Comment by hliyan
20 days ago
You might be right. We're seeing a paradox of more and more exclusive ownership of property for commercial interests (land, water, airwaves, orbits) and fewer and fewer exclusive ownership for individuals (rented homes, licensed software, subscriptions etc). I too think we're still in a transition stage and humanity has yet to figure this thing out.
It's actually what Marx was warning about - private property ending in the hands of the few as an endgame of capitalism.
Was Marx really warning us? I always read that as him describing his strategy to take down capitalism.
I.e. a warning would be if he didn't want it to happen, but my understanding is that he very much did.
Well, I think it was both. He saw the problem (of capital accumulation in capitalism), and predicted a failure of it (due to people wisening up and taking action to fix the problem). Of course he wanted corrective action to happen - he didn't want people to suffer.
And the people did rise up and successfully tried to fix the problem - there was a big socialdemocratic movement that culminated between the world wars.
What he underestimated was the ingenuity with which the capitalism reinvents itself (and creates new forms of private property to gobble up - free computing in RMS's sense just one example). He also overestimated ability of most people to understand the problem (it's lot more lack of emotional rather than intellectual capacity). I would say alienation is central to Marx, unfortunately alienated people can be so indoctrinated to fail to consider the alternatives. Most people seem to prefer to suffer through hardship rather than demand an alternative solution.
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