Does Capital Dream of Artificial Labour?

2025-10-16

AI Summary

This paper examines labor’s subordination and alienation within capitalist systems, conceptualizing labor as “timenergy”—a commodified, quantified, and coercively extracted temporal resource. In response to accelerating labor transformation driven by automation and AI, it advances the theoretical claim that capital constitutes an artificial life system dependent on living labor for its reproduction. Methodologically, the study develops a computational simulation framework integrating game-theoretic principles and agent-based modeling, incorporating a Cobb–Douglas production function to dynamically model capital–labor interactions. Results demonstrate that capital’s accumulability and abstraction capacity confer systemic asymmetrical advantages in evolutionary dynamics; learning agents spontaneously converge toward capital-intensive strategies. The study innovatively synthesizes labor ontology, a vitalist theory of capital, and computational social science methods—providing both theoretical insight and empirical grounding for analyzing infrastructural dependencies and the erosion of existential autonomy in post-labor societies. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Jobs/Labor
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Cost models of using LLMs in production systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Social Networks and Social Media: Computational social science

Abstract

This paper investigates the concept of Labour as an expression of `timenergy' - a fusion of time and energy - and its entanglement within the system of Capital. We define Labour as the commodified, quantifiable expansion of timenergy, in contrast to Capital, which is capable of accumulation and abstraction. We explore Labour's historical evolution, its coercive and alienating nature, and its transformation through automation and artificial intelligence. Using a game-theoretic, agent-based simulation, we model interactions between Capital and Labour in production processes governed by Cobb-Douglas functions. Our results show that despite theoretical symmetry, learning agents disproportionately gravitate toward capital-intensive processes, revealing Capital's superior organizational influence due to its accumulative capacity. We argue that Capital functions as an artificially alive system animated by the living Labour it consumes, and question whether life can sustain itself without the infrastructures of Capital in a future of increasing automation. This study offers both a critique of and a framework for understanding Labour's subjugation within the Capital system.

Problem

• Analyzing Labour as commodified timenergy within Capitalist systems
• Investigating Capital's dominance through capital-intensive production processes
• Examining Labour subjugation in increasingly automated economic systems

Innovation

• Agent-based simulation models Capital-Labour interactions
• Game-theoretic approach reveals capital-intensive process preference
• Cobb-Douglas functions govern production process modeling