Looks at notes for upcoming article, hmm still more to say about this coronavirus stuff, but the lead-in is getting a bit tired. I really need some sort of news hook to show how every aspect of life can be undermined. I wonder what’s on the AAP newsfeed.
Ah. That’ll do…
Ten deaths in the US so far that have been announced. Deaths appear to have slowed or ceased in China, but how would we know?
Parts of Italy are a ghost town. Two deaths in Oz. Schools and hospitals possibly being closed. Our bizarre and unique obsession with toilet paper (if it’s not some commercial meme) a welcome diversion for a worried world.
We’ll know in a week or two whether the US’ chaotic process of dealing with the virus has mattered or not.
China locked off the whole of Wuhan, and then the entire province it was in. The US let people get on internal flights with their rapidly falling prices. If the Chinese approach made a difference, the virus will burst forth in a hundred different places across the US all at once.
Amidst all this, and the great Australian toilet paper scare, was the announcement that Australian Associated Press was being wrecked by its major shareholders Nine and News Corp in order to stop cross-subsidising smaller news providers — which was the point of AAP in the first place.
Cue an argument as to whether this is political sabotage for the purpose of greater news control, a commercial decision that could have been avoided, or an inevitable result of the decline of paid circulations as the internet and social media take their toll.
I support, as any journalist would, the protests by AAP staff, and others in solidarity, against a decision that is obviously against the country’s general interest. But when you take the two together — the virus and the newsagency that would otherwise be reporting on numerous manifestations of the virus — what has to be said is this: all that you thought was solid is melting into air.
Something new is underway.
In recent years, as one social/commercial/cultural institution or condition of life after another has given way, there has developed a form of psychological triage reminiscent of Kubler-Ross’ “denial and bargaining” stages of grief.
Newspapers, universities worthy of the name, inner cities with a mix of class populations, solid working-class jobs, face-to-face shops, non-franchise small businesses, the most vestigial aspect of national self-reliance and independence… all this is going.
On one day, it’s the corner store you’ve been to for years, on the next it’s the collapse of the country’s standard newsagency.
One day, what would once have been a dispute at work to be sorted out turns into a matter of bullying to be legally adjudicated; the next, someone is warning of a pandemic that will threaten the supply chains of much of the means of our life.
Nothing’s really changing, you say. Then: OK it is, but thus far and no further. Then: OK, it’s changing altogether, but leave me this.
But it won’t. The system you’re now in is working off its own logic, and whether it’s the near-immediate crisis of production from a virus, or destroying a century of accumulated practice and social-informational capital with the stroke of a pen, it’s going.
What is that process? As Lizzie O’Shea explains better than most in her new book Future Histories, it’s the historically contingent development of global capitalism and tech at the same time, and intertwined in such a manner as to make each look like the necessary and inevitable expression of the other.
If a dynamic democratic socialism had won in the west post-WWII, the subsequent rise of tech would have been in a different form, one less inclined to cut along the lines prescribed by a global capitalism that had, from the late 1970s onwards, transformed and undermined the non-capitalist relations of everyday life: free, reciprocal and uncommodified connection, co-operation and exchange.
If that had not occurred then a triple cocktail of commodification, hyper-individualisation and prometheanism would not necessarily have occurred in the way that it has.
That applies not merely to the transformed world of media, communications and sociality, but to the material production itself.
With coronavirus — and before that Brexit — the world suddenly awoke to the fact that, as the decades had passed since the full implementation of a neoliberal order in the ’90s, the production of the means of life had become so widely exported that states that had — like ours — only recently gained their full political independence had traded away material independence through the wilful demolition of homegrown industries in, well, everything.
The profit imperatives of transnational capitalism drove this, but so too did an ideology of “transcendence” of “total globalisation” that arose from the conjunction of the global market and weightless tech.
The commerce graduates pouring out of the universities parroted Ricardo’s notion of “comparative advantage” of trade, taking no cognisance of the fact that, before the ’70s, anyone who suggested undermining practically everything in the name of cheaper imports/more “choice” would have been seen as stark staring mad.
How was it that as China, the workplace of the world, made clear that its political-economic program was one of world market participation on the road to Chinese economic autarchy, the countries of the West literally dismantled high-tech factories, shipped them eastward and were indifferent as to whether their own national GDP was composed of steel and cars, or financial services and wedding planners?
How, in other words, did “comparative advantage” become a blind ideology in which the means to an end became the end in itself?
The answer, as far as ideas and culture go, is the tech-specific form global capitalism has taken, and the global market shaping of tech, and the subsequent effects on subjectivity (selfhood), and the notion that freedom is wholly expressed by an increasing range of atomised choices between different products, that foreclose the ability to choose another way of living together at the local and global level.
The shorter way of saying that is that we live in the sort of dystopia we would be reading about if things had been otherwise.
Global viruses will happen in a global society.
The potential impact they are having now, the utter inadequacy of institutions to deal with them, the decay of notions of common good that makes the dissolution of AAP a simple decision of capital to be accepted with a shrug, are all products of the particular and general history of our time and the people who led us there.
(Of course, one could point out that AAP’s liberal, “non-interpretive” non-reflexive idea of “news” is partly the culprit in this. But that’s for another day.)
It’s time to understand all the cool stuff globalisation and tech offer us isn’t something that goes on top of what will always be there.
They are the virus. They will eat away at anything you ever thought mattered in life. Identifying one’s own need for bargaining and denial is a step in avoiding the final one, that of acceptance.
You wouldn’t read about it. Or you won’t soon.
Well, as current front-man for local capitalism (the front-man abbott failed to be), morrison wants recession. Australia’s corporate media is eager to support that policy.
Class warfare – exploitation of their institutional power by the 1% of filthy rich to ruthlessly plunder the income and wealth of us the 99% with the very deliberate intention of reducing us to penury (yes, I actually need to write it to avoid doubt) – is both worse and more visible than it was in the 50s. Public interest ceased long ago to be a consideration in the rewriting of media laws to line Rupert’s pockets; promoting capitalism is far more lucrative for its promoters.
Well written Guy.
I’m half way through Shoshana Zuboff’s, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ and will put Lizzie O’Shae’s ‘Future Histories’ next on the list. Compelling and depressing but we must keep discussing and educating ourselves about this. If only we could go back in time with hindsight …….
Spot on, Just Curious. Zuboff’s book should be required reading for all those brilliant techie subscribers to Crikey who have been urging us to embrace the Huawei tar baby.
An interesting piece. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on one question: how would we go about changing the identities and ways of thinking of two generations who have grown up in the dominant culture of techno-capitalism (the ‘digital pioneers’ and the ‘digital natives’)?
As one of the ‘digital natives’, I know plenty of us have genuine concerns about the links between capitalism, technology, and the crises which seem to face us (planetary systems, artificial intelligence, disinformation, and nuclear proliferation). But I think many of us would have existential crises—and react against systemic change—if the “triple cocktail of commodification, hyper-individualisation and prometheanism” were poured down the sink. What else is there for us to drink? Our options seem to be the esoteric musings of a radical university professors, the misbegotten ramblings of Gen Xs and Boomers pining for a return to a way of life “back in the day” which never really existed, or the ways of life of indigenous peoples around the world which tend to be either lost or appropriated by white people to signal virtue. And what about those parts of the global project which appear necessary for that path, e.g. an entity governing international laws made to respond to issues know no borders (like almost every systemic environmental issue)?
What makes this especially difficult is that even those of us who ostensibly reject these values find our identities fundamentally wrought in the shapes of capitalism. Our time and attention is a commodity and should always be spent “efficiently”, not “wasted”; our recreational experience “in nature” is rarely for ecological reasons, but because we want the productivity gains of the increased happiness people feel if they allocate two hours every week for time “in nature”. And so on.
Is there really a way for us to come together and find a different path forward? One which, possibly, veers away completely from capitalism and technological expansion of the kind we’ve seen this century?
I would recommend a book by the late Mark Fischer called ‘Capitalist Realism’. It’s only 80 pages long and you can find free pdfs online pretty easily. It discusses the cultural phenomenon of believing that Capitalism seems to be the only option.
I think that Australia seems to be one of the last Western centrists (along with Canada) with both the UK and USA quickly shedding neoliberalism (at the very least in rhetoric). This is already showing alternative paths in nationalism for the right and class struggle for the left. Don’t underestimate how quickly things that seem like unshakeable institutions can be removed and the effect on material conditions and culture that can have.
Good points Lachlan – Guys article nails it in my opinion, ‘ it’ being the unease and malaise felt by the politically aware.
But how to respond?. For me, one of the successful subterfuge’s of global corporatism is to be identified as capitalist. Capitalism is the corner shop, the plumber , the builder with 3 employees ,the massage therapist. They own the means of production, they employ labour. And probably read The Australian. Contrast this with Glencore, Raytheon, Proctor and Gamble et al. These players are large enough to distort markets, lobby and dictate policy, destroy actual competition and are staffed by the apparatchiks of managerialist corporatism that revolve through boardrooms and key government agencies.
This distinction is actively suppressed to the extent that the majority of commenters fail to mention it but it is key. This was recognised ,in part, by previous generations, and attempts were made to ameliorate the sociopathic dynamic but corporate globalism is one hell of an adversary . If the planet is to survive it must be tamed and forced into true social responsibility. It will not go there willingly.
Hi Lachlan, interesting points and questions.
“the misbegotten ramblings of Gen X”
Hey, I resemble that remark, although the few times I refer to ‘back in the day’ the recollections are real and rarely affectionate nostalgia, much of what went on in those dim days was violent, with authorities abusing power where they liked.
A bit like now, but the old authorities ceded power to multi national sociopaths.
I wish you luck in your endeavours.
Great write-up, Guy. At the moment, I’m watching the unfolding entropy with a sense of cool detachment. We’re over the rubicon now – all we’re waiting on now is the atavistic collapse.
I’m pulling forward early retirement by another year so I can get off this bus. I’ll take up a seat next to you George.
I certainly agree with the sense of loss, or even the loss of the sense of loss. Our corner milk bar has now been taken over by Australia Post in order to sell Tatts tickets.
But the role of technology in this process seems complex. What happened to the optimism of post-capitalism? Doesn’t Wikipedia offer a model for the non-monetary value of work?
We should avoid being “comfortable in the abyss” and take up the tools that capitalism has so kindly invented for us.