Jonathan Blow

Correct. That's what defines a worker - their relationship to the means of production. (The people who can produce their own value, like artists, are technically not workers, though this gets very complicated under current conditions.)

This idea of “the means of production” being like some big assembly line or something, and that this being kept out of peoples’ hands is the problem, is shown to be plainly false in the modern environment, where the “means of production” is, like, typing on a computer.

The actual main thing, that most individuals do not manage because it is hard, is *knowing what to do at any given time*. That is what gets companies to a point where they can actually produce value, and usually it is very hard to get a company there and keep it there over time.

That knowledge is what enables the company to build a context within which everyone’s work has the value that it does. Outside that context, the value of effort becomes tremendously less because it is not coordinated.

This is why the labor theory of value is wrong, because it is context and coordination that creates most of the value, not the actual labor per se.

And without the labour, it never happens. It is the labour that creates and sustains the company - and owning capital is what allows you to purchase that labour. Otherwise you're just another "ideas guy", one out of millions.

Well no. The labor is part of what creates and sustains the company, but if you took away all the knowledge and constant coordination and just had workers and said “okay workers, create and sustain the company”, well, it doesn’t work. The company is gone.

If all it took was labor to create and sustain a company, you would see a lot more successful companies, it would be much easier than it actually is. Any group of workers who got together would form a successful company. They would have no problem getting capital because