Honestly the only confusing part for me would be Marx’s inclusion of “mechanical and intellectual” organs when referencing the industrial machine then. Computers would still be in their primordial infancy when Marx was writing capital, and I highly doubt he had ever heard of them, so it doesn’t feel like he was referencing a “programmed” machine. Even one programmed mechanically.

That was mainly the line I was referencing when talking about how Marx humanises the machine and gives it a sense of self-autonomy. As why would a cotton gin require “intellectual organs”? Of which there is technically only one in the human body, which is the brain.

[–] AmarkuntheGatherer@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 6 days ago

I completely agree with how you approached it, the quotes you provided gave me pause when I first read them. Although in context I'm quite sure Marx really wasn't thinking about AI, I have no explanation for his choice of words. If I had to speculate, I'd suggest that he didn't think some tasks (e.g sorting by colour) could be done without some measure of intelligence, but that's just one idea.