I never set out to be a communist, but recently reading a biography of Stalin made me question some assumptions about Marx. The more I look at the way things are going – monopolies fatter than nations, AI promising plenty but fenced off for rent – the more his analysis starts to feel less like ideology and more like common sense.
Trouble is, “communism” is a poisoned word. Stalin and Mao turned it into shorthand for gulags and famine. So perhaps it needs a new name. Call it the Commonwealth – not the imperial club of flags and pageantry, but a society where the common wealth created by technology is held in common, and used for the common good. Not commissars, not cults, not five-year plans. Just prosperity shared fairly, and decisions made democratically.
Marx thought he had the trajectory nailed. Capitalism would gorge itself stupid, trip over its contradictions, and collapse under the weight of its greed. Out of that wreckage, communism – or the Commonwealth, to avoid the baggage – would stroll in as the logical next step once material needs could be met for all. But it all happened too early. Russia and China tried to fast-forward history, and instead of communism we got a pantomime version – red banners on the outside, tyranny on the inside.
They had no surplus to share, so they tried to conjure it with gulags and slogans. Workers didn’t emancipate themselves – the Party did it “on their behalf,” which really meant one set of masters replaced with another. The state didn’t wither away – it ballooned into the biggest bully on the block. Call it socialism if you want, but when the man in charge wears more medals than a Christmas tree and imprisons his critics, it isn’t Marx – it’s Mussolini with better propaganda.
And now here we are, staring at AI. In theory, it’s the technology that could finally deliver what Marx had in mind – machines that take the drudge work, freeing people for higher pursuits. In practice, it’s controlled by a priesthood of billionaires. They talk about “democratising AI” with the same sincerity as a Victorian mill owner promising fresh air breaks.
If you want to see what Marx actually meant, skip the manifestos and look at Star Trek. No money, no scarcity, replicators providing what’s needed. That’s still science fiction – rearranging atoms into steak dinners or violin strings is centuries away. But the metaphor holds. AI is the nearest thing we’ve got. It doesn’t conjure tea from thin air, but it can churn out words, music, design and code – the raw material of culture and commerce – at almost no cost. It can even supplant whole industries. The danger is the same: whether this abundance is shared, or fenced off and sold back to us on subscription.
And here’s the catch. Movements like this don’t rise by magic – they need leadership. Too little and they fizzle, too much and they curdle into tyranny. Corbyn is the case study: a campaigner with heart but hopeless as a leader. The Commonwealth can’t be built on one figurehead. That road leads back to commissars and cults. Enough leadership to launch – never enough to dominate.
And the neat solution – “break up the monopolies” – may already be slipping away. When the barons are writing policy in all but name, funding think tanks, sitting on government panels and shaping regulation before it’s drafted, the referee is already in the pocket of the players. We’ve just seen the mask slip. At a White House dinner, Mark Zuckerberg floated a $600 billion AI pledge, then leaned in to Trump on a hot mic and whispered: “Sorry, I wasn’t sure what number you wanted.” That wasn’t leadership. That was a billionaire asking a president how big a cheque he should wave. If that’s the relationship between tech and politics, then capture isn’t looming – it’s already here.
So the safeguards have to be different. Build public alternatives – AI models and infrastructure run like the NHS or the BBC, so private firms aren’t indispensable. Treat data as a commons – our culture, our writing, our labour – and make corporations pay rent if they want to mine it. Tax monopoly gains until they squeal, and channel the proceeds into universal services and a basic income, so machine wealth insulates people instead of impoverishing them. And crucially, limit wealth itself. No one person needs more than a modest multiple of the median. Cap dynastic inheritance so fortunes can’t harden into empires. Beyond a point, success should flow back into the commons, not sit hoarded in private vaults. Prosperity is fine; oligarchy is fatal.
Jeremy Corbyn’s platform – “For the Many, Not the Few” – was really a sketch of this Commonwealth: public ownership of essentials, green investment, stronger unions, universal services funded by fair taxation. Not gulags, not commissars – just common sense. His flaw was branding. He never found the word to defuse the smear. The Commonwealth does the job. Starmer daren’t touch it – too busy proving his “fiscal responsibility” to City editors, when the real irresponsibility is letting monopolies run riot.
That’s the fork in the road. AI could deliver a Star Trek future, where technology frees us from want and society works for the many. Or it could deliver a Blade Runner future, where even thought itself is fenced off and sold back to us on subscription. And if we don’t act, don’t be surprised when the new commissars arrive – not in Lenin caps, but in Tesla jackets and Silicon Valley hoodies. Red fascism, this time with better branding.
I never set out to be a communist. But if the choice is between their oligarchy and the Commonwealth, then hand me the badge.
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