By chance I was reading about this yesterday, only in the context of unemployment.

In Das Kapital, Section 5: The Strife Between Workman and Machine, Marx talks about how the automatic looms caused some of the very first waves of mass unemployment under nascent capitalism.

He tells how in some German states they banned the use of looms, burned them, some say even drowned or strangled their creators. Both the state and the textile workers did this in order to preserve order.

Later, states allowed them but the textile workers formed sabotage units in order to destroy machines and keep their jobs.

At the end it ends with this: "It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production (the machine), but against the mode in which they are used."

Very relevant in the face of progress, especially of AI.

Ps: and a quick reminder that communism is about developing production for human needs not profits. The ills of unemployment would be unnecessary with added efficiency.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm...