The Left and Artificial Intelligence

From Critiquing Technology to Shaping Its Future

Photo credit: Anton Petrus

Introduction: The Crisis of Traditional Methods in the Age of Algorithms

It is difficult to wage the battle for socialist liberation in the twenty-first century with the tools of the twentieth. We live in an age dominated by algorithms. The influence of digitisation and artificial intelligence is spreading into media, culture, education, work, and daily life. Political and economic strategies are increasingly shaped through the analysis of vast data sets and the computational processing of political and economic decisions. The left, therefore, faces an existential question: how can movements that still work and organise themselves by traditional logic withstand a digital capitalism that has reached an unprecedented level of technological advancement?

When left-wing organisations continue to rely on traditional methods in their discourse, organisation, and work, they face a major challenge in confronting capitalism. Their opponent commands an advanced arsenal of digital, economic, political, military, and media tools. It evolves by the minute in every field, adapts to its crises however deep they run, and forms class alliances across its own internal divisions. Yet a considerable part of the left still clings to old methods and means that can no longer keep pace with the demands of this renewed confrontation. This is the reality we witness today, and it makes the need to develop and renew these methods more urgent than ever.

In earlier articles, I described this vast digital gap through the image of the elephant and the ant. But after the rapid, immense growth digital capitalism has undergone, and because there still exist only a few influential left-wing and progressive digital alternatives, I now see, drawing on my professional work with algorithms and digital governance, that this gap has widened even further. It is a hard, bitter reality we must acknowledge openly. Only from that acknowledgement can we begin a serious consideration of the possible alternatives.

Marx and Engels: Science and Technology as a Double-Edged Sword

Science and technology were a central pillar of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels” thought. They saw in them tools that could be used either for liberation or to entrench class domination. Under capitalism, scientific and technological progress is used to maximise the bourgeoisie’s profit and to exploit manual and intellectual workers, deepening alienation and class inequality. Marx and Engels recognised, however, that these contradictions carry revolutionary possibilities that can help build a more just socialist system. Today their view appears even more urgent in the age of digital capitalism, where technology has become a new instrument of control while still holding the potential to liberate humanity.

Their deep grasp of the dialectical nature of history and society led them to see scientific progress as a material and social force that reflects class power relations. It is a double-edged sword: it carries immense liberating potential, yet is also used to deepen exploitation and entrench capitalist domination. Their thought demonstrated how material analysis can unite science with class struggle, turning knowledge into a force for changing the world rather than merely a means of understanding it. Their intellectual project calls clearly for moving beyond the boundaries of the capitalist order toward a more humane future, grounded in the liberating possibilities that technological progress opens up.

In Marx’s analysis of capitalism, technology occupied a central place in exposing the system’s fundamental contradictions. He saw that machines, which represented the pinnacle of scientific progress in his time, did not improve people’s lives or free them from the burdens of hard labour. Instead, they became effective means of accumulating capitalist profit and increasing the exploitation of workers. This use of technology produced surplus value by reducing the need for human labour, leaving the proletariat in a state of alienation, in which the worker is severed from both the production process and the fruits of their own labour. This contradiction was no accident for Marx. It was a fundamental part of the mechanisms of capitalism that turn science and technology into instruments of class domination.

Engels, for his part, saw science as a tool for understanding social conflict more deeply. His engagement with scientific discovery led him to argue that conflict is not confined to human society but extends into nature as well. He rejected biological determinism, however, insisting that the laws governing nature differ from the social laws shaped by conscious human action. Engels thereby added a scientific dimension to dialectical materialism: he showed that the laws of dialectics apply to both nature and society, reinforcing an understanding of historical transformation as part of one comprehensive evolutionary movement.

This approach, revising theory in light of historical change, was not foreign to Marx himself. He and Engels acknowledged it explicitly in their joint preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto, published in London in 1872, twenty-four years after the original manifesto appeared. There, they wrote that its general principles remained, on the whole, correct, but that some of its practical details, particularly the revolutionary programme set out at the end of the second chapter, had become outdated and needed an entirely different formulation. This owed to the immense industrial development the world had undergone since 1848, the expansion of the working class’s political organisation, and the lessons drawn from the Paris Commune of 1871. Had Marx been alive today, he would, by the same logic, have pointed out that digital capitalism represents an advanced stage of the very same exploitative dynamics he described in the nineteenth century, only carried out through more intelligent, concealed, and far-reaching methods of control. Its dominance is no longer confined to owning factories and raw materials. It now extends to controlling the flow of data and to directing and controlling human behaviour and consciousness, reaching as far as digital violence, repression, and militarisation through algorithms, and has, in many cases, through its alliance with the far right, become a digital fascism in the fullest sense of the word. The transformations brought about by the digital age may open the way for new forms of socialist struggle and organisation, provided we make use of them and engage with them with scientific precision.

This is a direct demand imposed by the realities that manual and intellectual workers live with the world over. Beyond its traditional exploitative character, digital capitalism exercises its power through algorithms that today no longer merely organise the flow of information but have come to control most aspects of daily life. They also determine which ideas reach public consciousness and which are erased or marginalised. This profound shift in the structure of class power compels the left to rethink, from the ground up, both its analytical tools and its forms of organisation on the ground.

Technology as Capitalism’s Tool for Overcoming Its Crises, and Scientific Flexibility as a Modern Class Struggle

The struggle over technology is not directed against science itself. It is directed against the ruling powers” monopoly over it. Artificial intelligence and technology in general should not be seen as a threat in themselves but as an arena whose contours are shaped by the balance of social, political, and economic power. Recent years have seen an unprecedented acceleration in the concentration of digital power among a limited number of major capitalist states and giant monopolistic corporations that control the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and global data. This has given them enormous economic, political, and cultural influence over the determination of humanity’s future.

Capitalism always turns, in moments of crisis, to reproducing itself through advanced scientific tools that allow it to overcome challenges without touching its exploitative core. This has played out in several instances. In the 2008 crisis, technology and scientific methods were used to rescue the financial system while the working classes were made to bear the cost of the losses. During the coronavirus pandemic, capitalism overcame the crisis by strengthening automation, artificial intelligence, and remote work, securing continued production through new mechanisms that reduced dependence on human labour and increased corporate profits at the expense of insecure working conditions for millions. Since 2023, the broad breakthrough in artificial intelligence has opened a new phase of labour market restructuring. Dependence on automation and intelligent systems has spread across numerous sectors, and concerns over the future of millions of jobs have grown, even as technology companies have reaped enormous profits from their monopoly over the new digital and knowledge infrastructure.

Taken together, these instances show how capitalism uses science as a tool to structure the system and secure its continuity and how it sometimes borrows certain socialist ideas, such as state intervention, as temporary measures to ensure stability, only to abandon them once the crisis has passed and reproduce exploitation through more advanced mechanisms.

In light of these challenges, the left must make use of scientific progress by reformulating its discourse and its tools in a methodical, precise manner. This requires modern means of analysing social issues and a realistic scientific discourse grounded in what is possible rather than merely what is desired, along with flexible organisational and leadership mechanisms capable of attracting young people who have grown up in a world dominated by technology. Investing in scientific tools does not mean embracing capitalism’s values. It is a strategy for putting them to use in the service of social justice and reducing class inequality, as a step toward the socialist alternative.

If earlier industrial revolutions changed the equations of production through the machine and steam and later through electricity and computing, the current phase, built on artificial intelligence, big data, and digital platforms, is reshaping production, work, knowledge, and human communication in a still deeper and more far-reaching way. In this age, data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence systems have become central tools for reproducing domination in relatively invisible ways: by shaping public opinion, steering individual and collective behaviour, and controlling access to knowledge and information.

Breaching the Fortress and Freeing the Tools: Toward Left-Wing Digital Alternatives

The left’s presence is receding in one of today’s key battles because it treats technology as a secondary tool. But the battle is not yet decided. Victory requires translating vision into concrete programmes of action grounded in the conscious use of technology. The left cannot remain on the defensive. It must instead be an active party in reshaping technology’s future and integrating it into its project of liberation.

Technology, however, cannot replace conscious human organisation. Real strength lies in the organised human being, capable of harnessing these tools to serve their own goals. Artificial intelligence and technology in general are effective tools for mobilisation, organisation, and analysis, but they cannot substitute for solidarity and grassroots work, which remains the essential engine of change.

As a left, we have historically succeeded in offering alternatives in economics, justice, politics, rights, and other fields, and we have always insisted on intellectual, political, organisational, and media independence. Today, however, we face a fateful challenge that strikes at this very principle: we still lack a comprehensive, independent, alternative digital vision capable of breaking capitalism’s technological chains. We remain bound by its own applications, which leave the left and its base exposed to restriction, marginalisation, repression, and infiltration. As noted earlier, the most important dialectical lesson we must grasp is that technology is not neutral. It is, in the fullest sense, an arena of class struggle. The fundamental problem does not lie in the nature of artificial intelligence or automation but in the ownership relations that govern them, that is, in their monopolisation by a handful of giant corporations and major capitalist states. This deepens the class divide and expands both the surveillance of the masses and the standardisation of human consciousness, all in the service of profit accumulation and intellectual and political dominance.

On this basis, it is no longer enough for the left to settle for the role of critic or spectator, standing outside this technology and merely criticising its exploitation from without. That alone will not bring about the desired change. It may instead keep the left confined to narrow intellectual and popular circles, far removed from the actual course of the struggle. What is required is to enter into the technological process itself and understand the logic of algorithms in order to decode and rebuild them in a liberating spirit by proposing new and bold mechanisms for using technology within democratic, participatory, and transparent systems.

We need “popular artificial intelligence and algorithms” that operate under social oversight and global and local laws, that develop through digital cooperatives with a socialist orientation, and that are transparent and open to scrutiny by all. Their aim should be to distribute wealth, organise production, address disease and poverty, and achieve social justice, serving genuine human needs rather than market whims or the reinforcement of domination and militarism. We also need open-source models and open-source progressive digital platforms, whether social networks, search engines, or others, along with collaborative technological initiatives that are not subject to the logic of commercial monopoly and that allow communities and the public to take part in managing knowledge and data and developing new technologies.

We are called upon to make the tools of this age our own. Just as Marx and Engels transformed the economic and philosophical sciences of their time, along with scientific and intellectual progress, from tools that justified the existing order into a theoretical and practical weapon in the hands of manual and intellectual workers, the left today is called upon to be an active agent in this arena. It must move from the category of “the passive user,” subject to the terms of capitalist platforms, to the category of “the alternative producer,” which puts forward open, liberated, commons-based technological alternatives.

The struggle over the power of algorithms is no longer just about the future of technology. It is also about the future of work, democracy, culture, and social justice.

Conclusion

These critical remarks are not meant to diminish the left or its recognised history in our countries. They are, rather, an attempt to strengthen a debate that remains too faint among us over the digital alternative we need. It is true that the task is not easy, that the gap is wide, and that digital capitalism is highly dominant. Yet history teaches us that nothing remains impossible in the face of sustained struggle. The working week once exceeded seventy hours. Today, in some countries, it does not exceed thirty-seven hours or less, the result of sustained struggles that once seemed like distant dreams. A century ago, women had no right to vote, to be educated, or to work outside the home. Today, in many countries, they lead governments, parliaments, and universities, thanks to a sustained feminist and left-wing struggle that never compromised, despite the uneven and harsh balance of power at its outset.

Given these immense changes and the highly advanced stage capitalism has reached, we must confront it with its own formidable weapons by making use of modern science, the digital revolution, and continuous renewal across every field, with the aim of ultimately surpassing it. It is in this context that the movement toward the Electronic-Digital Left emerges as an intellectual and organisational current that reflects a direct response to these sweeping transformations and to the growing awareness of rights and knowledge. It seeks to direct this awareness toward a radical, comprehensive socialist transformation of social, political, and economic structures, while preserving the core values that have formed the heart of Marxist and left-wing thought throughout history.

Reality has shown that left-wing organisations that continually renew and develop their discourse, tools, work, and organisation, that unite and keep pace with fresh challenges and with scientific and intellectual progress, are best able to preserve their role and influence. Currents that cling to their old methods, as discussed at the start of this article, gradually lose members and popular support, and their roles decline markedly. This is a difficult reality we observe in most countries of the world. It does not, however, rule out the existence of left-wing and progressive experiences that offer hope and provide models to build upon.

Without an active left-wing presence and joint work coordinated internationally in this field, digital capitalism will continue to determine the direction of technological development in the service of its own interests and to control humanity’s future. In the end, the left’s real strength lies in its capacity to unite grassroots human organisation with digital superiority so that the digital space becomes a supportive, effective arena, not a substitute for the struggle but a wing on which it flies toward a more humane and just socialist future.

This international dimension of the confrontation will be the subject of a forthcoming article on digital left internationalism. This article is only the beginning of an open dialogue. I invite comrades, women and men alike, locally and globally, to form joint digital working groups that explore the possibilities of building left-wing and progressive technological alternatives and lay the practical groundwork for the digital internationalism our coming struggle will need.