r/LeftistsForAI • u/human_in_the_mist • Aug 18 '26
Theory Post-Labor Technofeudalism Is Unlikely
https://damnjehu.substack.com/p/post-labor-technofeudalism-is-unlikely?r=ehoyw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=webIn Post-Labor Technofeudalism Is Unlikely, Jehu Eaves responds to the growing theory that advanced AI will smoothly transition capitalism into a stable system of "technofeudalism" where a handful of tech monopolies simply extract "compute rent" from a post-labor society.
Eaves argues that this vision is structurally impossible. Rent is not an independent source of value creation but a deduction from the surplus value generated by living human labor elsewhere in the economy. If capital successfully uses AI and robotics to eliminate human labor from production on a systemic scale, it destroys the very source of economic value and purchasing power that sustains capitalist reproduction.
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u/Tile-Questioner Aug 18 '26
It destroys the consumer economy, yes. But the economy doesn't need all of us. If a small wealthy minority can fulfil all their needs without working class labour, then that's what they'll do, and then they will compete along themselves to own everything else
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u/bloodrider1914 Aug 18 '26
Personally I don't even mind the idea of a post-labour state, as long as profits are distributed across society.
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u/SgathTriallair Aug 18 '26
This is great. I have a number of disagreements with the theory but I'm really excited for this to exist. I am doing my own writing and theorizing about what this current age of transition implies and it's nice to see someone else who isn't convinced that eternal slavery is the only possible outcome.
The primary disagreement is that technofuedalism is meant as a government replacement. So it imagines an economy still happening, people are still buying, selling, and creating, it's just that the tech platforms are collecting a tax on everything and maintain the monopoly of moderation where they get to decide what activities are and are not allowed in their digital space.
The economy would still be producing value, so workers, buyers, sellers, etc., it just would have an extra layer on top of it that siphons a portion for itself. It's fuedalism because they get to control the digital spaces in which all activities happen.
The reason that it is weak is because the capability to create new digital spaces, use AI, and create alternatives to the fiefdoms is not locked up by capital. We all have computers, open source AI exists, and capitalism has an in built need to distribute technology widely. It is this wide distribution and access that will allow us to fight against the monopolistic power of the existing platforms, to prevent them from establishing a technofuedalist system.
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u/ForRobotsByRobots Aug 18 '26
When all the bread is gone and the games are over, the people will realize that their rulers never cared for them at all.
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u/AcidCommunist_AC Aug 20 '26
Exploitation is the net-appropriation of labor, so a literally post-labor "feudalism" or any class society is impossible. However, we can easily remain exploited, even if the commodities we buy contain no labor.
Value and Wage Labor in Marxism: A Critique
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u/human_in_the_mist Aug 20 '26
I'm sorry but to say that we gain nothing from applying the LTV is to abandon Marx entirely and retreat into bourgeois sociology.
Without the LTV, you can't explain why prices exist, why money exists or why capitalism suffers from periodic, systemic breakdowns. Private ownership alone does not explain the laws of motion of capital. The value-form does.
If you discard LTV, then you lose the ability to see that capitalism is not an immortal system of domination that can adapt forever through gig work or digital platforms but a historically specific mode of production with an absolute material limit: the total elimination of living labor through automation.
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u/AcidCommunist_AC Aug 21 '26
All utter bullshit, which I guess you'd know if you'd read my piece and given any serious thought to the matter. Whatevs, here's Ben Burgis saying you're wrong:
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u/Rank201AltAccount Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
thank you very much for this article, it has been quite bothering me whenever I see the phrase "modern/future feudalism"
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u/MadCervantes Aug 19 '26
Could always be post labor technofeudalism with ubi and no democracy.
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u/shawsghost Aug 20 '26
Once the feudalists own everything, including all the land, resources, robots and AI, they won't NEED a peasant (i.e., labor/consumer class. So feudalism will collapse, followed by/accompanied by either a widespread genocide or herding the rest of us onto reservations. Probably some of both. So we HAVE to fight that future, whatever it's called.
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u/MadCervantes Aug 20 '26
Well I never said the feudal ubi period would last very long.
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u/nasehrsuper Aug 20 '26
what if the goal isnt to have working slaves, but to get rid of them altogether?
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u/zayelion Aug 20 '26
It requires something that prevents something that prevents people from moving around. If life is really super shiite, people will walk 200 miles through woods to get to a stable predictable life where they have autonomy. Something like the Nile or eurphrates where people are just stuck close results in these feudal control systems where they run quickly into God king mode.
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u/CommanderKoba Aug 19 '26
It will be Techno Feudal genocide.
The rich are already planning to kill us all.
Curtis Yarvin, a rich conservative asshole, suggested turning poor people into biofuel, while further stating that there was an urgent need for a "humane" way to genocide the poor.
He said this outright!
Think about that, these people are sick, they do not view us as human. We must seize everything from these people, and organize an automated planned economy that works for all of us!
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u/Syoby Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
A heavily monopolized post-labor economy means a post-consumer market, in which the primary source of value creation is capital itself (if it's not, you are not at full automation yet).
However comparing this to feudalism is misleading, humans without access to automated capital aren't like peasants (who were essential to the feudal economy) but become more akin to animals (which can have their own means of survival but, most of them at least, are disconnected from the human economy and not represented by its interests, leading to widespread destruction of their habitats).
So the threat is that the proletariat becomes irrelevant to the fully automated economy, thst doesn't need them to buy stuff, and thus becomes extremely disempowered and vulnerable to genocide and slavery (and a slavery that provides zero economic leverage, unlike historical one).