OptOut: Imperceptible Revolution

We live at a pivotal moment in history, during a true revolution. Of course, many people understand this to some extent: smartphones, the internet, blockchains, artificial intelligence, and the total “IT fiction of everything” – these phenomena are hard to ignore. But the fact is, these are only the initial signs of much more powerful tectonic shifts that will transform the economy and, with it, all other spheres of modern society. In other words, few realize that the current technological revolution is giving rise to a specific revolution in the mode of production, which in turn leads to a social revolution. And this process is happening right before our eyes today.

Lessons from History

Even the brightest minds of their time have not always been able to properly assess the consequences of events they witnessed. In the second half of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution happened. It subsequently brought about radical changes in the mode of production for centuries to come. The physiocrats saw industrialists and wage laborers in the industry as merely an "unproductive class": they were not engaged in agriculture, meaning they did not produce the food and raw materials they consumed. According to the physiocrats, only the land has productive power, so any society should aim to create an abundance of "products of the land" through the labor of those employed in agriculture, while the rest was considered less important.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that in manufacturing, which later transformed into factories, many workers could not fully sustain themselves without additionally working on a small plot of land. Sole employment in manufacturing at that level of economic development simply could not guarantee workers’ survival.

The same can be said for industrial production in general: its emergence was partly due to advances in agriculture. New tools and agricultural technologies led to an increase in the productive power of the land and the productivity of those employed in agriculture, creating a labor reserve for industrial production. Without the support of developed agriculture, the Industrial Revolution likely would not have been possible.

However, the further development of industry finally separated workers from the land. Over time, industry encompassed all major areas of production, even penetrating agriculture and transforming it in its own image. The previously established social structures were completely undermined, and new, industrial ones were established.

A detailed analysis of this process leads to the following conclusions:

• Social revolution is "triggered" by a revolution in technology and the mode of production. A shift in the means of production primarily changes the economy, which in turn leads to transformations in all other spheres of society.

• New mode of production grows out of the old, is based on it, and inevitably complements it. As it develops, it penetrates its old foundation and transforms it in a new way – from that moment on, the new mode of production stands on its own foundation and becomes independent.

  
  

Taking these points into account frees us from unnecessary skepticism and directs our attention toward finding truly progressive trends that carry revolutionary potential. It becomes less important that new technologies have not yet significantly impacted our daily lives; what matters is the fundamentally new production opportunities they open up. It is also less important that the new mode of production is still being built on top of the old one; what matters is how confidently and quickly it is developing. Without such a "compass", it is difficult to identify progressive directions, and genuinely revolutionary processes risk remaining unnoticed for a long time.

Economy Must Be Economical

But what exactly should the economy conserve? The primary function of the economy is to create goods necessary for society's life and development. To fulfill this function successfully requires a certain amount of resources, which are always scarce. That is, the faster and more goods can be produced with a given amount of resources, the better. Or, if we reduce all necessary resources to their monetary expressions, we can say that the economy seeks to reduce the cost of producing goods, all other things being equal. This process will conserve human labor because any value is ultimately determined by socially necessary labor expenditures.

Opponents of the labor theory of value might object here, but let’s leave this debate outside the scope of my article (it can be discussed in the comments). After all, this article is not an overview of all possible models of reality but a discussion of one particular model and the conclusions it leads to.

We are surrounded by a potentially infinite universe with potentially infinite possibilities. If that is the case, then any scarce resource can potentially be extracted (found or produced) in the required quantity, the only question being labor costs. But is it possible to spend less labor inventing new tools and processes whose application will allow us to conserve existing resources?

Indeed, new techniques and technologies allow us to optimize the structure of the economy, primarily the production sector. And if the dominant trend becomes a drive to conserve labor (I assume that, historically, this trend truly dominates), then these means are given free rein. This is reflected in the increasing productivity of labor.

Labor with a Human Face

The advent of machines and large-scale industry freed up an enormous amount of labor, and this labor, once again armed with machines, led to the creation of unprecedented goods, both in quality and quantity. However, with respect to labor itself, industrialization had a dual effect.

Before I examine these consequences, I need to define what exactly can be considered inherently human labor. In a certain sense, animals also "labor", but what distinguishes humans is that before acting, a person first actively builds an ideal model of their actions in their mind. This model is evaluated and adjusted both before the action begins and during the work process. It is subject to the goal of achieving a conscious objective, which is known to the person in advance.

Now, the use of machines splits people involved in production into two large groups:

• Smaller group of those who took the position "above machines" and subordinated machines to their creative will
• Larger group of those who found themselves "below machines" – where their will was subordinated by the machine and its method of operation.

Huge masses of people literally became appendages of machines: they were tasked with performing monotonous, partial operations, working to the rhythm of the machine, i.e., carrying out mechanical functions almost devoid of creativity, functions that automation had not yet reached. This largely contributed to the dehumanization of their labor.

And not just in the industry. Industrial production relations also influenced many other spheres of society, such as the education system and the functioning of the bureaucratic government, which became similar to a factory.

Humans and Computers

It is obvious that computers take automation to a new level. Where humans once were needed, now a cheap computing device can suffice. This is especially noticeable in fields of mechanical and intellectual labor: where entire institutions were once required, now the same tasks are solved by a tiny programmable machine that fits in a pocket.

However, further replacement of human labor by machines is far from the only thing computers bring with them. This kind of automation is, in essence, a solution to the problems of the industrial era, still fitting within its framework. However, computing machines and networks have also opened the door to a new era in which the mode of production itself changes, that is, how people interact when producing goods using computers. The most important changes are not where the computer has replaced the humans but where the humans have armed themselves with the computer.

In addition to reducing the number of people "below the machines", computers, thanks to the development of human-computer interaction interfaces, make machine control truly accessible and convenient for the mass user. In other words, computerization also potentially expands the class of people "above the machines".

And it is within this last class of people, engaged primarily in creative, inherently human labor, that the main revolution occurs. Humans have long been able to externalize their ideas, preserve them on paper as text or drawings, and store and transmit them without relying solely on their own minds. However, for a long time, the idea of one person or a group of people could only be transmitted directly to another person capable of reading symbols and bringing the idea to life. But only the era of computing dominance and computational networks allows not only dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people to work on the same concept simultaneously, like a single intelligent organism, but also, just as importantly, it provides the means for the automatic transformation of ideas. It allows the translation of an information model from a form understandable to humans into a sequence of commands directly interpretable by machines.

Only now are we approaching the threshold where human society becomes capable of forming a full-fledged noosphere. I mean involving masses of people in collective creative intellectual activity and shifting the main routine work of implementing and reproducing their ideas onto machines.

Model of Fully Automated Production

The computer-based field of information production today (particularly the field of software production) is interesting to consider as a visual model of fully automated production in general.

The fact is that any routine in programming is fairly quickly automated. There's no point in applying human labor to recreate the same algorithm each time—it’s enough to simply copy its code. If a procedure is used many times within a single project, it is abstracted into the project's code. If it's used across multiple projects, it’s moved to a shared library. As a result, software development is largely a creative activity, with developers primarily engaged in creating new things (locally new within a specific project or approach, and globally new as well). The outcomes of past labor are easily copied and reused.

The process of copying itself is not free—it requires machine time and memory. However, it doesn't require any human labor. No new labor is added to the produced copy along with the transfer of some necessary labor that was previously embedded in the machine and the original. This is the fundamental difference between so-called "copying technologies" and technologies of conventional industrial production, where the production of a "copy" inevitably requires human involvement and the addition of new living labor.

Since a copy doesn’t require additional human labor, no new value is added to it, and no new value is created along with the production of a copy. The cost of the copy is made up of fragments of transferred costs from the machine and the original.

The necessary labor that created the machine also created all the products that the machine has produced. For example, copies of a program. But with each new copy, the machine loses a part of itself—it wears out in the process of work until it becomes completely useless. A partially worn-out machine is worth less because part of its cost is transferred to everything it produces. Thus, the total cost of all copies produced by the machine equals the cost of the machine itself if it has been fully expended in the process of producing those copies.

The necessary labor that created the original informational program also created all subsequent copies of that original. The original is a piece of information, an idea that can be infinitely copied. Therefore, the original idea's initial cost is divided among each new copy, reducing the cost of each copy individually as more are made.

Obviously, if human labor is present only in the process of creating raw materials, machines, and informational models (projects and control programs), then the final product, regardless of how complex the automated production chain is, will collectively cost as much as the raw materials, machines, and information needed for its production. But what if raw materials and machines are also produced automatically by other machines without requiring additional human labor?

For a machine that can not only produce something useful but also manufacture another machine or replicate itself, the same law will apply to information copying. Since a new machine is created by partially consuming the old one, this means that as the number of such copies increases, the cost of each individual copy will decrease (because the total cost remains unchanged in the absence of new human labor being added).

Thus, in fully automated production, human labor is only involved in creating new informational models and prototypes. As a result, labor takes on an expressive informational and creative character, and it will likely adopt the most energy-efficient ways of organizing itself from those spheres of the present where similar conditions are already manifesting.

The Birth of Free Production

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial Earth satellite. This event marked not only the beginning of Humanity's expansion into space but also intensified the technological rivalry between the USSR and the USA. The "backward" Soviet Union’s leap forward greatly alarmed the United States. It became clear that without urgent measures, the USA would soon fall hopelessly behind the USSR in advanced technical fields. As a result, the American government accelerated the creation of DARPA (then ARPA) and later NASA. While NASA's achievements are widely known, DARPA's impact on the economic fate of the entire world remains largely unnoticed.

Among other things, DARPA funded the creation of ARPANET (which later became the Internet), BSD UNIX, and the TCP/IP protocol stack. These developments are crucial in the context of this discussion, but equally important is the influence of the production process itself. In particular, the free, non-bureaucratic environment without the pressures of commercialization that was deliberately cultivated in the laboratories of leading American universities. Minimal reporting requirements and generous funding for any projects deemed promising gave many scientific enthusiasts, researchers, and engineers the freedom to focus on what they loved without worrying about the commercial application of their results. This led to the development of a certain culture of free creative work and collaboration.

However, capital is capital, and in the end, it demands returns on investments. All the developments that could be commercialized were eventually commercialized. This process led to the breakdown of the previous culture of open collaboration on projects. Market competition infiltrated processes that once seemed completely alien to it and began to undermine them.

In protest against the new order forming around the development of the UNIX operating system, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory employee Richard Stallman attempted to revive free collaboration. As a result, in the mid-1980s, the Free Software Movement and its supporting foundation were born, with the goal of creating a fully free UNIX-like operating system called GNU. By that time, the development of computer networks and the growth of the Internet made it possible for geographically and culturally diverse people to confidently work on common projects. A special license agreement—GNU GPL, written by Richard based on previously used free licenses for individual programs—was designed not only to legally protect but also to standardize and generalize the "freedoms" for any free software project. It made the joint use of the same code across different programs possible. Additionally, the GPL license became a kind of manifesto with legal force, uniting thousands of developers around the world.

Freedom from "Copyleft"

Free licenses like the GPL, which prohibit the use of free software in proprietary systems, have come to be known as "copyleft" licenses, as opposed to "copyright". These types of licenses were particularly important during the early days of the free software development movement: the license protected the developer's work from being appropriated by commercial companies for use in their proprietary products. This was crucial for individual contributors, providing assurance that the free code they wrote would only be used in free programs. This protection allowed the self-sustaining GNU development process to launch at a time when community-driven free software production was not yet mainstream.

However, alongside the rise of "copyleft", the University of California, Berkeley, with DARPA's support, was working on the UNIX-like operating system BSD. A license was also drafted for its distribution that allowed free use of the source code—the BSD license. Its later evolution was the MIT license. Unlike the GPL, these licenses impose almost no restrictions on the user's freedom of action, allowing free software to be integrated into proprietary commercial products. For this reason, they are called "permissive" licenses. Such licenses are much more attractive to commercial companies and today dominate the world of free software for good reasons.

Two Types of Contributors

At first glance, any free software development community consists of people and only people. But from an economic point of view, this is not entirely true: the agents (active users, consumers, contributors, etc.) are not only individuals but also organizations, even commercial ones. The way free software is produced does not impose fundamental restrictions on its agents. It only requires that the producer needs the product being created and participates equally with others in the production process based on the community ownership of the source code.

Thus, in addition to individual developers interested in the product, organizations also become part of the community, equally interested in the product but acting through their employees. These employees represent the interests of their organization within the community and do so for pay. Such organizations typically do not sell the product they are helping develop; they directly use the product for their own production needs. Therefore, their participation does not make the production method commercial, even though they participate through hired labor with which they have commodity relationships.

In some cases, it seems that commercial companies find this production method profitable. Why? Besides being sellers, they are also consumers: to organize the production of their goods, they need to consume certain benefits. These benefits can be purchased if they are commodities, or they can be collectively created for direct consumption by the creators themselves (without a chain of resale) when it's more profitable than purchasing.

Now, if a company embarks on creating the necessary benefits together with others, it is advantageous for them to do so based on community ownership. This allows them to attract the widest possible range of contributors and do less work themselves. Additionally, the risk is reduced that a competitor will appropriate a project on which the company’s work depends, putting the company "on the hook".

Contradictions of the Transitional Period

While free production coexists with commodity production, a rather complex web of relationships emerges within the producing community.

On the one hand, individual contributors, directly interested in the product itself, are involved in the non-commodity relationships of free production, but not entirely: they still spend part of their time working for companies, selling their labor as a commodity. This duality leads to a conflict of interests within a single person.

On the other hand, companies are in the same situation: they continue their commodity production while also participating in non-commodity production. This participation in free production is done through the labor they purchase.

When hired workers make up 75% or more of the community’s contribution, the question arises: is this community truly free? The dominance of hired workers doesn’t make the community unfree, but it does make it more of a community of companies than of individual contributors.

Moreover, it's not uncommon for companies to hire already motivated and active contributors, further complicating the situation. This creates an additional internal conflict for individual developers, who are simultaneously acting on the project out of their own interests and the interests of the company. Everything remains peaceful and quiet as long as these interests generally align.

However, contradictions are not only a source of destruction but also of development. Two main lines can be identified that disrupt the current balance:

• Development of predominantly free production at the expense of commodity production
• Development of predominantly commodity production at the expense of free production

If we assume that the historical perspective favors free production, then the sources of its development are those individuals and companies that occupy a transitional position along the first line. It’s clear that they will be more successful if they consciously pursue their line of development.

The Prospect of Free Production

The reduction of material needs (due to the shift to information-based needs), free labor in producing collectives and communities, non-commodity production, community ownership of raw materials and produced goods—all of this sounds suspiciously familiar, doesn’t it?

The basic unit of this system is the producing community. Labor in such a community has a strongly creative character. Communities do not need to recreate what has already been created, which can be automatically copied and freely used, so their efforts are primarily focused on creating new things. This becomes energetically advantageous in conditions of free public access to the means of informational production (source codes, knowledge) and its results, as well as through the merger of production and consumption: the producer is also the consumer, and the consumer, consciously or unconsciously, directly participates in production.

In addition, the growth of free production should be accompanied by the development of non-commodity forms of distribution and exchange (based on an analysis of available resources and needs) and the democratization of the system of governance. The new governance system will naturally grow from democratic forms of management in communities of large, socially significant projects and inter-project organizations of contributors.

Trends of the Transitional Period

Here are a few examples of existing trends in modern production relations that are moving us toward revolution:

• Participation in free projects and communities. This refers not only to involvement in free software development, which is now quite common, but also participation in professional communities for learning, job searching, solving professional problems, and more. In some cases, it is faster and simpler to solve such problems through a community than by purchasing services from companies.
• Remote work. The vast majority of producing communities today operate remotely, using online tools for communication and organizing activities. Remote work helps developers who wish to participate more actively in such communities by freeing up additional time through the elimination of commuting and unproductive office hours and by teaching them the nuances of self-discipline and working with their own equipment as part of a distributed team.
• Working as an individual entrepreneur (IE) or freelancer. Unlike classic labor employment relationships, the IE form gives workers much more control and independence. They can negotiate more flexibly with clients, vary the time they devote to projects, sign contracts with multiple clients simultaneously, and have an unlimited geography of clients. This makes it easier to allocate time for participation in free project development.
• Promoting free software within companies. Today, many companies are already interested in using certain free products and often support employee initiatives to implement them. This leads to developers starting to contribute to free projects that are interesting to them and their company during work hours.
• Companies using market strategies aimed at developing free production. The market is always dominated by the strongest players. However, large companies are often slow and cumbersome, while smaller companies can react more quickly and adapt to new trends. If the development of free production is a trend, then small companies have the opportunity to "ride the wave", seizing market fragments disrupted by the rise of free production. These companies often find it profitable not only to use but also to develop free production because it becomes their key competitive advantage.
• Strengthening the influence of non-profit organizations. Although commercial companies find many advantages in collaborating with the free production movement, they are not interested in freeing up the areas where they do business with proprietary products. Therefore, only those companies that can flexibly shift their commercial focus will be able to stay in the free production trend and continue their business activities over the long term. Non-profit organizations have a much better chance of surviving in such conditions, as they use subsidiary commercial companies only as a temporary means to achieve their goals.

What’s the Bottom Line?

Here are my key takeaways:

• The main characteristics of any society depend on the nature of its economic foundation, primarily the level of development of productive forces and production relations.
• In our century, information technologies are penetrating all sectors of the economy, especially in the areas of development and management, complementing the acceleration of automation in operational fields, which began during the previous industrial era.
• Within information production itself (primarily in its most advanced area—software development), we are witnessing the growing influence of free production. That is, it is becoming economically advantageous to produce products through a broad community of active consumers based on community ownership of the conditions and results of collective labor.
• Thus, in the near future, the information production sector may become the main sector of the entire economy, and free production within it will become the leading production method, shaping the entire society.
• The realization of this potential lies in the hands of the individuals and organizations currently participating in and consciously developing free production.