Re: <nettime> Technopolitics of the future

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

On 27.10.22 20:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
> Indeed. The point is now to think those politics, and make their 
> possibilities recognizable.

I think it's pretty obvious that we are living in a period that is 
characterized by what one could call, with a nod to Durkheim, "total 
social crises". Meaning, they are not longer restricted to a single 
sphere -- so neatly separated in the modern liberal thinking -- but play 
out across the full-range of social domains. Thus any analysis needs to 
able to understand their interplay.

But what are these domains?  David Harvey's recent talk on "Marx’s 
Historical Materialism"

http://davidharvey.org/2022/01/new-podcast-david-harveys-anti-capitalist-chronicles

summarizes that very clearly, differentiating among seven sets of 
relations (though there is more than one way to slice the pie):

- technology
- nature
- relations of (re)production (waged and unwaged labor)
- mental conceptions
- relations of everyday life
- political (class) relations
- and systems of governance.

All these sets have what Marx calls a "metabolic relation" to each 
other, meaning they are dependent on one another and their concrete form 
can only be understood to through their interdependence. One cannot 
understand the shape and dynamics of the state without its relation to 
capital and vice-versa, or, increasingly, without eco-system pressures.

While these domains are related, they also follow their own dynamics, 
but in that movement, they transform the others as well, or are held 
back by them. Geo-egineering, for example, is a technological response 
to eco-system pressures in order to preserve relations of productions 
and class relations. Black Lives Matter aims to transform mental 
conceptions in order to dismantal racist/colonialist systems of governance.

Take, for example, the pandemic. It's zoonotic origin indicates a deep 
problem with our relations to nature. In response, massive technological 
development (mRNA vaccines, deepening of digitization etc) was 
coordinated by the government. At the same time, changes in everyday 
life (lockdown, masking, 'distancing', etc) were introduced, and mental 
conceptions started to shift. Of course, a massive economic crisis could 
only be averted by government intervention and the boundaries between 
productive and reproductive labor shifted.

While you could say the feedback loop built into the "metabolic 
relations to nature" triggered the pandemic, it's actual dynamics can 
only be understood by taking into account the dynamic relations between 
the different domains. The relation between the state and capital was 
evident both in the state's willingness to finance the vaccines, and in 
it's commitment to enforce patent monopolies. The importance of mental 
conceptions became evident in the public reactions to the vaccines. The 
point is, one cannot reduce on sphere to the other. There is no 
structure - superstructure relationship.

Neoliberalism (or liberalism more generally) is ideologically unable to 
address such total phenomena, because of its constitutive commitment to 
separating the domains.

In the 20th century, in the West, there have been, as far as I can see, 
three ways of reacting to such 'total crises'. Fascism, Keynesian and 
'war efforts'.

At the moment, all three approaches to 'total politics' are bein persued 
at the same time. The fascist writing is on the wall, it's, at the core, 
an us-vs-them zero sum game. "We" prosper because "they" suffer. The 
green new deal is a modernized form of Keynesianism, but more holistic 
(or 'total') by focussing on the interrelation between all the domains. 
What Europe is trying to do is a kind of 'war economy', in relation to 
the actual war but also as a way to speed up the energy transition. 
While I agree with the direction, I doubt that a technocratic approach 
can work, not the least because it cannot shape many of the domains that 
are actively involved shaping the problem. If people freaked out because 
of a vaccine that was perceived being forced top-down, just wait for the 
energy restrictions imposed.

But then again, the transformation of the mental conceptions, the 
understanding of a transformed relationship to nature, are also quite 
far developed.

The task, it seems, is to bring these bit and pieces, the cultural, the 
technocratic and segments of the economy, in such a relationship they 
can pull the rest into a different direction, and phasing out these 
sectors, particularly of the economy, that cannot or do not want to adapt.








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