“People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells. A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer’s idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer’s spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform” (Abelson and Sussman, SICP, Preface).

To illustrate the point, professor Sussman jokingly gave the lectures using a genie’s hat, making clear that programming is not a menial task, but rather, a work of magic. Magic is a familiar bridge to our experiences of new technologies. Modern systems of information are so complex that, even for trained professionals, the reason why some action works the way it does often remains hidden under words that deflect from its content: the arrow of the function f(x) -> y hides a whole universe of physical and spiritual operations under an abstraction; the differences between radically different systems are leveled by a transparent execution; the division of responsibilities for different applications in an architecture imposes the consideration of whole systems as black boxes. Programming, from the start, is the synthetic construction of a body of knowledge using algorithms and data structures for representing real entities; theory building, in the language of Peter Naur. But just like religion, economics, and any other sort of “reflex of the real world” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 1, §4), it has the inescapable recognition of its negative, the infinite known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

The programmer chooses to separate parts of the implementation, of algorithms and data structures, to not contemplate, by reasons of safety and efficiency. Cryptography is the perfect example: while it is possible to invent from scratch and to write by hand hypercomplex algorithms for hashing and encryption, it is common knowledge in the software industry that that is a bad idea, and it’s better to use any of the industry standard algorithms freely available for every programming language out there. LLM-based artificial intelligence, this decade’s trend, adds a new dimension to this problem space, as the unknowns are hidden behind blackout blinds, through which it is impossible to gaze: the autonomy of a Large Language Model to make connections in its “neural network” means its beliefs, decisions and other mental qualities cannot be known, even if we so desire. The system is completely opaque, and the only things we have access to are its outputs. In the Faustian contract of traditional programming, in which data structures and algorithms are written by the programmer, he or she still retains a position of control over the machine. The advent of artificial intelligence takes Marx’s analysis of the worker in the factory, made “an appendage of the machine” (Marx, Communist Manifesto, ch. 1), and, from a philosophical reflection on a historical process, turns it into a naturalist painting of concrete reality.

There is an implicit admission in the figure of speech employed by the computer science professors, the analogy between computer programs and magical spells. Magic, a phenomenon common sense understands as belonging to the prehistory of humanity, or to the Dark Ages before the Copernican Revolution, does not simply disappear with the advent of the modern era, erased by scientific rationalism. Rather, it goes through a dialectical éclosion, where some of its ritualistic, animistic aspects are shed, while other substantive aspects are preserved: the appeal to a higher truth, the dogmatism of established knowledge, the hypostatisation of empirical investigation into a general method. It is from magic and the capacity of metaphysical representation to gain objective autonomy that Marx derives the concept of fetishism. Fetishism works as an analytical key for a plethora of social dynamics in which appearance (Erscheinung) conceals the essence (Wesen) of things, by means of a sort of mystic transubstantiation of the object, that acquires qualities that have nothing to do with its own concept. It makes things sound less like man-made objects and more like medieval holy relics. We should take care, however, to not pay excessive attention to this magical, fantastic aspect, lest we evoke the demon by calling its name, and end up as victims to a sort of fetishism of fetishism. It is much less important to apprehend in the objects of our experience the chimera of a supernatural character, than using this idea as a tool with which to expose real fractures in social dynamics, immanent contradictions in the rational development of the capitalist system.

In the critique of political economy, for instance, it is not simply the magical power to enchant the masses of consumers, through tricks of illusionism like branding, advertisement and addictive substances, that Marx’s analysis of the fetishism of commodities intends to reveal. Rather, as a starting point of his investigation of the systemic functioning of capitalist production and circulation of commodities, he points out that these products of human labor are perceived as having an innate attribute, value, which we comprehend as a constitutive quality of the thing itself. A shard of wood can, through the worship of the masses, produce miracles, and no chemical examination will disprove this power. Likewise, under the fetishism of value, it is hard to dispel the mist that hides the social relations and productive forces necessary to the production of commodities.

“A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour… There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 1, §4).

Let us shed light on the question with a different example, one that makes this idea of transubstantiation very obvious. The advent of new forces of imperial power and violent disputes for territorial dominion resurrected from the time of the Cold War a political discourse marked by a belief in the spiritual powers of the nuclear bomb. This technological artifact’s immense destructive power to produce megatons of atomic discharge has the effect of acting as a deterrent of aggression on the global stage, as no country would (we see in the news that this logic is not flawless) take action against another in possession of an atomic bomb, as that would risk total human annihilation, or mutually assured destruction. Based on this use value as a “destroyer of worlds”, the atomic bomb acquires in the sphere of circulation an exchange value as a currency of power (cf. Harrington, Nuclear Weapons) to purchase political influence and national safety. The fetishism of power leads to an absurd impulse to accumulate this currency that takes on a life of its own, and defeats its own purported intention of guaranteeing peace.

It will be noticed that an important aspect of fetishistic thought is the logical fallacy of causal reversion, where the points of arrival of the analysis are taken as the points of departure, and vice versa: “so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 1, §4). This is patent in Marx’s critique of “vulgar” economy (Vulgärökonomie) as corollary of his analysis of the fetishism of value. The metamorphosis of social relations into objective qualities enables the writing of post-hoc laws based on exchange value reified as a thing in itself. Instead of basing the analysis of the wealth of society starting from the manner in which the production of artifacts is organized, viz. the social relations of production and the productive forces through which rough matter is extracted from the earth and transformed into useful goods, the analysis of the later marginalist economists, Jevons, Menger and Walras, takes the commodity as given, ready for sale, and from its behaviour in the free trade, it is possible to derive the “market laws”. These determine, in the balance of supply and demand, the prices of commodities, the wages and profits, which in turn determine the volume of production in the next cycle. The price, a contingent apparition of the value of the commodity in the market, is taken as having analytical precedence over the necessary components of production and circulation, namely, labor and capital.

“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, p. 113, quoted in Capital, Vol. I, ch. 1, §4, note 33)”.

In computer technology, from its origins as an industry to its latest incarnations, Big Tech (2010s) and Artificial Intelligence (2020s), we also see something claimed to possess spiritual attributes that far exceed its material content. Computer programs appear to us as having a wonderful capacity to, by themselves, solve problems, rebuild the old structures and transform society for the better. “Solutionism” is a term that describes this fetishism of innovation: “problems are to be dealt with via apps, sensors, and feedback loops – all provided by startups” (Morozov). Systems design substitutes politics as the sphere of mediation of conflicting interests in society: social demands can be satisfied by the development and distribution of an increasing number of programs and devices that solve individual everyday problems, and a network where people are allowed to connect, request, consume.

This attribution of a power of agency to programs and artifacts deeply influences the way we understand the recent changes in social dynamics. For example, the platformization of all aspects of life, e.g. grocery shopping, art and entertainment, love and sex, is perceived as a behavioral change effected by our handheld devices. In the sphere of work, in turn, the phenomenon of the disappearance of the work shift, and the growing trend of people always on the clock, available for work from home, or even from commute, appears also as enabled by the handheld connectivity to the global network. It seems as if the smartphones, inanimate bricks of plastic and metal, did this by themselves, and we humans were defenseless prey to their schemes.

This framing of problems, by affirming that devices can by themselves determine the way we live, does away with all references to political and economic disruptions in the concrete conditions of life. But we can put the thing back on its feet by negating this inverted logic.

1. Platforms that provide online services, such as remote medical appointments through video calls, and courses through video lectures, don’t simply win space in the market because the UI is intuitive and it’s more practical to do things from the computer. The privatization of essential services, such as health and education, and cuts to government programs for energy and housing, through the dismantling of the welfare state starting in the 1970s, allowed financial monopolies and big tech corporations to take over these industries and profit with the online sale of the basic necessities of life in civilized society.

2. Social media and dating apps provide a digital space for socialization where completely new laws and algorithms influence the motion of the affectūs: e.g. the desire for followers, the uninterrupted broadcast of routine, and the social health checks of likes. But none of this can happen without the ruin of communal life that births the absolute digital society (cf. Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft); a historical process advanced by the closing of public spaces for noncommercial activities. The practice of sports is increasingly expensive in the cities. Prices for cultural events such as concerts and sports matches are prohibitive for the poor. Even stepping outside is expensive, and there isn’t anything to do except shopping. In such an environment, there are fewer opportunities to meet people, to talk about life and grow healthy relationships.
3. Tech startups and hardware manufacturers have grown massively in the last decade, not just due to the financial market speculation and the expected profitability of digital products. The destruction of worker unions that strengthened the labor class in their demands for increased wages allowed a gigantic accumulation of wealth for the capitalist class. This, in turn, is invested in scientific research and computer infrastructure to create tools for automation and replacement of the work force. “The very potential for the expansion of disposable labor time (leisure) due to automation, Marx explained in his day, contradicts capital’s incessant need to expand surplus labor time. The system therefore seeks to promote, by way of automation—based on the leverage provided by an expanding industrial reserve army—the increased degradation and material dependence of labor” (Foster, “The Fetishism of AI”).

Then, there is the question of security. It is acknowledged that, according to the Marxist analysis of capitalism, the concentration of wealth in a small portion of the population (for which concrete data can be verified in the World Inequality Database) is a necessary effect of the cycle of accumulation of capital. In the system working as it is supposed to, impoverishment of a big portion of society functions as a social mechanism for reducing wages and increasing profits (cf. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 25). This reveals an innate contradiction in all policies for fighting crime: any effective long-term policy to reduce crime should also fight poverty, something to which there is no economic incentive in this system. This does not prevent the tech industry, through its mania for innovation, from taking this as an opportunity to capitalize, by selling products for solving the problems of violence and crime. The huge volume of data and the speed of transmission enable the creation of advanced surveillance systems: cameras in all environments, registries of locomotion of all people, all day long. Such systems are perceived as endowed with a special quality, the efficacy in solving and preventing the occurrence of crimes, through profiling, data crossing, and statistical prediction. “As Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said, these technologies allow for tracking and targeting everyone all the time. ‘Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on. And it’s unimpeachable…because AI is monitoring the video’” (Foster, op. cit.). This proposal fails to take into account the socioeconomic factors at the root of urban criminality, and how poverty and disenfranchisement are main drivers of increase of levels of violence. Fetishistic solutionism is a treatment that acts on the symptoms, but never at the causes of the disease.

As it happens with commodities and their exchange value represented by money, so does computing bring forth new currencies of innovation to the market. Data, abstract units for the representation of social phenomena, and tokens, abstract units of human language and cognition, are uprooted from the soil of political and economic reality, to constitute an autonomous objective existence, measured in terabytes in the cloud. Social relations between men, those who study and teach the science of computer programs, who write code, who manufacture and maintain hardware, appear in the form of relations between things, apps, bots, and clouds. This appearance brushes away the concrete historical and material process through which these things are brought forth, full of unresolved contradictions. By covering the political and economic contents of society under the cloak of fetishism, we lose sight of the real issue (Sache). The real transformation should be directed at “who controls the economy and whether regular people have a say in the decisions that affect them” (Taylor and Levin). Be they commodities, nuclear bombs, or computers, we cannot put faith in the magical power of artifacts to shape our world in a way that will solve problems that are, in truth, in the heart of society; a society made by, of and for humans, and therefore capable of change.

Further reading

Abelson, Harold, and Gerald Jay Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Foster, John Bellamy. “The Fetishism of AI.” Monthly Review 78, no. 1 (May 2026). https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-fetishism-of-ai/.

Harrington de Santana, Anne. “Nuclear Weapons as the Currency of Power: Deconstructing the Fetishism of Force.” Nonproliferation Review 16, no. 3 (November 2009). https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/npr_16-3_harrington_de_santana.pdf.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. London: Wordsworth, 2013.

Marx, Karl. The Poverty of Philosophy. 1847.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848.

Morozov, Evgeny. “The Rise of Data and the Death of Politics.” Guardian, July 20, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/20/rise-of-data-death-of-politics-evgeny-morozov-algorithmic-regulation.

Naur, Peter. “Programming as Theory Building.” Microprocessing and Microprogramming 15, no. 5 (1985).

Taylor, Astra, and Saul Levin. “The Fight against AI Datacenters Isn’t Just about Tech—It’s about Democracy.” Guardian, May 8, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/08/ai-datacenters-democracy.

Tönnies, Ferdinand. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [Community and Society]. 1887.

World Inequality Database. Accessed July 11, 2026. https://wid.world/.

As mathematics undergoes a process of arithmetisation, in a divergence from formal logic, it follows that, in order to take on the investigation of its principles, it is necessary to define first the fundamental concept of number. As Russell describes it, though the number is an ubiquitous concept in the hundreds of years of the history of mathematics, a clear and correct definition was only formalised and published in recent years, by Frege (Foundations of Arithmetics, 1884). Frege's definition is different to that of Peano, who defines numbers in terms of sequences or progressions, and also subtly different to the philosophers who defined numbers simply in terms of plurality -- one apple, two apples, three apples. The problems in defining numbers in terms of progressions or plurality are:

• Progressions, while they provide a correct knowledge about the relationships of numbers -- according to the function f(x) that determines the successor of x -- they do not provide any knowledge about the number itself and what it represents; if we change the reference to the first element of the sequence, the reference to all elements in the sequence is lost.
• Plurality, on the other hand, while it does provide knowledge of a single number in terms of the quantity of objects, it tells us nothing about the number as a number -- and, more importantly, about what numbers are; in other words, it provides a sense of what "three" is, but not of what "number" is.

A precise definition of what a number is requires that we abstract a single quantity into the general concept of all quantities, therefore putting forward the concept of groups -- or, more precisely, classes. Just as we can define a class a with three apples, and a class b with three bananas, we can define a class of all classes with three elements (i.e. all classes similar to a class with three elements, in terms of quantity of elements). Similarly, we can describe a class of all classes with thirty elements, or a class of all classes with three hundred elements.

The number of a class, then, will be the class of all classes similar to it. A number is any entity that is the number of a class.

The definition of numbers in terms of classes is interesting to the student of computer sciences, because of the importance that term has gained since the advent of object-oriented programming. Though I want to tread carefully and avoid the sin of anachronism (we are talking about a text written in 1919, when modern computation by electronic machines was a distant dream), it is worthy of note how Russell describes classes as "logical fictions" -- not real things in and of themselves, but rather a sort of imaginary line traced around objects, grouping them together in terms of some arbitrary common description (generative function; e.g. the class of men, the class of cars).

Am I then accusable of being too hasty and unconsidered in seeing a similarity between this definition of classes with the concept of abstract data types, which is so cherished in the field of object-oriented programming? Of course classes in OOP languages are much more complex structures -- with attributes, behaviours, contracts, interfaces -- than the simple abstractions of classes as "logical fictions" described by Russell; but I do see how we could interpret the latter as the former's source and inspiration.

We could, for example, describe the type specification of a class constructor as its intentional definition, and the instances of a class as its extensional definition. As Russell writes, classes can be defined in two ways: extensionally, in terms of its members, or intentionally, in terms of an abstract description; so, a class A could be defined as:

• A = {Jack, Jim}
• A = "men in this room now"

As for methods, they describe the relations between objects of this class with other objects in the world.

This approximation was brought to my mind because of a tweet someone posted some other day, about the weirdness of writing numbers as class objects in OOP languages, which leads to constructs such as 10.is_pair(). As we see in Russell's writing, the idea of describing numbers as abstract classes capable of having properties is not an invention of object-oriented programming.

The couple of would-be lovers, Iphigenia and Achilles, represent how the tourbillon of natural and human forces affect actors, and how interest and duty determine actions, in a dialectical articulation of internal and external normatives. In these first notes, we explore the relation of obedience and disobedience of subjects towards their king, as presented in Iphigenia in Aulis.

The nature of sovereignty, in ancient Greek society, even if the same word "king" (βασιλεύς) is used now and then, has radically different contents when compared to modern society. If we trace an arbitrary historical line from which we may talk about a modern concept of monarchy, say, beginning with Hobbes and his Leviathan, which incarnates sovereignty over the political body of civil society through the instrument of an original contract, we perceive that, despite contingent differences between absolute and constitutional monarchies, an underlying thread binds them, i.e. a self-determined, autonomous concept of sovereignty as a fundamental substance of power and constitutive principle of the people under a state.

In the so-called Greek world, represented in the tragedy, a different reality is revealed. Obedience to the sovereign is not presupposed by the citizen's belonging to the polis, nor by the king's hierarchical place in society, but only by the convenience of his leadership to the interest of the troops in the times of war. Free citizens recognize in one amongst themselves one who excels in martial and rhetorical talent, and push him to the front of the hosts to conduct them to victory. It is for this reason, Euripides explains, that Achilles offers his obedience to Agamemnon, as payment for the offer to win glory by crossing the sea and sacking Ilion. In the moment when he offends his honour, by using him in his schemes to bring Iphigenia to the port of Aulis to be sacrificed, Peleus' son sees no more reason to submit himself to the Atride. He explains it clearly when the queen Clytemnestra exposes her husband's malice. Says Achilles: "Provided the Atridae lead aright, I will obey them; but when they cease therefrom, no more will I obey. Nay, but here (in Aulis) and in Troy I will show the freedom of my nature".

The freedom of the Greek citizen makes relations of power require a recognition of the virtue of the king and the utility of his command; after all, the free citizen knows that obedience means renouncing himself to a will external to himself. The Trojan War, at first as a personal project of the Atride Menelaus, justified by his duty for vengeance against Paris after the abduction of Helen, requires necessarily, as a condition of its success, the mobilization of a massive army of Achaean soldiers. To effect this movement, the title of his brother Agamemnon is not enough. The staff that grants him command over the Greeks must be conquered through their consent. Confronted for having violated the seal of a letter held by a messenger, confessing to the queen of Mycenae the true reason of her summoning to Aulis, the king of Lacedaemon explains to his brother the frailty of his authority: "Ag. What right has thou to watch my doings? Is not this a proof of shamelessness? Men. My wish to do it gave the spur, for I am no slave to thee".

This way of life marked by an idea of individual independence is identified by Hegel in his investigations about Greek art, which we can read in his Course on Aesthetics. From it, the philosopher produces an interpretation about the political life and the way in which citizens relate to one another and to the authority figures. "These also (Homeric heroes) have a chief in common, but it is not a fixed and immutable law which binds one another, imposing submission; spontaneously, by virtue of free decision, they follow Agamemnon, who is not a monarch in the modern sense of the word" (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, I, ch. 3).

This free decision is what leads Achilles, king of the Myrmidons, to the risk of being stoned by his own troops. By giving himself the will and intention to defend Iphigenia and save her from being sacrificed to Artemis, the son of Peleus puts himself in the position of antagonist to the interests of the Achaean mob. Iphigenia saved would mean the failure to placate the goddess, the continuity of the sea storms, and the defeat at the Trojan War. Achilles, insulted by Agamemnon who uses his name in the scheme for bringing his daughter to the port of Aulis, heroically arms himself to defend the maiden and, more importantly, his own honour. But the physical strength of his men is bigger than his regal authority, and he is forced to flee to avoid being stoned by the Achaeans. Questioned by Clytemnestra whether his Myrmidons would not be at his side for help, the unhappy son of the goddess answers: "They were the first who turned against me".

Further reading

• Euripides. Iphigenia in Aulis. Trans. E. P. Coleridge, in The Complete Greek Drama, ed. Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill Jr. New York: Random House, 1938. (Quotations above follow this translation.)
• Hegel, G. W. F. Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik (Lectures on Aesthetics). Ed. H. G. Hotho. Berlin, 1835–38. English: Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
• Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1651].

Food, as a positive energy source for the active life of men and women of the city, carries in its development a negative principle, the subtraction of nutrients from the earth's bosom. The rift occurs because, differently from the previous historical period, when the overwhelming majority of the population lived in the rural lands, now the positive and negative moments of the natural cycle occur in different locations, introducing an imbalance. The anabolism of human beings in the city, because the matter does not return to its origin, is unable to compensate for the catabolism of the soil.

"Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e. prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to the lasting fertility of the soil" (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 15, §10).

The bourgeois revolutions entail the transition from agrarian to urban society. This transformation of social relations of production is also a transformation of the human relation with the physical space and its constitutive matter: steel and concrete substitute wood and earth as the physical elements that build the locus vivendi. In this process, the ancient balance between humans and nature is irrevocably destabilized. The metabolic rift exposes the contradictions in the interactions of humans with nature, and contributes, in the interior of the civil society, to the intensification of the antagonism between the city and the country folk, with political repercussions. Workers of the urban and agrarian industries, exploited by the same dynamic of wage work, constitute even today separate classes, proletariat and peasantry, with distinct interests. The dynamic that depletes the earth of its nutrients to feed the city dwellers imposes a hard challenge to the unification of rural and urban working classes in the direction of a social transformation that could solve this crisis that affects both parties.

The old patriarch of French letters clearly had in mind this antinomy of agriculture and the urban industrial society, when he interrupted his great novel to advance a long and melancholy exposition about l'égout de Paris and the rich bounty of organic matter that was wasted every day in the constant flow from the city to the sea. Addressing the bourgeoisie, he classified this as le chef-d’œuvre de votre ignorance.

Those heaps of refuse at the street corners, those cartloads of muck jolted through the streets at night, those hideous sanitation barrels, those fetid flows of underground filth hidden from view by the paving stones—do you know what they are? They are flowering meadows, green grass, wild thyme and sage; they are game and livestock; the contented bellowing of great oxen at evening; fragrant hay and golden wheat; bread on your table and warm blood in your veins; they are health, joy, and life itself. Such is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven. (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Vol. V, Book 2, Ch. 1).

Victor Hugo described the Parisian sewer as a senseless waste of resources, sans aucun but, amounting to approximately twenty million per year. What does not enter the master poet's accounting, however, is that capitalism is not a system whose end is the optimal allocation of resources. Rather, its end is the accumulation of wealth, as industrial and commercial profits. The systemic failure caused by the metabolic rift creates a providential commercial opportunity in the form of a high demand by the agricultural industry for nutrients to fertilize the depleted soil. Enters capital to remedy the problem: the chemical industry introduces a large supply of new commodities: artificial fertilizers, sewage treatment products. Their manufacturing enables added surplus value appropriation in the cycle of food production.

Before the introduction of modern fertilizers, produced from the mineral extraction of enormous volumes of solid rock in the periphery of the global market, the damages to the soil caused by the metabolic rift were compensated by the use of guano, a solidified accumulation of bird excrement. British ships would cross the Atlantic to bring loads of this natural fertilizer harvested by slave labour in the Americas, to the enrichment of the European merchant class. This historical picture adds to the gallery of representations of the cannibal capitalism, which expropriates and exploits natural resources and human labour to feed its autophagous appetite.

Further reading

Foster, John Bellamy. Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.

Fraser, Nancy. Cannibal Capitalism. London: Verso, 2025.

Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables. Paris: Émile Testard, 1890.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. London: Wordsworth, 2013.

Even if it looks like the world started in 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT, it would be precipitate to want to inaugurate a new historical era based solely on that event, revolutionary though it may or may not be. It should serve as an example when, during a different Revolution, the French National Assembly decided to enact the calendrier républicain, marking 1789 as the beginning of a new world history. This lasted for 12 months, after which, because of comings and goings of the political tide, History severely replied by restoring the Nazarene on Saturn's Throne.

If the latest potentially revolutionary technology, artificial intelligence, indeed brings forth a myriad of unresolved technical and philosophical questions, that we may have occasion to explore before the time when human brains are made obsolete in the order of the world, it is fundamental, when gazing at that artifact, the Large Language Model, to take a step back in order to avoid getting lost, dumbfounded in the face of its marvellous chthonic spectacle, and see more clearly and rationally its place in the history of ideas. Mechanistically circumscripted, the artifact of soft and hard matter, metal, electrons, and characters, is the latest spawn in the long devenir of intelligent automata, in the category of which are represented the computer, the calculator, and, archetypically, the clock.

It was René Descartes who, in Les Passions de l'âme, if not first, best developed a method for understanding the operations of body and soul in terms of the movement of parts, fluids, vapours; in a word, a mechanistic system. This system constitutes a constructive paradigm for all subsequent inquiries that approximate and correlate the operations of human and machine in a way that surpasses the physical dimension and invades the spiritual: not because the human is capable of imbuing the machine with his Promethean fire, but rather – this here the ingenious cartesian inversion – because he is himself a machine.

The mechanistic system is a perfectly solid scaffolding on which to build explanations for the physical, chemical and biological movements that allow artifacts to express abstract representations, or thoughts: the hands of the clock answer "what time is it?"; the calculator registers parts, and tells what is the sum. Technological progress appears as a cumulative process in which new features are added to an abstract machine, which the Moderns called an automaton, and we call a computer. Intelligence, in this theoretical paradigm, is built by adding more and more of these mechanisms of abstract representation, or ascribing additional mental qualities to machines, in the language of John McCarthy. His thermostat was capable of believing and deciding, and our LLM is capable of learning and teaching; but without exiting the epistemological frame of mechanicism, we are still in the company of Descartes.

What is more, this abstract machine is theoretically infinitely expansible, by adding more and more features, as long as there is fuel in nature, and demand for its gift in society; there is no reason to suppose the one-to-one blueprint reproduction of a human machine, in all its bits and pieces, to be outside of the realm of possibility. None of this is new to those who lived through the human cloning collective psychosis of the 2000s. If we pose the question in this manner, as, "what does the (abstract) machine lack that is given in the human?" the answer is, "potentially, nothing". Intelligence appearing as a collection of features makes artificial intelligence, in the mechanistic sense, a matter of giving the machine eyes to see, ears to hear, virtually infinite fingers to count, and a powerful algorithm to process the stream of phenomena. But here, in the crevices of the solid frame of mechanistic rationalism, we find the bud of a contradiction that may take root: what is not being questioned here is the effective content of reason itself, as it is put forth by the machine. In the question of intelligence, artificial or otherwise, the gaze should be repositioned, as the object is not the machine, but thought. The question becomes more interesting. Instead of asking what abstract representations can a human express that a machine cannot – not much, it seems now, and the limit gets closer and closer; we can put the question as, what is the determinate content of reason that the machine can operate, the so-called instrumental reason (instrumentelle Vernunft). That should ferry us to the more important question: in the concept of Reason, what are the contents of its other, a non-instrumental reason.

Further Reading

Descartes, René. Les Passions de l'âme. Paris: Henry Le Gras, 1649.

Horkheimer, Max. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.

McCarthy, John. "Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines." In Philosophical Perspectives in Artificial Intelligence, edited by Martin Ringle, 161–95. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979.

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