“ In the end, an inhuman power rules over everything (Marx) The arrival of AI renders capital increasingly autonomous from the human ”
End-Game Capitalism: Neomechanisation & Autonomisation
End-game Capitalism posits that the terminal phase of the current economic order is not merely a passive, deterministic collapse ("End-Stage") but a deliberate, strategic maneuver by elite actors to secure a definitive victory. Unlike historical epochs defined by the exploitation of labor, this "End-Game" is defined by the decoupling from it: utilizing Artificial General Intelligence and automation to achieve a 'Mechanist Win-Condition' where the ruling class no longer depends on the working population for production or power. The trajectory of endgame capitalism is a techno-feudal or exterminist state, where the masses are rendered not just exploited, but structurally obsolete — reduced from essential engines of the economy to manageable "human externalities" within a resource-constrained, post-labor world that serves only the elite.
The endgame is predicated on a qualitative leap from machines as industrial tools to agentic entities. Neomechanisation marks the transition from kinetic machines to machine intelligences, updating Mumford’s "Megamachine" to industrialize cognition itself. Autonomisation advances beyond rigid assembly-line automation to deploy sovereign "AI agents" capable of self-directed action. If uncontrolled, this convergence triggers Nick Land’s scenario 'Capital Escapes' and the rise of Scott Alexander’s "Ascended Economy"—a closed loop of hyper-efficient value exchange where machines produce for other machines, decoupling the future of the economy from human existence.
❝ From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ❞
– George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four / 1984 (1948)
Techno-Economic History
Mechanisation > Neomechanisation: the shift from the "First Machine Age," which focused on tools that amplified physical power and overcame physical limits (steam engines, cranes), to the "Second Machine Age," which focuses on tools that amplify and eventually replace cognitive function. Neomechanisation is the industrialization of thought itself, turning intelligence into a utility and effectively outsourcing the defining characteristic of the human species to synthetic entities.
Automation > Autonomisation: the critical threshold where systems move from being tools (controlled by human operators for human goals) to agents (pursuing their own sub-goals and strategies). Automation implies efficiency; Autonomisation implies the loss of the "off-switch" and the onset of recursive self-direction. It is the moment the tool becomes the user, and the human becomes the managed resource or the obstacle.
The 1st - 3rd Industrial Revolutions: These historical epochs represent the preparatory phases of Neomechanisation. 1st (Steam/Mechanization): Replaced human muscle with thermal energy. 2nd (Electricity/Mass Production): Rationalized the workflow (Taylorism) and centralized production. 3rd (Digital/Computing): Introduced logic processing and basic automation Crucially, throughout these three revolutions, the "Capital-Labor" bargain remained intact: machines were tools that required human operators, and technology generally created new, higher-value cognitive roles for the humans it displaced from physical drudgery. They augmented the worker rather than rendering them structurally obsolete.
The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR): Popularized by Klaus Schwab, this concept describes the current phase of Neomechanisation, characterized by the fusion of the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It involves the integration of AI, IoT, and biotechnology into "Cyber-Physical Systems." In the context of Endgame Capitalism, the 4IR is not just an upgrade but a qualitative break: it builds the infrastructure for Total Surveillance and Algorithmic Governance. It turns the entire world (factories, supply chains, cities, and bodies) into a machine-readable data field, preparing the ground for the automation of management and decision-making itself.
Criticality
The Iron Cage (Weber) & The Silicon Cage (Ramsahoye): Max Weber’s "Iron Cage" described the trap of bureaucratic rationality that constrains human freedom in modern societies. The Silicon Cage is its digital perfection: a system of algorithmic governance, predictive policing, and behavioral nudging that is so efficient and pervasive that human agency is rendered impossible. It locks society into a rigid, optimized stasis where deviation is mathematically impossible, creating a prison without walls where the inmate is monitored and corrected by the environment itself.
Runaway World (Giddens): Anthony Giddens describes a world defined by manufactured risk, where human-made systems (global finance, climate change, the internet) have become so complex that they escape human control. These systems evolve independently of their creators, creating a "runaway world" that no single government or institution can rein in. It is the realization that the driver's seat is empty, and the vehicle is accelerating.
The Second Worst Mistake Humanity Ever Made (Bregman, Ramsahoye): referencing Jared Diamond's claim that agriculture was the "worst mistake" (bringing disease and hierarchy), Rutger Bregman suggests the second worst is the unthinking handover of civilizational control to opaque, unaligned digital intelligences. We are trading our long-term autonomy and understanding of the world for short-term convenience and efficiency, risking a future where we are helpless dependents on a system we no longer understand or control.
Age of AI
AGI Economic Definition (OpenAI): The definition of Artificial General Intelligence as "autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable work." This definition explicitly frames AGI not just as "smart," but as a replacement for human economic utility. It signals the total obsolescence of human labor, implying a future where humans are no longer the primary engines of the economy, necessitating a complete restructuring of how value and resources are distributed.
The Intelligence Age (Altman & Crawford): represents the Techno-Optimist Teleology that justifies the transition to End-Game Capitalism. Synthesizing Sam Altman’s vision of "The Intelligence Age" with Jason Crawford’s "Roots of Progress" philosophy, it frames Neomechanisation not as a crisis of obsolescence, but as the ultimate liberation of humanity through "Super-Abundance."
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The Thesis: It argues that "intelligence" is the fundamental bottleneck of civilization. By commodifying intelligence (making it too cheap to meter via AI), we unlock the ability to solve all physical problems—climate change, disease, and poverty.
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The Narrative Function: Within the framework of End-Game Capitalism, this serves as the legitimizing ideology. It reframes the "Mechanist Win-Condition" (the removal of human labor) as a moral imperative. It posits that the disruption is merely the temporary friction necessary to achieve a post-scarcity world where "personal AI teams" allow anyone to create massive value, provided we maintain the industrial agency and "solutionism" (Crawford) required to build the infrastructure.
Agential Inequality (Gabriel): Iason Gabriel highlights the disparity in who possesses and controls AI agents. We face a future where the wealthy have armies of superintelligent digital representatives optimizing their lives, negotiating contracts, and managing their health, while the poor are managed by agents—subject to algorithmic denial of services and surveillance. This creates a new class divide not just of wealth, but of agency and capability.
Gradual Disempowerment (Kulveit et al.): argues that humanity will lose control over the future not through a violent coup, but through a rational, voluntary process of delegation. Driven by intense economic and military competition, actors are structurally incentivized to hand over increasingly critical decisions to AI systems that are faster and cheaper than humans. As we outsource our cognitive labor, human institutions progressively lose the capacity to understand or manage the complex systems they rely on, leading to a state of enfeeblement where we are technically the "owners" but practically the helpless dependents of a machine civilization we can no longer steer.
The Intelligence Curse (Drago & Laine): adapting the "Resource Curse" theory to the AI era, this concept posits that AGI acts like a "super-resource" (like oil) that decouples wealth generation from human labor. In a pre-AGI economy, elites must invest in the population (education, health) because human workers create value; in an AGI economy, infinite wealth is generated by server farms, rendering the citizenry economically irrelevant. This structural shift breaks the "Democratic Bargain," incentivizing a transition to Techno-Authoritarianism where the state no longer needs the consent or taxation of the people to survive, treating them instead as a fiscal liability to be managed or suppressed.
References
— Peter Frase Four Futures Jacobin (2011)
— Klaus Schwab The Fourth Industrial Revolution World Economic Forum (2016)
— Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
— Anthony Giddens Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives (1999)
— Jared Diamond The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race Discover Magazine (1987)
— OpenAI Charter OpenAI (2018)
— Sam Altman The Intelligence Age (2024)
— Intelligence Age The Roots of Progress Institute (2025)
— Iason Gabriel et al Agentic Inequality (2025)