Information more important then capital?

[Das war einmal]

According to one important studybook of my HRM studies, information is the new financial base for our current economy in the 21st century. It is more important then material conditions like ground, factories (and other buildings) and capital.

I know that today, vital information is worth millions. The market price for certain information is much higher than any materialistic product.

However how can something immaterial be the most important aspect of an economy? As far as I know you still need a materialistic basis before information has any value at all.

[Common_Means]

According to one important studybook of my HRM studies, information is the new financial base for our current economy in the 21st century. It is more important then material conditions like ground, factories (and other buildings) and capital.

I know that today, vital information is worth millions. The market price for certain information is much higher than any materialistic product.

However how can something immaterial be the most important aspect of an economy? As far as I know you still need a materialistic basis before information has any value at all.

Of course you still need a material basis; that is what objectifies value. Without a material basis, value remains a thought in one's brain.

Keep in mind however that the central feature to our economy is immaterial - as value is not, in itself material. Labour-power is not material. They only become material when human labour is congealed in a commodity.

[Kléber]

Intellectual labor still has to be expended to produce this information. The most sought-after and best ideas, theories and statistics will generally be those into which the most labor was put researching, and money spent paying researchers, so Marx's analysis still applies.

[Jimmie Higgins]

That textbook must have been written in the 90s:lol:.

I agree with what the other comrades said - I'm surprised to learn that people are still making the "information age" argument. Is it still common among academics?

[which doctor]

Information is stored labour power, in the sense that people had to perform intellectual labour to get the information. So, information is a commodity, and in that sense it is also very 'material.'

[CartCollector]

Information is stored labour power, in the sense that people had to perform intellectual labour to get the information. So, information is a commodity, and in that sense it is also very 'material.'
What are your thoughts then on the payment for intellectual labor? Quite a few communists I have come across support the notion that information shouldn't be restricted by patents or copyrights because they create artificial scarcity.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What are your thoughts then on the payment for intellectual labor? Quite a few communists I have come across support the notion that information shouldn't be restricted by patents or copyrights because they create artificial scarcity.It would be different depending on if you mean right now under capitalism or theoretically under a worker-run society.

[Dermezel]

Well yeah it makes sense. I mean, according to a Dialectical framework super-structure can contradict infrastructure. Marx's analysis still applies with respect to the centralization of capital, but he didn't say anything about something like the internet or computers because back then that didn't exist.

Marx's formulations represent working scientific principles, not weird metaphysical magical sayings. So yeah, strange new technology that Marx couldn't have predicted can alter the landscape significantly.

It still applies, just like natural selection still applies when a calamity like a meteorite hits, but it can be pushed into the background.

I think the empirical data shows that Marx's arguments still apply with respect to the centralization of capital, but information is much more powerful and independent then in previous epochs and the proletariat should maximize their strategic use of information war.

To not do so, to become Luddite and advocate the proletariat turn Luddite and let the bourgeoisie monopolize the importance of science and technology is to do a huge disservice to the proletariat. That is like saying the Red Army should stick to swords in the age of guns.

Likewise to argue that nothing "really changes" even when there has been more technological development in the past 50 years then in the past 200, and more in the past 200 then in the past 2000 is to send the proletariat into a world of crippling idealism. It is like when Lakotans launched themselves against bullets under the belief that the performance of some mystical ghost dance would protect them, and were subsequently slaughtered.

This is particularly harmful to the proletariat, as oppressed groups are more susceptible to superstitious beliefs. The proletariat must utilize every resource it can, especially the latest technology, to maximum degree. If the proletariat can do this in a utilitarian manner, while bourgeoisie forces live under delusions of work chauvinism and weird luddite fantasies so much the better. A real proletariat realizes that it is machinery, not hard work, on which the modern economy is based, and victory is dependent on strategic use of machinery, and now apparently, information, not hard work.

Anyone who has had a job in production knows that working twice as hard usually does not give equivalent results. I've had my boss try to squeeze out every single minute, often for little gain. This is especially true vs. having better tools, or strategies or machines. In fact, I was able to at times increase production two-five fold in various departments merely by advocating the increased use of machinery coupled with new strategic methods that took the newer machinery into account (the fact of the matter is the company was still using methods from the 50s when computers were not common, creating all this extra work just in the name of an idiotic bourgeoisie tradition. ) The bourgeoisie tend to romanticize labor for moralistic purposes- it helps them justify their privileges to themselves and others. They like to believe they "earned" it, or their ancestors earned it, and that is only plausible if wealth is the result of hard work. If wealth is the result of machinery, what sense does it make to say a person "earned" anything? It's pretty hard to justify "earning" 400 times more then a worker if all wealth basically comes to machine production and social inheritance of such production.

The idea that hard work achieves much, especially in capitalism, is a bourgeoisie illusion. That was the point of Capital, not that the labor theory of value should be true or having labor as the basis of value is good for the economy, but that it is true under capitalism, and treated as such in a sort of superstitious, deformed economy. As Marx noted in Critique of the Gotha program:


Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission. This cautioning against treating labor as something with supernatural power is more true today then when Marx wrote that because the technologically has improved so dramatically. Back then animal labor was still the primary basis of transportation. Now at days animal transport is almost 100% extinct and kept largely as a curiosity (this is in fact the reason why political gains are so important for the proletariat, because one day our labor will become completely obsolete) .

It is the fact that the proletariat can dismiss these illusions, and focus on pure utility and technology that gives us a strategic edge. It is the fact that Capital is a scientific argument based on conditionals that makes it more compelling then some weird religious or Utopian dogma. Someday everything Marx wrote in Capital will become obsolete, and a new theorist will make everything Marx wrote look like the works of a child, just like modern day biologists have far surpassed Darwin. Marx's statements only hold true within a certain level of technological development, in a certain political-legal framework, i.e. capitalism. The laws basically work like this:

Within X condition (capitalism) Y tends to occur as a consequence (centralization of capital. )

Some radical new invention like the internet, or robotics, or nanotechnology can make everything Marx wrote obsolete. So far the centralization of capital still holds strong as an economic law, but someday that may not be the case, and in fact the entire goal of socialism is meant to make much of what Marx wrote obsolete.

[vyborg]

Information was paramount in any epoch. Try to build a pyramid without proper information...

So the argument is hardly new. What is different now is the speed of the distribution of information via Internet, but if the information does not allow you to make a profit...it has no sense for a burgeois producer

[Dermezel]

Information was paramount in any epoch. Try to build a pyramid without proper information...

So the argument is hardly new. What is different now is the speed of the distribution of information via Internet, but if the information does not allow you to make a profit...it has no sense for a burgeois producer

It is a great tool for proletariat internationalist projects because it is relatively cheap compared to other mediums like television, it is less restricted, world wide in reach, and enhances critical thought. The internet can raise class consciousness to a whole new level.

[mikelepore]

What are your thoughts then on the payment for intellectual labor? Quite a few communists I have come across support the notion that information shouldn't be restricted by patents or copyrights because they create artificial scarcity.

It makes no sense to me that some people get paid once to do some jobs, and other people get paid continuously for doing a job one time. Should the worker who makes a cement sidewalk get paid over and over again, every day for the next fifty years, if other people continue to walk on the sidewalk for the next fifty years? Of course not. That's what's wrong with patents, copyrights, music royalties, movie residuals, etc. The creators did it once, so pay them once. There should be no artificial aristocracies among workers.

[CartCollector]

It would be different depending on if you mean right now under capitalism or theoretically under a worker-run society.
I'm thinking about what would happen in a worker-run society.


That's what's wrong with patents, copyrights, music royalties, movie residuals, etc. The creators did it once, so pay them once. There should be no artificial aristocracies among workers.
However, if there is no copyright or patent, how can you make sure that the creators get paid at all? It could be possible that, without a copyright or patent, a worker/group of workers wouldn't be able to be paid at all, as their work would be freely distributed from the outset. How about this: copyrights/patents last until the workers that created it are paid in full for their labor. But how do you establish what the value of the labor is? This is assuming that in the worker run society there is some means of exchange- this argument makes no sense in, say, a gift economy.

[ckaihatsu]

According to one important studybook of my HRM studies, information is the new financial base for our current economy in the 21st century. It is more important then material conditions like ground, factories (and other buildings) and capital.


I think this is partly acknowledgement of the post-industrial reality and partly desperation marketing to get people into the mindset of whirling political intrigues so as to fuel petty power-base-building. (In an era where actual constructive *labor* is increasingly not needed, what's left, then? -- the Mad-Max-like competition among competing factions of ownership...!)

This may *also* be a capitalist-defensive manuever in an attempt to justify their material position in the face of the Information Revolution -- the Internet -- that actually *cheapens* and *common-izes* the utility and exchange value of information.





I know that today, vital information is worth millions. The market price for certain information is much higher than any materialistic product.


This would have to be at the *fringes* of the economy, in the realm of *highly* speculative or cutting-edge investments -- long-shot bets, basically, on highly indeterminate outcomes. This whole kind of scenario is *so* dramatic and played-up that it sounds more like a movie script about bandits in the Wild West than anything else.

Keep in mind that the overwhelming bulk of the economy is *very* well-known and moves in mostly-predictable ways.

And, more to the point here is will *you* be the one who goes off seeking that "million-dollar information" to provide to others?





However how can something immaterial be the most important aspect of an economy? As far as I know you still need a materialistic basis before information has any value at all.


Well, *yeah* -- duh.





Intellectual labor still has to be expended to produce this information. The most sought-after and best ideas, theories and statistics will generally be those into which the most labor was put researching, and money spent paying researchers, so Marx's analysis still applies.





I think the empirical data shows that Marx's arguments still apply with respect to the centralization of capital, but information is much more powerful and independent then in previous epochs and the proletariat should maximize their strategic use of information war.




The proletariat must utilize every resource it can, especially the latest technology, to maximum degree. If the proletariat can do this in a utilitarian manner, while bourgeoisie forces live under delusions of work chauvinism and weird luddite fantasies so much the better. A real proletariat realizes that it is machinery, not hard work, on which the modern economy is based, and victory is dependent on strategic use of machinery, and now apparently, information, not hard work.




It is a great tool for proletariat internationalist projects because it is relatively cheap compared to other mediums like television, it is less restricted, world wide in reach, and enhances critical thought. The internet can raise class consciousness to a whole new level.


I think what's happened is that there's much less space between the "floor" and the "ceiling" in contemporary times, due to mature / developed consumer items (cell phones, computers, digital goods), the mass availability of the Internet, and the extensive proletarianization / reach of the world market network. Material existence has become far more "standardized", or regularized, than in previous periods where development of disparate technologies -- or even industrialization as a whole -- was still ongoing. In short, there's much less to "fuss over" and the lull and relative quiescence is unsettling to those in ownership who normally benefit from fluctuations and uncertainty.


Chris




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-- Epitomizing generalities --

[ckaihatsu]

It makes no sense to me that some people get paid once to do some jobs, and other people get paid continuously for doing a job one time. Should the worker who makes a cement sidewalk get paid over and over again, every day for the next fifty years, if other people continue to walk on the sidewalk for the next fifty years? Of course not.


Here's the tricky part, though -- for the next fifty years, while the worker is *not* getting paid "residuals" / "royalties" for the cement sidewalk they made, the *owner* of the property *is* *owning*, (probably) collecting rent, and benefitting in other ways (tax writeoffs) from the worker's construction of the property.

So, just as in *any* other labor // management situation there is an *inherent* divergence of interests, based on class.





That's what's wrong with patents, copyrights, music royalties, movie residuals, etc. The creators did it once, so pay them once. There should be no artificial aristocracies among workers.


Again, I think you're doing the working class a disservice here by arguing this line -- if the creators / workers *don't* get the proceeds, then *who* does? (management)

(I'll agree that a *labor aristocracy* exists -- the trade union officials -- but their objective position is different since they *leech* off of the already-paid wages that workers receive while they occupy a middleman, or negotiation-only interest, between labor and capital.)





However, if there is no copyright or patent, how can you make sure that the creators get paid at all? It could be possible that, without a copyright or patent, a worker/group of workers wouldn't be able to be paid at all, as their work would be freely distributed from the outset. How about this: copyrights/patents last until the workers that created it are paid in full for their labor. But how do you establish what the value of the labor is?


Right -- one can go batshit insane trying to find a definitive answer to these issues around content creation, compensation for the artist, "intellectual property", unit pricing, "digital rights management", consumer unit usage rights, etc.

The advent of digital goods has only brought the question / crisis of the overall economic system to a boil, if anything -- why shouldn't people just create content for the *whole population* and receive what they themselves personally require from society's bounty, in turn?! The "middleman" of capital / private property itself could be eliminated altogether, along with all of the bother and incessant attention that it requires for its own internal machinations.

[mikelepore]

I'm thinking about what would happen in a worker-run society.

However, if there is no copyright or patent, how can you make sure that the creators get paid at all? It could be possible that, without a copyright or patent, a worker/group of workers wouldn't be able to be paid at all, as their work would be freely distributed from the outset. How about this: copyrights/patents last until the workers that created it are paid in full for their labor. But how do you establish what the value of the labor is? This is assuming that in the worker run society there is some means of exchange- this argument makes no sense in, say, a gift economy.

I am only discussing how I believe a future classless society, self-managed by workers, should operate.

I believe that individual workers should be compensated hourly according to their work time, an exception being an additional compensation for work that is more strenuous or dangerous. If the work time can't be measured precisely, then an estimate can be used, which may be necessary in the case of creative writing and invention. Otherwise, in some cases, society should consider creative work to be hobbies, not compensated at all, and performed not during work hours but after people leave work.

As for a gift economy, I'm opposed to such a system in any case. If such a system were attempted it would immediately collapse, and even to hear such an unworkable suggestion tends to make the working class react by being more conservative and therefore lengthens the period of class-divided society.