This essay is a brief ideological manifesto written for a certain project. The idea was not initiated by me, but I was the main writer. It has something to do with ‘华文道’, but it is actually for another project proposal: https://prickly-ink-544.notion.site/da60bd1225aa49c2b6868d7011a617b3 In fact, the ideas of ‘华文道’ also broadly accord with this essay, so the two can be used as references for each other.
As Marx said, “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Capital), every technological transformation is an opportunity to build a new social form and reshape human civilization. What we are seeing now is that a series of digital technologies, including AI and blockchain, are heralding a new round of transformation, and we are seeing the possibility of a new social form. Is this new form the “communism” Marx envisioned?
Of course, Marx himself did not have a very precise imagination of communist society, and there are many ways to interpret it. But we believe that at least some of the core tenets of “communism” are in harmony with the possibilities contained in new technologies such as AI + blockchain. In the wave of new technology, it may be possible for us to find a path toward communism, or rather, human liberation.
1. Communism is decentralized individual liberation:
The Communist Manifesto says: “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (《共产党宣言》) — the aim of communism is human freedom, that is, “the free development of each.” The liberation of the independent “each person” is the precondition for the liberation of “humanity.”
Rather than saying that communism is about establishing a new form of rule, it is more accurate to say that it seeks to free each person from a condition of being ruled, to abolish all the old relations of ruling and being ruled, whether of state, family, class, or the like. In On the Jewish Question, Marx put it even more clearly: “Any emancipation is a return of the human world and of human relationships to man himself. Political emancipation was, at the same time, the dissolution of civil society into its component parts, the dissolution of man into the citizen, into the legal person, and, on the other hand, into the member of civil society. Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his individual work, and in his individual relationships; only when man has recognized and organized his own powers as social powers, and so no longer separates social power from himself in the form of political power, only then is human emancipation complete.”
Therefore, communism is less about stripping property away from individuals than about puncturing the abstract rights that are constrained by the ruled and do not truly belong to the individual, and returning to each person the real, truly one’s own powers.
We may as well say that the ideal of communism is “decentralization.” In traditional society, what people possess are abstract identities and abstract wealth; their power and rights are all granted by virtue of being attached to some centralized system of rule. Communism, however, seeks to restore the abstract to the concrete, and this concreteness does not refer to the physical world as opposed to the digital world, but rather to whether these things can truly be controlled freely by each person. In this sense, blockchain technology has, in the digital world, achieved precisely such a “concretization” of identity and property, returning actual control to each person.
2. Communism requires an abundance of material goods.
The material base determines the superstructure, and communism is not an air castle; it can only be realized once productive forces have developed to a certain stage, specifically, when “material abundance” has been reached.
Whether something is abundant is actually a relative concept, that is, supply relative to demand. Material things cannot be infinite, but fortunately human demand for material things is also finite, so abundance can indeed be attained.
As for “material needs,” we also have to distinguish the abstract from the real. For example, the digits of money are abstract; they can inflate without limit, and people’s desire for the amount of money they have is likewise limitless and never satisfied. But if we consider only the material needs of real people, we will find that these needs are actually quite limited. No matter how gluttonous a person may be, they cannot eat nonstop for 24 hours a day; even if they really could keep eating without stopping, the amount they could eat would still be limited, because the time each person actually has is limited.
The basic needs of food, clothing, and subsistence are being gradually met as productivity develops, especially as AI technology increasingly frees people from the toil of producing the necessities of survival. And people’s various additional desires for a better life will, with the development of digital technology, increasingly shift to the “metaverse” in search of fulfillment, while the replicability of digital products ensures ample supply. Therefore, if people can be liberated from money fetishism and direct more of their desire for enriching life experience toward the digital world, “material abundance” has already become something to look forward to in the not-too-distant future.
3. Placing human meaning in the new era
Every transformation of an era is also a transformation of values; what people pursue and the standard by which meaning is measured will change. For example, in the feudal era, “land” was the most desirable thing, whereas in the capitalist era, “capital” replaced the logic of “land.” The abstract valorization of money became the yardstick of value, and the capacity to promote production and reproduction — useful talent — also became the criterion for measuring the meaning of life.
But when material abundance has been achieved and basic material production is handled by AI, where should the meaning of human beings be measured then? If people no longer need to toil and struggle in order to solve basic material production, then what other things are meaningful, and worth doing? Is humanity fated to become nothing but idle, bored “boring apes”?
Some say, “A bad life is better than a good death,” and that “being alive” is the highest meaning. But in Marx’s view, this is the measure of animals: “The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from its life activity. It is its life activity.” Life activity is everything for animals; for human beings, however, one must transcend life itself and project oneself into the external “world.” Marx goes on: “Man not only intellectually reproduces himself, as in consciousness, but actively, and therefore really, so that he can contemplate himself in a world created by him.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)
In short, the meaning of humanity lies in “creating the world.” And the greatest threat of capitalism is the “alienation” of human beings. Workers can no longer see their own shadow in what they have created, and thus cannot find their own meaning in the world. An artisan in antiquity could also see himself in his work (his aesthetics, his talent, his will, his limitations…), whereas a Foxconn employee cannot see any reflection of himself in an iPhone.
In this sense, digital technologies such as AI and blockchain will not cause people to lose meaning; on the contrary, they may help liberate humanity from false meanings and recover the meanings that truly belong to us — by placing ourselves in the world through creation.
4. “Action” in the digital world
Hannah Arendt expanded Marx’s thought and broke down what was broadly called “labor” in Marx into
labor, work, and action these three active, dynamic modes of life.
“Labor” refers to those necessary affairs, that is, all the hard work involved in satisfying the material needs of life. These activities are endless: you eat your fill today and still have to eat tomorrow; the need for food and clothing and shelter is never truly satisfied. Precisely because labor is characterized by this ceaseless cycle, people are all too easily bound by the logic of the laboring animal and unable to break free in pursuit of a higher meaning.
The goal of “work” is not to satisfy the needs of life, but to transcend the finite life of the individual. In other words, the goal of “work” is to create the world and leave something of one’s own in the external world. What Marx emphasized as “contemplating oneself in a world created by him” is not achieved through “labor,” but through “work.”
And “action” refers to human collective life. The Mona Lisa as a material object has no value in itself; only the Mona Lisa seen by other people has value. Human creation acquires its full meaning only when it enters the public sphere and is witnessed, commented upon, and recorded by countless different individuals.
People socialize, form groups, compete, and record and comment on the deeds of others; these activities make the world created by human beings meaningful.
We can see that AI technology is helping humanity solve the ceaseless troubles of “labor”; blockchain and NFT technologies provide a hard and indestructible digital material carrier, fixing each person’s place in the digital world jointly created by all, making it possible for creators to return to the logic of “work”; and DAO is trying to explore a new mode of “action” in the digital age.
We put forward the slogan “Play to Action.” What we want to do is not merely create a game that provides amusement for the bored; more importantly, we want to explore a way of creating the world and forming associations, so as to adapt to the coming digital age of coexistence with AI. Our experiment ultimately points toward human self-liberation, toward the free development of each person.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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