Abstract:

In the age of artificial intelligence, as long as private ownership of the means of production persists, ownership will not come to an end; however, based on the separation of labor from ownership, the laws of capital accumulation, and the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of the means of production, a trend toward the end of ownership will emerge. The trend toward the end of ownership manifests in people obtaining only rights of use, the inability of ownership to achieve exclusive possession of the technical content of artificial intelligence, and the emergence of ambiguity regarding the subjects of ownership. This trend will give rise to exchange dilemmas and the influence of “AI totalitarianism.” Only by transcending private ownership can we fundamentally transcend the trend toward the end of ownership. The developmental logic of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the demands of the times, when combined with new institutional designs such as data trusts and public governance of algorithms, can collectively enable the mastery of the logic of capital, thereby achieving a limited overcoming of the trend toward the end of ownership.

Key words: private ownership, labor ownership, capital, legal rights, relations of production