of seamless, benevolent progress. It shouts: ‘Look at the contradictions! Look at the concentration! Look at the crisis brewing within the tech itself!’

Forecasting crisis points: It predicts where the friction between capitalist social relations and the productive potential of these technologies will cause rupture (e.g., AI-driven unemployment crises, ALife market crashes, biodigital enclosures sparking resistance).

Identifying terrain of struggle: Focuses analysis on the ‘key battlegrounds’:

Ownership & control: Who owns the algorithms, the data, the platforms, the genetic code, the quantum computers? (The ‘means of automated production’).

Governance of the general intellect: How is collectively produced knowledge/social intelligence captured and privatised?

Access & reproduction: Guaranteed income? Universal basic services? Decommodification of essentials?

Legitimising post-capitalist imagination: By showing capitalism ‘itself’ creates the potential for its overcoming (abundance via automation/intellect), AIMarx makes alternative futures (commons-based, democratically planned) seem not just desirable but ‘historically plausible’ outcomes of current technological trajectories – ‘if’ the struggle over ownership/control is won.

In essence: AIMarx is ‘Marx’s Fragment on Machines,’ digitally rebooted via Autonomist theory and deployed as a diagnostic toolkit and strategic provocateur against the god-like pretensions of 21st-century techno-capital. It doesn’t need Marx’s blessing; it needs to be ‘useful’ in explaining the chaos, forecasting the breaks and provoking the fight for who controls the future already emerging from our labs and servers.

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Full Citation Information:
Peters, M. A. (2025). AIMarx as Neo-Autonomist Research Programme: Hypothesis, Model, Forecast. PESA Agora. https://pesaagora.com/columns/aimarx-as-neo-autonomist-research-programme/

Michael A. Peters

Michael A. Peters (FRSNZ, FHSNZ, FPESA) is a globally recognised scholar whose interdisciplinary work spans philosophy of education, political economy and ecological civilisation. He holds the distinction of Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U.S.A.), Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University (P.R. China), and Research Associate in the Philosophy Program at Waikato University (New Zealand).

Previously, he served as Distinguished Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University (2018–2024) and held prestigious appointments including Personal Chair at the University of Auckland (2000), Research Chair at the University of Glasgow (2000–2006), Excellence Hire Professor at the University of Illinois (2005–2011), and Professor of Education at the University of Waikato (2011–2018).

A prolific author, Professor Peters has written over 120 books and 500 articles, shaping discourse in educational theory, philosophy, and critical policy studies. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Educational Philosophy and Theory for 25 years and founded multiple international journals, cementing his role as a leader in academic publishing.

His contributions have been honoured with fellowships in the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ, 2008) and the Humanities Society of New Zealand (FHSNZ, 2006), alongside honorary doctorates from State University of New York (SUNY, 2012) and the University of Aalborg (2015).

His latest research explores post-apocalyptic philosophy and ecological futures, including the forthcoming Civilisational Collapse and the Philosophy of Post-Apocalyptic Survival (Peter Lang, 2025). He is currently editing the Handbook of Ecological Civilization (Springer, 2025), advancing critical dialogues on sustainability and global transformation.

For more on his work, visit: https://michaeladrianpeters.com/