4 ms·

I've never been able to find a consistent definition of "means of production" or the distinction between "personal" and "private" property. At what point does

I've never been able to find a consistent definition of "means of production" or the distinction between "personal" and "private" property. At what point does my laptop go from a piece of machinery that gives me access to HN to a mean of production that could make something like HN?

Jtsummers 13y ago
A way to look at it may be: Is there one community laptop or are their many laptops? A mainframe setup and limited internet constrained to university and business campuses, it becomes more like the "means of production". If there are enough laptops (or near enough) to go around, it's personal property.
- atom-morgan 13y ago
  But this is exactly what I'm talking about. I've never been able to get a clear answer because so many people in this camp have to take it on a case by case basis. So if laptops are plentiful, it’s personal property. I feel it’s safe to say that most developers probably have their own laptop. So if I hire a developer to write code on my laptop (which was previously personal property) is it now private property since it’s being used as a means of production? If so, the true distinction between personal and private property is intent which is far from satisfactory if we're defining property. So many things I own today would constantly be switching between personal and private property based on what I was trying to accomplish at that moment in time.
  - shornlacuna 13y ago
    The difference is not intent but use. This is the same with real estate: if I own a building to live in it, that's personal property, but if I own a building to rent it out or run a business in it then it becomes private property.
    - humanrebar 13y ago
      What if it's my personal property is valuable as a commodity? As in, what if I want to sell my home? I'm not sure the lines are so distinct. Even if they were theoretically distinct, I doubt that a legal system would fairly make the necessary distinctions.
      - shornlacuna 13y ago
        If you wanted to sell your home to someone else so they could live in it, that seems to me like the transfer of personal property from one person to another, probably in return for some other personal property (another house maybe, you still need somewhere to live). Whether an actual communist society would organise housing like this isn't clear. No-one would reasonably consider Marx's writings to offer a societal blueprint, just principles from which actual details would be worked out through collective processes. That it's never actually worked out like that suggests there's been something missing when this has been tried, but this doesn't correspond to proof that the principles themselves are wrong.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    It's also sort of wrong to talk about private property in Marx's end game. It simply doesn't exist. There's personal property (your residence, clothing, non-scarce items that may, coincidentally, be used in production like a laptop or hammer). And then there's the rest. The mainframe I mentioned, in a 1960s tech level communist society, would be a means of production. It's scarce, many people need access to it to enable their work, time will have to be coordinated on it. Your laptop, even if loaned to someone else, in a world with abundant laptops/computers is still your laptop. If it helps, software in that world is not scarce either. It's freely shared because there's no copyright or license agreements. They'd be antithetical to that world's view.
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    As I said in an edit to my other post: the intuition is capacity to oppress — the state or capitalists controlling means of production, in Soviet communism and capitalism, respectively. This is the motivating factor behind any such definition, given the context. Now, if you're taking the stance of a determined skeptic, then that's like you pointing out there's no such definition of "chair". Which after all is true. (There's no predicate which separates all objects into chair and not-chair, and a simple argument demonstrates why.) Humans get by pretty well without extreme definitions. Presumably without the antagonisms inherent in systems like capitalism, there'd be fewer armies of lawyers squabbling over the meanings of simple words like "property", inventing weird new forms like intellectual property, fighting over whether that land or sourcecode is my property, if you can shoot someone on your property, etc. We're constantly squabbling over it right now, because that's how power works under capitalism.
chongli 13y ago
Copyright is a capitalist invention. It would not exist in a Marxist society. This makes your question trivial to answer: your laptop becomes a means of production when it's connected to a machine that produces real goods.
- AnimalMuppet 13y ago
  HN isn't "real goods"? You're stuck in the past.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    You missed the point. s/real goods/scarce items/g
    - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
      Well, HN isn't a scarce item in one sense, namely, anybody with a computer can access it from anywhere on the planet (except perhaps North Korea). But HN is a scarce item in another sense. If I wanted to make another one, I'd have to not only code it up, but also attract the readers that HN currently has. That would be difficult.
- atom-morgan 13y ago
  Copyright, along with patents and trademarks, is not a capitalist invention. It's a privilege granted by the government. Without the government close by, individuals or businesses would not have the power to enforce whatever it is they're trying to protect. In a truly free market, copyright would not exist.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    Well, it would exist to the extent that DRM could enforce it.
    - atom-morgan 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
calibraxis 13y ago
When (say) people explaining Parecon are in a fairly precise mood, they say things like "scarce means of production", and make examples that explain that you're not talking about laptops or pencils, if they're sufficiently commonplace. (So under Parecon, no one "owns" the scarce means of production — or you could say it's commonly owned — but you can own your laptop/pencil.) [Edit: the intuition is capacity to oppress — the state or capitalists controlling means of production, in Soviet communism and capitalism, respectively. This is the motivating factor behind any such definition, given the context.]
garrettgrimsley 13y ago
Personal property laptop: You use it on your own. Private property laptop: Someone else uses the laptop to perform work. You retain ownership of the laptop and the product of their labor. It's a use distinction.
- atom-morgan 13y ago
  Scenario: I use my own laptop to do work for someone else. Personal or private?
  - shornlacuna 13y ago
    You still use it on your own, so personal. Anyway, once you abolish private property, most versions of 'working for someone else' go too, so this is somewhat academic.
    - atom-morgan 13y ago
      But, the end product belongs to the person I was working for. It's still personal property? >once you abolish private property, most versions of 'working for someone else' go too How so?
      - shornlacuna 13y ago
        Well if you are just making something for someone else, that's artisan labour, which isn't really the 'production' that's being analysed by Marx. 'Working for someone else' as found in 'employment' is also something that marxists seek to abolish. Collective ownership of the means of production also means collective ownership of the product of labour. You only have 'employment' per se when ownership of capital is concentrated in private hands. (It's not for nothing that many marxists classify the former soviet union and post-Mao china as 'state capitalist' rather than 'socialist').
koof 13y ago
Means of production more has to do with scale. Software is extremely unique as an industry in that people can truly "produce" something by themselves - all other cases of self-employment I can think of are pretty much services, which is a whole other can of worms. A tech oriented example of a means of production that Marx would want run by the state would include any cloud service or datacenter. The average person simply can't afford to start one "on their own" without outside capital.
vilhelm_s 13y ago
I say if you work as a programmer using a laptop, then that laptop is a means of production. The usual formulation is that workers should own/control their means of production, so if you work as a programmer and own your own laptop, you are living in a small slice of communist utopia. This probably is very related to how much nicer programming jobs are than most other jobs--as a programmer you are much less affected by capitalism than workers in capital-intensive industries are. I remember reading a pamphlet about the micro-computer revolution published by some British communist organization in the early 1980s. They analyzed programming as belonging to Marx' category of pre-industrial "craft" production, and predicted that there would be a push from employers to gain more control (by reducing programming to a less personalized, more commoditized activity). I think several trends can be fruitfully analyzed from this point of view, e.g. UML-style software engineering methodologies, cloud computing, DRM, and app stores.
buzaga41 13y ago
I guess it's if this piece of machinery is not actually yours, costs more than you can make in a decade and it's lent to you by your employer so you can code asp.net corporate system only and nothing more for ever... well, the times were different. Writing this made me think of FOSS, Linux... Imagine how would things be without it o.O

Jtsummers 13y ago

A way to look at it may be: Is there one community laptop or are their many laptops? A mainframe setup and limited internet constrained to university and business campuses, it becomes more like the "means of production". If there are enough laptops (or near enough) to go around, it's personal property.

atom-morgan 13y ago
But this is exactly what I'm talking about. I've never been able to get a clear answer because so many people in this camp have to take it on a case by case basis. So if laptops are plentiful, it’s personal property. I feel it’s safe to say that most developers probably have their own laptop. So if I hire a developer to write code on my laptop (which was previously personal property) is it now private property since it’s being used as a means of production? If so, the true distinction between personal and private property is intent which is far from satisfactory if we're defining property. So many things I own today would constantly be switching between personal and private property based on what I was trying to accomplish at that moment in time.
- shornlacuna 13y ago
  The difference is not intent but use. This is the same with real estate: if I own a building to live in it, that's personal property, but if I own a building to rent it out or run a business in it then it becomes private property.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    What if it's my personal property is valuable as a commodity? As in, what if I want to sell my home? I'm not sure the lines are so distinct. Even if they were theoretically distinct, I doubt that a legal system would fairly make the necessary distinctions.
    - shornlacuna 13y ago
      If you wanted to sell your home to someone else so they could live in it, that seems to me like the transfer of personal property from one person to another, probably in return for some other personal property (another house maybe, you still need somewhere to live). Whether an actual communist society would organise housing like this isn't clear. No-one would reasonably consider Marx's writings to offer a societal blueprint, just principles from which actual details would be worked out through collective processes. That it's never actually worked out like that suggests there's been something missing when this has been tried, but this doesn't correspond to proof that the principles themselves are wrong.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  It's also sort of wrong to talk about private property in Marx's end game. It simply doesn't exist. There's personal property (your residence, clothing, non-scarce items that may, coincidentally, be used in production like a laptop or hammer). And then there's the rest. The mainframe I mentioned, in a 1960s tech level communist society, would be a means of production. It's scarce, many people need access to it to enable their work, time will have to be coordinated on it. Your laptop, even if loaned to someone else, in a world with abundant laptops/computers is still your laptop. If it helps, software in that world is not scarce either. It's freely shared because there's no copyright or license agreements. They'd be antithetical to that world's view.
- calibraxis 13y ago
  As I said in an edit to my other post: the intuition is capacity to oppress — the state or capitalists controlling means of production, in Soviet communism and capitalism, respectively. This is the motivating factor behind any such definition, given the context. Now, if you're taking the stance of a determined skeptic, then that's like you pointing out there's no such definition of "chair". Which after all is true. (There's no predicate which separates all objects into chair and not-chair, and a simple argument demonstrates why.) Humans get by pretty well without extreme definitions. Presumably without the antagonisms inherent in systems like capitalism, there'd be fewer armies of lawyers squabbling over the meanings of simple words like "property", inventing weird new forms like intellectual property, fighting over whether that land or sourcecode is my property, if you can shoot someone on your property, etc. We're constantly squabbling over it right now, because that's how power works under capitalism.

chongli 13y ago

Copyright is a capitalist invention. It would not exist in a Marxist society. This makes your question trivial to answer: your laptop becomes a means of production when it's connected to a machine that produces real goods.

AnimalMuppet 13y ago
HN isn't "real goods"? You're stuck in the past.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  You missed the point. s/real goods/scarce items/g
  - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
    Well, HN isn't a scarce item in one sense, namely, anybody with a computer can access it from anywhere on the planet (except perhaps North Korea). But HN is a scarce item in another sense. If I wanted to make another one, I'd have to not only code it up, but also attract the readers that HN currently has. That would be difficult.
atom-morgan 13y ago
Copyright, along with patents and trademarks, is not a capitalist invention. It's a privilege granted by the government. Without the government close by, individuals or businesses would not have the power to enforce whatever it is they're trying to protect. In a truly free market, copyright would not exist.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  Well, it would exist to the extent that DRM could enforce it.
  - atom-morgan 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

calibraxis 13y ago

When (say) people explaining Parecon are in a fairly precise mood, they say things like "scarce means of production", and make examples that explain that you're not talking about laptops or pencils, if they're sufficiently commonplace. (So under Parecon, no one "owns" the scarce means of production — or you could say it's commonly owned — but you can own your laptop/pencil.) [Edit: the intuition is capacity to oppress — the state or capitalists controlling means of production, in Soviet communism and capitalism, respectively. This is the motivating factor behind any such definition, given the context.]

garrettgrimsley 13y ago

Personal property laptop: You use it on your own. Private property laptop: Someone else uses the laptop to perform work. You retain ownership of the laptop and the product of their labor. It's a use distinction.

atom-morgan 13y ago
Scenario: I use my own laptop to do work for someone else. Personal or private?
- shornlacuna 13y ago
  You still use it on your own, so personal. Anyway, once you abolish private property, most versions of 'working for someone else' go too, so this is somewhat academic.
  - atom-morgan 13y ago
    But, the end product belongs to the person I was working for. It's still personal property? >once you abolish private property, most versions of 'working for someone else' go too How so?
    - shornlacuna 13y ago
      Well if you are just making something for someone else, that's artisan labour, which isn't really the 'production' that's being analysed by Marx. 'Working for someone else' as found in 'employment' is also something that marxists seek to abolish. Collective ownership of the means of production also means collective ownership of the product of labour. You only have 'employment' per se when ownership of capital is concentrated in private hands. (It's not for nothing that many marxists classify the former soviet union and post-Mao china as 'state capitalist' rather than 'socialist').

koof 13y ago

Means of production more has to do with scale. Software is extremely unique as an industry in that people can truly "produce" something by themselves - all other cases of self-employment I can think of are pretty much services, which is a whole other can of worms. A tech oriented example of a means of production that Marx would want run by the state would include any cloud service or datacenter. The average person simply can't afford to start one "on their own" without outside capital.

vilhelm_s 13y ago

I say if you work as a programmer using a laptop, then that laptop is a means of production. The usual formulation is that workers should own/control their means of production, so if you work as a programmer and own your own laptop, you are living in a small slice of communist utopia. This probably is very related to how much nicer programming jobs are than most other jobs--as a programmer you are much less affected by capitalism than workers in capital-intensive industries are. I remember reading a pamphlet about the micro-computer revolution published by some British communist organization in the early 1980s. They analyzed programming as belonging to Marx' category of pre-industrial "craft" production, and predicted that there would be a push from employers to gain more control (by reducing programming to a less personalized, more commoditized activity). I think several trends can be fruitfully analyzed from this point of view, e.g. UML-style software engineering methodologies, cloud computing, DRM, and app stores.

buzaga41 13y ago

I guess it's if this piece of machinery is not actually yours, costs more than you can make in a decade and it's lent to you by your employer so you can code asp.net corporate system only and nothing more for ever... well, the times were different. Writing this made me think of FOSS, Linux... Imagine how would things be without it o.O