The left and breaching capitalism’s digital fortress

Rezgar Akrawi

The battle for socialist liberation in the 21st Century cannot be fought with the weapons of the last century.

In an era in which algorithms hold sway, in which the influence of artificial intelligence over media, culture, education, and labour continues to expand, and in which economic policies and strategies are formulated on the basis of big data and algorithmic analysis, the left finds itself confronted with an existential question: how can movements that still organise themselves according to traditional logic confront a digital capitalism that has become technologically advanced to an unprecedented degree?

This text is not merely a call to develop tools. It is a call to transform organisational and intellectual consciousness towards a deep understanding of the nature of the digital battle.

The gap in question is not simply a gap in ‘technical mastery’. It is a gap in grasping that digital space has become a class battlefield in which capitalism dominates, programs and subjugates, while the left suffers from a diminished presence and the absence of a clear digital vision.

Closing this gap is no longer a luxury. It is a condition for the survival of the left itself, since today’s battle is waged in algorithms and networks just as much as it is waged on the ground.

The struggle over technology is not a battle against science. It is a battle against the monopoly that dominant powers hold over it to boost their profits.

AI should not be regarded as a threat in itself, but rather as a field of struggle whose features are shaped by the balance of social, political and economic forces.

Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented acceleration in the concentration of digital power within a limited number of giant companies that control the infrastructure of AI, cloud computing and global data, granting them economic, political and cultural influence that at times surpasses the influence of numerous states.

Technology as capitalism’s tool

When confronted with crises, capitalism resorts to reproducing itself through advanced scientific tools that allow it to overcome challenges without touching its exploitative core.

In the 2008 crisis, technology and scientific methods were used to rescue the financial system while loading the cost of the losses onto the working classes.

During the Covid pandemic of 2020, capitalism managed to overcome the crisis by reinforcing automation, AI and remote work, which ensured the continuity of production through new mechanisms that reduced reliance on human labour and increased company profits, at the cost of unstable working conditions for millions.

With the broad surge of AI since 2023, capitalism has entered a new phase of restructuring the labour market.

Reliance on automation and intelligent systems has expanded across numerous sectors, and growing concerns have emerged over the future of millions of jobs, even as technology companies achieve enormous profits as a result of their monopoly over the new digital and knowledge infrastructure.

These policies show how capitalism benefits from science as a tool for structuring the system and ensuring its continuity.

At times, it even borrows certain socialist ideas, such as state intervention, as temporary measures to guarantee stability, only to retreat from those gains once the crisis has passed and to reproduce exploitation through more advanced mechanisms.

A modern struggle

In the light of these challenges, the left must draw on scientific progress by reformulating its discourse and its tools in a scientific manner.

This requires using modern tools to analyse social issues and developing a realistic discourse along with flexible organisational mechanisms capable of attracting young people who have grown up in a world dominated by technology.

Investing in scientific tools does not mean identifying with capitalist values. It is a strategy for harnessing them in the service of social justice and reducing class inequality, as a step toward building a more humane socialist system.

If the previous industrial revolutions transformed the equations of production through the machine and steam, then electricity, then computing, the current phase, founded on AI, Big Data and digital platforms, is reshaping production, labour, knowledge, and human communication in a manner that is more profound and far-reaching.

In this era, data, algorithms and AI systems have become central tools for reproducing domination in relatively invisible ways, through influencing public opinion, directing individual and collective behaviour, and controlling access to knowledge and information.

Yet most left organisations remain digitally backward, which places them in a position of weakness. This lag reflects a failure to grasp that digital development has become an existential condition for socialist struggle.

The left’s lack of modern digital and knowledge tools places it in an unequal confrontation with a capitalist system that owns the global platforms, the data, and the computing and AI infrastructure – tools that grant it an unprecedented capacity to shape consciousness and influence social and political behaviour.

Reclaiming the initiative

While the left is currently losing one of the battles because it treats technology as a secondary tool, the war has not yet been decided. Victory requires translating vision into concrete programs of action grounded in the conscious use of technology.

The left cannot remain in a defensive position. It must become an active party in reshaping the future of technology to integrate it into its liberatory project.

Even so, technology is no substitute for conscious human organisation. Real power lies in organised human beings capable of harnessing these means in the service of their goals.

AI is an effective tool for mobilisation, organisation and analysis. Yet it will never replace the solidarity and grassroots work that remains the primary engine of change.

The left’s digital alternatives

As part of the left, we have historically succeeded in offering alternatives in economics, justice and politics. Yet today, we face a fateful challenge: we have not yet developed a comprehensive, alternative digital vision capable of breaking capitalism’s technological grip.

The most important dialectical lesson we must absorb is that technology is not a ‘neutral tool’ that falls from the sky. Rather, it is a class battlefield par excellence.

The fundamental problem does not lie in the essence of AI or automation, but in the ‘relations of ownership’ that govern them – that is, in the monopoly that major companies hold over these tools in order to deepen class conflict, surveil the masses, and standardise human consciousness in the service of accumulating profit.

On this basis, it is no longer sufficient for the left to stand in the position of ‘critic’ or ‘spectator’, since it must put forward new and bold mechanisms for using technology within democratic, participatory and transparent frameworks.

We need a ‘popular AI’ that operates under societal oversight and is developed through digital cooperatives, aiming to distribute wealth and organise production in the service of genuine human needs rather than the whims of the market and the strengthening of domination and militarism.

We also need open-source models, progressive digital platforms, and cooperative technological initiatives that are not subject to the logic of commercial monopoly, and that allow communities and the masses to participate in managing knowledge and data and in developing new technologies.

A genuine confrontation requires us to ‘breach the digital fortress’ of capitalism, which means entering into the very heart of the technical process, and understanding the logic of algorithms in order to dismantle them and rebuild them with a liberatory orientation.

Merely standing at the walls of this technology and crying out in condemnation of its exploitation will change nothing in reality and will leave the left isolated within outdated intellectual ghettos.

We are called upon to take possession of the tools of our age. Just as others transformed the economic and philosophical sciences of their time from tools that justified the existing order into a theoretical and practical weapon in the hands of the working class, the left today is called upon to be an active and programming force in this arena.

We must move from the position of the ‘passive user’ subject to the terms of capitalist platforms, to the position of the ‘alternative producer’ who puts forward a technology that is communal, open and liberated.

The struggle over AI is no longer simply about the future of technology. It concerns the future of labour, democracy, culture and social justice.

Without an active left presence in this field, digital capitalism will continue to determine the direction of technological development in the service of its own interests and will continue to control the development of the human mind and the human future.

The true strength of the left lies in its ability to integrate grassroots human organisation with digital mastery, so that digital space becomes a supportive and effective arena, not a substitute for struggle – rather, a wing on which it can soar towards a more humane and more just socialist future. – Globetrotter

Rezgar Akrawi is a leftist writer and researcher focused on technology, AI, the digital revolution, and the development of contemporary leftist thought and practice in response to these transformations. He works as an expert in systems development and e-governance and is a theorist of the concept of the ‘electronic left’.

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