Accounting for Capital, Accounting for Humanity – A Marxist View of AI and the Role of Accountants in the Time of AI

Major Western political economists of the past 300 years had an exaggerated emphasis on the role of capital in the economy, with the exception of Karl Marx, who recognized the role of labor, and solely of labor, in creating social wealth. The advancement of modern technologies has hitherto disproportionally benefited capital, even though we see labor welfare also improve over the centuries. This time, however, AI is infinitely benefiting capital. How can humanity survive? We imagine the rise of new accountants, serving a “super-entity,” to redistribute economic benefits to humanity. In search of historical perspectives, we go back in time. Divergent from the Western experience that accounting emerged for commerce, China’s experience with accounting is that it often availed itself to central governance. Further, market-participating state capital can be super-competitive and well-informed. Facing an anti-human private-capital-empowered AI, rationing and redistribution under an intelligent “super-entity,” enabled by the new accountants, take on a new meaning and urgency in taming unbridled private capital and helping preserve the physical existence of humanity.