Marxism did not provide a meaningful answer to the fundamental questions of existence in the 20th and 21st centuries. Because it froze after the victory “in individual countries”. And it gave no answer to the transformation of capitalism, nor to the creation of the middle class, nor to the scientific and technological revolution, nor to the emergence of a world reserve currency, nor to digitalization, the emergence of the precariat, the pauper punk and all that.
However, perhaps I was not entirely right. I carried Dmitry Ivanov’s article from St. Petersburg State University in my backpack for over a month, which I finally managed to read on the plane. I glanced at it, understood it in fragments, what to read, well, I finally got to do it.
Where I got it from, I don’t remember anymore, whether it was directly from its author at some philosophical or Duma party, or from my assistant who opened what was sent, but it is beautifully bound. And only 29 pages with a list of literature.
Apparently, this is precisely neoMarxism, analyzing the philosophical and sociological foundations and the effects of digitalization and AI. In any case, Marxism, neo-Marxism, and dialectic are mentioned there on every page.
The author regularly calls his work and his scientific tradition a “critical theory of society.” I don’t know what exactly that means, but apparently that’s what neo-Marxism is. The author makes substantial references mainly to the Frankfurt School, which was precisely intended to radically renew Marxism in relation to the new digital age.
This is a good article, quite interesting and informative reading, on our, in general, topic. So, it seems to me, it is worth continuing the discussion of neo-Marxism and digital exploitation by means of retelling with comments.
CRITICAL THEORY OF DIGITALIZATION; THE DOMINANCE OF ALGORITHMIC RATIONALITY AND THE REBELLION OF AUTHENTICITY
The article is written in a slightly complex language, philosophical and sociological, so I will retell it more simply, in accordance with my level of philosophical ignorance. Like protein ZPT. Perhaps the author will be horrified by what I managed to extract from his work and how I managed to distort it, well, what can I do.
The main postulates:
Digitalization is an extremely important and very relevant, but not widely reflected upon topic
They talk a lot about digitalization, but only in the technocratic paradigm. Affirmative, that is, accepting everything as it is. Like, look, the development of technologies is good, it leads to good social changes in society. We will study the consequences.
“The efficiency of social institutions in almost all areas of society, from economics and politics to culture and education, is assessed based on the level of implementation of digital services and the degree of achievement of indicators of government technological development programs.”
Affirmative and dependent discourse of digitalization
A so-called “managerial discourse of digitalization” is emerging, which uncritically and optimistically praises digitalization, largely copying the same Western discourse, and sociologists simply follow it, creating dependent discourses, surveys and studies. the joys of digitalization and its support by the population.
Ambivalence, but not that
Sometimes researchers note the “ambivalence of digitalization”, but somehow in passing, in the spirit of “well, there are risks and negative aspects”. Basically, Russian researchers view digitalization as a fundamental and positive process. And if they point out risks — in a patriotic spirit — then these are risks of the bad Western, globalist digitalization as a counterbalance to ours, patriotic and truly Orthodox.
Digitalization is already a routine
The penetration of the Internet, digital services, government services, and banking into society is almost one hundred percent. It has become routine. But it has not been reflected upon by either society or scientists. As a result of the transformation of “digital” into routine, critical research on digitalization is belated. Nevertheless, it is necessary to deconstruct the discourse of digitalization as an expression of capitalist post-industrial alienation and domination. This includes awareness and recognition of the new digital divide.
The old digital divide has disappeared, a new one has emerged
Previously, the digital divide was understood as unequal access to the Internet and digital technologies. Now, both in the regions and among low-income groups of the population, digital technologies are used in the same way or even more strongly than others. There is no gap in access. Although the ritual of mentioning it and fighting it still exists, especially among officials and Rostelecom. They constantly boast about the promotion of wide bandwidth.
Then a digital divide of the second kind emerged on the scene: digital inequality began to be interpreted as a difference in the ability and inability to use digital technologies. But this difference no longer exists anywhere, even in the older age segments. It was finally killed by remote work during the COVID period. Although the ritual of fighting the digital divide of the second kind still exists, officials talk a lot about “overcoming digital illiteracy,” etc.
But now there is another form of inequality: a true digital divide of the third kind. This is the divide between the creators of digital content and services and their passive consumers. “Inequality has become inclusive, not exclusive.” Everyone is connected, but some benefit from being connected, while others pay for this benefit with attention and money.
Some users who have learned to generate content and build up “symbolic capital” — likes, views, connections, “friends” — gain the opportunity to capitalize on virtual capital, convert it into real financial capital, attracting advertising and investors. Thus, passive users work for active users, serving as an unpaid sourceofincome fortheminority.
But itisnotonly passive consumersthatareexploited,butalso active ones.
New forms of alienation and exploitation are emerging
Digital proletarianization of the masses of users. A new type of exploitation of active and passive users is emerging, creating unpaid sources of income and super-income for platform owners.
Content expropriation. Platforms appropriate user-generated content, thereby increasing their digital capital.
“By receiving a ‘virtual allotment’ – a platform for their work, creative users submit to built-in algorithms and imposed services, through which the results of user activity are alienated in favor of digital ‘landlords’…
Totality of alienation. Internet resources that seemed to democratize communication 20 years ago have now been appropriated by corporations and the state, which makes communications alienated, controlled and forced. This includes the need to communicate with robots when accessing government services, banks, etc. Surveys show that almost none of the users would want to communicate with a robot of their own free will. In general, free activity turns into alienated being.
So, what does neo-Marxism have to say about this?
Forced virtualization of communications increases alienation
Citizens are being forced into digital communication with digital platforms and the state. Network resources such as Web 2.0, that is, user-generated content, which once served as a means of democratizing communications, have been captured by large corporations and the state. Most digital platforms are merging with the state; and communication with the state is channeled into digital services such as State Services.
Many public opinion studies show that this increases alienation; citizens want to communicate with the state directly, they don’t want contact through chatbots and “fill out a form on a website” — but they can’t bypass them.
“In the data on the routine and imposed totality of the use of digital technologies, signs of the transformation of free activity, creativity and communication into alienated being are empirically discovered.”
The alienation between user groups is growing, which is expressed in the attitude towards digital communications as burdensome, imposed, uncomfortable, an unnecessary waste of energy and time.
Fetishization
Digitalization is simply a technological expression of the general process of virtualization of society. It is simply the most convenient for this virtualization.
It is not digitalization that entails virtualization, but the opposite. Alienation requires digitalization as a technical foundation.
But at the same time, digitalization bureaucrats and digital business quite consciously fetishize digitalization and artificial intelligence. In essence, through AI and digital services, the state and corporations “appropriate the practices of virtualization of social processes,” and in order to hide the real essence of this “progress,” they fetishize AI, endowing it with divine functions.
Although in fact digitalization and AI introduce a limited culture and a narrow mental outlook, a new digital barbarism of AI developers.
Algorithmic rationality
The author introduces the concept of “algorithmic rationality” — a new form of domination and totality of the state. It replaces human communicative rationality, human subjectivity and subjectivity. Does not give a person the right to irrational, “human” behavior and mistakes, including that are their own.
In response, a “revolt of authenticity” arises, when a person and a citizen does not want to be a vector, to be driven into a digital concentration camp. He begins to value not the virtual, but the living, etc. Returns to the rhythms of life, and not the rhythms of IT platforms, etc.
This phenomenon needs to be considered in the spirit of dialectics, the struggle between enslavement and emancipation.
The Dialectics of Domination and Emancipation
The author believes that we see a common pattern in the dialectic of modernity: the development of society occurs through cycles of denial of established systems of domination, the establishment – denial by anti-systemic outsiders, an anti-social way of life, protest and subversive movements; thentheyareappropriated,absorbedbythesystem,becomeinturnthemainstream,thesourceofanewnormforanewsystemofsuppressionanddomination.
Examples are well known: the hippies of the 60s, who in their thirties put on jackets and became the new establishment, the bourgeoisie; the IT and Internet people of the 90s, digital dissidents who became overseers in the new capitalist digital concentration camp. The author is confident that we are at the beginning of a new cycle of denial and emancipation—the dialectical denial of digitalization. The growing value of live communication, the “analog experience”, the transformation of digital platforms into something archaic, in general — the development of post-virtualization. I will not cite or retell the author’s subsequent polemics with the authorities of the Frankfurt School, with Marcuse, Fuchs, Hassan and other neo-Marxist thinkers. There is a lot there. If you are interested, you can find a job onthenet, it seemstome.
Well, what can you say here
In general, everything is correct, we have already discussed much of this:
- Internet users of the “freedom” era, antisocial and anti-state noses and Revazovs, foreign agents, drug addicts and homosexuals.
- Semantic capsules of alienation, compaction of personal bubbles with “recommendations”, general movement towards alienation and manipulation in social networks, supposedly aimed at communication.
- Imposing digitalization in an exclusively positive sense, forcing people to switch to digital and transfer their entire lives there. Show-off, campaigning, falsifications.
- Monopolization of digital space by a few IT platforms and the state. In general, the construction of a digital concentration camp.
- Inserting an AI gasket between citizens and the state, removing responsibility from the official for honest communication with the people.
… and so on.
All this is visible to the simple eye of an IT specialist, not armed with a philosophical apparatus. However, after reading the useful and informative work of D. V. Ivanov, some bewilderment and objections also arise.
Objections and comments
Firstly, somehow “resistance” and “emancipation”, “rebellion of authenticity” are not very visible yet.
Yes, there are parental communities, voices are heard from those who are against the dominance of domestic dirty platforms like VK, there is a movement — even of deputies and senators — towards the Digital Code, but the masses somehow have not yet emancipated themselves digitally. They are willingly immersing in the “digital”—in the village they continue immersing, in the city already up to their nostrils,as the author himself writes.
It seems to me that the author here presents what is still desired as already real. Or perhaps the power of theory makes the author a prophet, and this is a prediction that will inevitably come true, for the cycles of enslavement-emancipation are inexorable. I don’t know.
Secondly, and most importantly: if the author is a Marxist, then why doesn’t he see the main process, which should be the subject of Marxist research. Why do I, not a Marxist, see it clearly, while Marxists somehow don’t?
Namely: we are now observing the formation of a new, digital class, defined by its attitude to digital means of production. This class arises in fact, “from below”, spontaneously, having gained access to technologies and to citizens’ data. This class is still just emerging, and it includes IT platform management, technology and service developers, search engine and social media owners, officials, city hall IT system administrators, digital fraudsters, and owners services like “Eye of God” and so on.
Yes, this class has not yet been formed, it is motley, has internal contradictions and opposite interests, but it has already arrived and is clearing a social platform for itself.
Defining the boundaries of this new class, its strata, its social composition is a matter for sociology, but nevertheless, it must be articulated in neo-Marxism.
Marxism (neo-Marxism) should have been — at least due to the structure of the doctrine and its philosophical tradition —
- to record the emergence of a new type of means of production;
- to detect the emergence of a new type of surplus value (behavioral surplus according to Shoshanna Zuboff), as well as free attention and time of consumption of digital services;
- and, of course, to see the emergence of a new digital class that has access to or owns these new means of production, because Marxism was originally about classes;
- and already on this base to detect and record the emergence of a new type of exploitation – coercion to give away behavioral surplus and free attention/time/content.
Well, it would be nice to point out to us the antagonist class and its political vanguard, which will resist this digital enslavement. Is there such a party?
Well, what age are they living in? Neo-Marxists will probably still see all this and build a new, comprehensive theory of class struggle and exploitation in digital space. And we will read.It would be better, of course, not in the “Brief Course on the General Theory of Society” and not in Lenin’s rooms.
