Marx’s 150-Year-Old Warning on AGI and the Fork in Humanity’s Economic Future

As artificial general intelligence (AGI) edges closer to reality, a 150-year-old insight from Karl Marx has resurfaced with startling relevance. In Capital, Volume III, Marx wrote: “A development of productive forces which would diminish the absolute number of labourers, i.e., enable the entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time span, would cause a revolution, because it would put the bulk of the population out of the running.” Today, analysts and technologists are recognizing this not as historical theory, but as a precise diagnosis of the coming economic inflection point: automation no longer displaces workers in isolated sectors—it threatens to render human labor obsolete across the entire economy.

Unlike previous industrial revolutions, where displaced workers transitioned to new roles—farmers to factory hands, clerks to call center agents—AGI automates cognitive labor itself. Writing, legal analysis, medical diagnostics, software development, and financial forecasting are all being rapidly absorbed by machine intelligence. As noted in a widely shared Reddit analysis from the r/singularity community, this eliminates the traditional safety net of labor mobility. “There’s nowhere to retrain to at the necessary scale,” the post observes. The result is a paradox: companies maximize profits by cutting labor costs, but collectively destroy their customer base, as fewer people have income to purchase goods and services.

This structural crisis is compounded by the erosion of workers’ bargaining power. Historically, labor’s leverage came from its indispensability. When production required human hands, strikes and unions could force concessions. But as autonomous systems take over logistics, security, manufacturing, and even caregiving, the displaced majority may hold no meaningful leverage. “What bargaining chip does the displaced majority actually hold?” the Reddit author asks. The answer, chillingly, may be none—unless society proactively restructures ownership and access to technology.

Enter “Manna,” a 2004 speculative fiction short story by Marshall Brain, now circulating as a blueprint for possible futures. In one version, AI is controlled by corporations and the state: workers are laid off en masse, housed in government-run facilities, and kept docile through surveillance and minimal welfare. In the other—the “Australia Project”—the same AI technology is collectively owned. Robots manage agriculture, energy, and healthcare; citizens enjoy universal abundance without traditional employment. The distinction isn’t technological—it’s political. The same code, the same hardware, yields diametrically opposed outcomes based on who controls it.

Crucially, AI today is uniquely democratizable. Unlike semiconductor fabs or nuclear reactors, open-source models like Llama and Mistral can be run on consumer-grade hardware. Solar panels, 3D printers, and decentralized energy grids are becoming affordable. Communities from rural Oregon to Kerala are experimenting with AI-managed local food systems and energy microgrids. “You don’t necessarily need the megacorp,” the post argues. “You build a parallel economy from the ground up.”

Yet systemic forces are working to centralize control. Proposed regulations in the U.S. and EU require licensing for training large AI models. Export controls on advanced chips limit access in developing regions. Cloud infrastructure is increasingly dominated by a handful of tech giants. These aren’t necessarily malicious policies—they’re rational responses to security and IP concerns—but they have the effect of closing the window for decentralized alternatives.

The future, then, may not be monolithic. We are likely heading toward a fractured world: some regions embracing distributed, community-owned AI economies; others descending into managed dependency under corporate and state surveillance. Marx understood the crisis. “Manna” reveals the choice. The question now is whether democratic, grassroots mobilization can outpace the machinery of corporate consolidation before the fork in the road disappears.