With Rezgar Akrawi and Artificial Intelligence Once Again

With Rezgar Akrawi and Artificial Intelligence Once Again


Four years ago, the director and founder of the website Al-Hiwar Al-Mutamaddin—which continues to attract more writers, creators, and millions of readers and followers—raised the subject of artificial intelligence in an article entitled “The Most Prominent Intellectual and Organizational Foundations of the Electronic Left”, published in September 2012. It generated wide discussions, with more than 450 comments and responses at the time from writers, intellectuals, and followers. These endorsed the ideas presented in the article, enriched them, and confirmed the importance of the proposals that were put forward and the necessity of pursuing them.

Today, the leftist writer, the independent Marxist—as he describes himself—Rezgar Akrawi, after a rich personal political experience in several communist organizations and currents, has placed before us his important book:
“Capitalist Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for the Left and Possible Alternatives: Technology in the Service of Capital or a Tool for Liberation?”

This work can be considered an entry into a new field of knowledge, dictated by the historical stage of our time and the developments it produces, which rely on enormous technological achievements. Artificial intelligence constitutes an important part of these and a fundamental pillar within them. It has now become indispensable in all economic, commercial, financial fields and their extensions, forming the backbone of the global economy—still predominantly capitalist in nature and form—alongside China’s model, which bears the title of “two social systems within one state.”

Meanwhile, there still exist cases that continue to claim socialism, as in Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea, as well as other countries. Added to this are societies still revolving within the orbit of primitive communality, such as tribes living in forests, jungles, and isolated islands, and other economies that have not yet exited pre-feudal atmospheres or remain within modern feudalism accompanying contemporary capitalist development. In our era, this has transformed many economic and commercial activities into family fiefdoms, along with political backsliding that turned many parties and political organizations into family properties managed by new, contemporary political feudal strata.

This coincided with the retreat of leftist forces, the ossification of revolutionary organizations, and the growth and expansion of religious currents that built political parties and organizations with military arms—these too tied to family entities—that now advance to seize power in many countries and regions, supported and allied with contemporary financial capital in the age of this intelligence.

Artificial intelligence continues to advance, invading other fields of knowledge, media networks, and methods of teaching. It now governs commercial practices, air transport, communications, and giant corporations dominating war industries and military activities in space, all the way to food, drink, personal necessities, medicine, and pharmaceuticals—managed through computers and robots that increasingly compete with and displace human workers across sectors, partially or entirely replacing them.

And this will not stop here. There are those who think and plan to create a mechanical alternative to the human mind. Today, academic and university circles across many fields speak of the concept of “post-human,” in a frenzy of boundless imagination, just as science and scientific progress that gave birth to this intelligence seem boundless.

From here, we may ask: what is the nature of our era—the age of artificial intelligence? It has introduced us into sweeping transformations, liberating us from many burdens and risks of labor and long hours of exploitation, providing us with more time to enjoy life’s other aspects. Yet, at the same time, it confronts us with new, hideous forms of exploitation and the theft of our freedom—matters that must be stopped at, diagnosed, and analyzed. In other words, the content and forms of these new conflicts, wrapped and hidden in our time, must be clarified—conflicts that go beyond the traditional struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie, as it was known in previous stages of capitalist development.

In earlier times, Marxist concepts diagnosed these contradictions, and revolutionary political institutions—beginning with the Internationals and followed by the emergence of communist parties, described as “parties of a new type”—rose to confront and overcome them. These succeeded in penetrating the capitalist body in several countries, beginning with Tsarist Russia, which later, through the union of several states, became known as the Soviet Union, and subsequently extended to a group of socialist countries in the last century.

We can pause here to consider the dimensions of what is presented in the chapters of the book before us by Rezgar Akrawi. To my knowledge, it is the second comprehensive book in Arabic after Ali Sabri Farghali’s 1989 translation of Alain Bonnet’s Artificial Intelligence: Its Reality and Its Future (Kuwait’s ‘Aalam al-Ma‘rifa series, no. 172). While many other books over the past three decades have addressed specific topics in a limited way, Akrawi can be considered the first to enter this field of knowledge as a theorist of the “Electronic Left,” as he defines himself at the end of the book.

It is a unique, field-based scientific research work in contemporary sociology that deserves praise and enrichment, particularly as it addresses a vital and important topic still in its formative stage, with its shoots and foundations beginning to grow and develop, forming the features of our new era—the era of artificial intelligence. He draws attention to:

The importance of diagnosis. Rezgar Akrawi succeeded here, highlighting with precise details its urgent and significant dimensions and the need to give them proper attention, for they represent a comprehensive turning point in human history, where transformations accelerate and impose new equations in all fields.

In the chapters of his book, he analyzes the manifestations of current economic development and the role of AI in “reshaping labor relations” and production patterns, with the internet becoming a commercial factory generating billions for major corporations. He examines its impact on social consciousness, showing how capitalist circles, having gone beyond traditional tools, invested this intelligence to impose a one-dimensional vision on contemporary audiences and generations. Having become an unprecedented means of production, AI has restructured markets, imposed a digital reality controlled by dominant capitalist elites in technology, and spread systematic ignorance, triviality, false consciousness, superficiality, and shallowness, abandoning democracy, disregarding refugee rights, and fostering alienation, all to perpetuate itself as an irreplaceable socio-economic system. It produces modern slaves, corrupts governments, dismantles states, and supports corrupt and failed rulers to become tools of their masters, tasked with spreading ruin, destruction, and looting their countries’ wealth.

From this specific angle, as AI has become a field of class and social struggle, Akrawi presents his leftist viewpoint, repeatedly stressing the necessity of adopting and creating an alternative concept under the name “Leftist Artificial Intelligence”—to contribute to redirecting social behavior and overcoming the limited political vision of a communist left increasingly distant from the public, paralyzed and lagging behind due to digital illiteracy.

After presenting a clear critical vision, he outlines the foundations of the Electronic Left and the need to form digital Internationals to confront capitalist digital hegemony. He bases this on the possibility of redirecting AI in favor of exploited masses, proposing the reduction of working hours without reducing wages. This echoes a proposal made decades ago by Karl Marx’s grandson through his daughter, a leader in the French Socialist Party, who suggested reducing the workday to only three hours. He argued that with advanced technology, this suffices for profitable production, ensuring workers’ income, reasonable profits for capitalists, and covering state taxes.

Here, as long as we are in the stage of diagnosis and analysis, Rezgar Akrawi may be right or wrong. He will face those who praise, support, and see his proposals as humane and feasible, foreseeing the creation of political institutions aligned with his ideas that could gain global significance. This was reflected in the more than 450 comments and interventions on the book, accompanied by important questions that can be seen as a new intellectual-political direction in contemporary politics.

At the same time, there remain opinions that believe capital in the age of AI can overcome its crises and that leftist concepts remain utopian dreams, unrealizable and impractical.

The researcher—and here I deliberately use the word researcher to describe Rezgar Akrawi—also stressed the importance of forming new global leftist political institutions to confront the evil forces of contemporary capitalism in the age of AI. In this field, he calls for change and the search for new, effective ways to meet the demands of this era, considering this more important than anything else in his book. For it concerns the practical stance toward AI and its effects in this dangerous age of transformations, marked by unprecedented new forms of exploitation.

However, his call carried some caution, as though leaving this task to others who have so far failed to grasp the new reality and act quickly to keep up with rapid changes. He warns against relying on those still waiting for traditional, ossified parties to awaken and resume their role—a futile dream.

Despite attempts to form new parties in several European countries, the US, and Turkey under the label “Revolutionary Communist Parties,” holding meetings and running modest online platforms, with the hope of greater effectiveness later, Akrawi did not mention these. I do not blame him, for speaking of AI and intellectual work in this field requires collective effort and specialists across economics, industry, agriculture, health, and other sectors of human activity. AI is impacting them all and even shaping new concepts in culture and language, imposing itself at every moment, as we now live in a sea of AI circles surrounding us on all sides.

The writer does not stop here. He presents important ideas concerning the nature of our era, which witnesses the rise of racism, crises, violence, and wars threatening world peace and humanity’s future, and stresses the necessity of harnessing AI for the service of humanity and its quest to create peace, reject violence in international relations, and enforce the will of peoples by disarming through restructuring global institutions into institutions of free peoples and nations.

These proposals come amid pessimism, retreat, disintegration, dissolution, and distrust in the possibility of creating a better world. Yet the author confronts this with confidence and firm conviction, asserting that opportunities still exist to create a better alternative. This is a revolutionary stance grounded in scientific theses deserving of study by leftist parties and organizations, which must now—not tomorrow—keep pace with the times and establish specialized committees within every leftist party and organization, capable of engaging with information technology in the AI era and using it as a tool of struggle and work for change.

Thus, with this effort and content, this is not an ordinary book but a new manifesto needing assimilation, greater support, and enrichment to become an effective social program for leftist forces worldwide. It can be completed and transformed from a theoretical project into real practice by calling for a meeting to establish a new leftist movement expressing social hope and aligning with the nature and developments of our time.

A leftist movement that relies on the driving force of history and draws on the precariat¹ and on leftist and revolutionary communist organizations and parties formed in America, Europe, and Turkey, now holding conferences and periodic meetings and engaging with ideas emerging from within the capitalist core itself, such as those of Bob Avakian and Joe Sims, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. Sims revealed intellectual and organizational renewal processes within the party aimed at keeping pace with contemporary changes, especially technological progress and massive informational openness, and maintaining effective communication with America’s younger generations. From his leftist perspective, Sims stresses: change in the United States is possible.

Surely, the Left will also be supported by China and a number of countries that still maintain forms of socialism.

But what is required—and let us be frank—is that acknowledging mistakes is not enough. To be truly revolutionary and leftist, believing in the possibility of change, acknowledgment must be accompanied by a plan of action and serious struggle to overcome the failures and setbacks we have witnessed for more than three decades.

It must also be stressed that Marxist Left, and the Left in its broader sense, has not and will not die. It needs to renew its rhetorical and organizational tools to genuinely express the demands of the masses. As Rosa Luxemburg said: “The choice is not between socialism and capitalism, but between socialism and barbarism.”

We must build a new Left—self-critical, reconciled with the struggles of popular classes for freedom, justice, and human dignity.

The world—all the world—is in danger. We must grasp the situation. Our task is to mobilize energies and unite efforts. No solutions will come from the heavens. Waiting is futile. The solution must be in our hands, through effective contribution to creating a better world.

Sabah Kanji
6 May 2025

Sources
– Alain Bonnet, Artificial Intelligence: Its Reality and Its Future, ‘Aalam al-Ma‘rifa series, Kuwait, no. 172, tr. Ali Sabri Farghali, 1989.
– Rezgar Akrawi, Capitalist Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for the Left and Possible Alternatives: Technology in the Service of Capital or a Tool for Liberation?
– Link to a previous article entitled Dialogue with Rezgar Akrawi on the Horizons of the “Electronic Left”:
https://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=731992

¹ Precariat: A socio-economic concept, a neologism derived from “proletariat” in political economy. Professor Guy Standing of the University of Bath, UK, first coined the term. It refers to several categories in contemporary societies who suffer exploitation and may move to defend their interests as a rebellious force.

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