Marx (who I haven't read much of either, not for lack of trying) viewed capitalism as so exploitative and so powerful that on the one hand it totally displaced

Marx (who I haven't read much of either, not for lack of trying) viewed capitalism as so exploitative and so powerful that on the one hand it totally displaced feudalism, but on the other hand it could not exist long before people would demand a rebalancing of society. In Adam Smith's economics though the same market forces / human nature determined returns on labor, capital, and monopoly rents, etc throughout feudalism, capitalism, etc. Previous eras were simply less 'free' due to interference of elites/special interests - something we should strive to prevent primarily for economic and moral reasons. In the second view, of course it seems reasonable that rents and monopoly profits will compete with returns on capital even in a highly developed capitalist system, because that has always been a defining feature of commerce. Some even considered it likely that (land) monopolies would beat capitalism (e.g. Georgism). In the Marxist view though, capitalism should be 'winning faster' and a return to a 'techno feudalism' state should essentially be impossible because of competitive forces driving capital returns to zero, abundance, etc. So this article is by a Marxist revising that assumption (brining it more in line with the earlier model of Smith, IMHO). The 1700s/1800s were a time of extreme technological development and commentators certainly considered AI-like levels of labor saving. > And, as we can assign no limits to the progress of invention, neither can we assign any limits to the increase of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-saving inventions went on until perfection was attained, and the necessity of labor in the production of wealth was entirely done away with, then everything that the earth could yield could be obtained without labor, and the margin of cultivation would be extended to zero. ^ Henry George analyzed the full robotics + AI case for interest/wags/rents in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty.