Marx in the Age of AI: How Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Value, Class, and Ideology

What would Marx make of artificial general intelligence? In this provocative and accessible book, Alvaro Rivas reexamines the classic Marxian questions of value, class, and ideology in the era of AI, autonomous agents, and data extraction. Marx argued that surplus-value is created only through human labour-but what happens when machines develop the capacity to think, plan, and act across domains? The prospect of AGI unsettles capitalism's old assumptions and raises urgent new problems. Can non-human systems generate surplus-value? What happens to the "doubly free" worker when AGI competes for wages? Will AGI bring the end of capitalism-and if it does, what class structures and ideologies will replace it? Marx gives us a method for confronting AGI: who will own the new means of production, who will profit from its value, how class conflict will change, and which ideas will be used to justify the new order. Through clear explanations, sharp analysis, and imaginative thought experiments, Marx in the Age of AI offers a framework for thinking about work, value, and power when cognition itself is automated.