Letters from Tomis

Introduction

The digital revolution of the 21st century has profoundly transformed work and economic life across the globe. Automation, artificial intelligence, and platform-based business models are disrupting traditional industries and labor relations. From warehouses deploying robots to ride-hailing apps deploying millions of gig workers, digital technologies pose new challenges and opportunities for workers and for how production is organized. This essay examines these developments through a pro-socialist and pro-communist lens, arguing that socialist theory offers crucial insights into the digital age’s contradictions and potentials. Key issues such as automation, digital labor, and the gig economy are analyzed to reveal how capitalism’s use of digital technology often deepens exploitation and inequality, whereas socialist approaches could harness these same technologies to empower workers and build a more equitable digital future. The discussion draws on global examples and both historical and contemporary sources to show how socialist ideas – from Marx’s critique of capitalist production to modern proposals for platform cooperatives and digital commons – apply to today’s high-tech transformations. In doing so, it explores how socialism and communism might inform the organization of a digital economy that genuinely serves the common good.

Socialism, Communism, and Technology: A Historical Perspective

Technology has long been a double-edged sword in socialist thought. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed the development of new machinery and industrial techniques under capitalism as both a source of worker exploitation and a potential liberator of humanity from drudgery. Marx observed that as industrial productivity rises, “the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time,” meaning wealth depends more on science and technology than on direct human labor. In his Grundrisse notebooks, Marx envisioned that beyond a certain point of development, capitalism’s drive to increase productivity would undermine itself: wealth would increasingly be produced by machines and the “general state of science” rather than by workers, making direct labor less central. In a famous passage, Marx writes that once necessary labor is reduced to a minimum, “the free development of individualities” and the “general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum” would become possible. This is a striking early vision of how automation could pave the way for a socialist or communist society where work is no longer a painful necessity but a freely undertaken activity, and free time is abundant for all.

Communist thinkers in the 20th century similarly saw technology as vital to building a new society. Vladimir Lenin famously proclaimed that “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification,” underscoring the belief that modern technical infrastructure could lay the groundwork for socialism. Throughout the 20th century, however, socialists also grappled with the realities of technology under capitalism: rather than liberating workers, machines were often used to deskill labor, increase worker productivity, and bolster capitalist profits. This dynamic was noted by Marx, who pointed out how machinery in the hands of capital devalues workers’ skills and intensifies their exploitation. Later Marxist analysts like Harry Braverman (in Labor and Monopoly Capital, 1974) showed how employers use technology to control the labor process and cheapen work, a trend now echoed in today’s algorithms and software managing workers. Yet, Marxists have also maintained that if the means of production – including modern technologies, factories, and now data centers and digital platforms – were owned and governed by society as a whole (rather than by private capitalists), those technologies could be deployed to vastly reduce work hours and ensure abundance for everyone.

This historical perspective sets the stage for analyzing the digital age. The core socialist argument is that technology’s impact on society is determined by who controls it. Under capitalism, digital technology is developing in a way that extends capital’s power over labor (through automation that throws workers into unemployment or surveillance that intensifies exploitation). Under socialism or communism, by contrast, the same technology could be repurposed to eliminate poverty, shorten the workweek, and democratize economic decision-making. The following sections examine how this contrast plays out in three key arenas of the digital age: automation, digital labor, and the gig economy.

Automation and the Promise of Liberation versus Capitalist Reality

The rise of automation and AI is one of the most consequential aspects of the digital revolution. Machines can now perform tasks once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans – from manufacturing and logistics to driving and even aspects of white-collar work. This raises an urgent question: will automation lead to a dystopia of mass unemployment and greater inequality, or can it be used to free humanity from toil? The answer, a socialist perspective argues, depends on the social system in which automation unfolds.

Under capitalism, automation tends to be deployed in ways that prioritize profit over people. Companies introduce robots or algorithms chiefly to cut labor costs – often resulting in layoffs, downward pressure on wages, and worsening job insecurity. Indeed, recent decades have seen productivity soar thanks to information technology, but workers have not seen the benefits. For example, between 1950 and 2020, labor productivity in the United States increased by roughly 299%, yet this did not translate into proportional gains for workers in terms of reduced working hours or higher real wages. Instead, many jobs were eliminated, and those remaining often became more intense and precarious. Paradoxically, despite unprecedented technological capabilities to produce plenty for all, we witness phenomena like stagnant wages and overwork alongside underemployment. The International Labor Organization reports that punishingly long hours (exacerbated by digital monitoring extending work into personal time) contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. In a rational society, increased productivity should enable people to work less and enjoy life more, but under capitalism the gains are captured by owners of technology and capital. As a result, modernization that could benefit workers instead often “makes their lives more difficult and insecure,” as one analysis notes.

From a socialist perspective, this outcome is not inherent to technology itself but to its use under capitalism. Socialists argue that if the productivity gains from automation were shared across society, they would allow for more leisure and a better quality of life for all. There is historical precedent and contemporary advocacy for this idea: during the early 20th century, it was widely assumed that technological progress would lead to a “leisure society” of vastly shorter workweeks. In 1940, the United States even legislated the 40-hour workweek as a standard, down from much longer hours in the 19th century – an example of social choice shaping how productivity gains are used. Today, figures like U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders have pointed out that given our high productivity, we could move to a 32-hour four-day workweek with no loss of pay – essentially using automation’s benefits to improve human well-being. Modern socialists similarly call for reducing the working week, arguing that “automation should mean that we could reduce the average working week from 5 or 6 days, to 2 or 3, without any decrease in production” under a socialist framework. Rather than fearing automation, socialists welcome it – but insist that its fruits must be distributed by shortening work hours and providing social benefits, rather than simply enriching a few tech owners.

Importantly, the socialist view highlights that even advanced AI still relies on human labor behind the scenes, and full automation of all work is not as imminent as some tech utopians or dystopians claim. Many jobs, especially in services, care work, and creative fields, cannot be entirely handed over to machines in the foreseeable future. Moreover, what has been touted as “artificial intelligence” often masks large pools of human workers who label data, moderate content, or handle tasks that algorithms struggle with. For instance, digital platforms like Facebook and Uber, which appear to run on seamless algorithms, actually depend on “a considerable human labour pool” to function – without masses of human workers (whether as content moderators, data cleaners, or drivers), these platforms “would quickly fall over,” as one study observes. Thus, the notion of a completely jobless automated society is still speculative. The pressing issue is who controls the automation that does exist and how its gains are allocated. Socialists maintain that automation under capitalism produces dystopian outcomes (job loss, surveillance, inequality), but automation under socialism could be utopian, enabling a world where necessary labor is minimal and people are free to pursue their passions – fulfilling Marx’s vision of an era in which the measure of wealth is not working hours but free time.

Digital Labor and the Political Economy of the Tech Industry

Digital technology has not eliminated labor so much as reconfigured it. The term “digital labor” refers to forms of work enabled or mediated by digital systems – from coding and data entry to content creation on social media, online microtasks, and the maintenance of the vast IT infrastructure. A central critique from a socialist perspective is that much digital labor is either underpaid or entirely uncompensated, even as it generates enormous value captured by tech companies.

One striking aspect of the digital economy is the prevalence of “free labor”: for example, millions of users create content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, essentially working as unpaid content producers while the platforms monetize their attention and data through advertising. Similarly, users on Facebook provide the content and data that make the platform valuable, yet they receive no share of the revenue. Marx’s concept of exploitation – the extraction of surplus value from workers – can be extended here: in digital platforms, the surplus produced by user activity is captured by capital (the platform owners) without even paying a wage. Scholars like Christian Fuchs have argued that social media users are exploited digital laborers inasmuch as their activity is a form of labor that produces value appropriated by the platform. While users ostensibly use these platforms for social interaction or self-expression, the underlying economic model treats their collective activity as a commodity (user data and engagement sold to advertisers). A socialist response to this might be to decommodify digital social spaces – imagining, for instance, a publicly owned social network or cooperative platforms where users have rights to their data and a say in governance (or even a share in profits).

Another category of digital labor is the hidden army of workers who support AI and digital services. These include content moderators who screen social media for violence or misinformation, data annotators who train machine-learning algorithms, and cloud infrastructure workers who keep servers running. These jobs are often outsourced to contractors in the Global South or performed under precarious conditions. For example, an investigation famously revealed that Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant relies on low-paid workers in India and other countries to listen to and transcribe voice recordings to improve the AI’s accuracy. Likewise, content moderators for Facebook and YouTube, tasked with reviewing traumatic content, often work for subcontractors in countries like the Philippines or Kenya, earning low wages for psychologically grueling work. From a socialist standpoint, this global division of digital labor represents a new form of imperialism and exploitation: high profits accrue to tech firms in Silicon Valley, while workers in poorer regions do the invisible labor at a fraction of the cost. This dynamic calls for international worker solidarity and for treating these digital workers as part of the same working class, deserving of rights and a fair share of the value they create, regardless of the borderless nature of the internet.

Digitization has also penetrated traditional workplaces in the form of algorithmic management and surveillance. Companies now use software to monitor worker productivity in real time, set performance targets, and even discipline or fire employees automatically. Amazon is notorious for its extensive surveillance of warehouse workers: scanners and sensors time every task, and an algorithm tracks each worker’s “rate.” If a worker’s productivity falls below a set benchmark, the system can issue automatic warnings and even terminations without a human supervisor’s intervention. In effect, Amazon’s workers find themselves managed by a machine that allows no flexibility or rest beyond what is programmed. Such practices have been criticized as digital Taylorism, extending Frederick Taylor’s time-and-motion time studies to a hyper-level where every second of the worker’s day is monitored. The socialist critique here is sharp: rather than technology reducing the burden on workers, it is used to squeeze ever more labor out of them and to weaken their autonomy. Workers essentially compete against the algorithm, and the incessant monitoring erodes dignity and on-the-job rights. In some cases, the algorithms are error-prone or overly harsh – there have been instances of Amazon’s automatic system firing workers for “low productivity” even if they had legitimate reasons (like medical issues) or were on break. Socialist analysis interprets this as a vivid example of how, under capitalism, digital tools serve as instruments of control and exploitation, rather than liberating workers from menial tasks. It underscores the need for strong labor protections (including regulation of workplace AI) and for giving workers collective control over how technology is implemented in their workplaces.

However, digital labor also presents opportunities in a socialist view. One is the potential to recognize new forms of labor and organize workers who have historically been dispersed or individualized. The rise of online worker forums and digital communication has enabled, for instance, far-flung contributors to open-source projects or crowdwork platforms (like Amazon Mechanical Turk) to share experiences and push for better conditions. It also challenges us to expand concepts like the “working class” to include people who may not have 9-to-5 factory jobs but who nonetheless perform productive labor for society (like contributing to Wikipedia or developing free software). These people may not be “paid” by an employer, but their work generates social value. Socialist theory, especially in its Marxist form, emphasizes the idea of unpaid labor contributing to surplus – an idea quite applicable to digital contexts. By highlighting the role of unpaid digital labor, socialists call for new models where such labor is either compensated or voluntarily contributed within a commons, rather than being captured by corporate profit.

The Gig Economy: Precarity and Alternatives

Perhaps the most visible shift in work under digital capitalism is the emergence of the gig economy – typified by platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, DoorDash, Airbnb, and many others. These platforms use apps and algorithms to connect workers (“gig workers”) with consumers on a per-task or freelance basis. Proponents often laud the gig economy for its flexibility and innovation. A socialist analysis, however, peels back the marketing language of “sharing” and “flexibility” to reveal an old pattern: workers with few rights, performing piecemeal labor under the control of profit-driven middlemen – essentially, day laborers with smartphones. Precarity is the defining feature of gig work. Drivers, couriers, or freelancers are typically classified as independent contractors rather than employees, meaning they lack basic labor protections like minimum wage guarantees, health benefits, paid leave, or the right to unionize. The platform sets the terms (often via algorithmic pricing and dispatch systems), and workers must accept what gigs they can get, with income highly unstable and often insufficient.

A food delivery driver transports orders for an app-based platform. Gig economy workers like food couriers often face low pay, unstable demand, and lack of labor protections, prompting socialist critiques that these platforms profit by shifting business risks onto precarious workers.

The gig economy’s rise is not a neutral outcome of technology, but rather, as Wendy Liu writes, “the inevitable result of the recent evolution of capitalism” in a context of weakened labor protections and abundant venture capital willing to subsidize growth. In other words, gig platforms expanded rapidly in the 2010s because economic conditions were ripe for a model that uses technology to bypass labor regulations and access a large pool of people desperate for income. One commentator argues that “the gig economy is just the latest means of using technology to get precarious workers to sacrifice their time in the service of capital”. Instead of secure jobs with benefits, tech companies offer apps that dispatch work to individuals on a per-task basis – but this “flexibility” mainly benefits the companies. They can scale a workforce up and down on demand without responsibility for those workers’ well-being. If there isn’t enough work, it’s the worker who sits idle (unpaid); if a worker gets sick or injured, the platform typically bears no liability. Power is firmly in the hands of the platform owners and investors, not the workers driving the cars or bicycles. As long as we accept this disempowerment of workers “in the name of greater efficiency,” the exploitation epitomized by the gig economy will persist.

Global examples abound. In China, which has one of the world’s largest gig workforces, food delivery and ride-hailing platforms have recruited over 200 million gig workers by government estimates. These workers, often rural migrants in cities, toil long hours for delivery apps like Meituan or e-commerce platforms’ delivery services. Their conditions grew so harsh – with reports of excessive hours and algorithmic penalties for late deliveries – that even China’s nominally communist government felt compelled to step in. In 2021 and 2024, Chinese regulators issued guidelines requiring gig platforms to pay at least local minimum wages, provide insurance, and allow adequate breaks for delivery riders. This can be seen as a state-led attempt to curb the worst exploitation in the gig economy. However, enforcement is uneven, and companies continuously look for loopholes. The Chinese case illustrates both the ubiquity of gig work under digital capitalism and the challenges of protecting workers who lack formal employment status. Even under a government that espouses socialist principles, the reality of a market-driven digital economy has been harshly capitalistic, necessitating reforms to protect gig workers’ basic rights.

In Western countries, gig workers have similarly struggled. Uber drivers in the United Kingdom won a landmark Supreme Court case in 2021 classifying them as “workers” entitled to minimum wage and holiday pay, but elsewhere, such as in California, Uber and other companies spent heavily to overturn legislation (through a ballot initiative, Proposition 22) that would have made drivers employees. The push-and-pull between gig companies and labor advocates continues. From a socialist perspective, merely tweaking the gig economy with minor regulations is not enough – a deeper reorganization is needed to ensure workers are not at the mercy of platform capitalists. Two main alternatives are floated: unionization and platform cooperatives. Unionization efforts (for example, the formation of rideshare driver unions or informal associations in various cities) can help gig workers collectively bargain for better pay and conditions. Yet true collective bargaining is hard when workers are legally contractors. This is why some socialists promote the idea of platform cooperativism: creating gig platforms that are owned and governed by the workers (or users) themselves, rather than by distant shareholders. If drivers or delivery couriers owned the app through which they get work, they could democratically set fair rates, decide on working conditions, and share the profits. It’s an ambitious model but not unheard of – there have been attempts like driver-owned ride-hailing apps (for instance, the Drivers Cooperative in New York City, founded in 2021) and cooperatively owned food delivery networks (such as CoopCycle, a federation of bike delivery co-ops in Europe). As an article in Jacobin put it, “Driver-owned apps could end Uber’s exploitative reign over the ride-share market,” highlighting that technology itself isn’t the enemy; it’s the ownership and profit model that determines whether an app-based service exploits its workers or empowers them.

Of course, platform cooperatives face steep challenges competing against venture-capital-fueled giants. A socialist approach might therefore also involve public policy – for example, cities or states could introduce regulations to favor cooperative platforms, or even launch publicly owned platforms for certain services (imagine a municipally owned rideshare app that treats drivers as public employees or contractors with full benefits). The broader point is that the gig economy does not have to be organized on a capitalist basis. The same digital tools that enable Uber to algorithmically manage a fleet of drivers could be used by a democratic organization of those drivers to efficiently meet transportation needs without exploitation. The technology is agnostic; it is the social relations around it that matter. By reimagining those social relations – through stronger labor laws, collective ownership, and democratic control – we can retain the genuine innovations of gig platforms (convenient services, real-time apps) while eliminating the precarity and harsh conditions for workers.

Digital Platforms, Big Data, and the Revival of Economic Planning

Beyond the world of work, socialism in the digital age also poses questions about how entire production systems and economies might be organized. Under capitalism, we have seen the rise of enormous digital platforms and tech conglomerates (Google, Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba, etc.), which command resources and data on a scale that rivals or exceeds many governments. These corporations operate with a profit motive, but interestingly, internally they resemble centrally planned economies in certain respects. For instance, Amazon’s e-commerce empire is coordinated by sophisticated data-driven systems: its inventory management and logistics are not left to a market mechanism but are orchestrated in a top-down manner using algorithms, databases, and AI – essentially a form of computerized planning. As one analysis notes, “Walmart built its empire by using data collection and logistical strategy to keep its suppliers responsive and low-cost,” coordinating production and distribution in real time across a vast network. Walmart’s ability to provide a huge variety of goods at all times is credited to its “cybernetic planning” – harnessing big data to update supply chains and inventory as demand changes. Likewise, Amazon and Alibaba have developed proprietary systems to manage warehouses, shipments, and sales globally, often more efficiently than if each step were left to ad hoc market decisions. In effect, these corporate giants practice a form of in-house socialism: they plan and coordinate economic activity deliberately, rather than relying on spontaneous market adjustments, and they demonstrate that planning can handle massive scale when aided by modern computing.

This ironic reality has revived interest in the old socialist idea of economic planning – but now turbocharged by “big data” and AI. During the 20th century, the socialist calculation debate (between economists like Oskar Lange and Friedrich Hayek) argued whether a planned economy could ever match the efficiency of markets in allocating resources. Hayek and others claimed that without price signals, planners would be overwhelmed by information problems. However, advocates of “digital socialism” today point out that we now have technologies that early socialists could only dream of: high-speed computers, vast data-collection networks (the internet of things, digital payment systems, etc.), and algorithms that can optimize complex systems in real time. Evgeny Morozov, a prominent writer on technology, asks pointedly: What opportunities does the new feedback infrastructure of data capitalism offer for non-market forms of social coordination? The very same “feedback infrastructure” – meaning the ability to gather data from millions of devices and transactions instantly – could, in theory, be used by a socialist economy to make informed decisions about production and distribution without the anarchy of market competition.

A famous historical example anticipating this is Project Cybersyn in Chile. In the early 1970s, Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile sought to implement a form of computerized economic management for its nationalized industries. Led by British cybernetician Stafford Beer, Project Cybersyn built a network of telex machines feeding factory production data into a central mainframe in Santiago, with a futuristic Operations Room for viewing economic indicators and making decisions. While Cybersyn was cut short by the 1973 military coup, it demonstrated the feasibility of real-time data collection for economic planning, and it remains an inspiration for modern leftists thinking about “digital socialism.” In today’s terms, one could imagine a public system where, for example, supply and demand information across the economy is transparently collected (perhaps via a national digital platform) and production plans are adjusted algorithmically to meet human needs with minimal waste. This wouldn’t necessarily mean a super-centralized Soviet-style plan – some propose decentralized, participatory planning where local units or even individuals contribute to setting priorities, facilitated by digital communication networks.=

However, a socialist approach to the digital economy is not simply about emulating corporate planning or resurrecting command centers like Cybersyn’s Opsroom. It’s also about democratizing the governance of digital infrastructure and ensuring data and technology are used for public good. One concrete proposal along these lines is to treat certain digital platforms as public utilities. For example, social media networks or search engines, which have characteristics of natural monopolies, could be regulated or even owned by the public, ensuring they serve users’ interests rather than purely chasing advertising revenue. There are debates about whether to break up Big Tech monopolies or to nationalize them; a socialist perspective leans toward bringing critical digital infrastructures under some form of social control. This could prevent abuses like surveillance-for-profit (as critiqued in Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism”) and could align innovation with societal needs (for instance, using AI to solve environmental and health problems rather than just to serve ads or maximize consumer clicks).

Another crucial element is the idea of digital commons. The digital age has given rise to new commons in the form of open-source software, Wikipedia and other wikis, open-access research, and creative commons media. These are resources produced and maintained by communities rather than by private firms, and they are freely available for others to use and build upon. They exemplify a non-capitalist mode of production that thrives on cooperation and sharing. As one definition puts it, digital commons are “information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between a community and that tend to be non-exclusive (generally freely available to third parties). They are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity.” This description highlights that the logic of commons-based production is fundamentally different from that of the market: the aim is not exchange value or profit, but use-value and broad accessibility. In many ways, this mirrors socialist ideals. Projects like Wikipedia – created and maintained by volunteers around the world, with no profit motive – demonstrate that highly complex and useful systems can be built without hierarchical corporate control. Free/open-source software (like the Linux operating system, which runs a large share of servers and smartphones globally) shows that innovation can flourish in a collaborative, peer-to-peer fashion. Socialist theorists often point to such examples as proof of concept that human beings don’t require the incentives of private profit to produce valuable work; given the right conditions, people contribute to commons out of intrinsic motivation, solidarity, or reputational incentives. The challenge is how to extend these models to areas where material costs are significant (software and digital content are relatively easy because copying bits is cheap). But even in more capital-intensive endeavors, there are emerging models – for instance, the concept of open-source appropriate technology, or cooperatively managed “fab labs” for manufacturing.

In summary, the opportunities posed by digital technologies, from a socialist perspective, include: the ability to plan and coordinate economic activity more rationally (using data and automation to meet needs efficiently); the possibility of greatly reducing necessary labor while maintaining or increasing output (the foundation for a post-scarcity economy); new forms of democratic ownership and control (platform coops, public digital utilities); and the expansion of the commons (open knowledge and technology accessible to all). The challenges are equally significant: under capitalism, these same technologies are used to concentrate wealth (as seen with Big Tech monopolies), to extend exploitative labor practices (gig work, surveillance), and to commodify every aspect of digital life (from personal data to online behavior). The socialist task is to flip this script – to seize the means of digital production, so to speak, and ensure that automation and information networks benefit the many, not the few.

Toward an Equitable Digital Future: Applying Socialist Theory Today

What would a more equitable digital future look like if informed by socialist and communist principles? Bringing together the threads of the analysis above, we can sketch some key elements:

• Democratic Control of Technology: Rather than tech development being driven by the whims of billionaires or profit-hungry corporations, society at large (through democratic institutions) would have a say in guiding innovation. This could mean public tech agencies setting research agendas (for example, focusing on green technology and public health over ad optimization), and workers having input into how new tech is implemented in their workplaces. Strong labor unions or worker councils in tech industries could negotiate the introduction of AI and automation in ways that protect jobs or compensate workers with shorter hours and retraining. The principle is that those affected by technology – workers and communities – should participate in decisions about its use.

• Social Ownership of Digital Infrastructure: Key digital platforms and infrastructure might be owned by the public or by users and workers cooperatively. Imagine if Facebook were a user cooperative or a public service – surveillance advertising could be abolished or minimized, privacy could be strengthened, and the platform could be oriented toward facilitating genuine connection and knowledge-sharing. Similarly, an e-commerce platform owned by producers and consumers collectively could ensure fair prices and labor standards throughout the supply chain. Public broadband and telecommunications, already present in some countries and cities, could guarantee universal internet access as a basic right, preventing digital divides. In socialist theory, social ownership doesn’t necessarily mean the state running everything – it can take various forms (state, municipal, cooperative, commons-based). The digital realm offers new possibilities for hybrid models of ownership, such as data trusts or community-owned data cooperatives, where people collectively decide how their data can be used and benefit from its value.

• Universal Protections for All Workers (Including Gig and Digital Workers): A socialist-informed digital economy would erase the artificial distinctions that have been used to strip labor protections. Whether someone is a full-time employee, a part-time freelancer, or a crowdworker clicking tasks online, they would be guaranteed a base level of income security, health care, and social benefits. This might be achieved through broad policies like a universal basic income or universal basic services (free healthcare, education, etc.), which decouple survival from having a traditional job. It could also include legal reforms to recognize gig workers as employees or create a new category of worker with rights and benefits. The goal is to eliminate the precarity that currently plagues gig and digital labor. If automation does reduce the need for labor in aggregate, socialist theory would advocate redistributing work in the form of shorter hours for all (rather than some being overworked and others jobless) and maintaining livelihoods through either guaranteed jobs or unconditional incomes. Essentially, no one should be left without means of living just because technology made their particular job redundant – the gains of efficiency should be shared, not concentrated.

• Planning for Human Needs: In a socialist future, the immense power of computing and data would be used to serve societal needs deliberately. For example, climate change mitigation could be tackled by planned changes in production and consumption – coordinating shifts to renewable energy, efficient transit, etc., in a way that markets thus far have failed to do. Large-scale projects (like transitioning to sustainable agriculture or responding to public health crises) could be managed with AI-assisted planning tools, ensuring resources go where they’re most needed. Importantly, planning doesn’t imply a dictatorial top-down approach; modern proposals emphasize participatory planning, where citizens have input at various levels, and transparency is maintained via open data. Digital technology can facilitate this by allowing millions of people to communicate preferences (as seen in experiments with online participatory budgeting and policy-making platforms). This way, the economy can be re-oriented from the profit motive to the fulfillment of social needs, with digital tools helping to balance supply and demand and avoid problems like overproduction or shortages more efficiently than chaotic markets do.

• Cultivation of the Digital Commons: A continued expansion of freely shared knowledge and cultural goods would be a cornerstone. Governments could mandate open access to publicly funded research, support open-source software development, and incentivize the creation of educational and creative content that is available to all. The commons offers a way to resist the enclosure and commodification of information. For instance, instead of proprietary algorithms kept as trade secrets, important algorithms (like those guiding social media feeds or search results) could be open-source and auditable by the public. This transparency aligns with socialist calls for overcoming the alienation and mystification in capitalist production – people should understand and control the tools that shape their lives, rather than being subjected to opaque black-box systems.

In conclusion, the relationship between socialism (and communism) and the digital age is one of both critique and possibility. Socialist theory provides a powerful critique of how digital technology is being used under capitalism – to exploit workers (through gig work and digital labor), to deepen surveillance and control, and to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few tech oligarchs. But socialist theory also illuminates the possibilities of the digital revolution: the potential to free humanity from mindless labor, to plan economies rationally and democratically, and to share the fruits of knowledge and technology as common wealth. History shows that technology alone does not guarantee progress; it matters who owns it and whose interests it serves. The automation of production and the advent of AI could herald a new epoch of luxury and leisure for all – or a dystopia of unemployment and surveillance – depending on whether a socialist or capitalist logic prevails. The gig economy and platform technologies could either continue the “race to the bottom” for workers globally, or be restructured to empower workers and consumers in a cooperative model. Big data and networks could feed an authoritarian surveillance-capitalism, or instead help coordinate a democratic socialist economy that is responsive to people’s needs and environmental limits.

For a more equitable digital future, the essay’s pro-socialist argument ultimately calls for collective action and policy: stronger labor organizing among tech and gig workers, public regulation of tech monopolies, experiments in cooperative platforms, and political movements that push for social ownership and democratic governance of digital resources. Around the world, there are nascent signs of this – from tech worker unions, to cities building open-source software for public services, to countries debating digital nationalizations. These efforts face stiff resistance from the current powers that be, but they represent the struggle to ensure the digital age is shaped by and for the many, not the few. In the words of one commentator, we must be “bold enough to imagine a better world: a world where economic gains are shared equally, and where technology is used not to divide and control us but instead to truly liberate us”. That vision – of technology in the service of humanity’s liberation – is at the heart of the socialist perspective on the digital age.