This post argues AI and robotics may usher in the end of capitalism.

“We have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump is detestable. Class hatred is not a mere matter of envy on the part of the poor and contempt and dread on the part of the rich. Both rich and poor are really hateful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, but I am equally bent on their extermination… I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves”: Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Fascism 1928.

The capitalist is a truly delusional creature, reliant on the erroneous notion that their supremacy is secure. Karl Marx, of course, prophesied the extinction of capitalism; noting “[bourgeois rule] will carry with it the seeds of its own destruction” (Marx, 1850). The so called “AI blood bath” in conjunction with robotics/advanced industrial machinery, while championed by the capitalist class, may just be the harbingers of capitalist demise. Das Capital vol. 3, articulates the relations of production that cause profits to decline over time. Marx posits automation is central to this process. On first glance, one might be inclined to reject the notion: profits have a tendency to decline. However, rejecting this premise would be a foolish mistake. This post will consider the utility of AI/automation for the bourgeois capitalist classes, how Marx’s understanding of value applies, the ways in which capital combats the tendency of falling profits and why Western capital can no longer successfully employ these tactics.

Hate that automates

In general terms AI is the theory and development of computer systems intended to perform tasks that would ordinarily require human intellect and skill. Such tasks include: decision making, visual perception, speech recognition and language translation (Australian Signals Directorate, 2023). This definition is unreasonably broad and vague, for the purposes of this article “AI” refers to large language models. The implementation of AI and robotics in addition to advanced industrial machinery has been dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schawb, 2015).

AI is intended to replace the intellectual labour while robotics and other such automation machinery is to replace physical labour. The bourgeoise has invested heavily in the development of these technologies hoping to limit/eliminate labour costs while maintaining a constant or increased rate of productivity in pursuit of ever-growing profits. This logic is flawed and highlights some of the many contradictions present in a capitalist arrangement of production. Capitalism is a system of labour exploitation. Machines cannot be exploited.

The capitalist class is also using AI and robotics to solve another issue that has plagued the wealthiest among us for centuries: we out number them. The ruling classes are acutely aware of this ratio, spending millions on selling us fanciful mythologies about freedom, democracy, class mobility and the rule of law; manufacturing our consent for the violent theft of natural resources and surplus labour globally.

However, the mythologies only last as long as the masses are housed and fed domestically. In the past, when wealth inequality reached critical mass some of those at the top were… euthanised. The western bourgeois classes idiotically believe they may overcome this condition with these technologies; using the AI digital panopticon along with various styles of drones the repress the disenfranchised masses. Some harrowing examples of such aspirations include: Peter Thiel’s Palantir, Larry Ellison’s Oracle, Israel’s lavender AI/subsequent drone strikes, and Ukraine’s Diia app. These technologies are being tested by American vassal states currently but they’re spreading swiftly.

The theory

Marx’s labour theory of value, in simple terms, posits a commodity’s value (not to be confused with price) arises from the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. A worker can and does produce over and above that of their own subsistence, Marx refers to this excess as surplus value which is appropriated by the capitalist and sold for a profit. The capitalist is able to alienate the worker from their product by controlling the means of production via the legal fiction known as ownership. The worker sells their labour time to the capitalist on the threat of starvation and homelessness.

This reality robs the worker of their humanity, reducing them to a mere input of production. The worker’s labour as a production input is referred to as variable capital. Variable capital is itself the source of value as articulated above. Machinery and materials are thus named constant capital.

The capitalist prefers constant over variable capital, as workers ask for things like decent wages and safe working conditions that eat into those luscious quarterly profits. However, this has long term consequences the capitalist is apparently blind to. As new value may only arise from labour, increasing constant capital while decreasing variable capital inevitably erodes profits over time. The bourgeois classes can take steps to counter the tendency for profits to decline by:

• Capturing government(s)
• Destroying the currency
• Abusing workers

These measures are used to expand markets and surplus labour theft. However, the measures will eventually cease to be effective.

Counter steps

It is important to understand these counter measures are implemented incrementally across decades. The measures are also cumulative and should be understood in the context of the US empire with its vassals (As inherited from European and British colonial projects). The US has of course been the centre of global capital, particularly post Bretton Woods where the USD was made the reserve currency.

Capturing the government

The first counter measure category, capturing government(s), combats the tendency by controlling trade, domestic law enforcement/military, government expenditure, policy and legislation to violently liberalise/expand markets (Harvey, 2005). A sovereign government keeps western capital awake at night (see for example: Russia, Cuba & North Korea). This measure usually manifests as a garden variety regime change, a colour revolution and/or fascism.

The US empire conducts regime change operations across the globe via the military, the CIA and its various cutouts like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (Grayzone, 2024). Examples include Nicaragua, Libya, Syria and most recently Nepal (Kinzer, 2006; Pathak, 2016; Wehrey, Boduszynski, 2025). These nations are selected for their bountiful resources, low-cost labour and often communist tendencies. Usually following such regime changes, the newly implemented puppet leaders take on large loans with oppressive terms from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forcing these nations into debt servitude and austerity while state assets are privatised.

Colour revolutions differ slightly from the average regime change as it is a term applied specifically to post Soviet states. The USSR and now by extension modern Russia has been the greatest threat to American dominance, China aside. This is why it has its own special brand of regime change. An apposite example is Ukraine. American capital captured the Ukrainian government in, what those with discernment call, the 2014 Maidan coup (Grayzone, 2023). The US empire had thought itself successful, after the collapse of the USSR, with Boris Yeltsin as president. An easily manipulated, alcoholic Boris implemented “economic shock therapy” otherwise known as neoliberal austerity policy. Suffering poor health Boris Yeltsin relinquished power to ex KGB lawyer Vladimir Putin. It soon became obvious Putin would not allow capital to destroy dear mother Russia. Unable to tolerate an economically sovereign Russia, the American and Western European ruling classes took control of the neutral Ukrainian government (Stone, 2017). NATO moved in, running war games along the border until Russia took a stand in February 2022 (Grayzone, 2023). Given it was Stalin’s USSR whom defeated the German Fascists, it is only fitting the Sino-Russia alliance will be triumphant over American fascism (if you think the Americans defeated the Nazis, I have a bridge to sell you).

Communism is the only true bulwark against fascism which is currently taking hold across North America, Europe and Australia as capitalism rapidly decays. While the previous two methods of government capture are concerned with oppressed nations, modern fascism is largely concerned with the oppressor nations/vassals. Fascism in general terms is simply the merging of corporate and state (Mussolini, 1935). As the wealth gap widens and class conflict intensifies the capitalist class takes complete control of government, gradually, then suddenly.

While there has always been an undercurrent of fascism in all settler colonies, there are moments where the working classes have some agency and sway. To crush these moments the capitalist class sets about lobbying, bribing and funding industry plants to push deregulation, tax breaks and the erosion of worker rights. These efforts will invariably reach critical mass, which is how we end up with the PayPal Mafia billionaire warlords running the US government. To fund this audacious project the capitalist class, particularly bankers, erode the value of the currency until it is eventually destroyed completely.

Destroying the currency

The second measure adopted to combat declining profits is currency destruction. Using the reserve currency, USD, as the example we can see this is achieved through inflation, wage stagnation and de-industrialisation. Inflation coupled with wage stagnation erodes purchasing power, meaning the worker must increase their labour time to maintain the same standard of living thus benefiting both their employer and merchant. All while employment opportunities stagnate.

In order to destroy the currency, first the ruling class must take control of the currency. The US Federal Reserve (the Fed) was created in 1913. During this period gold was legal tender. In the lead up to the Fed’s creation, irresponsible/poor decision making meant banks were frequently failing. Capitalists and bankers prefer to avoid the consequences of their action and thus created a system to serve that very purpose (Beattie, 2025; Goddard & Wilson, 2016).

Capital has never been able to competently and efficiently utilise labour resources; this incompetence caused the great depression, from 1929. As noted above, capitalists and bankers alike avoid accountability, insisting the public pay for their failure. In 1933 President F.D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, confiscating and criminalising gold coin/bullion. Gold then ceased to be legal tender.

In its place the Fed implemented the debt-based fiat money system. Fiat money permits the Fed to expand the money supply irrespective of US economy’s productive capacity. Fiat is functionally a state sanctioned Ponzi scheme. This meant the ruling class could covertly exploit the labour value of workers while nominal growth afforded them the fantasy of economic health as the industrial base decayed. Presently, the US dollar has lost 96.23% of its value since 1913 through inflation (retrieved 03/10/2025).

As the dust settled on WWII a conference establishing a new monetary reality was held at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire 1944. This pivotal meeting expanded the international banking cartel (IMF & the World Bank join the Bank for International Settlements) and established the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The US dollar would be redeemable in gold for foreign nation state dollar holders on a fixed exchange rate while other national currencies would be pegged thereto.

This arrangement was short lived as Nixon shock hammered the final nail in the monetary coffin. In 1971, Nixon closed the gold window, this meant foreign dollar holders could no long exchange those dollars for gold. Without gold backing, the ruling class had to generate artificial demand for the dollar. Enter the Petrodollar.

The Americans essentially issued the House of Saud an ultimatum, OPEC is to price oil in USD… or else (Chen, 2025). This arrangement has had a great many perks for the US empire, namely exponential monetary expansion and what amounts to free goods imports, functionally paying nothing for the world’s labour product. Further incentivising American capital to globalise production, de-industrialising/financialising the national economy.

The American ruling class hopes to continue this scam by implementing private bank issued stable coins or central bank digital currency in its vassals while using digital surveillance to exclude dissenters from banking services (See for example: Gibbons, 2025; World Economic Forum, 2023). However, this will ultimately fail as the underlying issues with production, detailed on this blog (see Reserve Bank and Labour Offshoring via the home page), remain.

Worker abuse

The third measure the capitalist employs to evade declining profits is direct worker abuse. The capitalist may abuse workers through lifting the cost of education, contract terms, wage theft, lobbying government, the work environment and culture to extract the maximum surplus labour their ever-shrinking employee pool can provide.

The capitalist/worker relationship is fundamentally contradictory and exploitative. The worker would like to spend as little time working for the highest wages they can bargain, while the capitalist hopes to extract the maximum amount of labour time for the lowest wages they can bargain. Capitalists often add further insult to injury by deliberately paying workers less than agreed; this phenomenon is called wage theft. This relative bargaining power is of course tremendously uneven. The capitalist employer can exercise and increase this relative power in several ways.

Capital may lobby government for legislative changes. Such changes usually include the erosion of workplace protections around safety, wages, union busting and any other conditions of employment like super contributions, penalty rates or paid time off. The employer classes will also pressure government to defund regulators while insisting those same regulators dismantle and prosecute trade unions (See for example: CFMEU).

Capitalists will also make individual work environments cruel, usually while maintaining plausible deniability. Workplace dysfunction will ultimately yield poor outcomes long-term; however, employers often have anti-social character traits and thus will double down rather than reflect on their choices (Pyschogios, Hussain & Bailey, 2025). Adverse work environments can be created through poor office and equipment design along with the cultivation of social violence. Workers might be expected to work long hours and/or unpaid overtime.

Oppressive office design might look like fluorescent lighting, open floor plan, ineffective climate control with high noise levels and a lack of privacy (Danielsson & Theorell, 2024). Both blue- and white-collar jobs will often implement surveillance technologies to elicit further control over workers (Kayas, 2023). The general feeling of discomfort and stress arising from these high control conditions will often facilitate toxic workplace cultures characterised by poor communication, bullying, discrimination, harassment, exhaustion and fear (Brassey, Coe, Dewhurst, Enomoto, Giarola, Herbig & Jeffery, 2022).

System failure

The bourgeois ruling classes have been increasing constant capital exponentially, per the aforementioned method, relying on the counter measures to continue sustaining their profits and control into the future. However, as foreshadowed the conditions described above ultimately bring about empire collapse. The characteristics of a declining empire include:

• An over-extended military
• Over-reliance on nations outside the empire’s purview to provide the goods and services required to maintain the empire
• Unmanageable national, commercial and consumer debt
• A hungry/financially distressed populous

Over-extended military

Capturing foreign governments to sustain control over resources is in and of itself extremely resource intensive. To maintain global dominance the US military has over 750 military bases across at least 80 countries. The US is also engaged in multiple proxy wars with no strategic avenue to victory (see for example: Ukraine & Israel) while simultaneously threatening direct hot war with multiple nations (see for example: Mexico & Venezuela). On top of the regime change efforts described above, as proliferated by intelligence agencies and NGOs, it is clear the US does not have the productive capacity to sustain these aspirations. The American military industrial complex has become bloated, inefficient and unjustifiably costly. Meanwhile, the US has lost control of the requisite supply chains essential to weapons manufacturing.  

Over-reliance on offshore production

The US simply does not produce high-quality cost competitive goods or services of sufficient significance to retain international relevance. There is no comparative advantage to speak of, while some may argue the US is a leader in AI development this will ultimately be of little consequence long term for reasons discussed below.

Western corporations, in their hubris, gave up their leverage when they took production offshore. China largely commands rare earth processing, thus can restrict supply to everyone’s benefit. When the US is unable to manufacture weapons, ordinary people win.

Not only is the US reliant on global supply chains to sustain the military, they also source most consumer goods internationally, running very large trade deficits. USD decline is only accelerated by this reality. Foreign nations have no need nor desire to maintain their depreciating USD denominated assets. Especially, where the west has shown they will unlawfully appropriate financial assets as they see fit having frozen Russian assets held by Euroclear (Kolyandr, 2025). Fortunately, alternate trade and payment systems outside American purview are growing in popularity (see for example: BRICS, CIPS & New Development Bank).

Unmanageable debt

The US is not only struggling with an unpayable national debt, both commercial and consumer debt is also reaching critical mass. The debt to GDP ratio is entirely untenable. The resulting financial instability is inconceivable, liquidity issues, bond market precarity and obscene counterparty risk. When the vast unrealised losses sitting in western financial institutions begin to make themselves known on balance sheets one can only imagine what will come to pass. Between the OTC derivatives market and the under-collateralised central counterparty clearing houses, the risks are incomprehensible. As per usual ordinary people will be expected to carry the failures of an incompetent and fraudulent ruling class. The fallout will not be contained to the United States either.

Distressed populous

There is only so much abuse people can take. Not only does the ruling class expect to demolish the jobs market, but they also think themselves entitled to people homes, cars, medical care and savings/retirement accounts. The people need to eat, hungry unemployed people with guns does not a safe society make. Many of the world’s wealthiest have built bunkers preparing for the oncoming disaster they themselves have caused; with the knowledge they will likely lose their ability to enforce their rule. Given they felt the need to prepare in this way, I suspect they know their AI surveillance and control aspirations are destined for failure.

AI slop

AI itself does not have any legitimate use cases. AI chat bots hallucinate, discriminate, fabricate, encourage suicide, induce psychosis, reduce short term memory, destroy the environment, poison drinking water and create low quality work product in general not to mention the obscene IP theft. The technology cannot adequately perform the human tasks the bourgeois would like. AI cannot create new value, per its aforementioned position as constant capital, however, it differs from other automation technologies like the power loom or CNC machine as it does not assist in the production of goods or services with any substantive material utility (financial products do not meet that criteria so hush).

AI is in fact a scam, created in the image of the criminally insane Curtis Yarvin style eugenicists making the decisions in Silicon Valley. Board members/CEOs/partners tend to be quite dull and short-term orientated, thus have been easily hoodwinked into implementing AI with reckless abandon; acting on their fear of being left behind and rendered irrelevant, they will certainly walk into their destruction.

Many businesses have already struggled to implement the technology, with many walking back these poor decisions. A recent report coming out of Forrester indicates 55% of employers regret implementing AI (Eriksson, 2025). CommBank offers a recent and comedic example. The bank implemented AI in hopes of eliminating multiple customer service positions. However, call volumes increased substantially according to the Finance Sector Union, stating: “CBA was scrambling to manage the situation by offering staff overtime and directing Team Leaders to answer calls”. CommBank has since conceded “they did not adequately consider all relevant business considerations” further noting “we should have been more thorough in our assessment of the roles required” (Finextra, 2025). Unsurprisingly, it does not appear CommBank has learned from the blunder given they have just entered a multiyear deal with OpenAI. This is only the beginning of the AI circus.

Given this predicament, the largest AI businesses do not currently have a path to profitability and that is not likely to change. AI girlfriends and JD Vance signing videos are not going to cut it. OpenAI alone has vast unfunded contractual commitments that will become a problem for investors sooner rather than later. Ed Zitron has covered these failing business models at length, it is best to check his work for further details on the subject as I will not do his work justice  (https://www.wheresyoured.at/).

While one can not predict the future, it is obvious disaster is en route. Sam Altman often opines in the immense impacts of AI implementation on society, though I expect he might be in for quite the shock when all is said and done. It does not have to be this way of course, the ruling class could accept the failure of liberalism and look to problem solve accordingly though I will not be holding my breath. However, I can confirm, I will be delighted to watch the elite suffer the consequences of their actions.

References

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CommBank reverses plan to replace call centre staff with AI (2025). Finextra: https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/46482/commbank-reverses-plan-to-replace-call-centre-staff-with-ai