If Youtube Existed 200 Years Ago

Thomas Borgwardt

Dr. Albers

Sociology 301

October 12, 2017

If YouTube Existed 200 Years Ago

The internet has become a worldwide necessity to almost everyone currently living on earth.  Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone that doesn’t have access to the internet at almost all times inside the United States.  I believe Karl Marx would view the internet as beneficial in some ways, but in other ways he would see it as harmful to the proletariat.  In a general overview, the internet gives the worker some technological advances, such as if they produce videos that go on YouTube for free.  But, it alienates the worker when they plan on putting the videos on YouTube for money and increases the division of labour.  We are reliant on the internet, but I’m not sure if Marx would want to keep YouTube around it is still alienating the working class that chooses to use it.

YouTube, which is one of the most visited websites on the internet, has both positive and negative effects for the worker that chooses to use it to make a profit. For the worker that doesn’t chose to use YouTube for profit, but just as a place to post videos for their enjoyment and fun, YouTube is completely harmless and completely de-alienating.  Those that post videos on YouTube, not for profit, there are no adds placed on their videos and they are free to remove them at any time.  In this sense, YouTube has not taken any control over their video and separated them from it.  They are free to post what they want, and they are free to do with it what they want.  They are the private owner of that video and control the means to the labor that produced it.

YouTube would completely change views in Marx’s eyes as soon as a person said they were producing videos to put on YouTube as a means to an end for themselves.  A worker produces the video that goes on YouTube, and in order to make a profit, they give the right to YouTube to place an advertisement in their video.  So even though the worker made a product to be placed on YouTube, the real product would really be seen as the advertisement because that is what generates the money for YouTube which then gets shared with the worker.  “The pre-roll ads you skip after five seconds and the banners you reflexively close are what keep the lights on. Advertisers pay for your attention; as the saying goes, “when the product is free, you are the product.” This money is split between YouTube and the creators – I get 55% of the ad revenue my videos generate” (Lennard, 2016).  This is what makes the worker that produced the video their money, as well as the bourgeoisie, which in this case is YouTube.

Where Marx, would see this as a bad thing is when the worker has to split their profits with YouTube which in the end, YouTube makes much more money the worker.  “The workers exchange their commodity, labour, for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and this exchange takes place in a definite ratio. So much money for so much labour” (Marx, 1887; 182).  In this case, the worker exchanges his video with YouTube, for them to place an advertisement of their choice, on it, which then the worker receives 55% of the profit for the advertisement revenue, that was placed the video they gave to YouTube generated.  

“The more productive capital grows, the more the division of labour and the application of machinery explains. The more the division of labour and the application of machinery expands, the more competition among the workers expands and the more their wages contract” (Marx, 1887; 188).   What this means in the sense of YouTube and it’s workers, is that the workers produce videos that they sell because they have competition of other producing videos but have to make theirs better so they get more views which means more profit for them from the advertisements placed on their videos.  The more workers that are producing videos, the more YouTube is making because the videos with advertisements are being watched, so they are bringing in more revenue, while the worker is making less in revenue because there are more videos produced by other workers that are being watched instead of theirs.  Therefore, the division of labour between the bourgeoisie, YouTube, and the proletariat, the worker that produces videos, grows.

In Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he discusses alienation of the worker.  To start with this, “From an actual economic fact, the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates” (Marx, 1844; 147).  This relates back to what we just discussed as the division of labour, but also leads to the alienation of the worker.  “This fact expresses merely that the object which labour produces – labour’s product – confronts it as something alien” (Marx, 1844; 147).  When this relates to YouTube, the workers are alienated to their work because they are paid less or the products don’t fully belong to them anymore.  “In one sense we YouTubers aren’t alienated from our videos because we retain ownership of them and we can remove them anytime. We’re also not compelled to put ads on them: you’re free to use YouTube to share your videos without making a penny off them” (Lennard, 2016).  But those that do use YouTube for profit, become alienated because they are selling their product for less than they are actually making, which is actually made off of the advertisements.  

Another aspect of alienation that Marx believes exists is when the worker is alienated from his work through the act of labouring itself.  In his manuscripts, Marx discuses this in the sense that the worker does not find himself in his work but only is himself when he is not working but is forced to work.  “…forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it” (Marx, 1844;149).  He goes on to say words such as self-sacrifice and mortification to describe alienated labour.  In an article online by Lennard, she is discussing how creators of YouTube videos, workers, get stuck in a trap of either creating for the rest of their life or getting rich.  For these workers, they are either, “too well-known or busy to hold down other jobs, but barely making ends meet on the money YouTube brings in – might feel their labours confront them as alien, an embodiment of hostile forces beyond their control rather than the result of a fulfilling creative act” (Lennard, 2016).  The way this occurs is because they don’t get to choose what advertisement appears on their video.  If advertisement is placed on their video that they don’t agree with or support, they don’t get to remove the advertisement or change it.  Their labour then becomes alienating because their profit comes from that advertisement but they don’t have control over it, and if the profit to satisfy needs, then there is nothing they can do about it.  The words Marx used like self-sacrifice now describes what these videos creators are now doing.  They are sacrificing themselves, their talents or skills, to create these videos, that they are then being alienated from when the advertisement not of their choice gets placed on the video, by YouTube, to make them money.