Means of Communication as Means of Production

In the 1960s and 1970s, Raymond Williams advanced an argument that orthodox Marxism found puzzling and liberal economics found irrelevant: that the means of communication are themselves means of production. Not metaphorically—Williams insisted on the material reality. Communication technologies require physical infrastructure (presses, transmitters, fiber-optic cables, server farms), organized labor (writers, editors, engineers, content moderators), and capital investment. They produce commodities that circulate in markets. And, most importantly, they shape the conditions under which all other production occurs—determining what can be known, coordinated, collectively decided, and imagined as possible. The argument rejected both the Marxist tendency to treat communication as superstructure (mere reflection of the economic base) and the liberal tendency to treat it as neutral infrastructure. Communication technologies are productive forces with their own material requirements and political consequences. The large language model makes Williams's claim undeniable: a system that produces working code from natural-language description is simultaneously a means of communication (it processes language) and a means