[Commons-Law] Marx, Private Property and cultural common

[Joe Joe Harding]

One sees quite of lot of Marx and his quotes in
discussions on
property. 
Few things need to be kept in focus in using Marx.

For Marx privately owned production enterprise (the
proverbial 'capitalists'
owned enterprises)
were the object of analysis. The falling rate of
profit was 'the Law"
which would posit the objective limits of these
enterprises. Perhaps
this law did posit the objective limits. They were
transcended by stock companies
and state owned enterprises. For Marx stock companies
were a 'negation of
capital' and he termed them the negative negation of
capital. For many
later day Marxists the state owned enterprises were
also negation of capital
and perhaps a positive one - a.k.a. first stage of
communism. 
Marx excluded stock capital from the dynamics of
Falling ROP and instead included it
in the counteracting influences on the falling rate of
profit.
For Marx falling ROP does have any crucial influence
on Stock Capital.
The mode of distribution of redistribution of social
labour in situation
with predominant stock-state-loan-dependent mode of
production was thus not 
within Marx's purview, since it is through Falling ROP
that Marx explained
the distribution and redistribution of social labour
in Capital.

Significant part of Marx's analysis of Capital as a
whole 'the Vol. III' is dated and needs 
to be superseded. This part of Marx's analysis has
little relevance in the present.
Indiscriminately using Marx in analyzing today's
world where private owned production enterprises has a
very insignificant existence,
creates much more confusion than it aims to solve.
Loan dependent enterprises (what has been
interestingly termed as managerial
capitalism), sate owned production enterprises and
other such conglomerations
are the predominant mode of production based on wage
labour today. 

Marx’s characterization of wage labour based commodity
production with its
basis as the production, realisation and accumulation
of surplus value 
is still the foundational theorisation of present day
production.
Having said that it also needs to be pointed out Marx
dealt with non wage 
labour based commodity production in a very cursory
way. The artisans and
the peasants have a significant existence in many
parts of the world and
to many theorists has a crucial importance in the
survival and growth of
the capitalist social relation.
 
All struggles are not struggle of wage labour and
capital 
and not even class struggle per see. 
Many factions of capital, many modes of commodity
production
and many modes of production struggle against each
other. To collapse all
struggle under the rubric of class struggle is
erroneous.
The Culture war thesis appears to be doing just that.
The public and
class seems to be synonymous in this thesis!

Free software movement and Marx perhaps may be
discerned to have similar
passion for freedom. And there perhaps the similarity
ends. Free software
movement is a creative constructive challenge to
commodity production. It is 
perhaps prefiguration of the new that many of us
desire. The new which
neglects the ethos of the commodity economy - the
ethos of personification of
things and reification of social relations.

Marx's analysis informs what is quintessentially
commodity production,
and free software movement tells us how it can be
transcended
in practice. Marx analysis needs to be extended to
today's world and
free software movement needs to extended to other
fields of social life.
Marx's analysis needs to be grounded on the passionate
anti-commodity
ethics of Free software movement, which perhaps was
implicit in Marx 
but got lost somewhere in Marxism. And free software
movement needs to be
encapsulated with in a broader framework of 
production and reproduction of social life.

Joe



		
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