Marx and the machine

Posted by Mike O'Brien on December 5, 2025 in Ai in Marketing, Big Data, Marketing Automation | Leave a comment

How AI extends a story that began when workers lost the centre of the economic narrative

This piece reframes the AI debate through a longer arc of economic history. Workers were once seen as the heart of society, but the liberal globalisation wave led by Reagan and Thatcher shifted that centre of gravity. Deregulation empowered corporations, weakened unions and elevated shareholder value as the dominant organising principle. Inequality widened as executive elites surged ahead. AI is not the beginning of that story. It is the acceleration point. The question now is whether leaders allow AI to deepen exclusion or use it to restore a more balanced, human-centred economy.

The long slide from centre stage: How liberal globalisation weakened worker power

For much of the twentieth century, Marx’s view endured in practice even if not in name. Workers were treated as the foundation upon which prosperity rested. Unions were strong. The post-war consensus tied corporate success to social mobility. Inequality narrowed.

Then came the ideological pivot.

The Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s championed deregulation, privatisation and the supremacy of free markets. Labour protections were weakened. Collective bargaining collapsed. Shareholder value became the sole measure of success. Capital became mobile, labour became replaceable, and global supply chains optimised cost over community.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, corporations operated with unprecedented autonomy. The C-suite elite surged away from the rest of society. Executive pay ballooned. Productivity rose while wages stagnated. Globalisation became a ladder for some and a trapdoor for many.

The centre of the economic narrative shifted decisively. Workers were no longer the heart of society. They were a variable input. Now, AI enters a landscape already shaped by this imbalance.

The impact on work: Displacement built on pre-existing inequality

Automation discussions often imply a sudden break with the past. In reality, AI is landing on an economic foundation where worker power has been eroding for decades.

McKinsey estimates that up to 30 percent of activities in 60 percent of occupations may be automated by 2030.¹ But the deeper concern is that workers no longer hold the political or economic leverage to navigate this transition. When labour is already weakened, displacement becomes structural, not cyclical.

AI does not remove work entirely. It reallocates value away from the many and toward the few who own the models, platforms and intellectual property. Unless leadership acts deliberately, AI risks amplifying a trend that began in the 1980s: the concentration of prosperity at the top and the fragmentation of economic security below.

This is not an argument against AI. It is a reminder that technology inherits the values of the system it enters.

The rise of intermediary power: Platforms as the new corporate empires

Amazon, Meta, Google and other platforms represent the next phase in the shift away from worker-centric capitalism. Where the Reagan–Thatcher era elevated corporations over labour, the platform era elevates digital intermediaries over everyone, including many corporations.

The figures tell the story:

• Google, Meta and Amazon captured over 55 percent of global digital advertising in 2025.²
• Amazon Ads is now one of the fastest-growing global media ecosystems.³
• Platforms define how brands reach customers and how customers reach the world.

Economist Yanis Varoufakis calls this technological feudalism.⁴ Not a return to medieval hierarchy, but a system where economic life takes place on digital estates governed by platform landlords. Users, workers and even brands become tenants. Value flows upward. Agency flows downward.

This shift makes businesses more powerful than many governments, yet more dependent on intermediaries than ever before. Workers, already weakened by decades of liberalisation, find themselves squeezed between corporate optimisation and platform extraction.

The perfection of servitude: Why AI risks deepening the divide

AI does not create inequality from scratch. It magnifies the structures already in place.

In a world where labour bargaining power has collapsed, AI becomes another instrument for cost compression. In a market dominated by platforms, AI becomes another lever for behavioural extraction. In a society shaped by widening inequality, AI becomes another vector through which advantage concentrates at the top.

The danger is not dystopian robots. It is quiet, frictionless dependence. It is the conversion of human unpredictability into managed behavioural patterns. It is the replacement of worker agency with algorithmic oversight. This is how servitude evolves in the digital age. Not by force, but by design.

Why this matters now

The debate about AI cannot be separated from the legacy of the past 40 years. Worker power has declined. Inequality has surged. Corporations have become transnational actors with extraordinary influence. Platforms now mediate the flow of information, commerce and identity.

Against this backdrop, AI becomes a multiplier. It can accelerate injustice or expand opportunity. It can compress humanity or elevate it. The outcome is not predetermined. It is governed by leadership decisions.

AI becomes meaningful only when leaders choose to put people back into the centre of the economic narrative.

What responsible leaders must do next

1. Rebuild human agency
   Treat workers not as cost centres but as strategic contributors to innovation and resilience.
2. Reinvest in capability and progression
   Shift from job protection to career mobility. Equip people for judgment, creativity, problem-solving and leadership.
3. Strengthen corporate accountability
   Align AI strategy with long-term social outcomes, not short-term efficiency gains.
4. Reduce platform dependency
   Build direct customer relationships, first-party data and differentiated value beyond the reach of intermediaries.
5. Champion ethical AI governance
   Transparency, fairness and accountability are essential as power centralises.
6. Use AI to empower, not enclose
   Choose augmentation over displacement. Choose participation over exclusion.

The future depends on whether we return humanity to the centre of the story

Workers were once the heartbeat of society. That heartbeat was diminished by the liberal globalisation wave. AI arrives at a moment when inequality is already severe, power is concentrated and the social contract is frayed.

The question is not whether AI will replace humans. It is whether leaders allow AI to complete a story of diminishing human value, or begin a new one grounded in dignity, capability and contribution. For now, AI will not decide. Leadership will. So, the question of who leads matters. The lucky and all-powerful few, may not have the interests of humanity at heart. Just saying.

Wouldn’t it be odd that we might have to wait for a non-human leader in the age of ASI, to keep us safe from an elite that moves further away from the workers of today with each passing moment. Globally, billionaire fortunes have been rising by the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars every second, while the majority of workers struggle to stand still.

Using Oxfam’s figures:

• Since 2020, global billionaire wealth has grown by about $2.7 billion a day. Oxfam GB+1 That is roughly $31,000 every second.
• In 2024 alone, billionaire wealth jumped by $2 trillion in a year, which is about $5.7 billion a day or roughly $66,000 every second. Oxfam International+1

Closer to home:

• UK billionaires’ wealth increased by £35 million a day, which works out at around £400 every second. Oxfam GB+1

References

1. McKinsey Global Institute (2023). The Future of Work After COVID-19.
2. Statista (2025). Market share of global digital advertising spend by platform.
3. Insider Intelligence (2025). Amazon Advertising Forecast 2025.
4. Varoufakis, Y. (2023). Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism.
5. Oxfam International (2023) Survival of the Richest: how we risk a decade of division. Oxford: Oxfam International.