Introduction
Capitalism may well be stuck in its end of days but it remains dangerously tractable and capable of fucking us up. In the third decade of this century most of us certainly feel like the world is an enormous mess. We’ve got despots in charge of some of the world’s largest ‘economies’ & allegedly running things. We’ve got wars and violent conflicts on any number of scales. We’re divided in ways and within venues unimaginable 30 years ago. We’ve got conspiracy theories exploding with cancerous intent all around us, and we’ve lost faith not only in any sort of reasonable god but in any and all one-time Authorities, the ones we thought knew stuff. And yes, we’ve lost trust in democratic government and (subconsciously, perhaps) in ourselves. We’ve forgotten we’re human. We’ve become economic entities who are Plato’s perfect walk in Victim of what’s wrong with Democracy.[1]
Former Greek Finance Minister and socialist economist Yanis Varoufakis believes that traditional capitalism, with its ‘factories’ &/or ‘sweatshops’, its produced ‘goods’ or service provision, its profit motive… is dead[2]. What has replaced it is Big Tech’s feudal overlords, with attendant subsidiary lords and workaday serfs, all paying rent. It didn’t really matter if it’s dead or not, as we’re still doing old (dead) capitalism’s bidding, because we’re operating as Homo economicus. We’re competing economic units, apparently happily paying rent for monetised space-vacuums where nothing substantial is produced – other than white noise. For a good part of many of our days we inhabit a Never-Never Land that’s allegedly Social and purports to Mediate.
If the world’s ‘mind’ was a Venn Diagram, 3 key things are and have been for a decade or so playing about in it.
~ The rise of big tech as the ascendant capitalists this century. The tech moguls are Schrodinger’s-Cat-like capitalists
~ The shifting of forum for discussion of society’s issues from traditional ‘space’ to an online ‘place’ [apparently limitless]
~ The fight for the minds of ordinary women, men & children. That the fight is actually for ‘Wallets’, for consumption habits, and reliant on confusion of purpose (dream vs reality) is driven by the key economic and ideological principle/system of this world, CAPITALISM, even if said capitalism is just doing a German’s cat’s trick.
[1] If we recall what Plato said about democracy, he wasn’t a fan… he believes that the individual citizen [a male in his Athenian society] becomes someone reified, entirely focused on self, unable to tolerate any action that he doesn’t see as beneficial to his reified self [and immediate family; he’s not a complete narcissist.. Our Platonic democratic citizen sounds a lot like a modern Homo economicus, who we shall meet later.
[2] See ‘Technofeudalism: what killed Capitalism’.
Inkstained fingers 