I was recently reading an essay by Karl Marx. Karl Marx viewed capitalism as an exploitative, unstable, and inherently contradictory system that, while revolutionary in developing technology and productivity, would inevitably lead to its own collapse. He argued that capitalists accumulate wealth by extracting "surplus value" from workers, leading to alienation and intensifying class conflict between the bourgeoisie (owners) and the proletariat (workers).
The New Labor Field
There is a persistent message running through contemporary culture that everyone should become a kind of capitalist. Build your platform. Grow your audience. Monetize your output. Turn your presence into income.
On the surface, this appears to be a democratization of opportunity.
In practice, it functions differently.
Most people are not becoming capitalists. They are becoming laborers inside a system that presents itself as open while concentrating actual control elsewhere.
The difference is important.
A capitalist, in the classical sense, owns the means by which value is produced and distributed. A factory owner owns the factory. A publisher owns the press. Ownership determines where the value accumulates.
In the current system, the means of production are platforms. While we as artists are the producers of our own work, in today’s digital world the economy is attention and attention drives traffic and who gets it.
And those platforms are not owned by the people producing the content that gives them value.
The individual creator produces:
images
writing
video
commentary
identity
But the platform owns:
distribution
visibility
audience access
monetization pathways
This means that while individuals are encouraged to think of themselves as independent operators, they are operating within a structure where the primary value extraction happens above them.
It is a familiar pattern in a new form.
Labor produces value.
Infrastructure captures it.
What makes this system more complex than earlier industrial models is that participation feels voluntary and even empowering.
No one is assigned a shift.
No one is visibly coerced.
Instead, participation is driven by visibility, aspiration, and the desire to be seen and heard. The system does not need to force production. It invites it.
And because expression itself is the raw material, the boundary between life and labor becomes unclear. You are not just working. You are expressing, sharing, reacting, documenting. Yet all of it feeds the same system.
There is another layer.
Not all expression is equally rewarded.
What rises most reliably is what produces measurable engagement, and engagement is most easily generated through intensity.
Outrage travels.
Conflict travels.
Division travels.
This creates a feedback loop.
Creators, consciously or not, begin to shape their output toward what moves. Over time, the field becomes saturated with heightened signals, each one competing for attention within the same bounded system. The result is not only economic extraction, but social fragmentation. People who might otherwise stand beside one another are pulled into oppositional positions because opposition performs.
In this sense, the system does not just extract value. It reorganizes relationships in order to maximize value.
If there is a question for the artist within this, it is not simply how to succeed within the system. It is whether success within that structure aligns with what one is trying to do. Because the system rewards production, but it does not necessarily reward depth. It rewards visibility, but not necessarily coherence. It rewards reaction, but not necessarily understanding.
A post-labor creative society would begin by recognizing this distinction.
It would ask:
What does it mean to create outside of a system where expression is constantly pulled toward monetization and performance?
This does not require immediate withdrawal from existing platforms. That is neither practical nor necessary.
But it does suggest a different orientation.
One in which:
not all work is produced for the system
not all value is measured by reach
not all expression is shaped for response
It also suggests the need for parallel structures.
Spaces where:
distribution is not entirely centralized
relationships are not mediated only by algorithm
value can circulate without being continuously extracted
And beyond structure, it suggests a cultural shift. A recognition that not everyone needs to become a capitalist of the self. That the pressure to constantly produce and perform is not a natural condition, but a constructed one. That creative life might be organized differently.
Karl Marx looked at a world where workers competed for wages within systems they did not control. Today, the competition has moved into the realm of visibility and expression. But the underlying dynamic remains. People are still competing within structures that benefit from that competition.
And the question remains open:
What would it look like to step out of that arrangement, not individually, but collectively, and begin to build something that does not depend on it? Is that possible?If so, what would that look like?
There’s another element to this system that didn’t exist, before the data age. Our data, personal and professional, has value to the powers that be. Regardless of how you enter platforms, our engagement on tech has value to someone else from scammers and fraudsters to Zucky and Musk.
I wish I had suggestions, but sharing this article is the best I’ve got.
I have a couple of thoughts (or maybe questions) on this very thoughtful article. I'll preface this by saying I am not a working artist, I am a dabbler who is blessed with the time and ability to spend hours a day painting and collaging. I sell nothing, so my understanding is limited.
First, it seems that creators are largely dependent upon some type of infrastructure to help them get their products seen and distributed, whether that system is a patron system, a gallery or publisher, or a tech platform. One cannot be both creator and marketer without collapsing from exhaustion. I am not imaginative enough to envision an alternative system that isn't small and local - like an art fair or farmer's market. Or even a collective of some kind. Would you agree to the statement that some kind of infrastructure is a necessary component for most creators (except maybe Picasso)?
If we agree that some type of infrastructure is a necessity, then I keep coming back to the idea of state-sponsored support of the arts. For example, Scotland appears to me to be highly supportive of artists. The National Gallery markets art and creativity to the citizenry in an engaging way, although it focuses attention on the most successful artists. Could a type of state-sponsored art collective work? However, while I recognize that the National Gallery appears benign, there is always a chance that will change and a tin-pot dictator will take over and dismantle the system.
So then, how might museums be brought into the idea of the collective.? I live in a small town, with two museums. The state run museum has a historical focus and is an unlikely partner, but our privately owned museum works hard to highlight young artists and creators, and to engage the community. Is it feasible to create a network of museum/collectives with nodes in various communities across the country, and eventually the globe?
I look forward to other thoughts on this subject.