| Is there a clear passage from any of the authors you referenced where they essentially say this: "If the means of production can themselves be copied for a cost of zero, this theory would not necessarily apply." Or even: "If a good can have a marginal cost of zero, it is special and the consequence of taking over the means of its production may diverge from what the theory suggests." Let me give an example of what I mean by "clear" with a passage from Thomas Jefferson: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." He's not talking about means of production but incentives for production. But the insight is clearly stated and apt for digital tech. So are there any examples like this from those references that are still apt when applied to zero marginal cost digital artifacts (files), factories (compilers), or publishing (bittorrent)? |
I'm not so sure if zero-cost reproduction of means of production would render Communism unnecessary in the eyes of the theorists I have mentioned. People would still effectively need to sustain themselves via wage labour, though they pay wages to themselves. This is forgetting the fact that most of the products made to my knowledge can't be made using zero-cost means of production; bread for example requires not only the bread machine, but also the mill, the labour input to sow the seeds of the wheat, to reap it, to grow the yeast, etc.
I would not say that the concept of Communism applies to goods which require zero cost to reproduce - I think this is for two reasons; firstly, one could say it is already Communistic that the means of production for digital objects can be considered to be producing commodities with very low value, tending to zero though not quite zero (electricity and maintenance of computer comes to mind), though as I will later note, considered in isolation then they only have use values and thus a PDF isn't a commodity, so software doesn't count as MOP; secondly, wage labour, which the Communists aim to liberate the proletariat from, is not necessary with the factories and publishing you mentioned - as such, most such instances, such as my laptop I'm using now or your phone you publish torrents with, these objects are personal property, not private.
But there is of course still the problem of who creates (labour) the computers which are used for near-zero cost reproduction, and indeed their maintenance (labour) and powering (labour). These three instances of labour is what Communism concerns itself with, rather than reproduction.
So while I don't know of anyone who has written about it (certainly not Marx, though I wonder about modern day Communists), I think I'd agree with what you said originally - the theory of Communism does not apply when we are talking about files/compliers/torrents, primarily because when considered in isolation, these do not require wage labour. It's similar to how Communism doesn't apply, for example, to the case of the garden which you personally tend to in your back yard.
Edit: Communism, being an anarchist ideology, is inherently opposed to the ideas of "intellectual property", copyrights and patents in the first place. I feel as though most Communists would very much agree with Jefferson, as I do. What's rather strange is that Communism, to some, is considered the legitimate offshoot of classical liberal thinking, especially considering the warnings or outright condemnations of the usage of private property by early liberals.