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Of Marx, machines, and democracy

In college and beyond I spent some time pondering a very Marxian problem. (Both an ironic and appropriate thing to do at an institution dedicated to the promulgation of capitalism and founded by an oligarch of the industrial revolution.) As technology improves, and manufacturing becomes increasingly automated, the workers no longer control the means of production. Capital thus becomes the only scarce or non-replaceable resource along the production cycle, which means that the suppliers of said capital, i.e. the owners of the machines, will be able to extract most of the "value" in the value chain, depressing wages for low-skilled production jobs to a subsistence level. A small pool of marginally well-paid highly-skilled operators or technicians would be necessary to run these machines, but their wages would be supported only be the effort required to obtain the necessary technical capabilities. Everything else accrues to the capital owners.

Apart from the evident problem of no one being able to buy anything if almost everyone is poorly paid, this trend would lead to an increasingly stratified society, and other such very bad things. We've already seen this occurring, and generally, when I'd think about these issues, I'd become depressed.

Recently, however, I was reading this, and I realized I'd forgotten something. Machines can make machines, which will lower their cost and drive down initial capital requirements, meaning that everyone will have the ability to become a manufacturer. The only missing component then is the knowledge required to design and operate said machinery.

I used to say the Internet was cool, and then it was killed by shopping. And for a time, in the boom years, this was true. The real potential of the Internet isn't coming up with better ways to monetize content, or ever more efficient marketplaces, or even the development of new sales channels. The potential of the Internet is democracy, of which CGM is just a small part of the CGC (Consumer Generated Content) landscape. The boom had to die in order for the Internet to bloom, and blooming it is. CGM is democratizing the media and empowering the consumer. Wikis are democratizing knowledge, VOIP is democratizing telecom, and the open-source movement is democratizing software.

The Internet fills the missing components in the production cycle, information, by making that resource universally available. Add to that a generation increasingly comfortable with the idea that sharing knowledge improves life for all, and one finds a transformative shift in marketplace dynamics taking place. Workers won't just control the means of production, workers will *be* the means of production.

Welcome to the people's republic of technology.

Posted by Jeffrey Feldman on September 12, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Email this post Permalink

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