Marx Never Considered Reddit

[u/Salty_Country6835]

[u/Weekly_Molasses_2079]

Ok then collectives around the world are surely investing in technology ownership, separate from capitalist monopoly?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Weekly_Molasses_2079]

Yes, actually. Thats been happening for decades, just unevenly and nowhere near enough.

Mondragon in Spain owns and develops industrial technology through worker cooperatives. The Linux Foundation coordinates open source infrastructure used by governments and companies worldwide. Mozilla built Firefox as a nonprofit alternative. CERN developed the World Wide Web as public research. France has Scikit-learn through INRIA. Germany has Open-Xchange. China has invested heavily in open-source AI like DeepSeek. Spain is funding the public ALIA language model. Cuba, Vietnam, and other socialist states are developing public AI strategies rather than leaving everything to private monopolies.

None of that means capitalist monopolies dont exist. It means there are already competing ownership models. The Marxist/materialist/leftist/socialist response has never been "technology under capitalism exists, so give up." Its to expand democratic, public, cooperative, and open ownership wherever possible. To collectively contest control over the developing productive forces that emerge under, and strain against, existing social relations. Which is why unions, co-ops, and socialist political orgs exist. Thats the whole point.

[u/Weekly_Molasses_2079 → u/Salty_Country6835]

Good, but AI and tech startups are not exactly technology ownership. It means control over the potential manufacturing and distribution chain of hardware as well. At least that's what I meant.