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Ask HN: How would Marxists define the “means of production” in 2020?

9 points by tdevito 6y ago

Doesn't anyone with an internet connection and a computer technically "own the means of production"?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
api 6y ago
The Internet is not made of fine unicorn hair braided by pixies. It’s a huge very physical machine comprised of wires, switches, demarcation points, interchange data centers (carrier hotels), undersea and long haul overland cables, satellites, and massive cloud data centers that host shared compute and data and SaaS apps. It consumes a ton of energy and if you weighed it all would be quite massive. PCs and mobile devices are part of that vast spaghetti monster, but only small parts. If we could achieve cloud SaaS levels of performance and usability in pure P2P apps it would be possible to dispense with some of that, but not all of it. You would still need the wiring and interchanges and stuff. Pure P2P is also hard and doing it that efficiently requires solving some unsolved engineering problems around rapid bootstrapping, data lookup, consensus, and security.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I think you completely missed the point of the question. If I have a computer and an internet connection, I can download, for free, everything I need in order to write, say, an Android app. And put it on the app store, and start making money (if it sells). That doesn't let me do SaaS or become the next Google, but it lets me go into business as a "producer". Same with making and selling music. Same with writing (hello, Amazon self publishing). Same with some services - audio and video production, software contracting, editorial assistance, and I'm sure many more that I can't think of at the moment. So, how do Marxists deal with that? Is a computer part of "the means of production"? Or does that only mean "big industry"? If it only means big industry, the Marxists are talking to those who live in the past. In the present, big industry employs a much smaller fraction of the population than it used to.
  - api 6y ago
    I suppose you could say that computing reduces the imbalance between capital owners and workers to some extent in some areas.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      True, "to some extent in some areas". Even in the example that I gave, an Android app, Google's going to take their cut, because they own the app store. So from one perspective, you're free to go into business for yourself, writing your app. From another perspective, you're just working for the man in a different form.
  - kleer001 6y ago
    Depends on if OP is looking for the proximal or ultimate means of production. No schlub like myself is going to own and run the data centres necessary to host all that created content of music, books, or apps.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > So, how do Marxists deal with that? Why would Marxists need to deal with it at all? I mean, even if you ignore that the data centers, etc., supporting the app stores, ebook stores, etc., involved are, in practice, essential parts of the means of production for the actual consumer product being delivered, all "it's possible for a solo independent business owner to own the whole means of production for a product and make and delivery the product to consumers by applying their own labor to capital they own" would mean is that "the capitalist middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, can actually exist in that society." Which Marxists generally assume to be true about capitalist societies. > Is a computer part of "the means of production"? Yes, the same as, e.g., workers hand tools are. Specifically, its part of the instruments of production, which are a subset of the means of production. > If it only means big industry, the Marxists are talking to those who live in the past. No, if it only meant big industry, Marxists would be talking to no one; workers owning their own tools, that can be anywhere between the entire instruments of production for some goods to a small part for others, have been common longer than capitalism. But then, Marxism always incorporated that, so its not an issue.
d33lio 6y ago
It's a moronic ideology, the clear answer here is you end up with a system similar to china, except stripe is owned by the govt, the computers you buy all come from the same govt org and the govt monitors and controls all forms of internet access. If you live in America and support Marxism, please move to a country where they currently have a similar system and stop complaining. Granted, most of the people who want this likely don't have the brain power to understand basic economics...
- redwoolf 6y ago
  Marxism is more a critique of capitalism than it is a theory of communism. Marx wasn't interested in prescribing "recipes for cook shops of the future." Economics isn't a field that studies things the way they are in the same sense that physics is the study of the way things are. Just because you lack the imagination to envision a different economic ordering doesn't mean that the ideology is moronic or that those of us who are students of Marx lack the brain power to understand basic economics.
  - d33lio 6y ago
    A "critique" that seems to have never really "worked yet" or burned itself out every time? I don't lack the imagination, I have more than enough evidence to indicate that "centralizing the means of production" and taking the notion of individuality away from citizens is a half baked idea at best. With the best example being my family that fled Slovakia. It's ironic that immigrants from derelict marxist nations seem to champion capitalism, and yet jaded privileged white people seem to champion marxism... Maybe we should just have marxist agitators trade places with economic refugees?
    - redwoolf 6y ago
      You seem to be confusing Marxism with Totalitarianism. A common mistake.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dalmo3 6y ago
Look for the book "The Singularity and Socialism: Marx, Mises, Complexity Theory, Techno-Optimism and the Way to the Age of Abundance" by C. James Townsend. It doesn't answer the thread title, but tries to tackle your following question. The idea is that, yes, as marginal costs go down (the Singularity being it reaching zero), wealth tends to go to wealth creators instead of capitalists. It's a bit of fantasy but so is Marxism anyway. I was intrigued by the author's argument that Marx's ideals (not Marxism) and free markets could converge.
cblconfederate 6y ago
As of now, the means of production is the advertising. It's what makes money. Unfortunately users have relegated themselves to raw materials. They need to either seize the means of production, or stop giving away their content, however trivial it is
twright 6y ago
When it comes to distribution on the internet, no, unless the network infrastructure is owned by the commons which is very hard to do even with small portions of it. There is a great Current Affairs piece from this summer (with what looks like some good further reading) which explores this more and better than I can here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/reclaiming-the-physical-internet https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/reclaiming-the-physic... Perhaps you circumvent the internet and distribute software on USB thumb drives, if you’re the sole creator and owner of the software then yes!
dragonwriter 6y ago
> How would Marxists define the “means of production” in 2020? "The tools (instruments) and the raw material (subject) you use to create something are the means of production." [0] > Doesn't anyone with an internet connection and a computer technically "own the means of production"? A portion of them, similar to a physical laborer who owns his own hand tools. And, similar to that, its the whole means of production for some goods, and a tiny subset of other goods, and somewhere in between for lots. [0] https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm

9 points by tdevito 6y ago

Doesn't anyone with an internet connection and a computer technically "own the means of production"?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

api 6y ago

The Internet is not made of fine unicorn hair braided by pixies. It’s a huge very physical machine comprised of wires, switches, demarcation points, interchange data centers (carrier hotels), undersea and long haul overland cables, satellites, and massive cloud data centers that host shared compute and data and SaaS apps. It consumes a ton of energy and if you weighed it all would be quite massive. PCs and mobile devices are part of that vast spaghetti monster, but only small parts. If we could achieve cloud SaaS levels of performance and usability in pure P2P apps it would be possible to dispense with some of that, but not all of it. You would still need the wiring and interchanges and stuff. Pure P2P is also hard and doing it that efficiently requires solving some unsolved engineering problems around rapid bootstrapping, data lookup, consensus, and security.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I think you completely missed the point of the question. If I have a computer and an internet connection, I can download, for free, everything I need in order to write, say, an Android app. And put it on the app store, and start making money (if it sells). That doesn't let me do SaaS or become the next Google, but it lets me go into business as a "producer". Same with making and selling music. Same with writing (hello, Amazon self publishing). Same with some services - audio and video production, software contracting, editorial assistance, and I'm sure many more that I can't think of at the moment. So, how do Marxists deal with that? Is a computer part of "the means of production"? Or does that only mean "big industry"? If it only means big industry, the Marxists are talking to those who live in the past. In the present, big industry employs a much smaller fraction of the population than it used to.
- api 6y ago
  I suppose you could say that computing reduces the imbalance between capital owners and workers to some extent in some areas.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    True, "to some extent in some areas". Even in the example that I gave, an Android app, Google's going to take their cut, because they own the app store. So from one perspective, you're free to go into business for yourself, writing your app. From another perspective, you're just working for the man in a different form.
- kleer001 6y ago
  Depends on if OP is looking for the proximal or ultimate means of production. No schlub like myself is going to own and run the data centres necessary to host all that created content of music, books, or apps.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > So, how do Marxists deal with that? Why would Marxists need to deal with it at all? I mean, even if you ignore that the data centers, etc., supporting the app stores, ebook stores, etc., involved are, in practice, essential parts of the means of production for the actual consumer product being delivered, all "it's possible for a solo independent business owner to own the whole means of production for a product and make and delivery the product to consumers by applying their own labor to capital they own" would mean is that "the capitalist middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, can actually exist in that society." Which Marxists generally assume to be true about capitalist societies. > Is a computer part of "the means of production"? Yes, the same as, e.g., workers hand tools are. Specifically, its part of the instruments of production, which are a subset of the means of production. > If it only means big industry, the Marxists are talking to those who live in the past. No, if it only meant big industry, Marxists would be talking to no one; workers owning their own tools, that can be anywhere between the entire instruments of production for some goods to a small part for others, have been common longer than capitalism. But then, Marxism always incorporated that, so its not an issue.

d33lio 6y ago

It's a moronic ideology, the clear answer here is you end up with a system similar to china, except stripe is owned by the govt, the computers you buy all come from the same govt org and the govt monitors and controls all forms of internet access. If you live in America and support Marxism, please move to a country where they currently have a similar system and stop complaining. Granted, most of the people who want this likely don't have the brain power to understand basic economics...

redwoolf 6y ago
Marxism is more a critique of capitalism than it is a theory of communism. Marx wasn't interested in prescribing "recipes for cook shops of the future." Economics isn't a field that studies things the way they are in the same sense that physics is the study of the way things are. Just because you lack the imagination to envision a different economic ordering doesn't mean that the ideology is moronic or that those of us who are students of Marx lack the brain power to understand basic economics.
- d33lio 6y ago
  A "critique" that seems to have never really "worked yet" or burned itself out every time? I don't lack the imagination, I have more than enough evidence to indicate that "centralizing the means of production" and taking the notion of individuality away from citizens is a half baked idea at best. With the best example being my family that fled Slovakia. It's ironic that immigrants from derelict marxist nations seem to champion capitalism, and yet jaded privileged white people seem to champion marxism... Maybe we should just have marxist agitators trade places with economic refugees?
  - redwoolf 6y ago
    You seem to be confusing Marxism with Totalitarianism. A common mistake.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dalmo3 6y ago

Look for the book "The Singularity and Socialism: Marx, Mises, Complexity Theory, Techno-Optimism and the Way to the Age of Abundance" by C. James Townsend. It doesn't answer the thread title, but tries to tackle your following question. The idea is that, yes, as marginal costs go down (the Singularity being it reaching zero), wealth tends to go to wealth creators instead of capitalists. It's a bit of fantasy but so is Marxism anyway. I was intrigued by the author's argument that Marx's ideals (not Marxism) and free markets could converge.

cblconfederate 6y ago

As of now, the means of production is the advertising. It's what makes money. Unfortunately users have relegated themselves to raw materials. They need to either seize the means of production, or stop giving away their content, however trivial it is

twright 6y ago

When it comes to distribution on the internet, no, unless the network infrastructure is owned by the commons which is very hard to do even with small portions of it. There is a great Current Affairs piece from this summer (with what looks like some good further reading) which explores this more and better than I can here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/reclaiming-the-physical-internet https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/reclaiming-the-physic... Perhaps you circumvent the internet and distribute software on USB thumb drives, if you’re the sole creator and owner of the software then yes!

dragonwriter 6y ago

> How would Marxists define the “means of production” in 2020? "The tools (instruments) and the raw material (subject) you use to create something are the means of production." [0] > Doesn't anyone with an internet connection and a computer technically "own the means of production"? A portion of them, similar to a physical laborer who owns his own hand tools. And, similar to that, its the whole means of production for some goods, and a tiny subset of other goods, and somewhere in between for lots. [0] https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm