Overproduction of Words
Peter Ayolov
Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", 2026
Abstract
This article argues that the contemporary crisis of capitalism can no longer be understood only through the classical model of material overproduction. Drawing on the Marxist theory of crisis, especially the framework associated with P. K. Figurnov, it proposes that digital capitalism has displaced the contradiction of overproduction from the factory to language itself. In the age of artificial intelligence and large language models, words, narratives, arguments, and symbolic forms are produced at near-zero marginal cost and on an effectively unlimited scale. What follows is not an expansion of meaning, but its devaluation. As commodities once lost exchange-value when they could not be sold, language now loses meaning-value when it can no longer be absorbed, interpreted, or distinguished within an oversaturated symbolic market. The article develops this claim across four movements: the transformation of classical overproduction into linguistic overproduction; the collapse of intellectual value under AI automation; the need to oppose planned obsolescence with civilisational durability; and the ideological failure of accelerationist fantasies that confuse energy, speed, and scale with historical direction. It concludes that the deepest crisis of late capitalism is not simply economic, but superstructural: a breakdown of meaning, legitimacy, continuity, and symbolic order. Within this condition, Ayolov’s work is presented as one of the few contemporary attempts to map the totality of a decaying superstructure and the obscure emergence of a new one.
Comments (1)
Sound interesting