# General intellect Marx’s “Fragment on Machines”, which is the logical culmination of the *Economic Manuscripts 1857-1858* or the so called *Grundrisse*, expounds on the “natural development” of capitalism where the labor that produces material objects and even the working class itself will be displaced from the core of the production of wealth. The evolution of capital will proceed to its “final phase” because capital itself, instead of the working class, causes a change in the nature of the production of value – a change that will lead to the dismantlement of the organization of production based on exchange value. According to Marx, the reason for this change is that abstract knowledge and thinking become immediate productive power. They will replace direct labor and its fragmented and monotonously repetitive tasks, or industrial labor and the society based on division of labor in the traditional sense. As a result, the “great foundation-stone of production and of wealth” will no longer be the immediate labor performed by men (modification of natural resources, manufacture of goods), or even the time used for this (work time). Instead the “forces of social combination”, the “development of the general powers of the human head ” and the “development of the social individual” as a whole will now take this role. For Marx, the foremost expression of the power of this general intellect, or general social understanding, is the increasing importance of machines and systems of machinery – i.e., of fixed capital – in production. For us, Marx’s Fragment on Machines appears both amazingly prophetic and amazingly failed. For more see [Akseli Virtanen (2006): General Intellect](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/HkdzRAE0s). --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://glossary.ecsa.io/general-intellect.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.