Obviously there are a lot of different contexts in different times and places but didn't peasants have more ownership and control over the land they worked generally than a laborer has over the means of production in the modern economy? Assuming that hacker in this context means programmer for hire (as comparing a independent hacker to a peasant wouldn't make any sense) then they have basically no control right? I suspect that the horizontal axis is meant to represent increasing worker specialization and the vertical increased autonomy that they are able to demand. I guess it is true in the case of pay and some social freedoms but only in comparison to a still existing laborer class. But the hackers don't really have any more control or ownership over the product of their labor than the toiling laborers.
Basically I don't think I agree with my interpretation of this graph and I didn't read whatever it is from.
Pretty sure the vertical is struggle and toil, and the hacker still has to contend with the landlord and the capitalist while also trying to retain some value from the 'hacks' they produce in labor for the vectoralist. Considering the abysmal rate of creative worker unionization in the info space, I think it makes sense. The hack doesn't usually require reproductive labor in the same sense as the previous forms, so it's much more difficult to create labor power under this relation. Software developers are regularly laid off after they deliver working code for example, and the labor can be replaced by coders at much cheaper pay in another country with very little friction.
Obviously there are a lot of different contexts in different times and places but didn't peasants have more ownership and control over the land they worked generally than a laborer has over the means of production in the modern economy? Assuming that hacker in this context means programmer for hire (as comparing a independent hacker to a peasant wouldn't make any sense) then they have basically no control right? I suspect that the horizontal axis is meant to represent increasing worker specialization and the vertical increased autonomy that they are able to demand. I guess it is true in the case of pay and some social freedoms but only in comparison to a still existing laborer class. But the hackers don't really have any more control or ownership over the product of their labor than the toiling laborers.
Basically I don't think I agree with my interpretation of this graph and I didn't read whatever it is from.
Pretty sure the vertical is struggle and toil, and the hacker still has to contend with the landlord and the capitalist while also trying to retain some value from the 'hacks' they produce in labor for the vectoralist. Considering the abysmal rate of creative worker unionization in the info space, I think it makes sense. The hack doesn't usually require reproductive labor in the same sense as the previous forms, so it's much more difficult to create labor power under this relation. Software developers are regularly laid off after they deliver working code for example, and the labor can be replaced by coders at much cheaper pay in another country with very little friction.