3725. Criticism of the block universe theory by philsophers and scientists

 

3724. The Theory of the Block Universe

3723. Intellectual Foundations of Ecocentric Socialism

By Kamran Nayeri, October 1, 2026

Photo: www.vecteezy.com

Six existential threats face humanity: global warming and catastrophic climate change (Nayeri, August 3, 2026), the Sixth Extinction (Nayeri, May 14, 2017), recurrent pandemics (Nayeri, March 19, 2020), nuclear holocaust, and artificial intelligence.

What are their root causes, and how can we resolve them?

I have already discussed each one; most recently, artificial intelligence (Nayeri, September 22, 2026), arguing that they stem from anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization. To resolve them, I have argued that humanity must transcend it toward Ecocentric Socialism (Nayeri, July 4, 20210. 

I have published several essays describing what Ecocentric Socialism is and why it is needed as a theory of socialism for the twenty-first century. Still, some of my readers misunderstand it. For instance, a socialist website editor and publisher whom I very much respect has classified my essay “Why Ecocentric Socialism?” (published in English as “The Case for Ecocentric Socialism”) under “Nature” and “Environment,” not under “theories” and “socialism!” Although my readers are generally socialists, there has been no reaction to these essays and my book “Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism.” Not even a question, let alone a book review or a critique. I could dismiss this as what I fear is true: a general demoralization among socialists, accompanied by a lack of interest in the theoretical causes of socialism's demise in much of the world. Still, I decided to write this essay to outline the intellectual bases of Ecocentric Socialism in a new and well-documented form, hoping it may raise some interest in the issues I tackle. Let me be clear: I am arguing that Marx’s nineteenth-century theories of society and history have been outdated for decades! I aim to respond to Marx’s and Engels’ admission of their shortcomings while maintaining Marx’s focus on alienation and his theory of socialism/communism as a society free of it.

As I have argued in my earlier writings, Marx’s theory of society and history, historical materialism, was of necessity anthropocentric by construction, setting aside nature, an essential part of reality for any theory of human society. In this essay, I examine how Marx’s theory was constructed, its limits, and how I propose to develop it by considering what we know about humanity and its connection to the rest of nature, to arrive at a superior theory of society and history. This theory replaces Marx’s materialism with animist ecological materialism and Marx’s vision of socialism with a very different vision. ‘

I have rejected the Greens’ argument that these anthropogenic threats are rooted in industrial society. They overlook that industrialization historically emerged from the capitalist mode of production in England from 1760 to 1830 and spread accordingly.

I have also criticized the Marxist socialists and ecosocialists who argue that capitalism is the root cause. Even those who admit deficiencies in Marx’s theory still fall back on his nineteenth-century theories of capitalism and socialism because they do not question how he constructed them. They also ignore that ecological crises date back to the rise of civilization: Sumer, the earliest civilization, collapsed because of soil salinization, and ecological crises have contributed to the collapse of most civilizations since (Butzer & Endfield, 2012; Douglas, P. M. J. et al., 2016). Clearly, the fact that capitalist societies are not ecologically sound does not prove that ecological crises are rooted in capitalist dynamics and labor-capital conflict alone.

Greens do not consider social relations generated by the dominant mode of production in their explanation, and Marxists do not consider the historical roots of malignant human relations with the rest of nature.

The structure of Marx's theory

I agree with István Mészáros (1970, p. 93) that “the Manuscripts of 1844…lay down the foundations of the Marxian system, centered on the concept of alienation.”

Marx’s theory centers on alienation (estrangement) in the capitalist mode of production, first presented in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. He identifies alienation from nature and social alienation (the worker's alienation from the product of his labor, the labor process, other people, and the self).

Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production, Das Kapital, uncovers these forms of alienation and the dynamics that can lead to overcoming them through a socialist revolution led by the working class to open up the road to transition to socialism/communism, a society free of all forms of alienation.

As Mészáros writes, in the Manuscripts, Marx’s theory of alienation has “three fundamental terms of reference,” man, nature, and “industry” or “productive activity.” (ibid. p. 103) In a diagram (ibid. p. 104), Mészáros shows their relationship as a triangle, with each element at one tip and arrows showing “action upon” from one to the other. Thus, both man and “industry” affect nature, while nature affects both man and industry. But “industry” is man’s productive activity. Thus, man and his activity affect nature, and nature affects both.  Thus, Mészáros writes:

“As we can see, here we have a dialectical reciprocity… between all three members of the relationship, which means that ‘man’ is not only the creator of industry but also its product. (Similarly, of course, he is both product and creator of ‘truly anthropological nature’—above all in himself, but also outside of him, insofar as he leaves his mark on nature. And since man’s relation to nature is mediated through an alienated form of productive activity, ‘anthropological nature’ outside man bears the marks of this alienation in an ever-expanding form, graphically demonstrated by the intensity of pollution that menaces the very existence of mankind.” (ibid. 104).

Thus, Mészáros shows how Marx’s theory of alienation in the capitalist mode of production might help explain the existential crises of our time.  

Alienation as a historical problem

As Mészáros notes, alienation “is an eminently a historical concept, if man is ‘alienated,’ he must be alienated from something, as a result of certain causes.” (ibid., p. 36) Thus, he began to trace Marx’s discussion of alienation in the capitalist mode of production. My main interest is how Marx treated “man” and “nature” in developing his theory of society and history. 

In brief, I will argue that Marx excluded nature or objectified nature in his theoretical constructions, thereby undermining their utility.

 A year later, in Theses on Feuerbach (1845a), Marx says, “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” (Thesis 6) Thus, he excluded nature in what he called “the essence of man” to emphasize social relations.

In 1845-46, in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels outlined their theory of society and history.

They begin with the first premise:

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus, the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.” (Marx and Engels, 1845-46, my emphasis)

Thus, Marx and Engels consciously set aside nature in historical materialism even though Marx still argued that nature is the source of all wealth in his Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx, 1875): “Labor is not the source of all wealth. “Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values.”

Marx separates human labor from the rest of nature here to emphasize the value created by human labor, but it is self-evident that humans are part of nature. Thus, all wealth comes from nature through the labor of the laboring masses.

Marx also objectified nature in Das Kapital. His theory of exploitation in Volume 1 treats “raw materials” as contributing nothing to surplus value. However, I have shown that in the case of the meat industry, farm animals raised and slaughtered certainly contribute to the surplus value produced in that industry and by cheapening the food in the wage basket, increase the surplus value economy-wide (Nayeri, December 31, 2022).

I have also suggested why Marx and Engels had to set nature aside in historical materialism and future theoretical developments. They did so because, in the mid-nineteenth century, they knew little about the natural conditions of life on Earth and humanity’s relationship to them. They had to rely on the written history of the most recent 3000 years of civilization, that is, the class society, and class struggle as the force to move from one mode of production to another. They also had no way to know scientifically what constitutes human nature (Nayeri, July 30, 2026).

Thus, historical materialism is a limited anthropocentric theory, as is Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production and socialism. In these theories, nature is objectified, that is, alienated, and set aside, unlike the “dialectical interactions” in Mészáros’s discussion of the 1844 Manuscripts.

What follows is an outline of how I have attempted to reconstruct a theory of society and history, hence of capitalism and socialism, consistent with Marx’s intent to build these on the basis of a theory of alienation and socialism as a process to create socialism as a society free of alienation.

The origin of history and of alienation

We now know the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and evidence suggests life may have started within the first few hundred million years, around 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. The oldest known fossils date back to about 3.7 billion years.

For estimating Earth's age, the crucial breakthrough was radiometric dating.[1] By the early 20th century, physicists understood radioactive decay well enough to use it as a geological clock. By measuring radioactive elements and their decay products in rocks and meteorites, scientists eventually established approximately when the Earth formed. The same techniques have been used to date fossils and date approximately when life emerged on Earth and what it looked like.

These techniques began to mature in the mid-twentieth century, boosting fields such as biology, anthropology, and archeology. Human history became a small recent part of natural history.

Thus, we can reconstruct a theory of society and history considering these findings. The Homo genus appeared approximately 2.5 million years ago. Homo Sapiens, humans, appeared 300,000 years ago. Farming began approximately 12,000 years ago. The first civilizations emerged about 5,000 years ago.

Thus, humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 2.5 million years. Only a tiny fraction of this time (0.00048%), the last 12,000 years, has turned to production, mostly agriculture, and in the past 250 years increasingly turned to industrialization. Civilization, a fancy word for class societies, is only 5,000 years old. Our ecological crises began with the advent of farming and the expansion of civilization (Nayeri, October 15, 2018).  

This brings us to the origins of alienation. Researchers in cultural anthropology have found that hunter-gatherer bands saw themselves as part of their ecosystem and as kin with other beings.  Some were animist: the worldview in which non-humans, including other animals, plants, rivers, and even weather systems, possess a spiritual soul, or personal agency. Others (native of Australia, for example) are totemist, the worldview in which individuals or groups feel a spiritual connection or kinship with a specific animal, plant, or natural entity (Scott, 2025; Swancutt, 2019; Poirier, 2013), “Animism”. I use the term ecocentric for these worldviews. For 2.5 million years, our ancestors were ecocentric.

The world-historical change in humanity’s worldview from ecocentrism to anthropocentrism, that is, from being one with nature to becoming alienated from it, has been ignored by socialists and ecosocialists for the past 170 years!

However, alienation is central to Marx’s theory, especially his conception of socialism/communism as the social form of alienation from nature and social alienation.

This ignorance is encoded in historical materialism as a mid-nineteenth-century anthropocentric theory of society and history which lacks any attention to the so-called “pre-history” of humanity, that is, humanity before the rise of class societies.

Anthropocentrism as alienation from nature emerged with the rise of farming, which required domestication of animals and plants. That is, alienation from nature was a prerequisite for the farmer's exploitation of them. The farm itself is an artificial ecosystem entirely dependent on the farmer's daily care, which set the farmer in opposition to the wild nature surrounding the farm. Thus began the unceasing drive to dominate and control nature. Hence, it set the stage for ecological crises of all kinds.

Once farmers could produce a consistent economic surplus, social differentiation began to develop, leading to private property, patriarchy, and the state. All forms of social alienation.

Ecocentric Socialism

Thus, socialism as a society free of alienation can be attained only through a combined revolution: a socialist revolution against capitalism and a cultural revolution to replace anthropocentrism with ecocentrism, with all implications of that transition. I call this Ecocentric Socialism. In important ways, Ecocentric Socialism differs from and is superior to hitherto theories of socialism and ecosocialism.

Animistic ecological materialism

Materialism as an ontological theory concerns the kinds of things that exist. In its simplest form, it is a claim with two aspects. It holds that only material things exist; that is, the world is made up of material things, and other things, like the mind and consciousness, arise from material interactions and depend on physical processes, including those of the human brain and nervous system (Brown & Ladyman, 2020). In the nineteenth century, philosophical materialism stood against naturalism, that is, the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted:

Marx criticized materialism: “The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively.” (Thesis 1) Further he wrote:

“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question” (Thesis 2).

He added:

“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”

Marx concluded: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” (Thesis 11, emphasis in original)

Thus, Marx’s materialism included human praxis, both to confirm the truth of things and to change material reality. In Marx’s materialism, consciousness plays a key role.

This aspect of Marx’s philosophy has created controversy around the key concept of base and superstructure (Marx, 1859).  

In Anti-Dühring and other writings, Friedrich Engels expanded the concept to include ideological forms such as philosophy, religion, and art within the superstructure, creating a more heterogeneous and all-encompassing model. The Second International and later the Stalinist Soviet Union codified it as a fundamental tenet of dialectical materialism. This prompted Engels and later Marxists like Georgi Plekhanov and Louis Althusser to introduce concepts such as "determination in the last instance", "relative autonomy", and "overdetermination" to account for the apparent independence of superstructural elements. Other recent theories propose that superstructures must have their own distinct systems of production, which grants them a degree of autonomy and can place them in conflict with the base. Marxists, like the Western Marxist tradition like Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, and Raymond Williams, expressed dissatisfaction with the rigid, stratified model. They developed alternative concepts such as hegemony and social totality to offer a more dynamic, interactive understanding of social formations, often critiquing or rejecting the base-superstructure model in its received form.

Evolving scientific understanding of physical reality

Since the seventeenth century, Materialism has kept close to scientific development. Scientific understanding of the world has evolved tremendously since the classical Newtonian view. Newton's universe contained matter in the form of bodies, absolute space, absolute time, and the force of gravity between physical bodies. Reality appeared fundamentally mechanical. If you knew the positions, velocities, and forces acting on things, in principle you could calculate their future behavior. This encouraged the famous clockwork-universe conception. Matter was regarded as relatively passive, while universal laws governed motion.

The nineteenth century profoundly complicated the mechanical picture. Faraday and Maxwell showed that electricity and magnetism could be understood in terms of fields extending through space. This was a major conceptual shift. Reality became particles and continuous fields permeating space. Light itself turned out to be an electromagnetic wave. The idea of an invisible field became fundamental to physics.

Einstein's theories of relativity produced another revolution. Special relativity (1905) showed that space and time aren't independent. They form a unified spacetime, and measurements of time and distance depend upon the observer's state of motion.

General relativity (1915) went still further. Gravity was viewed as dynamic spacetime curved by matter and energy.

So, the old Newtonian picture, matter exists in space and time, became something closer to: matter, energy, space, and time form a coupled physical system. This was an enormous change in the concept of reality.

Quantum mechanics challenged this view of nature. Max Planck introduced the idea of energy quantization in 1900, laying the groundwork for future developments. Albert Einstein expanded on Planck's ideas in 1905 by explaining the photoelectric effect, demonstrating that light can behave as both a wave and a particle. Niels Bohr further developed quantum theory with his 1913 model of the hydrogen atom, which incorporated quantized energy levels. Other significant contributors include Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac, who helped formalize quantum mechanics mathematically.

Quantum mechanics demonstrated that at microscopic scales, quantum entities exhibit wave-particle duality, superposition, quantization, interference, probabilistic measurement outcomes, and entanglement.

It showed that an electron's properties don't have a definite value independent of measurement in the classical sense. This led to competing interpretations of what quantum mechanics says about reality: Copenhagen-type interpretations emphasize measurement and operational predictions; many-worlds interpretation treats the quantum state as fundamental and avoids collapse; Bohmian mechanics retains particles with definite positions guided by a quantum wave; objective-collapse theories propose that quantum states sometimes physically collapse.

Importantly, physicists largely agree about the experimental predictions while disagreeing about the underlying ontology.

This distinction is important for my philosophical argument: the failure of nineteenth-century mechanical materialism does not necessarily imply the failure of materialism itself. It may instead require a much richer conception of what "material" or "physical" reality means.

These ideas challenge Marxian philosophical materialism. Quantum mechanics introduces non-deterministic elements into the nature of reality, making it probabilistic and stochastic. conflicting with materialism's often deterministic framework. Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon in which the quantum state of each particle in a group cannot be described independently of the others, even when the particles are separated by a great distance. Quantum entanglement lies at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics: it is a primary feature of quantum mechanics absent from classical mechanics. This challenges the materialist view of objects' separateness and individuality, suggesting an interconnectedness that materialism struggles to explain.

Quantum tunneling, barrier penetration, or simply tunneling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, should not be passable because the object lacks sufficient energy to surmount it. Tunneling results from the wave nature of matter and quantum indeterminacy.

Such discoveries have reintroduced panpsychism into discussions of nature: the view that mind or conscious experience is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, including all physical reality.  Panpsychism is also described as a theory that the mind is a fundamental feature that exists throughout the universe. It is one of the oldest theories in the philosophy of mind, possibly overlapping in some interpretations with animism, the spiritual or religious worldview of many indigenous societies, though panpsychism is usually regarded as a philosophical (metaphysical) stance. Physicists and cosmologists increasingly believe that the universe itself must be viewed in a relational sense.

As I discussed above, these views align with animist views of nature found among hunter-gatherers and indigenous cultures.

 

“The idea that existence is fundamentally relational – that nothing exists in complete isolation – is not new to philosophy. But today, the sciences are independently arriving at the same conclusion through their own rigorous methods. Across disciplines as different as physics and meteorology, the emerging picture is consistent: the universe’s deep structure is one of interconnection, mutual influence, and dynamic interdependence. To understand this, we need to look carefully at three major scientific frameworks: the theory of relativity, quantum field theory, and chaos theory (Philosophy Institute, no date).”

The above opens an intriguing philosophical possibility for animistic materialism: rather than opposing "materialism" to "agency," one could ask whether agency, relationship, emergence and process can themselves be understood as properties of a dynamic, relational, material reality rather than as properties belonging exclusively to human minds.

Conclusion

Ecocentric Socialism provides a theory of society and history in which humanity is deeply integrated into the rest of nature, thereby responding to the deficiencies Marx and Engels admitted in historical materialism.  It revises Marx’s nineteenth-century philosophical materialism with animist ecological materialism informed by developments in the natural and social sciences. It offers a theory of alienation from nature rooted in systematic domestication and farming beginning about 12,000 years ago, resulting in systematic economic surplus, social differentiation, and alienation. Rather than limiting historical agency to humans alone, it considers the ecological interaction of animate and inanimate nature since the emergence of life; in class societies, it includes the struggle of social classes as well as non-class struggles inside and outside civilization, including the struggle for the rights of Mother Earth and nonhuman beings. It provides a sound basis for understanding the base and superstructure in dialectical interaction, rather than a mechanical one-way relationship. Ecological-social forces of production and forces of destruction, Eco-social relations of production, and dialectically interacting base and superstructure. It promises to undo all alienation originating in alienation from nature, which has resulted in all forms of social alienation. It provides ample grounds for the reverence for the natural world of which humans are a tiny part, not its master and certainly not the “apex of creation.”

 

 

References:

Brown, Robin Gordon and James Ladyman. “History of Materialism.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.

Butzer, Karl W. and Endfield, G. H. “Collapse, environment, and society.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(10), 3632–3639. 2012.

Douglas, P. M. J., Demarest, A. A., Brenner, M., & Canuto, M. A. “Impacts of Climate Change on the Collapse of Lowland Maya Civilization.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 44, 613–645. 2016.

Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science. 1877.

Marx, Karl. Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts. 1844.

_________. Theses on Feuerbach. 1845.

_________  A Contribution to the Critique of Political. 1859.

Economy

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. 1845-46.

Mészáros, István. Marx’s Theory of Alienation. 1970.

Nayeri, Kamran. “How to Stop the Sixth Extinction: A Critical Assessment of E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. May 14, 2017.

____________. “The Crisis of Civilization and How to Resolve It: An Introduction to Ecocentric Socialism.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism.  October 15, 2018.

____________. “The Coronavirus Pandemic as the Crisis of Civilization.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. March 19, 2020.

____________. “The Case for Ecocentric Socialism.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 4, 2021.

____________. “The Labor Theory of Value and Exploitation of Nonhumans: The Case of the Meat Industry.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. December 31, 2022.

____________. “Human Nature and Socialism.” July 30, 2026.

_____________. “Catastrophic Global Warming and Climate Change: An Overview of the Crisis and How to Stop It.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. August 3, 2026.

_____________. “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. September 22, 2026.

Philosophy Institute. “Unveiling the Fabric of the Universe: Insight from Contemporary Science.” No date. 

Poirier, Silvie. “The Dynamic Reproduction of Hunter-Gatherers' Ontologies and Values.” Wiley Online Library. 2013.

Roman, S., Palmer, E., & Brede, M. “The Dynamics of Human–Environment Interactions in the Collapse of the Classic Maya.” Ecological Economics, 146, 312–324. 2018.

Scott, Colin. “Indigenous Epistemologies.” Anthropen. 2025.

Swancutt, Katherine Anne. King's College London. “Animism.” 2019.  

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[1]. Scientists don't determine the age of a fossil simply by looking at it. They can use radiometric dating of minerals associated with geological formations. Methods include uranium-lead dating, potassium-argon dating,

argon-argon dating, and samarium-neodymium dating. These methods can date rocks millions or billions of years old.

3722. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

By Kamran Nayeri, September 22, 2026

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

1. The controversy over Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation in the United States is essentially a dispute over how to balance two competing concerns: preventing serious harm from increasingly powerful AI systems while preserving innovation, economic development, and freedom to use the technology (The 2026 AI Index Report | Stanford HAI). Participants come from a wide range of professions and social positions: AI developers, mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, philosophers and ethicists, trade unionists, consumer advocates, and bourgeois politicians.  Overall, about two out of three Americans say there is at least a “moderate” risk that advanced AI could destroy humanity, with majorities across parties, genders, and age groups holding that view (Politico, September 16, 2026).

Thus, several overlapping AI concerns emerge.

A. The "existential risk" debate
Leading AI researchers such as Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, as well as some industry leaders, are concerned that sufficiently advanced AI could become difficult or impossible for humans to control. This part of the controversy receives the most public attention.

B. The "economic transformation" debate
Economists are asking a somewhat different question: Even if AI never becomes superintelligent, what happens if increasingly capable machines perform large portions of human intellectual labor? A 2026 statement involving hundreds of economists and technology leaders specifically called for research into the economic consequences of transformative AI.

C. The "social and political power" debate
Sociologists, political scientists, lawyers and policymakers are concerned about who controls AI, who owns the computing infrastructure, who benefits economically, and how AI affects democracy and human rights. The UN's independent scientific panel, for example, examines AI across economics, security, human rights, democracy, autonomy, safety and governance—not merely technical safety.

E. The "regulation versus innovation" debate
Governments, technology companies and regulators disagree over how much oversight is appropriate. Some AI executives are now calling for stronger safeguards and coordination, while others argue that excessive regulation could slow innovation and weaken national competitiveness.

There is no doubt that socialists everywhere need to engage with the first three of these concerns to address the current debate in a way that advances a socialist vision and to consider whether and how AI would be part of a socialist future.  There are other less prominently voiced concerns with AI technology relevant to socialists such as:  

·       Safety and catastrophic risks: Supporters argue that sufficiently powerful AI could cause harm that ordinary consumer-protection laws cannot adequately address. These include sophisticated fraud and manipulation; autonomous cyberattacks; assistance with biological or chemical threats; uncontrolled autonomous AI agents; accidents caused by AI systems operating in critical infrastructure; potentially much more serious risks from future, substantially more capable systems (see “superintelligence” below).

·       Consumer protection and misinformation: Generative AI can produce convincing false information, impersonation, deepfakes, and synthetic media at enormous scale. Regulation can require disclosure that content is AI-generated, restrict uses, and establish liability for certain harms. The European Union's AI Act, for example, contains transparency requirements for certain AI-generated content and prohibits particular AI practices.

·       Discrimination and fundamental rights: AI used for hiring, credit, education, policing, immigration, insurance or healthcare can reproduce or amplify discrimination contained in its training data or deployment environment. Regulators therefore argue that some applications deserve requirements for testing, documentation, human oversight, and accountability.

·       Labor and economic disruption: Another controversy concerns employment. AI could substantially increase productivity while simultaneously displacing some occupations or reducing workers' bargaining power. This raises questions that go beyond "AI safety": Should governments regulate particular applications, require employers to disclose AI use, protect workers from automated decisions, or address the consequences primarily through labor and social policy?

2. Marx on automation

AI may represent the final stage of the capitalist technological drive toward automation. Karl Marx, whose vision of communism is a society of abundance with an ethical view summarized as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," thanks to technological advances that reduce socially necessary labor time to provide ever more leisure time to develop human potentials (Marx, 1875). Marx analyzed the trend toward automation in the capitalist mode of production, driven by capital accumulation and competition (Nayeri, 2018).  AI seems the likely candidate to replace humans in production and service tasks across the economy, sustaining socialist and then communist societies.   

However, as I argued in the same article, technology has historically been developed to expropriate wealth from nature by exploiting masses of working people, requiring alienation from nature and social alienation across civilization, especially in anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization. Thus, Marx's vision of a society of plenty and communism clash. 

Instead, I have argued for Ecocentric Socialism (Nayeri, 2021), characterized by a much smaller human population living in largely self-sufficient ecovillages where all able-bodied adults contribute to producing the goods and services necessary for a comfortable life and human development. Ecocentric Socialism will value a culture of being and set aside the culture of having. It will critically examine technologies to ensure they do not undermine the rhythms of Mother Nature's life and respect for all other beings who are our kin. I

Socialists would also participate in current controversies over AI development much the same way as we have over the nuclear energy and nuclear power pushed by capitalist firms and states.  

The existential threat of AI

Now, let’s focus on the existential threat AI can pose to humanity. I'll summarize the concerns of the above-named AI computer scientists: Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell.

For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries that AI will cause serious harm. Hinton quit his job at Google, where he worked for more than a decade and became one of AI's most respected voices, so he can speak freely about the risks of A.I. In an interview with The New York Times (May 1, 2023), he said that generative A.I. can already be a tool for misinformation. Generative AI (GAI) is the type of AI that can create new content based on input data. Hinto says that GAI could soon threaten jobs. Down the line, it could even risk humanity. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he argued.

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist and a pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that has significantly advanced AI by enabling computers to learn and understand like the human brain. It helps computers discover patterns in data independently, leading to breakthroughs in image recognition, speech understanding, and natural language processing.

“What worries me the most is the fact that we are collectively racing ahead towards A.I. models achieving human-level or greater competence on most cognitive tasks without knowing how to align and control them reliably. As A.I. capabilities and agency increase, behaviors like cheating, manipulating, and lying, for which we see early signs today, will increasingly pose significant threats and could lead to catastrophic risks. I and several other renowned A.I. researchers even believe that it is plausible that, if nothing significant is done, the current trajectory could lead to the creation of superintelligent A.I. agents that compete with humans in ways that could compromise our future.” (Observer, September 18, 2025)

Stuart Russell is a British computer scientist well-known for his contributions to artificial intelligence. Russell co-authored the authoritative textbook on AI, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, with Peter Norvig; it is used in more than 1,500 universities in 135 countries. In a Guardian column, Russell cites the resignation of AI safety researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.  In his resignation letter, Coxon expresses alarm over the prioritization of superintelligence development at companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, stating that they are "gambling with our lives". He emphasizes the lack of a safety framework and exit plans in the race to create advanced AI systems, urging immediate action to address these existential risks. The letter has sparked widespread discussion about the ethical implications of AI development and researchers' responsibilities in the field.

Russell comments as follows:

“Recursive self-improvement leading to superintelligent AI raises the risk of the irreversible loss of human control. The acceptable risk level for loss of control is perhaps one in 100m per year, not the one in 10 or one in five that the AI CEOs currently estimate.

“And remember “the complete absence of credible plans for controlling superintelligent AI systems”. At some point, progress along this technology path will halt, not because further progress is impossible, but because further progress is untenable when the technology is intrinsically unsafe. Humanity has a right to protect itself.

There is huge resistance to this conclusion. We have already sunk trillions of dollars into the current technology path and plan to sink trillions more. But the sunk cost fallacy is just that: if we double down on a mistake, it’s still a mistake.” (Russell, September 15, 2026)

There is no doubt that working people, including socialists, must join the growing demand for full and immediate regulation of AI technology currently being shaped by private corporations that have poured billions of dollars into it. Their interest is to plow ahead in the bid to become the first to possess AI superintelligent systems that can control the world. Of course, they are blinded by the fact that superintelligent AI systems may decide to dominate and control, and even annihilate, humanity.

Thus, the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization has now created a NEW EXISTENTIAL THREAT: AI technology.

The dialectics of negation of the negation in Marx’s theory, that is, the radicalization of the working class and subsequent emergence of its self-organization and self-activity to transcend world capitalism, has not yet materialized despite overripe material conditions for socialism.  Meanwhile, the anthropocentric capitalist civilization has created the social and planetary crisis that threatens much of life on Earth, including our own species. Artificial intelligence is the most recent existential threat it has brought to life.

To stop and resolve these existential crises, working people worldwide need to transcend anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization and move toward an ecocentric socialist future. 

References:

Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Program. 1875.

Nayeri, Kamran. “Capitalism, Automation, and Socialism: Karl Marx on the Labor Process.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. 2018. 

_____________. "The Case for Ecocentric Socialism." Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. 2021. 

_____________. "Socialism in the 21st Century: Why It Is Needed and Some of Its Salient Features." 2022. 

3721. Cuba’s Market Reforms: Reflections on Wilder Pérez Varona’s Contribution

By Kamran Nayeri, September 20, 2026

Wilder Pérez Varona

Wilder Pérez Varona’s intervention in the discussion of market reforms introduced by the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and quickly adopted by the National Assembly of People’s Power in June is a welcome and thoughtful contribution. I will focus my remarks on the interview Ariel Dacal Diaz conducted with him, published in La Joven Cuba in July, translated into English, and posted on the Links website on July 30. I published my initial assessment of the proposed market reforms in Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism (Nayeri, 2026) on July 11. I urge readers to consult it before proceeding, as I will not repeat my earlier argument here and will build on it.

Currently, Pérez is a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at the Institute of Economy and Society in Contemporary Argentina. Before moving to Argentina, he was the managing director of the Institute of Philosophy in Havana, a socialist think tank that serves as the Communist Party of Cuba's cadre school. Thus, he writes from the standpoint of someone intimately familiar with Cuba's problems and its economic and political system and keenly interested in seeing its long-term crisis resolved in favor of socialism.

Pérez’s overall view of the market reforms under discussion comes at the conclusion of the interview:

“The future of Cuban socialism will not depend solely on how much the economy grows. It will depend on whether those who produce wealth also have a say in decisions about how it is used. If reforms merely modernize mechanisms of accumulation but leave existing power relations intact or even reinforce them, they will have changed the economy without transforming what, from a socialist perspective, really matters: who governs the collective wealth and on whose behalf.”

“The most significant change is not more market, but the redefined relationship between ownership and power. A company can still call itself socialist while workers and citizens no longer have a real say in its affairs, thereby rendering social ownership a legal fiction.” (Pérez, 2026)

He offers an example:

“GAESA [a Cuban conglomerate owned by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces] is the clearest example. Beyond recent news regarding the release of assets, under these reforms it could retain its management forms and convert companies it already runs into shareholdings. On paper, ownership will remain with the people; in practice, it will be the same people making decisions as before the reform”.(ibid.)

Pérez also writes:

“This [the reforms] also alters the socialist project’s logic. For decades, despite many contradictions, equality was the model’s starting point. As [Cuban president Miguel] Díaz-Canel stated, this sequence is apparently being reversed: first accumulate, then redistribute. Growth is no longer subordinate to social justice; social justice now depends on growth.’

“This represents a shift in economic philosophy. The market can be a useful tool for developing a socialist economy, but it cannot substitute for politics. If new opportunities for accumulation are not accompanied by transparency, democratic regulation and social control, we risk replacing an inefficient bureaucracy with a new economic elite closely linked to state power.” (ibid.)

Marx’s socialism vs. Cuban socialism  

For decades, the discussion among supporters of the Cuban revolution has been murky on what socialism is and how to transition to it. In my assessment of the market reforms, I have contrasted Marx’s view of socialism with what has become accepted as Cuban “socialism” (Nayeri, 2026).  Marx’s concept of socialism is a society free from alienation from nature and social alienation, achieved through a socialist revolution led by the proletariat as a self-organized, self-mobilized class. On the other hand, Cuba's socialism has always been about building an egalitarian society. As Pérez stressed: “For decades, despite many contradictions, equality was the model’s starting point.”

This notion of “socialism” has made Cuba a welfare state created by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). I have contrasted Costa Rica, which in 1948 created the first capitalist welfare state in Latin America, with Cuba and Nicaragua, both of which had revolutions in 1959 and 1979, respectively; I have found that taking life expectancy, infant mortality, index of social security, democratic rights and democracy, and the desire to remain in the country of their birth as opposed to migrating to the United Staes, Costa Ricans fare better than Cubans and Nicaraguans (Nayeri, 2025).

What distinguished Cuba in the first three decades after the 1959 revolution was its policies to achieve greater equality in income and access to basic necessities, as well as education, health care, and housing, among Cubans, especially for women and Afro-Cubans. In the mid-1980s, people experiencing poverty—defined as those who could not meet their basic needs with what they earned—made up no more than 6%. In contrast, across Latin America during those years, the poverty rate averaged more than 40%, and in some countries, it exceeded 70%. (Espina, 2025). Thus, we can think of Cuba as a welfare state, a state that created the institutions and conditions for more equality.

However, the PCC and the Cuban state were able to do this largely because of subsidies from the Soviet Union, which totaled $60 billion over those three decades. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of poor people had more than doubled, reaching about 15% in 1994 (ibid.). Espina (2026) estimates poverty to be about 45% of the population now. She cautions readers that she cannot provide a more accurate estimate because the Cuban government does not provide the necessary statistics and does not allow surveys to determine an accurate rate.[1]

The roots of Cuba’s economic crisis

The Cuban leadership has consistently claimed that the ongoing economic crisis in Cuba is due to the U.S. blockade that officially began on February 7, 1962. Pérez and I have pointed out that imperialist hostility and the blockade, while harming the Cuban economy, are not the root cause of the ongoing crisis.  Pérez notes “inefficient bureaucracy” in Cuba and writes: “There is consensus that the bureaucratic statist model has run its course. Cuba needs more dynamic companies, greater managerial autonomy and new scope for economic initiative.” (Pérez, 2006). Even the PCC leadership acknowledges this, arguing that socialism is impossible without generating wealth that can be broadly distributed among the people.

However, the PCC points to China and Vietnam as models for achieving these dynamics through the market. As Prime Minister Marrero told legislators, the measures formally recognize the market as “an instrument for the efficient allocation of resources” (Atkins, 2026).

 

Pérez adds a significant issue: “There is consensus that the bureaucratic statist model has run its course. Cuba needs more dynamic companies, greater managerial autonomy, and new scope for economic initiative. But autonomy for whom and under what controls?” (Pérez, 2026)

Further on, he put his finger on the crucial problem of the democratization of the Cuban economic and political system: “The crucial question is whether Cuba will have sufficiently democratic institutions to prevent economic power from ultimately capturing political power. The reforms redistribute much more than just income; they redistribute power. This new distribution of power, rather than the economic measures themselves, will ultimately define Cuba’s future.” (ibid.) Distribution of power to whom?

He further adds: “That is why the debate should not be reduced to a choice between the state and market. The fundamental question is whether these reforms will further socialize economic power or pave the way for a new structure of privileges.” (ibid.)

The absolute need for socialist democracy

As I have already argued (Nayeri, 2026; August 11, 2024; October 16, 2024), the Cuban revolution, like other revolutions after the October 1917 socialist revolution in Russia, has been a national democratic revolution against imperialism and for economic development led by parties that essentially followed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, that is, the Stalinist one-party state that combined economic development and industrialization with a measure of welfare state policies. Stalinist parties led all these revolutions, except in Cuba, where the July 26^th Movement led it. However, in Cuba too, Fidel Castro who became a socialist in his university years, mistook the pro-Moscow Popular Socialist Party (PSP) as the representation of Marxist-Leninism and the Soviet Union as socialist. He maintained this belief throughout his life (Nayeri, April 19, 2024).  That is why, in the Great Debate of 1963-65, Che Guevara, who was a sharp critic of the Soviet Union, was eventually sidelined, and in 1965, with the founding of the Communist Party of Cuba, left for Africa and later Bolivia to help the revolutionary struggle and was eventually captured and executed.  

Thus, Cuban socialism has never been rooted in self-organized, self-mobilized working people.

Even Guevara’s vision of the transition to socialism, which stressed the need to do away with the law of value, had two key weaknesses. First, his Budgetary Finance System (BSF) began with political decisions of Cuba’s leadership that shaped the overall economic plan of JUCEPLAN (the planning board). The ministries then shared this plan with enterprises and production units. The ministries summarized their considerations and communicated them to JUCEPLAN, which adjusted the economy-wide plan accordingly. The ministries then developed plans for specific enterprises and supervised their implementation. JUCEPLAN oversaw the economy’s central controls, assisted by the Treasury Ministry in financial control and the Labor Ministry in planning labor allocation. In other words, the state bureaucracy managed key decisions about what to produce, how to produce it, and how to distribute the products. Guevara’s plan left no room for self-organized, self-mobilized workers.

Second, when Mandel, who was in Havana at Guevara's invitation, tried to convince him of the need for socialist democracy, he was unmoved. His idea of Cuban workers' participation in decision-making appears in Socialism and Man in Cuba (1965) as a dialogue between Fidel Castro, the revolution's undisputed leader, and the masses at public rallies.  Over the decades, the PCC leadership occasionally organized Cuban workers in workplaces or neighborhoods to discuss major policy proposals.  At these meetings, participants recorded proposed changes and submitted them to the PCC leadership for consideration, sometimes including them in the final policy resolution. During the massive downsizing of the sugar industry, when world sugar prices collapsed, sugar workers were involved in discussions of how to carry it out.

However, such “consultations” with the Cuban working people are substitutes for socialist democracy, which has been lacking in Cuba. To put it another way, the PCC, not the self-organization and self-activity of the Cuban working people, has been driving policy decisions about the economy and society in Cuba.

Economic activity can be organized in three ways: by the market, by the state (bureaucracy), and by the working people themselves. The capitalist mode of production is the most relevant way to organize economic activity by the market, as Karl Marx best analyzed. In all so-called “socialist countries,” the state has organized production and, to a lesser degree, the state-managed market. Market Socialism is most identified with Yugoslavia under Tito, an extreme form of it. History has shown that in all such cases, this form of production leads to a market economy, that is capitalism. The working people's self-organization for production is exemplified by family farming and cooperatives, and, for brief periods, by workers’ management of nationalized industry.

A note is in order here about the characterization of these “socialist countries” as workers’ states. This mistake stems from Trotsky’s analysis of the degeneration of the socialist revolution in Russia in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936) as I have discussed in detail (Nayeri, 2006). He correctly argued that the Stalinist counterrevolution represented the destruction of the 1917 socialist revolution and its leadership in the Bolshevik Party (renamed the Communist Party in 1919), its program and tradition, and the driving of the proletariat in the young Soviet Republic out of politics. Yet he still insisted that nationalized property, a monopoly on foreign trade, and central planning constituted a workers’ state, albeit a degenerated one. He hoped a political revolution by the working class would remove bureaucracy and revive the socialist revolution.  However, in Marx’s theory of the state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the self-organized and self-mobilized working class is the absolute requirement for a workers’ state to exist, not administrative and legal categories like nationalized property, monopoly of foreign trade, and central planning. Trotsky predicted that the Soviet Union would revive as a healthy workers’ state through a political revolution; if that did not happen, it would return to capitalism. However, he anticipated resistance to such a counterrevolution, going from a workers’ state, albeit a degenerated one, to capitalism, by the working people. History showed that these “socialist countries” did return to capitalism, and the bureaucracy reemerged as capitalist. However, the working people did not oppose this, and in some cases, they celebrated it.  

As in the Soviet Union, which Trotsky analyzed with mastery (Trotsky, 1936, Chapter IV), Cuban workers, sidelined by the state bureaucracy, have no political incentive to innovate and improve the production of goods and services. As a result, labor productivity in Cuba has lagged.

Concluding remarks

In my essay on the systemic crisis of economy and society in Cuba (Nayeri, August 11, 2024), I followed Hope Bastian’s use of Pierre Bourdieu's Form of Capital (1986) to trace the ideological shifts in Cuban society over the decades. A post-Marxist, Bourdieu views capital as the power of an individual or social group to mobilize economic resources for their own ends. He discusses three forms of capital: economic capital that can be readily converted to money and is constituted in property rights; cultural capital, such as academic or artistic attainments that can be monetized; and social capital, or a network of powerful connections that can make access to consumer goods easier and can be turned into economic capital.

The proposed market reforms indicate that the PCC leadership is opening the way for a capitalist class in the Marxist sense in Cuba. This is what Pérez is concerned about. The PCC leadership is half-hearted about it, as it was with earlier, less drastic market reforms.

Bastian has discussed three forms of capital since the 1959 revolution. The first is revolutionary cultural capital, which arose from revolutionary power and became a source of socioeconomic changes in the 1960s. In the 1970s, material incentives were added to the moral incentive of becoming a Fidelista and joining the Communist Party founded in 1965. Bastian does not deny Cubans joined the Communist Party because they wanted to contribute to improving Cuban society. In her interviews, she found evidence of material and moral incentives for joining the revolutionary movement. She also offers examples of individuals who, despite many years of selfless revolutionary service, refused to use their prestige to find much-needed resources in the 1990s. However, over time, fewer such individuals emerged.

During the depression years of the 1990s (Special Period), a new social configuration emerged, which provided access to power, consumption, and resources. The importance of revolutionary cultural capital decreased, while economic capital and social capital (access to a network of well-connected individuals) increased.

Economic capital now appears to be gaining power in Cuba, as reflected in the PCC market reforms. A new class of capitalists has been forming in Cuba, as reflected in Díaz-Canel meeting with representatives of the Cuban “private sector” reported in Granma. (Martinez, 2026).

However, the PCC leadership, backed into a corner by a severe economic crisis at home and aggressive U.S. imperialist policy to put in place a government subservient to Washington, is opting for a course toward capitalism while keeping the PCC in power, that is, the Vietnam model (The China model is not appropriate as Cuba simply has no resources to create a world economic power within fifty years).

The problem is that the U.S. rulers have their eye on taking over the Cuban economy as they had before the 1959 revolution. (Schlenker and Augustin, 2026)

If the PCC moves ahead with its market reforms, which will heavily and quickly affect the working people of Cuba who are already largely in poverty, it will lose much of the support it currently has, which bars imperialist military intervention. If it does not, the economic crisis will deepen.

While Pérez and I both wish for working-class power intervening in this situation, there is no such possibility in sight. For many decades, the Cuban working class were denied independent political action and urged to follow the leadership of the PCC.

There is also no sign of a revolutionary breakout anywhere in Latin America and the rest of the world.

As I have argued, the socialist revolution that Marx and Engels predicted to break out in their lifetime in Western Europe never materialized because of the rise of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy that became supporters of the Western imperialist regimes.  This formed the basis of the reformist Socialist Democracy of Second International.

The Russian socialist revolution of 1917 degenerated not only because of Russia's economic backwardness but also because socialist revolution in the West never happened.

As a result, the world revolution turned to the periphery of capitalism, where national democratic revolutions broke out against colonialism and imperialism. In some cases, like China, Vietnam, Korea, and Yugoslavia, Stalinist parties led these revolutions and declared their one-party rule socialist because it helped win the support of the working people. I have already discussed Cuba.  It must be abundantly clear that one-party states running the economy and society are not stable social formations, as they have all returned to open capitalist social formations in which the Communist Party still rules.

Cuba's future cannot be different unless Cuban workers undergo mass radicalization to take the state power in their own hand and the world revolution comes to their aid.

References:

Atkins, C. J. “Cuba Embarks on Emergency Reforms.”  Communist Party U.S.A. June 23, 2026.

Bastian, Hope. Hope Bastian. Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility, and Emerging Inequalities. 2018.

Guevara, Ernesto Che. “Socialism and Man in Cuba.” 1965.

Castro Ruz, Fidel and Ignacio Ramonet. My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. 2006.

Espina, Mayra. “Look at Cuba: Growing Inequalities.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America. Apr 22, 2025.

__________. “Poverty In Cuba Today.” CEDA. May 1, 2026.

Martínez Hernández, Leticia. “Díaz-Canel se reunió con representantes del sector privado cubano.” Granma. August 25, 2026.

Nayeri, Kamran. “Critical Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: A Marxian Survey.” III Conferencia Internacional La Obra de Carlos Marx y Los desafíos del Siglo XXI (The Third Conference on the Work of Karl Marx and the Challenges of the 21st Century) in Havana, Cuba, in May 2006.

_____________.  “The Political Thoughts of Fidel Castro.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. April 19, 2024.

_____________. “Economic and Political Thoughts of Ernesto Che Guevara.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. April 30, 2024.

_____________. “Systemic Crisis of the Cuban Economy and Society.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. August 11, 2024.

_____________. “The Cuban Revolution and Other Socialist Revolutions of the Twentieth Century: A Reassessment.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October 16, 2024.

_____________. “A Historical Comparative Analysis of Costa Rica's Development.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October 22, 2025.

_____________. “Cuba Adopts Wide-Ranging Free-Market Reforms: An Assessment.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 11, 2026.

Savioli, Arminio. “The Nature of Cuban Socialism,” L’Unita, February 1, 1961.

Schlenker, Lee and Ed Augustin. “Trump and Rubio Allies Are Vying for Control of Cuba’s assets If Regime Falls.” The Guardian. September 17, 2026.

Toussaint, Eric. “Ernest Mandel, Revolutionary Cuba and Che Guevara.” CounterPunch, January 12, 2024.

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[1] She also adds: “Poverty exists in degrees; within that 45% figure, there are moderate, intermediate, and extreme situations the latter falling below the threshold of mere survival, a point at which existence becomes extremely fragile and subhuman.”