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.