DIGITAL COMMUNISM IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Artificial abundance, the devaluation of human labour, and the reconfiguration of economic value

The history of economics is inseparable from the evolution of the means of production. Every major technological transformation has altered the relationship between capital, labour, and the creation of wealth. Industrial mechanisation gradually replaced part of human physical effort with mechanical power. Computerisation subsequently automated many administrative, accounting, and information-processing operations. Today, generative artificial intelligence is introducing a different kind of rupture: it is directly involved in activities that traditionally relied on individuals’ cognitive, intellectual, and creative capacities. This transformation raises a fundamental question: what happens to the economic value of human labour when technologies make it possible to reproduce, accelerate, and standardise an increasingly large share of an individual’s productive capacities? The issue is not simply the possible disappearance of certain occupations. It concerns a deeper transformation in the mechanisms through which labour is valued. Artificial intelligence can substantially increase an individual’s productivity without guaranteeing a proportionate increase in remuneration. It may even reduce the market value of certain skills by making their use more accessible, faster, and less costly. We are therefore confronted with a paradox: individuals have access to increasingly powerful means of intellectual production, yet this increase in their productive capacity no longer necessarily secures them a stronger economic position. This contradiction is the starting point of our inquiry. We put forward the hypothesis that artificial intelligence is gradually separating three dimensions that were historically closely connected: the capacity to produce, the individual contribution to production, and the ability to capture a share of the wealth created. To analyse this transformation, we propose three organising concepts: digital communism, artificial abundance, and the tendency towards the devaluation of human labour. Our aim is not to argue that human labour is losing all economic usefulness, but to show that the conditions under which it is valued are changing. Value does not necessarily disappear: it shifts, becomes concentrated, and is recomposed.