Well, he would probably think he was right. Such thinking fits neatly with his thinking: the spread of machines, or the creation of the all-encompassing, pervasive neuro-anatomy of the internet reminded me of a quote from the Communist Manifesto: 'the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.'

Such prescience is characteristic of Marx. (Speaking of which, when I googled that quote, it actually returned this. But I digress.)

So then, how would Marx agree that the consumer driven economy as a method of resolving the problem of surplus? (o be honest, I'm not sure he would accept that this resolves the problem, which arguably was better managed by the destruction of capital via two World Wars. Perhaps the reliance on a consumer is mere temporary management of the chaotic nature of capitalism rather than its resolution.

For Marx in that sense, then, does the creation of the internet - like the industrial revolution, or the proletarianisation of Chinese peasants, say - pave the way for revolution? Is this what transforms the working class into the revolutionary class (like the bourgeois who now dominate)? Or is that age passed now? Is there another class of people who are the lynchpin to production (and consumption) that have the power to transform society? It leads me to an uncomfortable possibility that this class may in fact be techies and nerds. I doubt it, I still think it's the working class - the people who make and consume things - that make the world go around. I'd be curious to know if others agree.

-- LizzieOShea - 17 Sep 2015

You could take my contribution to this rumination to be the dotCommunistManifesto of 2003, I suppose.....

Yes I like this! And if anyone ever needed a justification for the abolition of property in ideas, surely this serves that purpose. Imagine a world where this was renationalised or re-appropriated!

My concern is that if we do think that 'the creators' are the revolutionary class (and this probably needs greater analysis) I'm a bit worried that this will go awry. There are so few people with knowledge and understanding of the web and how it works that a key project must be to develop such literacy more broadly, kind of like general literacy. The Rights of Man was read aloud in pubs because people couldn't read - so there are ways around it. But I'm concerned that the creators do not have political grounding (or a developed political culture) that protects against cooptation or compromise. There is no real movement to hold them accountable. Many techies I meet also think that technology will find a solution to many of these problems, like surveillance, data accumulation etc. That seems fundamentally to misunderstand the world we live in.

So we need more people who can speak their language to argue about these points and more people who speak the language to orient toward mass movements, away from power and privilege. Obvious really, I guess, just hard to put into action.