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Techno-scientific Socialism vs Techno-solutionism — LessWrong

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Techno-scientific Socialism vs Techno-solutionism

by CounterCritical

1st Dec 2025

4 min read

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Techno-solutionism is currently being pushed as the ultimate solution to complex social, political and ecological problems. This is based on the assertion that these problems exist as a result of the failure of democratic institutions, all of which should be replaced by a system primarily or exclusively based on technological innovation. In this view, technology is viewed as inherently neutral, efficient and progressive. Therefore, based on the ideology that reduces societal crises to engineering problems, they believe that automation, algorithms, platforms and data-driven systems should replace messy costly bureaucratic human institutions. Technosolutionism is at its heart a denial or an obscurement of underlying mechanisms of power, inequality, exploitation and governance. Techno-solutionism reinforces existing hierarchies, it legitimizes corporate power and influence over public life, while bringing into question democracy, and proposing technical fixes to all societal problems.

In reality, techno-solutionism and the proposed models of AI-powered future societies are in the hands of a few tech-billionaires who are in the forefront of AI-revolution. Along with the deployment of impactful AI models in recent years, many tech-billionaires have started peddling the idea of AI-powered governance, a model that is proposed to correct the “failure of democratic systems”, as they claim. More recently, major AI actors and lobby groups managed to delay the implementation of EU AI Act under the guise of “competitiveness”. It should also be noted that the AI revolution is not driven by democratic institutions but by a handful of corporations who also “happen” to hold extremely anti-democratic views. The question is whether we all have to accept to live in technologically advanced societies of ultimate control where all aspects of human life, even humans are turned into commodities? Are there any alternatives?

We argue that a post-capitalist technologically advanced future is possible. There is no historical or scientific necessity for a future that is organized around profit extraction. Why would it be impossible to imagine a society with shared stewardship of automated infrastructures and other alternatives grounded in cooperative robotics and data commons? Why can’t we treat robots and AI systems as collectively owned productive forces, managed through democratic institutions rather than corporate monopolies or state technocracies? We can imagine a world where data, the most valuable commodity of today, becomes a public good governed by transparent, participatory mechanisms, ensuring that algorithmic systems reflect communal values and priorities rather than commercial imperatives. We can live in societies where technological power is decoupled from domination and redirected towards betterment of human life. Automation and AI-powered technologies do not have to become a tool for displacement of workers into precarity. Communities can use cooperative robotics to redistribute labor and to expand time for education, culture and political engagement. Technology and power do not have to be concentrated in the hands of a few. Instead it can be redirected toward radically more equitable forms of life centered on collective flourishing.

What kind of political system can realize this vision?

Historically, scientific socialism was proposed as a deterministic evolution of capitalist societies. The origins of this ideology lie in the convergence of European philosophy, political economy and revolutionary ideas. It emerged as a synthesis of these traditions, rejecting utopian schemes in favor of a theory of history in which material forces, economic structures, and collective struggle determine the evolution of society. It views socialism not as a moral aspiration or a utopian dream but as a historically grounded and an empirically analyzable process, hence a scientifically examinable and provable process. The claim is that the development of productive forces and the contradictions of capitalism make the transition to socialism a predictable necessity. In short, socialism arises as a historical necessity born from self-emancipation of the working class as it confronts capitalist exploitation.

It should be noted that it has been widely criticized by the proponents of capitalism, who also connect capitalism to something inherently human, as a form of governance for its tendency, in practice, to produce centralized, authoritarian states. It is claimed that “historical necessity” often legitimizes political repression, suppresses pluralism and concentrates power in the hands of “a self-appointed vanguard” claiming to speak for the working class. Others point at the empirical failures of 20th century socialist state experiments with their planned economy and lack of individual freedoms, arguing that the failures challenge the idea of a natural historical development leading to emancipation. They contend that socialism is an economic system that will remove incentives for competition and innovation, it will undermine individual freedom and limit accountability.

Above we argued that a better technologically advanced world and a better form of governance is possible. If we believe in scientific socialism as a necessity, we could imagine a techno-scientific socialism offering a radical alternative to techno-solutionism by rejecting the idea that technology alone can solve social crises while leaving existing power structures intact. Innovation has never been a neutral force. The revolutionary AI powered technologies do not have to become commodities controlled by private actors. Technological systems (AI, robotics, automation, data infrastructures) can be treated as collective productive forces that are democratically governed. Techno-scientific socialism insists that the benefits of advanced technologies should be socially distributed, their development guided by public needs rather than profit imperatives, and their risks mitigated through collective oversight rather than corporate self-regulation, as it is today. In the modern world technology must become a tool for dismantling exploitation, reducing drudgery, expanding human capacities, and enabling new forms of cooperative life, rather than a mechanism for deepening inequality or entrenching technocratic authority.