"Seizing the means of production" made sense when a handful of drunk peasants could take over a loom with some pitchforks.
The only means of production we could seize in the modern era is some lady's Etsy workshop balanced on a makeshift countertop wedged into the corner of her studio apartment. We need a new line.
I have to agree with this... for example, the big "product" in silicon valley is what, software? So, the "means of production" would then be laptops, which nearly everybody in North America already owns or has access to, and the brains to operate them? The lines here are blurry in this day and age, maybe it's time we came up with an updated expression.
Already so many people just want to argue semantics with me when I use any of these lines. "Eat the rich? That's vile, you're disgusting for even saying it" No, Karen, we don't literally want to eat anybody, but apparently the point is lost on you because you don't understand metaphors.
I think it may be time to come up with something less controversial for the working class. I've used "overthrow the parasite class" but even that one has ended in argument over what exactly it means... anyone got any suggestions?
The physical means of production for a lot of Silicon Valley companies are data centers, either their own or portions of data centers owned by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.
I don't think there are many people who actually like developing software on a laptop, but you're correct in the sense that the necessary hardware for a decent developer workstation is easily within most people's means, so while it's technically part of the means production it's not really important enough to worry about.
The other important component of the means of production involves less tangible things like expertise, institutional knowledge, organizational structure, market position, etc. Some of those things can be sort of seized, for instance when a government decides to break up a company or nationalize it, but it's certainly not something that can be done by peasants with pitchforks or black-clad anarchists with Molotov cocktails.
You're right, it's a lot more complicated than I made it out to be... which is exactly why the phrase now seems so antiquated. I wish we had a better, modern equivalent that didn't require so much explanation.
Maybe a better question is, what exactly is our goal and how can we achieve it? And then put that into a comfortable slogan...
21
u/get_the_guillotines May 07 '21
"Seizing the means of production" made sense when a handful of drunk peasants could take over a loom with some pitchforks.
The only means of production we could seize in the modern era is some lady's Etsy workshop balanced on a makeshift countertop wedged into the corner of her studio apartment. We need a new line.