Postmodern Theory and Internet George Ritzer

10  As Braverman (1974) and others have demonstrated (Huws, 2003), this is a core component of  

the history of management—the history of rationalizing the production process in ways that reduce 

labour costs and increase the power of capitalists to substitute expensive skills with ‘scientific’ 

techniques and controlling technologies. There is, indeed, an ongoing political tension that stems from 

it; one in which capitalism’s growth constantly fosters new creative occupations while also striving 

to divide mental from manual labour. To repeat, worker resistance to these forces constitutes a core 

dynamic in the history of labour-management relations specifically and class relations more generally.

11  On the other hand, despite these complexities, there is nothing terribly new in twenty-first 

capitalism that Marx did not anticipate. In the nineteenth century, of course, class relations entailed 

more than just the bourgeoisie and proletariat; small numbers of workers escaped their proletarian 

positions; technologies, techniques and machines of all kinds were used by independent workers 

or petit bourgeois businessmen; and numerous forms of ‘non-productive’ (yet, for the production 

process, nevertheless essential) forms of labour existed. What has substantively changed, however, is 

the scale, speed and complexity of capitalism’s underlying dynamics, locally, nationally and globally.

12  Despite empirical evidence that capital historically encourages creativity but then systemizes and 

codifies it through technologies and management, Hardt and Negri’s recent book, Commonwealth 

(2009), repeats the argument that ‘social hierarchies is [sic] a fetter to productivity’ (p. 148). 

According to recent research conducted for the European Union, even in organizations where tacit  

forms of knowledge and creativity are deemed to be beneficial, the trend is ‘towards further 

rationalisation, standardisation and knowledge codification through the introduction of bureaucratic 

processes or knowledge codifying technologies’ (Ramioul and De Vroom, 2009: 85-6). The reason,  

others postulate (Huws and Dahlmann, 2009), is that the innovation and commodification process, 

under capitalism, is never ending. Corporations pursue and governments promote creative, 

knowledge-based developments followed by their rationalization, management and full exploitation. 

As knowledge advances alongside the technologies needed to commercialize it, activities once viewed 

to be fulfilling and even non-alienating are de-skilled, routinized or eliminated (Ibid.: 33-4).

13  Most employees today are not even permitted to enter prices into cash registers as scanners and 

touch screen buttons have been almost universally adopted.

14  Again, this is not to say that worker resistance has been insignificant. Critics of Braverman, 

among other points, emphasize that workers play an active role in this process—organizing (often 

successfully) in ways that have produced materially beneficial compromises (Burawoy, 1979;  

Edwards, 1980). However, over the long-term, such efforts have been countered through the methods 

discussed herein, using direct coercion (involving state mechanisms), and through cultural co-optation 

(including ‘standard-of-living’ improvements focusing on consumption). On the latter, see Comor 

(2008).

15  For a representative example—specifically on how the ‘scientific management’ of professional 

journalists is being elaborated using Web 2.0 technologies—see Peters (2010).

16  First, Torvalds is free to provide or deny his Institute’s technical support. Second, if others initiate 

profitable Linux-based services, he is free to develop similar ones (probably at lower costs). And, third, 

rival service providers, if they utilize an independent programmer’s (usually non-remunerated) code, 

are legally compelled to enter into a licensing agreement with Linux directly (Chopra and Dexter, 

2005). Barring a radical reform of U.S. and international law, what is known as the Linux open source 

business model (Rivlin, 2003) will likely continue into the foreseeable future.

17  See also Fitzgerald (2006) and Rusovan et al. (2005).

18  Nevertheless, the prosumer’s value for vested interests pursuing all components of the production 

process will drive forward the ease through which prosumption will be practiced. Just as the keyboard, 

graphic user interface and pc are now being eclipsed by touchscreen, voice recognition and mobile 

computing, user-friendly prosumer interfaces will likely become increasingly systematized, making  

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

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

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the kinds of creative contributions that are possible more delimited than open ended. Even the 

marketing aspects of prosumption will involve pre-defined, computer-mediated calculations as the 

labour inputs of both prosumers and marketers become increasingly automated and systematically 

processed.

19  More specifically, such privileged individuals have the wealth needed to circumvent the 

‘unfreedom’ of the wage labour contract. They also possess the intellectual capacities needed to 

facilitate a reflexive understanding of ‘reality’ in the context of historical structures. Surely these 

individuals are relatively well positioned to engage in creative, non-alienating forms of prosumption, 

involving, among other pursuits, their participation in knowledge and/or artistic endeavours. Of 

course, because many or most of these individuals, by definition, are not working class, it is unlikely 

that their prosumption will focus on truly revolutionary anti-status quo activities.

20  To repeat, Archibald (2009) presents empirical evidence of the contemporary predominance  

of alienation. See also Erikson (1986).

21  Presumably, since capitalism and its mediating institutions remain in place, prosumer practices 

will not be divorced from considerations of efficiency and profitability. This is not to say that efforts 

to circumvent these conditions, whether pursued consciously or not, will dissipate. Instead, and in 

contrast to an idealistic and, indeed, voluntaristic understanding of resistance, how people respond  

to exploitation and alienation is contingent; it involves both the structural parameters of one’s 

political economic existence and, related to these, the intellectual orientations of those taking part.

22  This idealized individual is ‘the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to 

society for them. The individual [is] seen neither as a moral whole, nor as part of a larger social 

whole, but as an owner of himself ’ (MacPherson, 1962: 3).

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

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

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