Very recently I wrote a post about the Luddites. In it, I light-heartedly drew a parallel with the arrival of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in modern times and suggested we either try to take the benefits of the opportunity or we get left behind. The machine breakers of earlier times could not stop technology changing their lives and neither can we. If we don’t grasp the opportunities we miss out on the benefits and let others get ahead of us.
An article in the New Yorker this week (Will A.I. Trap You in the “Permanent Underclass”? by Kyle Chayka, 8 October 2025) explored this idea of A.I. creating an unbridgeable gulf between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. The article looked at whether A.I. was going to create a digital lumpenproletariat that is removed from participating in the future workforce.
Meaning of lumpenproletariat
The lumpenproletariat was a word coined by Karl Marx in 1897. He used it in the sense of a rabble, the poorest of the working class who, because of their lack of education and minor criminality, make no contribution to the workers’ cause. From German “lump” equivalent to ragamuffin and “lumpen” meaning rag.
The Marxists Internet Archive Encyclopedia pulled no punches defining the lumpenproletariat … “It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements”.
Perhaps we shouldn’t quite characterise modern A.I. Luddites quite so blackly as the Marxists. However, I did discover some definitions of the digital age social classes showing that the New Yorker is a bit behind in understanding the new hierarchies. This might help you understand where you fit in the digitopia we are creating.
Meaning of proletariat
In ancient Rome the proletariat according to the traditional division of the state, was the class of the poor, propertyless, free people having been impoverished from being replaced by slaves. Proletarians were exempted from taxes and military service and only served the state only by having children (i.e. from “proles” meaning offspring or progeny).
In Marxism, the “proletariat” was engaged in industrial production as the wage worker class. Their source of income was derived from the sale of their labour.
The new Digitopia
Chayka’s New Yorker article did get me asking whether there were ideas around the social classes in this new digital age. This new digital age we can call a Digitopia—not in a naive way but in the same way that “utopia” was used—with heavy irony—and its offspring, “dystopia”. (If you google “digitopia” you may wonder, as I did, whether the organisations using it understand irony).
The netocracy
Coined in the 1990s by Wired magazine “netocracy” (from internet + aristocracy) is today’s digital nobility—venture capitalists, platform owners, crypto-evangelists and tech gurus. Their capital is data and information —they rule through their influential networks. They control our access to information, mediate our social interactions; and harvest our intellectual property to sell back to us (with no intervention from our Luddite governments).
The cyberdeutocracy
A newer term, coined by Philip Freiberg (in 2018) this describes an elite that controls the online narrative. The cyberdeutocracy floods the internet with narratives, trends and memes that shape public perception. They make us believe that the algorithms are providing benefits beyond the theft of our IP and copyright. The year 1984 is a long time ago.
The cyberocracy
“Cyberocracy” is rule by information (not strictly a social class). The term was created by David Ronfeldt by 1992. The new bureaucracy relies on data and algorithms designed and mediated offshore by cheap coders. A computer decides our credit rating, our job application, or if we’ve passed some unknown guidelines. Try to object to a wrong decision and you find yourself in a digital Kafkaesque situation.
The digerati
The “digerati” are the people highly skilled in the manipulation of digital information—the academics, coders, and designers who understand technology and know how to sell its benefits to we lumpens. They are for Digitopia’s middle management.
It was coined in 1992 by New York Times editor Tim Race (from “glitterati”) and defined by him in William Safire in his “On Language” column as:
“Digerati, n.pl.—people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks”.
The consumtariat
Swedish philosopher Alexander Bard coined “consumtariat” in 2012 for the digitopian underclass whose main activity is consuming. We keep the system running by blindly buying the products that are slowly disempowering us and mistaking the freedom of choice for agency. As AI progresses we move towards being Marx’s lumpenproletariat fed on “bread and circuses”.
In ancient Rome, the proletariat was kept busy with “bread and circuses” a term used to refer to the leaders distracting the common people from revolt by providing food handouts and entertainment. Today, we get click bait curated by algorithms as we are fed with sentimentality, titillation, and meaningless videos by influencers with duck lips.
The precariat—the new A.I. lumpenproletariat
Sociologist Guy Standing popularised the term “precariat” (in 2011) for the class of freelancers, gig workers and contract staff who live in a state of perpetual insecurity (from prerarious + proletaria).
They generate the content borrowed by AI and provide the data to feed the marketing algorithms. Members of the precariat have no guaranteed work, poor control of their intellectual property, no union, and increasingly higher uncertainty. As AI progresses it is likely that this precariat class will be most affected.
Will I see you on the barricades, comrade?
The Marxian view of the world does not offer any solutions but it does help us question where we will end up after our use of AI has changed our value in the social hierarchy. Will our neo-Liberal market-driven capitalism have the checks and balances to control the onward march of the netocracy. If not are we all going to end up the consumtariat and precariat living off bread and circuses?