A Spotlight on Rezgar Akrawis -Capitalist Artificial Intelligence-

I ve read my dear Rezgar Akrawi s book, "Capitalist Artificial Intelligence," more than once. To be honest, my testimony regarding this book would be biased, as I consider my dear Rezgar a companion and a loyal friend. After I finished reading the book, I felt as though we are living in a world where we probably share the same level of concern for the challenges facing leftist forces in the era of the digital world and digital globalization.
First, it must be said that Rezgar Akrawi is an encyclopedic figure in the field of digital media. As a result, his opinion represents precise theoretical work that one should pause at for a long time and learn from, especially since he and the editorial board of Al-Hewar Al-Mutamaddin (The Civilized Dialogue) deal daily with hundreds of articles that contain various intellectual, social, and economic perspectives. They handle all of them with a broad mind and open-mindedness, which has opened the door for many to express their opinions with complete freedom and reach readers easily through the Al-Hewar Al-Mutamaddin platform.
The points that Rezgar Akrawi’s book focused on all made me pause for a long time to reflect on the unity of ideas that brought us together. At the same time, I began publishing my book, "Democracy of the Precariat," in ten parts. Three parts have been printed so far, and the other parts will be published by Dar Al-Darawish publishing house by the end of the year. I won’t hide that we focused on the same topics, but from somewhat different angles. However, they unite in warning of the danger of the left ignoring artificial intelligence and not dealing with it with a serious and sober logic.
I completely agree with most of the proposals in my dear Rezgar s book. I was amazed by his sound academic breadth in summarizing the book s ideas into excellent tables and algorithms that made it easy for the reader to understand the ideas presented, especially with his use of the question-and-answer format that neatly summarizes the concept for the reader.
I don t disagree with the book s assertion that the traditional left in Arab societies is far behind in keeping pace with digital globalization and its challenges. This left will lose its compass if it cannot reach the mind and intellect of the modern reader through the digital technologies available and accessible to it due to the widespread presence of digital platforms in all aspects of life. The traditional concept of political economy has been transformed into a purely digital concept due to this development. Even the idea of evaluating a commodity, as Karl Marx saw it, has begun to fade due to this progress. This is what we must focus on in our engagement with the era of digital capitalism or the digital services society, which has gradually begun to turn into a terrifying dragon that threatens human life if we cannot deal with it in a sound and positive manner.
The crucial question in studying this topic remains: Where will digital globalization and artificial intelligence lead us?
Rezgar Akrawi has put his finger on the actual challenges facing the left and the working class from a purely Marxist perspective, which I consider to be sound and accurate. It makes us realize that we are facing a world that is not easy to deal with before arming this class with the necessary tools that enable it to acquire its rights.
I do not disagree with my dear Rezgar that digital globalization has contributed to domination and the flattening of consciousness, especially since a huge majority of those who use these technologies are illiterate and do not know how to deal with them in a truly progressive way. In the last German elections, the German Left party achieved a percentage close to 10% of the parliamentary seats, a high percentage that even the most optimistic of the Left party would not have dreamed of. But when we shed light on the reasons, we realize that for the first time, the German Left used digital platforms and social media to spread its ideas and goals. On the other hand, it drew closer to the masses through the pains caused by digital globalization and free markets. The first of these pains were inflation and economic recession, rising prices, high rents, the gradual polarization of society into rich and poor, and the destruction of the middle class. Most Germans emigrated from their country because of the state s authoritarian surveillance of their bank accounts, social media platforms, and so on.
For this reason, the German Left put forward solutions and proposals that resonated with the demands of the masses to curb the government’s authoritarian digital domination and economic security, which had bound the life of the German citizen with an iron shackle that could only be broken by emigration and leaving the country. The Left achieved its major voting percentage by making use of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X platforms. Therefore, mastering the use of modern technologies seems extremely important for the left so that it can reach the heart and mind of the masses everywhere in our world.
This model is perhaps the closest to the ideas that my dear Rezgar wanted to consolidate on the ground in the minds of the masses and to arm them with the progressive idea of benefiting from digital technologies. The world we live in is not an easy one, especially since the number of Internet users has exceeded three billion people, which is half of our planet s population. The majority of users are ignorant of the nature of the policies behind the establishment of digital media, the digital economy, and digital surveillance institutions on a global scale.
In short, digital globalization has transformed our world into a virtual one, but it is more realistic in flattening and debasing consciousness to a degree that has made the world of cooking, sports, digital prostitution, and the extremely negative use of women central tenets of its progress, while making scientific and progressive ideas retreat in the face of a negative feminization of the digital world.
The pursuit of profit under the digital system is gradually approaching an economy that I have named "New Darwinism" in the world of economics (the survival of the fittest). There is no disagreement on this matter. Since the collapse of traditional capitalism in 1971, the capitalist society has transformed into a services society after the dollar lost its real value, and we began to deal with paper that had lost its gold value but was imposed on us by force of arms and imperialistic might that could not be rejected or stood against.
The profound transformations that advanced nations are witnessing in the field of modern technologies have become a driving force for the sociological change of societies in light of the strong emergence of neoliberalism in global markets and societies. It must be said that the phase that followed China s transformations toward openness played a significant role in the growth of this digital class around the world. Starting in 1978, China began to emerge publicly and announce a wide-ranging openness to Western companies, transforming the Chinese market from a closed one to a transcontinental one. This means that China became an open arena for capitalist dynamism and also contributed to creating the services society system in Europe, perhaps much earlier than its time.
China has achieved record growth rates during the past two decades, making it a master on the stage of the global market. The thing that contributed to this change in China was the great technological progress that the world witnessed, which worked to make the Chinese model an advanced model in our world, especially since the low cost of Chinese labor enabled the country to invade global markets with force, given the low prices of Chinese goods compared to goods produced by other advanced countries.
China transformed from a backward, closed country ruled by the iron form of state capitalism to a cautiously open country until it reached a stage of total openness to Western companies, which relocated a large part of their centers to this country. At the same time, and one year after Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open up to the outside world, Paul Volcker became chairman of the US Federal Reserve in July 1979. He was the person whose banking policies contributed to the export of the devalued dollar to the world’s markets (the dollar not backed by gold value). This created a dramatic change in US monetary policy, which contributed to prolonging the American expansion in global markets through a policy of eliminating inflation without looking at the unemployment rate in society.
It is known that Paul Volcker s policy contributed to the elimination of the crazy inflation in the United States, but this elimination was temporary and partial, and came at the expense of curbing the power of labor as well as liberating the sectors of agriculture, industry, and resource extraction from the legal restrictions that had been imposed on them. These two steps contributed to unleashing the power of money at home and on the global stage simultaneously. This policy also contributed to creating global economic seismic centers that were not even noticed by the best economic experts in Europe, as well as in Japan and China.
These steps made the revolutionary impulses of workers around the world take a greatly different form and achieved a wide spread with a new quality whose repercussions shaped the world around us in a completely different way. The cheapness of Chinese goods and their entry into the global market led to wide-ranging changes, even in the classic form of social classes, and strongly created a form of primitive precariat in that era.
The profound economic transformations that took place since the beginning of the 1980s were based on four main pillars in international politics: Paul Volcker, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, and Margaret Thatcher. They directly contributed to spreading these economic transformations from a narrow level to a wide and comprehensive one through historical and conventional laws that directly contributed to changing the shape of the world around us, as well as through the bold political decisions they made.
When we look at the new economic structure that has appeared in societies, we often find media names for it associated with globalization. However, the economist who understands the process of development in the stages of social progress from its economic side understands that it is a services society, which capitalist progress itself has brought about through its course of development and advancement.
When we shed light on the four figures who contributed to this change, we find that the main reasons for their steps were centered on the serious search for a way out of crises or at least a temporary curbing of them. Deng Xiaoping seriously studied the state of the Chinese economy, which was based on a central, state-guided economy, as he called it, strongly guided by the Communist Party. He also studied the infiltration of Western companies and capital into the Asian arena, especially in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and came to the conclusion that strengthening Chinese power would not come through the militarization of the economy but by liberating it and opening up markets to Western capital and its companies. He called this a model of "market socialism" in the Chinese economy.
As for Ronald Reagan, he took his ideas for liberating the sectors of agriculture, industry, and resource extraction from the legal restrictions that were binding them from the former American politician in the Republican Party, Barry Goldwater (US presidential candidate in 1964). Although the latter s proposals did not have a majority in the US Congress, Ronald Reagan made them a majority vision that he adopted with Paul Volcker to find its way to creating a new global economic pattern.
Volcker and Margaret Thatcher also contributed to bringing the most dominant class over the markets into the open, which is the class of the new neoliberalism. They transformed it from an ordinary class into a central principle that guides administration and the economy on a global level. This appearance of the new neoliberal class created a transcontinental economic pattern that includes all of the world s economic markets without borders. The spread of modern technologies greatly contributed to spreading the core idea of this economic pattern that came to dominate the world.
At the same time, neoliberalism contributed to creating points of tension in the world’s economies that worked to create a widespread protest movement on a global scale, which I will dwell on in detail in this book. Some have attributed these points of tension to the monetary policies of the International Monetary Fund, which it imposed on most countries that borrowed money and injected it into local economies. The Arab Spring revolutions that began in Tunisia are perhaps a good example of this simple approximation.
The existence of the new system of the services society or globalization and its leading neoliberal class has greatly changed social life patterns, so much so that this very pattern has become a commodity in the new neoliberal society and its era.
To understand the general framework of neoliberal policy in our world and its foundations, we must understand that it is based on the principles of unleashing individual freedoms as well as encouraging the creative commercial skills of the individual through the use of modern technologies within a legal institutional framework characterized by its strong protection of private property rights. The freedom of trade cannot be available between countries without legal systems and international agreements that contribute to facilitating these procedures and making the whole world more like a small village.
The freedom of economic markets in our modern world has indeed created a new pattern of life that no one can ignore, especially since it has created ambitions and ideas among the vast majority of the world s youth to improve their lifestyle and keep pace with the developments taking place in our world in various fields. Many years ago, we used to pose a crucial question that reflected our understanding of the traditional capitalist system that directly controlled the world for the seven decades of the Cold War, which began at the beginning of the last century and is still exerting its power but in a different way that is compatible with the development that the human mind has reached under globalization. This question is: where will the development of this system lead us?
Or, in another way, the question can be posed in a concise manner regarding all aspects of our lives, not just the political-economic side: Where are we going? Where is this globalization pointing us, especially since it has come to govern every detail of our lives through digital technology whose essence, movement, course, and impact on the human mind and on the entire development of human consciousness we mostly cannot understand?
Most of us who have a good understanding of Marx know that one of the characteristics of capitalist production is that it can never stop at a certain point for a long time. Rather, it is always in a developing state that keeps pace with the times, not out of love for civilization but out of love for profit. This process, as we know, is conditional and always begins with the change and development of the productive forces (i.e., a change in their level of consciousness in a way that is compatible with the modern technologies that are introduced). This is indeed happening with the change and development of work tools to great levels. However, what we must focus on is that the legal aspect that accompanies this technological development always remains in the hands of the minority that legislates laws to ensure the permanence of their ability to create the perpetually new. Humans cannot understand it until a decade or two has passed since these laws were enacted, so they can put in place the realistic touches to deal with them on the ground, whether through labor unions or through the struggle waged by the precariat to change these legislations in a way that serves them. The tools of work or the technologies that are at the heart of capitalist production are in continuous development, not just today, but throughout human history. These tools play a role that we do not always feel, but we can sense in our lives. This role is to develop human society and its system of consciousness. The degree of development of these tools is evidence of human control over the forces of nature and harnessing them for their benefit. This may remain clear within the limits of our partial perception of the subject. However, the broader picture means that the machine, while providing work on a wide scale in societies, at the same time displaces large numbers of skilled workers into the streets to meet a new fate of unemployment based on the machine s impact on their lives without realizing that progress has consequences that must be dealt with by waging a struggle that does not stop at any limits in order to take this machine out of the hands of the minority that controls the fate of the simple worker in every part of the world and to make it socially and economically fair by raising wages and lowering taxes for the simple worker. Therefore, machines and modern technologies in the modern digital neoliberal system are not used to provide and facilitate job opportunities, but as a means of increasingly draining free labor. It is well known that the capitalist does not pay for the worker s labor but only for the value of the labor power they use. For this reason, the capitalist only resorts to the machine when its value becomes less than the value of the labor power it replaces. Therefore, the capitalist system works to keep the workforce in a giant container that moves according to its will, not according to the will of the workforce. Within this framework, which has been strongly entrenched in our modern era through globalization and digital technologies, new labels for the mantle of neoliberalism are formed, which continue to change color with every suffocating crisis.
The great impact that globalization has had has not led humanity to spiritual and intellectual progress. Rather, it has contributed to the flattening of human consciousness more deeply than before, so that every advancement in the machine is met by a flattening of this mind, and not a progression as the cycle of the capitalist system that Karl Marx talked about in "Capital" assumes. Our lifestyle has become colored by this system without us feeling its profound negative effects on our way of thinking, except in political, religious, and social crises. But how did this change happen, which did not occur to us when we studied the course of this system s development, the causes of its crises, and its ways of getting rid of them?
The answer is, without a doubt, that technological development has directly contributed to transforming our lifestyle as humans into a capitalist lifestyle that completes its production cycle. This seems funny, but we are living the details of it. Each of us has a lifestyle that has become our own private world, which no one else shares. Perhaps here we enter into the framework of another study related to the psychological system of humans, which capitalism is trying to keep within the framework of that major container so that it does not go out of the actual control of its tools and technologies.
Although the new neoliberal system encouraged the freedom of trade in various goods and commodities according to a monetary system based on fixed exchange rates that were fundamentally based on the convertibility of the US dollar to gold at fixed prices, and because fixed exchange rates are not compatible with the flow of capital, it became clear that there is no escape from keeping it under control.
Here we must focus on the flow of capital to global markets, which is the flow of the dollar outside American borders as a basic reserve currency for global monetary reserves. This flow cannot happen without the protection of American military power from the seventies of the last century until today. This flow made the dollar lose its real value by separating it from its corresponding value in gold.
The American economy and wide parts of the global markets under direct American influence have transformed. Since the 1970s of the last century, the economic system has moved from capitalism to a services society, which is a world opposed to capitalism. Therefore, global debts have risen to more than $200 trillion, borrowed from the collapsed capitalist world s stock with the collapse of the real value of the American dollar. The first fact that cannot be ignored is that a service has no exchange value, as it is exchanged on a basis that takes into account labor power, not the necessary time to produce the service or the commodity. Therefore, the fixed measures of labor power are absent here, given that they are determined arbitrarily, away from any effect of the law of value and without taking on the fetishism of the commodity.
The world of industry today differs in a way from the world of services, as each of them has its own production relations. The alienation of the product from the producer is an essential condition in the capitalist system, but that is impossible in a services society. A service is consumed completely at the moment of its production and no longer has exchange value. The capitalist production cycle, as we know, is repeated and complete (money - commodity - money), while the production of services is not achieved in a complete cycle (money - commodity - zero). Therefore, the capitalist cannot trade in the production of services.
Service workers do not produce surplus value, and therefore, according to Marx, they are unproductive and place the burden of their livelihoods on workers in agriculture and industry. If we take the American model into consideration, we will find that 80% of the workforce works in the services sector. The remaining 20% cannot cover the costs of the 80%, so the American government resorts to bearing these expenses and supplying the market with additional money through borrowing. This has made the American economy itself a bubble economy by injecting the devalued dollar into global markets, which portends an economic catastrophe that will soon shake the world.
The United States of America itself turned to the path of neoliberalism and adopted the services economy without studying the distant horizon that this path might lead to. Even the countries that fell under American influence were affected by this path, such as Japan, Germany, and other industrial countries that share a common market with the United States.
As the era of digital globalization progressed, the process of monopolizing profits witnessed a terrifying centralization, reaching a point where two companies, BlackRock and Aladdin, actually controlled the world. They now control digital globalization in all its economic, social, political, sports, artistic, and sexual ramifications, among others, and they control the joints of the economies of the top ten countries in our world.
Therefore, we are facing challenges that are not easy, especially since most of those who deal economically and socially through digital platforms are illiterate in every sense of the word in the face of the vast algorithms of artificial intelligence that rob them of their lifestyle and introduce them to a lifestyle whose form and content are determined by it.
I shake hands with my dear Rezgar Akrawi and consider his book a communist leftist manifesto for the modern era. We cannot ignore every chapter and question he raised in it because it leads us to deal with the dangers of digital globalization with progressive awareness and puts leftist forces at a crossroads to choose methods of dealing and reaching their goals through a precise understanding of the requirements of arming themselves with digital awareness and harnessing it to serve social justice.

Rate the article
Bad	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Very good
Result : 100%							Participated in the vote : 1