Technological Subsumption and the Enclosure of the General Intellect
In the opening chapters of Capital, Marx introduces the concept of commodity fetishism—the phenomenon wherein the social relationships between people are obscured and perceived instead as objective relationships between things. Today, we confront a new, more potent form of this obfuscation: the fetishism of the algorithm. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) permeates the socio-economic fabric, the public discourse is dominated by a mixture of awe and anxiety regarding the “autonomy” and “intelligence” of these systems. We are told we stand on the brink of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—a singular, technological event that will rival the emergence of biological consciousness.
This paper argues that this narrative is a fundamental mischaracterization, serving a specific ideological function. It posits that the current technological paradigm is not the birth of a new alien intelligence, but the enclosure of an existing human one. By revisiting Marx’s concept of the “General Intellect” outlined in the Grundrisse—where social knowledge itself becomes a direct force of production—we can reframe the current moment not as a technological singularity, but as a crisis of ownership.
We propose a shift in nomenclature from Artificial General Intelligence to Artificial General Intellect. This distinction is not merely semantic; it is material. “Intelligence” implies an individual biological capacity, a property that belongs to the machine and its creators. “Intellect,” in the Marxist tradition, is a social relation—the accumulated scientific, linguistic, and cultural output of the species.
Through a historical materialist lens, this paper will examine how the “Visionary” class—from the radio era to the present—has consistently intercepted the democratizing potential of technology. We will demonstrate how the current race for AGI represents the ultimate “entropic inversion,” where the immense capital requirements of training frontier models allow the ownership class to privatize the digital commons. The result is a paradox: as the technology becomes more “general” and capable, the power to govern it becomes more concentrated, leaving the public alienated from the very social brain they helped create.
The Marxist critique of political economy rests fundamentally on the antagonism between the proletariat, who possess only their labor power, and the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production. Central to this critique is the Labor Theory of Value, which posits that the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time required for its production. However, the introduction of machinery introduces a complex dialectic. In Capital, Volume I, Marx observes that while machinery holds the potential to reduce necessary labor time, under capitalism, it functions as “fixed capital”—a force that dominates “living labor,” intensifying the pace of work and stripping the laborer of agency. This aligns with Harry Braverman’s thesis in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), where he argues that the primary function of technology in the capitalist workplace is “deskilling”—the systematic separation of conception from execution, ensuring that knowledge of the labor process resides exclusively with management rather than the worker.
Yet, a more emancipatory reading exists within Marx’s Grundrisse, specifically in the “Fragment on Machines.” Here, Marx anticipates a stage of development where the production of wealth depends less on direct labor time and more on the general state of science and social knowledge—what he terms the “General Intellect.” He foresaw a moment where “the development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production.” It is at this juncture—where knowledge itself becomes the primary driver of value—that the potential for a post-capitalist transition is most acute. Theoretically, if the “General Intellect” is a social product, its private appropriation by capital should become increasingly untenable, leading to a rupture in the mode of production.
History demonstrates that the introduction of transformative technology creates a temporal fracture—a brief window where the democratization of information and production appears viable. In each instance, however, the public has deferred to “Visionary” figures who promise to shepherd society through the transition, effectively re-enclosing the commons.
The advent of radio in the 1920s was initially greeted with a Brechtian optimism; it was perceived as a decentralized apparatus capable of two-way communication, a “wireless commons.” However, this potential was rapidly subsumed by the “Visionary” strategies of figures such as David Sarnoff of RCA. Sarnoff successfully argued for the “broadcast” model—a centralized transmission to a passive audience—financed by advertising. The revolutionary potential of the medium was inverted; rather than a tool for the proletariat to coordinate and communicate, radio became a unilateral channel for the reinforcement of consumer ideology.
Similarly, the personal computing revolution of the 1970s was born from the “Homebrew” ethos, characterized by a rejection of centralized mainframes and an embrace of open hardware. The computer was framed as a “bicycle for the mind,” a tool to liberate the individual intellect. Yet, as the technology matured, the narrative shifted toward the “Visionary” leadership of figures like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The focus moved from open architecture to proprietary licensing and closed ecosystems. As Nick Dyer-Witheford notes in Cyber-Marx (1999), the information age did not transcend the historic conflict between capital and labor but rather constituted a new battleground where the “circuits of struggle” were re-routed through proprietary platforms. The user became a consumer of software rather than a master of the machine, and the capital generated by this efficiency was concentrated in the hands of platform owners.
We have now arrived at the precipice of the AI era, a moment that mirrors historical antecedents but introduces a critical linguistic and material deception. The industry term “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) functions as an ideological cloak. A more precise, materialist designation—grounded in the Grundrisse—would be Artificial General Intellect.
The “Visionary” class (Altman, Musk, et al.) aggressively promotes the frame of Intelligence. This biological metaphor suggests that the technology is an autonomous entity, a digital organism being birthed by the genius of the few. It individualizes the technology, framing it as a “being” that must be aligned, feared, or worshipped.
However, a critical analysis reveals this technology is not intelligence (an individual cognitive capacity) but intellect (a social relation). As Marx noted in the Fragment on Machines, the “General Intellect” is the accumulation of social knowledge—science, art, language, and culture—developed collectively by society over centuries. LLMs (Large Language Models) are literally this: they are statistical representations of the totality of human output. By calling it “Intelligence,” capital obscures the source of the value (the public data) and attributes it to the algorithm (the private property).
We are witnessing the “primitive accumulation” of the General Intellect. Unlike the enclosure of physical commons (land), which was local and visible, the enclosure of the Artificial General Intellect is global and abstract. The “means of production” are no longer just factories, but the corpus of human thought.
Proponents argue AI democratizes capability. However, this view ignores the structural reality of “entropic inversion.” The Personal Computer era allowed users to own their tools of creation. The AI era forces users to rent access to the process of creation. Because the capitalization required to host the Artificial General Intellect (energy, chips, data centers) is so high, it forces a centralization of power that supersedes the democratizing potential of the digital age. We are moving from a model of “distributed computing” to “distributed submission.”
The historical trajectory from the radio to the internet suggests that technological disruption creates a vacuum of complexity reliably filled by the “Visionary” capitalist. However, the stakes of the current moment are qualitatively different. We are not merely debating the ownership of a broadcast tower or a software platform; we are contesting the ownership of the social brain.
The critical task for the modern proletariat is to pierce the veil of “Intelligence.” As long as the public views AI as a separate, superior entity created by visionaries, they remain alienated. Class consciousness in the 21st century requires the realization that Artificial General Intellect is not a product of Silicon Valley, but the alienated product of society itself—a “turning of the tables” that has not yet occurred. The technology is us, estranged from us, and sold back to us.
The “Visionary” is not the creator of this intellect, but merely the toll collector on the bridge between the public and their own collective knowledge. The future of the class struggle, therefore, will not be fought over wages or hours, but over the right to access, govern, and deploy the Artificial General Intellect for the common good rather than private accumulation.
References: Marx, K. Capital, Volume I; Marx, K. Grundrisse (“Fragment on Machines”); Braverman, H. Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974); Dyer-Witheford, N. Cyber-Marx (1999)