Postmodern Theory and Internet George Ritzer

The craftsman wields a tool. The individual worker cannot be said 

to wield a machine, for the machine of modern industry cannot 

be wielded… [T]he machine wields the worker, since he [Marx] 

conceives him as placed at its disposal, to be pushed and pulled.  

A machine in operation is a system in motion and the man is what 

is moved. But this makes it impossible to characterize the worker  

as a machine … The machine relates to the worker as the craftsman 

relates to his tool… (Cohen, 1968: 221, emphasis in original)

Cohen implicitly disavows the notion that alienation stems from the worker’s 

use of machinery and technology. In reality, the use of everything from knitting 

needles to computers to a pencil and paper in many instances may further the 

worker’s realization of her self-creative essence. Rather than humanity’s essence 

being denied as a result of using technology, a person’s essence is lost when 

she becomes merely a tool. To quote Marx directly: ‘Every kind of capitalist 

production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of 

creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that 

employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ  

the workman’ (Marx, 1887: 398-99).

Now that Marx’s theorization of alienation has been distilled, I return to 

prosumption to examine whether or not today’s digital technologies are being 

used to, in effect, liberate people from their dehumanized roles as tools in the 

production process.

Prosumption, production and class

To assess contemporary prosumption in light of its implications for alienation, 

we need to modify one aspect of Marx’s analysis. Unlike nineteenth century 

England, the populations of most twenty-first century capitalist societies are not 

always identifiable in straightforward bourgeois/proletarian terms. Significant 

numbers of people now are employed in so-called ‘non-productive’ occupations, 

innumerable workers own shares of corporations (even those they work for), and 

some aspire to self-employment using computers and other digital technologies 

as their individually-owned means of production. Given this contemporary 

labour force—characterized as it is by ambiguities and potential contradictions—

to proceed with a Marxist analysis of alienation and prosumption we need to 

re-frame class itself in a way that reflects these developments.

11

 To do this, it 

is useful to reiterate Marx’s emphasis on the fact that production is a process 

involving four interrelated moments: production, distribution, exchange and 

consumption.

Digital prosumption and alienation ………………………………………………………… Edward Comor

http://openfile.org.uk/archive/gil-leung-things-are-circulating/

7/18 

---

One of the most attractive traits of class (and certainly one of the reasons some 

find it troublesome) is its flexibility. As David McLellan observes, ‘Marx has 

many criteria for the application of the term ‘class’ and not all of them apply 

all the time. The two chief criteria are relationship to the prevailing mode of 

production and a group’s consciousness of itself as a class with its attendant 

political organization’ (McLellan, 1980: 182). Yet the concept of class reflects 

the essence of Marx’s analysis—it is the ‘place’ in which the material conditions 

of historical development are linked to the thoughts and actions of human 

beings. With Marx, the motor of historical change lies specifically in the 

dynamic drive to increase surplus value and, more generally, in the ongoing 

contradiction between developing forces and the relations of production.  

In keeping with the necessarily holistic nature of this approach, and given the 

importance of all inter-related moments in the production process, I believe  

that a similarly holistic approach to class—identifying class positions in terms 

of both production in and the reproduction of capitalist relations—is consistent 

with Marx’s methodology.

The importance of this broader reading of class becomes apparent as workers, 

particularly in recent decades, have become more directly burdened with the 

costs and time pressures associated with both their own reproduction and the 

reproduction of the production process in toto. The constant drive to ‘re-skill’ 

workers now, for example, often involves individuals learning, upgrading and 

paying for these reproduction needs. In the home, what Ursula Huws refers to 

as ‘consumption work’ has steadily increased also, meaning that the techniques 

and technologies needed to run a household (and reproduce labour) have been 

domesticated. Furthermore, a growing number of workers are trying to eek out 

livings from labour based in their homes, mostly performing jobs that are tenuous 

and poorly paid. Among this ‘cybertariat’ information and communication 

technologies (ICTs) constitute, for neoliberal apologists at least, a means of 

realizing greater ‘career independence’ and perhaps a way forward becoming, 

potentially, entrepreneurs or commercially recognized programmers, writers  

or artists. Beyond the spin, the fact is that such pursuits require most to become 

more (not less) dependent on a network (i.e. ‘the machine’) and an economic 

system that operates beyond any individual’s control—a network and system that 

impels those seeking ‘success’ to constantly improve their skills and purchase the 

latest (often expensive) hardware and software commodities (Huws, 2003: 170).

A growing workforce now labouring online are engaged in prosumption 

activities that support various components of the production process. Recent 

evidence demonstrates that those most active—what a recent Forrester Research 

report calls the Internet’s ‘actual creators’ (defined as those who have posted 

Digital prosumption and alienation ………………………………………………………… Edward Comor

http://openfile.org.uk/archive/gil-leung-things-are-circulating/

8/18 

---