There's a lot of research on the mental health benefits of cycling, and I think a big aspect of that could be chalked up to it being one of the few forms of mostly un-alienated labor available to people under capitalism. You work the machine to move yourself. You own the means of your own transportation production basically. Just some 'shower thought' that keeps coming back to me.
It's very common for people to talk about going for a bike ride like it is a form of therapy, that it clears the mind and puts you in a better mood after a bad day, etc. Let me know what you think about this idea.
I think as far as Marxism is concerned, it’s about the means of economic and therefore social reproduction, and one’s relationship to it as a class actor. Between you and a bike, I mean if you aren’t using as an economic ahem vehicle, then it’s just an item of personal property. You can’t really get more or less alienated to it, because there isn’t a dynamic of capital (re)production. I mean if you’re like using the bike to economically reproduce by, idk, using it for DoorDash or something, or it’s a Lime e-bike that you don’t own and then give personal data to/pay to use via your own physical labor power of sorts, then I could see it becoming a point of Marxist discussion. But not really just having a bike outright and using it for personal pleasure. Separately the question of using or not using it within a broader economic ecosystem, i.e. choosing to bike over using a car or something, will inherently be influenced by the structure of the system it’s in and therefore also a point of Marxist discussion but that also doesn’t sound like what you’re talking about
I think it's interesting to consider that being on a bike in a public roadway is more legal than being a pedestrian. Being on a bike changes your social relation in various ways compared to being in a car or on foot. If you are commuting to a job on a bike, that certainly makes it part of reproductive labor to maintain that job. This is very common with lower paid workers especially, there's even the term in bike advocacy for this: 'invisible cyclists'. I guess I'm most interested in how the augmentation of labor via the machine of a bike changes social relations. There was a huge aspect to this related to Women's Suffrage and Feminism. Bikes offer a transportation option that is quite self-reliant and often quite independent of existing economic power structures. This is why women biking was viewed as a socially destructive force by many at the time.
You work the machine to move yourself. You own the means of your own transportation production basically. Just some ‘shower thought’ that keeps coming back to me.
Doesn't really feel much different from a car you own, really. I mean the main difference would be bikes are like super easy to fix yourself, comparatively and the infrastructure required is also way less but that'd seem more like an anarchist type of thing (and also why you get the odd libertarian who gets super into bikes)
t’s very common for people to talk about going for a bike ride like it is a form of therapy, that it clears the mind and puts you in a better mood after a bad day, etc. Let me know what you think about this idea.
Think that's just exercise, many people go run.
The difference here I think is that biking at a level compareable to walking still allows you to go much, much further in the same time span, so it's just more practical to integrate into your day to day.