Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

Marx & Proudhon in the Digital Age

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Ultimately, Proudhon’s predictions for the nature of an industrialised world did not eventuate.

Proudhon argued that “the introduction of machinery into industry is accomplished in opposition to the law of division”. 9 The failure of this prediction is probably due to his over-exaggeration

of the level to which mechanisation would be able to reverse his concerns over the division of

labour. However, Proudhon’s conception of machinery seems to be more applicable to today’s

internet, which is a form of connected machinery. Specifically, computers seem to corroborate

Proudhon’s labour-machine value theory of the non-division of labour. Seen through Proudhon’s

prism, the internet is a liberator in that machinery serves to reduce the bonds of servitude placed

upon the working class.

Another interesting societal change which has occurred throughout society is the emergence of

a class of people who are able to earn a comfortable wage solely through the generation of

internet content. This group can be seen as the return of Proudhon’s ‘man of letters’, as many of

them seem to match Proudhon’s description of a “writing commissioner in the pay of

everybody”. There are numerous cases where internet authors (workers) are simply paid for

their contributions to public discourse, regardless of their practical value.

3 - Karl Marx and the Capacity of Machinery in Labour-value Exchange

Marx’s critique of Proudhon’s understanding of the division of labour and mechanisation opens

with a claim that Proudhon is breaking from the traditional economic understanding of the

division of labour. To challenge Proudhon’s proposals, Marx first surveys existing economic

theories in order to establish that pre-existing theories covering the division of labour remain

9 Proudhon, The Philosophy of Poverty . Chapter 4 ‘Second Period. Machinery. 1. Of the function of machinery in its relations to liberty’.

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