You could think about it in a classic sort of sense whereby capital during the industrial revolution drew peasants together into the factories to produce commodities. in the production of proletarian etc.. It also, paradoxically, gave them the opportunity to discuss working conditions with each other and to confront their mutual exploitation. So if you look at it in a certain way you can say: sure, on the one hand capital innovates new forms of production and exploitation, but by doing so it also generates an opportunity to some degree to self-organise, to self-realise the social identity. So, I don\u2019t think anything has really changed that much when it comes to these kind of production technologies. Maybe the difference here is it is less clear that people are actually producing something. Here people are both producers and consumers or \u2018pro-sumers\u2019 as some call this, and what they produce is knowledge. But now if we are talking about studio artists in particular, then they traditionally are not engaged in social production, or more accurately they don\u2019t perceive themselves to be social producers. They tend to work individually in their studio, which reinforces this perception. They don\u2019t always realize to what degree other artist-producers are in exactly the same position with exactly the same problems as themselves. Though curiously, in our post-industrial US or Europe this isolation also becomes the condition for most workers. If I can\u2019t meet my mortgage that\u2019s my problem, I\u2019m a failure. Could we speak with enough people we might discover that it\u2019s not \u201cmy\u201d failure, and maybe there is something else going on here related to the system and the broader political economy. These kind of social connections are being enhanced and expanded through new communications technology and that is very positive. And a growing awareness of the socialization of production is even emerging now amongst artists, especially since the financial collapse of 2008-2009 and the occupy movement\u2019s chant of “we are the 99%.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"