Intelligent databases as a new type of means of production: basic forms, historical evolution, and monopoly mechanisms

Abstract The concepts of “means of production” and “general intellect” in Marxist political economy provide a theoretical foundation for analyzing intelligent databases (IDs). An intelligent database is a system that integrates massive amounts of data, proprietary algorithms, and high-performance computing power and can operate autonomously and self-reinforce. Its function is to continuously transform raw data into predictive, decision-making, and control capabilities, thereby reshaping the organizational principles of value production, realization, and distribution. From a historical perspective, the transformation of means of production has followed a phased path from factory machines to IDs. Moreover, under the capitalist production mode, the leading investment of financial capital, the self-reinforcement of the data flywheel, the locking of ecology and standards, as well as the structural control, jointly drive the advancement of IDs towards monopoly. The monopoly power of IDs continuously penetrates and expands in economic, political, and cognitive dimensions, prolonging and intensifying the fundamental contradiction between socialization of production and private ownership, and triggering new crisis tendencies in the fields of value realization and social reproduction. In the future, we should start from the monopoly power of intelligent data paths, focus on regulating digital capital power, and reconstruct public interests in the digital era.