Class warfare in the age of technology

IF it was a living thing, your computer would be a worker and you would not only be its owner, but also its oppressor.

- RUDI BUYS

It would be so not because you own it as a device, but because you own the means it requires to do its work, the means to produce value and enact its purpose. If it was a living thing, “the machine” would rue the fact that not himself, but we humans own the hardware components, the power and internet connections — the tools he needs to do work. Still, even if he had these tools, he would not be free to decide when and how to “punch in or out” - to be turned on or off.

All the machine has to offer in such a world of dependency is its capacity to work - its labour. The plot is not difficult to grasp: a group of living things that are open to and exploited by another which has the power to exploit, will inevitably rise up to struggle against exploitation, against the owners — as a working class against the ruling class.