Ask HN: How would Marxists define the “means of production” in 2020?
Doesn't anyone with an internet connection and a computer technically "own the means of production"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
"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.
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...
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?
And if yes, well, it ends by calling for the "forcible [presumably violent] overthrow of all existing social conditions". That has, in practice, resulted in totalitarianism every time it's been tried.
Now, you could say that there's a lot more to Marxism than that. And you'd be right. But "forcible overthow" is inherently part of it. And as long as it is, a bunch of us aren't willing to even touch the whole package, because we see it as having a bomb in it.
You've probably been duped by Leninist propaganda into mistaking Leninism and its descendants for Marxism (and, moreover, apparently the sole actual Marxism.) Leninism is, at best, a radical revision of Marxism in a attempt to erase the prerequisite for a developed capitalist economy with broad working class class consciousness.
The actual place Marxism, and not radical revisions like Leninism and its descendants, has had an effect is throughout the advanced Western states where capitalism -- the late-19th Century system critiqued by Marx -- was universally dominant, where it formed the core energizing various movements against that system, including particularly the labor movements, resulting in the replacement of the capitalist system Marx critiqued and the emergence and then dominance of the modern mixed economy, which while certainly not the end-state Marxism was directed at is clearly comprised of steps in the direction Marx called for.
If you want "free" everything and a gulag for dissenters please leave our fine country.
BTW, leave what country…? Is HN only open for people from one specific country? Are you sure you and I live in the same country?
But, it's going to take several generations to excise the festering thorn of Marxist thought from the human collective consciousness. If it can be removed before we enact its inevitable results again.