Michael Goldhaber on Wed, 3 Dec 1997 14:25:23 +0100 (MET) |
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<nettime> Class in the Cyberspace Era |
"The political economy of the Net, still 'under construction', is both a critical and a speculative undertaking, without much solid ground." --Geert Lovink in Bulldozer, as posted on Nettime Class in the Cyberspace Era by Michael H. Goldhaber Lovink's remarks prompt me to offer Nettimers a version of my own approach to these issues, which I refer to as the attention economy. In part this has been put forward in a variety of places, (see below). A book on the subject is in progress. Rather than go over ground already covered in the available sources, what I would like to emphasize here are what I see as the relationship of my work to Marx's theory and current avatars of it. Since Marx, political economy has only taken note of two possible broad futures (aside, perhaps, from barbarism): capitalism or socialism. Today, everyone, left and right ,generally agrees that we are not at this point moving closer to socialism. The universal conclusion seems to be the near inevitablitliy of continuing capitalism, as the only real alternative, even if it is now termed post-Fordist, late capitalism, flexible capitalism or something of the sort. I take issue with this conclusion. As is well known, Marx's argument involved three basic components: 1. "All history is the history of class struggle" 2. The last stage of class society is capitalism. 3. Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction within it (as argued in great detail in "Kapital") Marx's conclusion is of course that the capitalist underclass-the working class or proletariat-will smash what remains of class society and create socialism. But suppose we accept only points 1. and 3. While the arguments for either of them are not absolutely water tight, there is a good bit of support for each. Point 2. on the other hand remains, as far as I can see, pure wishful thinking. If previous class societies have been overthrown by newer class societies, then what is the reason to believe that the process will come to an end with capitalism? What would prevent, new previously unimagined kinds of class antagonism from emerging? Indeed since, according to Marx, class divisions are the main dynamic force in history, how could any new mode of production come into being without a further development of classes? Marx eluded this question by arguing that somehow the post-capitalist world of socialism was to come abouut through a fight between capitalist and working class, to be won by the latter. This is quite different from the passage, say, between feudalism and capitalism, where lords and serfs gave way to capitalists and workers, that is two new classes emerged to replace the two old classses. Despite obvious antagonism between lords and serfs, it was only the arrival of the new class system that finally outmoded the old. Disappointing as it may seem, the conclusion is that what we can continue to expect is not more capitalism, but not the end of class society either; instead, new class systems will continue to emerge, and the tension between the classes they each contain will continue to drive history. Socialism is not the end of history, then, but neither is capitalism. Lyotard and friends tell us we must give up on grand narratives, but that only refers to positing a unilinear progress. More reasonably, we must understand that a new class system replacing capitalism will offer different challenges from capitalism, for instance different inequalities. So what are the new classes and what is the basis of the relation between them? Before explaining this, I want to say why it seems worthwhile to stick to the simple two-class paradigm Marx postulated without explanation in "The Communist Manifesto." The main reason is the obvious one: simplicity. I mean this not only in terms of ease of explanation; rather, because the dynamics of a two class system is most simple, it leads to the most evident growth in new directions, transforming the nature of social life most strikingly. There may be additional classes around, but most probably they play only minor or intermediate roles. (Likewise, in any society there may be divisions in addition to class, such as gender that also drive history but in different (though ultimately linked) spheres.) The basic relation between the two predominant classes is what moves each new "mode of production" forward. The two new classes can now be revealed. To be crude, one may refer to them as *stars* and *fans.* Why these two? Because capitalism reaches its limits by more or less eliminating the need for both capitalists and workers; through increasingly automated production, material goods are spewed forth in growing amounts to the point where their scarcity is no longer the central issue. [See Livingston, cited below ] The new predominant scarcity is now the scarcity of attention, which must come from other people and is both necessary and desirable. Stars get lots of attention; fans pay it. (Think of these categories in the broadest possible way.) The internet of cyberspace, to put it simply, is a new technological system that serves the purposes of attention-gathering, or at least promises to. Anyone can set up a web page, and attempt to become a star, succeeding if enough people pay attention to the web page. Despite the possibility, only a few can succeed at this; with billions of web pages, already, most are doomed to receive little or no attention. While we are already fairly far along in the transformation to the new system, we are just at the begining of the full development of cyberspace. It will both spread to more and more people, and more and more easily encompass tools such as video, multiple dimensions, etc. Increasingly then, cyberspace will be the space of normal experience, and the material world will be a mere appendix to it. Some of the many questions that might arise at this point I have already answered in some of my other writings. Let me address the issue of classlessness or equality. It is the ultimate scarcity of attention as well as its desirability which creates the basic attention inequality between stars and fans. Stars do provide fans with what I call illusory attention. This is the sort of attention, that, for example, an author appears to give to a reader. A relatively few stars - whether a thousand or a million is hard to say- obtain a huge percentage of total world attention, and that obviously leaves less for everyone else. We can imagine attention equality, a situation in which everyone is afforded more or less equal attention. You can see why it is very hard to maintain. Even if everything else is made equal, some people are still going to be substantially better and more motivated than others in corralling attention for themselves, creating an initial inequality that can then burgeon. (For why it is likely to burgeon, see the first Monday pieces.) Insisting on maintaining attention equality requires a willingness to accept being bored, or else an incredible openness to others, some of whom will not necessarily reward one's attentiveness with real attention of their own. Thus true attention equality, though obviously desirable in some abstract sense of justice, is not one that very many of us would readily be willing to sacrifice for. And of course, even among the fine Nettimers, there may be some, (I obviously don't exclude myself) who are eager to have considerably more attention than their "fair share." A revolt against attention inequality would be a movement with no visible leaders or heroes, for the obvious reason that a leader or hero (consider Gandhi, Marx, Che, Martin King, or Gramsci or anyone else you can name ) would be a star, not a true equal. However, difficult as it is to reach, one may still put forward the notion of attention equality as a goal to move towards, realizing that those who get no or too little attention are likely to suffer significantly as a consequence. With the material world increasingly secondary and dependent on the distribution of attention, this suffering may well take on material dimensions in addition to what might be called spiritual ones. Finally let me note that in the current transitional period, there are four major operative (overlapping) classes: capitalists and workers and stars and fans, and that at any given moment any three of these can be allied against the fourth, and allniaces and antagonisms shift rapidly. For the most part, one can perhaps expect the shift to remain non-violent, but it will pose all sorts of severe strains as the new values come to dominate over the old. I don't think there are any simple answers to the quesiton of which side to be on in this struggle. ____________ (c)1997 Michael H. Goldhaber Where to look for more by me on this: First Monday http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber/index.html , and also http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_7/goldhaber/index.html ) where more references can be found; Also (slightly different from FirstMonday version) forthcoming in Telepolis for those who prefer German. More briefly in Dec.'97 Wired p 182-190 and still more briefly in The CPSR [Computer Professionals for Social Responsiblity ] Newsletter, Fall 1997, pp 16 and 17.(soon to be on Web at http://www.CPSR.org ) Apologies to those who question the ideologies of some of these journals. I live and work in Oakland and Berkeley, California, so perhaps what I have to say can be known as the East Bay ideology, to distinguish it from Kevin Kelly's West Bay, i.e. San Francisco ideology] Also see http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/ my web site For an extremely interesting account of the development of US capital in the period of "disaccumulation" see James Livingston "Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940" Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1994 Best, Michael Michael H. Goldhaber Ph/FAX 510 -482-9855 mgoldh@well.com http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/ --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de