Re: <nettime> Big tech, the return of capital to its C18 supremacy, and

Thank you so much Max - and for these very fine expressions of the issues and forces at play.

Hi Rana,

This is a great essay and very apropos vis-a-vis the relationship of democracy to property in the West.

Your observation that 18th century England could not afford democracy, and did not need it, is right on target. Also on target is your observation that gradually pressures of revolt led to a degree of need that dovetailed with the ability to afford. This to me is the right concept of a system of contraries in more balance or less depending on a variety of circumstances and decisions.

The old idea of "parlement," or allowing the subjects to talk to the monarch, is relevant as well. Many have observed recently that "king-in-parliament" rather than democracy is the best form of government. If the monarch is capital, or property, then you end up with something like a conversation on unequal ground. Of course there are many varieties of conversation on a continuum, and even if socialism were the global order rather than capitalism there would likely still be questions of power, control of resources, inequality, military conflict, law enforcement, and such.

I found William Janeway's book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy quite interesting with regard to the themes you discuss such as the mercantile and industrial revolutions. His more Keynesian approach says that capitalism is somewhat eating its own liver right now, with the interests and powers (big data tech being the prime example) who benefitted from the state investments in the Digital Revolution now arrayed rather cannibalistically against the state investment which is required for the next phase of innovation i.e. the Green Economy. Janeway explains well how this libertarian orthodoxy gets out of hand and cultivates dangerous liaisons with far-right and nationalist-populist elements. Your description of its philosophical trappings a la Bannonian Post-Enlightenment is excellent and apt.

In this sense I am hopeful that novelists and artists can help foster a climate in which public and private can find a win-win of cooperation. I obviously can't predict whether a co-operative approach will succeed, and if so how, but I do believe it is possible under the laws of physics and can be influenced at least hypothetically by the good old 18th century public sphere of communication (long may it live and continue to improve). My fervent hunch is that Leonardo predicted something like big data run amok, and used the Mona Lisa to symbolize the history of technology as a bridge, its present as a garment, and its rightful guide and author (human agency) as the gesture of the right hand directing our attention to what we weave.

At very least I enjoy the fiction that he might have intended this! 🙂

All very best regards,

Max

From: nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org <nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org> on behalf of Rana Dasgupta <rana@ranadasgupta.com>
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 11:49 PM
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>
Subject: <nettime> Big tech, the return of capital to its C18 supremacy, and the decline of American democracy

Dear Nettimers

Here's a recent essay which owes much to my contemplation of the various
conversations on this list. I apologies: I'm not spontaneous enough to
participate in those conversations: I discover only much later what I
think, and through writing pieces like this.

https://harpers.org/archive/2020/12/the-silenced-majority/

The assault on American democracy, I say here, is not a matter of
personalities or political parties, but a deep-structural concomitant of
the return of capital. In order to understand the forces at work, we
would do better ignoring the more obvious, but analytically
inappropriate, parallels of Hitler, fascism, etc, and focussing instead
on Britain in the eighteenth century.

In this light, today's Silicon Valley giants appear as a significant
historical force of both technology and capital. Both as technological
platforms and as new formations of finance and (non-) labour, they are
well-adapted to the task of expelling the Western masses from the centre
of the world economy, and relegating them to the periphery - where they
had been until the C19 or even C20. Democracy, inevitably, then becomes
the big problem - even in the wary, discriminatory form it has assumed
in America.

Very best to all

R

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