Information Explosion: A Marxian Analysis of the Information Revolution
...ent in commodities of a greater or less amount, depending on the complexity of the labour power. The expenses of this education enter pro tanto into the total value spent in its production” (Marx 2000: 491-492). If having advanced education and training means the value of this labour will increase, then technology employers will have to pay their workers more. A polarization of the working class will ensue – known in Marxian terms as de-skilling (77.222: 22 Sept 2004) – generating unskilled labourers who are grossly underpaid and skilled workers who earn a considerable amount of money. Due to the rise of the educated working class, the reign of corporate owners and employers will start to collapse. The consequence of the high-technology workplace is the disappearance of the distinction between management and labour; in its place emerges a shared professionalism. Marx has predicted this trend as well, claiming that the modern labourer will sink below his own class and that entire sections of the ruling class will be precipitated into the proletariat by the advance of industry. “Existence of the bourgeoisie is no longer compatible with society. The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (Marx 1988: 30-31). The generation of wealth increasingly depends on the exchange of data, where labour and materials become less important than knowledge. Because information is not exhausted by use and can be reproduced easily and inexpensively, it is immune from ownership… or is it? Can the knowledge produced in the information revolution be considered a commodity or not? If a good is produced for your own use or for the use of another individual, it is not regarded as a commodity in Marxism. According to Marx, “to become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use-value, by means of an exchange” (Marx 2000: 462). This definition may be applicable when discussing spindles and yarn but is flawed for an analysis of the information revolution. Although information cannot currently be described as a Marxian commodity, it may someday come to fit such a description. If, one day, knowledge is produced for the sole purpose of trading, i.e. is commodified, then information may perhaps become the new “money” of our society. As knowledge is circulated, its “ownership” is distributed among many individuals, resulting in a decline in the possession of this knowledge as a commodity to be bought and sold. In other words, the expansion of technology will generate a dissolution of ownership, yielding a gradual relaxation of capitalist relations and commodity exchange; that is, an increasingly equalitarian society. This notion of historical progress toward a classless society was predicted by Marx and Engels, who claimed that the division of classes would be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces, and that this abolition presupposes a degree of historical evolution (Engels 1988: 66). While this may be true, Marxism doesn’t take into account the potential emergence of a new class, a professional class based on knowledge rather than property, which exists between the opposition of capitalist and worker. This professional class may, in fact, become the new ruling class, a possibility Marx and Engels do not consider in their theory. If capitalist relations are relaxed and society becomes increasingly equalitarian, can such a society even be called capitalist anymore? Does this information explosion really transcend capitalism or simply elevate it to a new level? Exploitation of labour, alienation, dehumanizing mechanization, centralization and concentration of wealth, immiseration – all are characteristics, not of capitalism by itself, but rather of industrial civilization. We are headed toward a future in which the commodification of information leads to social salvation. It can be said that this will result in a new stage of capitalism that will not even really be capitalism at all since it will serve a range of human goals rather than profit alone. Alienation results from a lack of control over what we create; workers are alienated from the products of their labour. Although Marx carries this concept further, noting that conditions in a capitalist society make it impossible for workers to live meaningfully in relation to each other, to the products of their labour, or even to themselves (77.222: 22 Sept 2004), he does not carry it far enough. Advanced technology may reverse this feeling of alienation, eliminating the dehumanizing effect which often results in an indifference toward some significant aspect of life. Whereas before workers did not own the means of production nor the products of their efforts, today the most powerful tool is the information inside workers’ heads. In other words, highly skilled workers will now own a critical component of the means of production; in essence, they will possess the fruits of their labour, rendering them virtually irreplaceable. Now we stumble upon an obvious contradiction. It is clear that technology results in two things – an increase in the production of knowledge and the increase in the required training to produce this knowledge. These two things are positively correlated: as expertise increases, the rate at which that expertise can produce knowledge will also increase. Since information is replicated effortlessly, then the efficiency of the production of knowledge will continually increase. Consistent with Marxism, there is a relationship between the labour required to produce a good and the value of that good – the less labour required, the less the value (Marx 2000: 466). Marx provides the analogy that “With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If we could succeed … in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks” (Marx 2000: 462). In other words, as technology continues to increase, the value of the information it produces will decrease. The more knowledge there is, the less it is worth. Does this even make sense? Now comes the interesting part: the amount of training required to do these jobs is increasing ...