CYAIOct 16, 2025

Does Capital Dream of Artificial Labour?

arXiv:2510.16042v1h-index: 7ALIFE
Originality Incremental advance
AI Analysis

This study provides a critique and framework for understanding Labour's subjugation within the Capital system, addressing issues of automation and AI in economic theory.

This paper investigates the relationship between Capital and Labour using a game-theoretic simulation, finding that learning agents disproportionately favor capital-intensive processes due to Capital's accumulative capacity, revealing its superior organizational influence.

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.

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