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Lachlan Kermode
@ohrg.org

The discussion of what makes for 'real' work here really effectively shadows an academic debate going on in the Marxology world currently about Alfred Sohn-Rethel's (mid-century Marxist) diagnosis of capital as a "real abstraction".

Lachlan Kermode
@ohrg.org

The problem, in a nutshell, is the 'real' status of money. Money is a real abstraction, because it is a fictional contract that quantifies value; but it is a REAL abstraction because it's not just something you can choose to do without, as you might a standard 'abstraction'.

Lachlan Kermode
@ohrg.org

This essay really effectively pinpoints how the ideology of objectivity associated with computing ('the world is REALLY just data') reifies the world and consigns it to its current capitalist reality.

Lachlan Kermode
@ohrg.org

The "third real" Jessica writes about here-- especially as it pertains to our work (labor) and its value-- is (I think) exactly what Marx would call communism, i.e. a social reality suffused with value(s) that meet our ethical standards, a reality that is "internally consistent".