I'm going to begin this post by quickly correcting some issues with my previous post on marx.
The primary issues come in the section "Well, not according to Marx". Whether you say, "surplus value is time spent working beyond what is socially necessary", or "surplus value stems from the alienation of the worker from productive powers other than her labour power", you're really getting at the same thing from different directions. In the first case, the implicit call for a reduction in or the elimination of surplus labour-time would necessitate the reconciliation of the worker with productive powers beyond labour power. In the second case, the reconciliation of the productive powers would necesitate the elimination of surplus labour-time. Since surplus labour-time is labour-time spent producing the means of subsistence (and beyond) for a capitalist , abolishing the role of the capitalist and abolishing the performance of surplus labour have the same meaning. So it was wrong of me to say that Jehu and his cohort have missunderstood Marx, it was just that our starting directions through the relation of wage labour were different.
My segment on "Gattungswesen" might also have been misguided. I was not aware of the extent to which "early" and "mature" Marx differ on the relevenace of the humanist angle. I still believe I was correct to criticise Marx's construction of the human subject.
The section, "Not So Historical, Not So Materialist" doesn't do a good enough job of actually getting at Marx's theories of societal stages. I don't mention the ideas about "dominant", "residual" and, "emergent" modes which are present in Marx's analysis. Marx was fully aware that during any particular stage where there exists one dominant mode of production, that doesn't mean that it is the only mode of production. Even still, I think my critiques here are relevant even though I should have been a bit clearer on Marx's more nuanced analysis.
Ok now we've got that out of the way onto the actual subject of this post. Many people on the left like to talk about "the contradictions" in capitalism, but it's not always clear what they mean. If they do clarify, it usually comes down to the central tension between capitalist and worker, wherein the worker would like to work fewer hours for a higher wage, and the capitalist would like them to work more hours for a lower wage. That on it's own is not wrong, but it doesn't follow how or why that tension will resolve itself. It could be the case that workers and capitalists go back and forth on wages and labour time ad infinitum. If we look at the feudal economy, we can clearly see how over time, power became concentrated in the bourgeois merchant class through the accumulation of capital. Over time, the emergent capitalist mode of production gained more and more ground. How and why? This is an incredibly broad topic which I don't have the expertise or time to cover in full here. I'm going to lay out a few basic concepts which are necesary for my argument but know that this will be an extremely reductive and limited view on the concentration of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Early feudalism was almost entirely a rural society. As time went on this began to change. The more productive a peasent worker is, the more surplus they can produce for a lord. Technological development of the productive powers was notably slow, but it did happen. Early ploughs were entirely wooden, driven by hand and had no wheels. Later ploughs were wheeled and driven by beasts of burden, and could thus become heavier, allowing them to push deeper into the earth. The blades also were often metal rather than wooden. This made the ploughs overall more effective. There were other developments in agricultural technology, such as the transition from two to three feild crop rotation. In early feudalism, each family had their own millstones which were hand opperated, usually by the women of the household. As time went on, milling became centralised in specialised wind or water mills. I won't go through every technological development but suffice it to say these increases in productive power took place and lead to an increase in surplus extraction by the lords. They spent a lot of it on themselves and a lot of it waging war against other lords, but they also wanted lavish goods. Since land was now more productive, and there was more surplus sitting around waiting to be spent, it enabled a process of urbanisation. Towns and cities grew in population over time and these towns came to be dominated by merchants. Merchants could skim off some surplus and increase their power. Passing armies, lords, and fellow merchants all dealt in money. Since these groups were the primary inhabitants of feudal towns and cities, these towns were centers of the growing mode of commodity exchange. This form deteratorialised zones of feudal class, tradition and other economies, reteratorialsing them into the shape we would now call something like proto-capitalism. There is more detail about the influence of merchant guilds, early industrial production and so on but I think I've given a general outline by which we can see a process whereby power comes to be in the hands of one class rather than another. What's important to note here is that the "revolutionary subject", in this case the bourgeoisie, was not a pre-existing class, but a class which developed as a part of the transformation of society.
Just as feudalism created the conditions for it's own overcoming, let's see how capitalism does the same. Intensified urbanisation to opperate industrial production brings workers in close contact with one another, enabling mass organisation. The demand for accounting jobs required the creation of public schooling and mass literacy, which in turn allows for workers to become educated on the nature of class society. The development of productive forces lowers socially necesary labour time to it's minimum, enabling the possibility for the abolition of work. There are some of the points that marx and marxists bring up as exemplary of the process by which the proletariat is created and empowered. The issue is that it's plain to see proletarians are not in fact empowered under capitalism.
I have heard some leftists describe the revolutionary power of the proletariat in the simple terms that "there are more of us than there are of them". I find this very strange because that's not a good thing. The fact that the capitalist class is small and concentrated means that their organisation is much easier. To give an example: if Bezos wants to lower the wages of amazon employees, he needs only to have such a whim, and make a quick phone call. He has individual power. If amazon workers want a higher wage, it will require the formation of a union which takes substantial time and effort at risk of being fired; planning within that union regarding negotiation and strike action which will require time and effort at risk of being fired; the execution of a strike which will require time and effort and funds to support the workers all with very little guarantee of success. This process will require months if not years of continual struggle, all because power is distributed among the workers in its collective form, rather than centralised in the individual power of a capitalist. Do not read this as my personal support or condemnation of vanguardism as a revolutionary strategy.
As previously established, urban centers served as a zone wherein the logic of feudalism was deteratorialised and reteratorialised by the logic of capital. Where, in present society, is the logic of capital being negated in a similar fashion? I contend that it is in the digital zone. Capitalist production depends on a particular set of facts. It takes some amount of labour to produce say one table, and it takes a comparable amount of labour to produce another table, and another and so on. When it comes to digital goods, this logic is no longer true. It takes some amount of labour to produce some digital good, but the subsequent reproduction of that good requires a negligible quantity of labour. It's important to note that within this realm, the distinction between production and distribution breaks down. Producing one more copy of an mp3 file is the same process as distributing that copy. Capitalist distribution takes place within some firm or series of firms. Peer to peer (p2p) distribution, for instance via the bittorrent protocol, takes place within a distributed network of independent devices. Peers share files using some computer which they own (the degree to which they can be said to "own" their computers depends on their ability to modify it to their will. A repairable computer running a foss operating system is the ideal to which I am reffering). Public torrent trackers opperate on a principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Users are encouraged to seed torrents, and can leach whatever they like. Private trackers often have some minimum ratio requirement. Ratio keeps track of your quantity of seeds to downloads, in other terms it's a form of labour voucher. Across the network, the higher your ratio the more priority you get in download speeds, so those who perform more labour are rewarded and there is a system of incentives for production. One cannot purchase ratio on a market, since ratio doesn't circulate. There is no surplus extraction because there is no class division in terms of relation to means of re-production / distribution.
Due to the availability of freely distrubted digital goods, commodity fetishism begins to break down. when purchasing something online, it's clear that rather than paying for the material of a product in itself, one is paying to remove a paywall which has been placed in front of that product. That paywall can just as easily be circumvented via a p2p mode of distrubution. All payments of money in exchange for digital goods are donations. The p2p economy is a gift economy, it sustains itself on donations. Independent websites and services recieve donations to cover their hosting and upkeep costs. If they are producing use value, they often meet these costs.
Torrents only constitute a small portion of the economy. I'm not saying you're going to be able to torrent a hamburger tomorrow. However I do believe that the p2p economy is a material example of an emergent communist mode of production. What's particularly noteable is that bittorrent was invented by Bram Cohen, who as far as I can tell is not a communist (in fact I believe he's some form of libertarian). It's reasonable to assume that the majority of participants in the p2p economy are also not communists. This fact might indicate that the importance which has so far been placed on "raising class consciousness" may have been overstated. The beginnings of a programme emerge from the discovery of the p2p economy as an emerging communist mode of production. It would begin with enabling the concrete ownership over personal computers via the adoption of free software and hardware. It would encourage the usage and expansion of p2p modes of production to some extent beyond their current limited scope. It would involve the establishment of a gift economy of donations to help workers sustain themselves in capitalism while utilising the p2p economy. In future I will make another article in which I propose the adoption of the form of non-commercial personal websites (like this one) and independant forums are essential to the development of such a programme. This should not be taken to constitute the totality of what is needed to overcome capitalism, to put it plainly it is necessary but not sufficient. That being said, it should not be downplayed either. The victims of widespread adoption of the torrent economy are not some insignificant small fry, they currently constitute the subset of the capitalist class in command of the media industry, a significant and growing portion of the global economy. Moreover, unlike what has traditionally been see as the emergant mode of communist production, worker-coops, the p2p economy actually negates the commodity form.