Beyond techno-feudalism: A monopoly-capital analysis of artificial intelligence investment

This article argues that the contemporary artificial intelligence boom is best understood not as evidence of a transition to “techno-feudalism” but as a historically specific expression of monopoly-finance capitalism under conditions of chronic overaccumulation and profitability strain. Against claims that platform power, rent extraction, and digital enclosure signal a qualitative rupture in the mode of production, the analysis situates artificial intelligence investment within the surplus-absorption framework developed by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy. Reconstructing Marx’s distinction between the rate and mass of profit, the article shows how artificial intelligence operates through three interrelated mechanisms: class-mediated consumption and the expanded sales effort, investment demand driven by accumulation itself rather than realized productive necessity, and disproportionate sectoral expansion concentrated within a narrow technological enclave. Artificial intelligence thus functions simultaneously as a speculative sink for overaccumulated capital and as a capital-intensive, labor-displacing technology that intensifies downward pressure on profitability. The political implication is that the likely resolution of the artificial intelligence bubble is not postcapitalist transformation but devaluation, consolidation, and intensified class power.