The Internet & Capitalism

[Hexen]

I found a very interesting article regarding the relations of the Internet and Capitalism.

http://www.marxist.com/capitalism-internet-patents130306.htm

Question is, is the Internet in it's free & open form as it currently exists now is actually incompatible under capitalism according to how the system itself works (political science wise)? If so why and how does it exist anyways in our society today? Historically wise I heard or read somewhere that the internet was actually put out accidentally which is now a "beast out of control" that the proletariat just took a lucky opportunity to stumble across and quickly took advantage of it or something like that.

[bricolage]

I can't remember where but I thought I read somewhere that the internet was designed with NATO in mind or something, I dunno...

On the subject of the internet (although I haven't yet read the article I'll try and give it a shot) if I may (and I've never done this before so I hope its not a slippery slope into self-congratulatory self-quoting) here is part of a piece I wrote at University, it was a comparison between Abahlali base Mjondolo and the early 2000s alter-globalisation movement but I think this section of the internet might be relevant (sorry if some of the references don't make sense or some bits don't link up I'm not sure if this was the final version and there might be some bits missing here and there);


With the world brought closer together, at least for certain people, it has often been argued that this has caused a qualitative shift in global consciousness, Scholte agrees with this view and speaks of a changing way of thinking where ‘people conceive of their social affiliations in non-territorial terms, for example, with trans-border solidarities based on class, gender, generation, race, religion and sexuality’. While it is tempting to concur it is also the case that such ideas are not new, it was in 1848 that the Communist Manifesto called for ‘workingmen of all countries’ to unite as well as history since of left wing internationals as multi-national feminist and environmental organisations.

Linked to this idea it has also been argued that new technology provides a free plane entirely conducive to the formulation of resistance. It was this that led John Barlow in 1996 to proclaim the ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’. Yet it is evident that state control over the internet, as well as other means of communication, remains strongly in place. This is hardly surprising in a world where technological progress cannot be abstracted from the social relations they are produced in. With this in mind while much was made of the use of the internet during the 2009 ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran as means of organising protest, it was equally utilised by the Islamic Republic to slander, split and capture to opposition movement. The internet, nor any other form of communication, has ever existed as a site exterior to overall social and economic life and far from solely enabling dissent it has equally operated as growing aid to state surveillance.

Furthermore while the internet and mobile phones allow a plane on which transborder resistance can be formulated they do not create such solidarity. Global consciousness cannot be born from computer screens. Technological advances may provide opportunities to build networks of resistance but they can never be substitute’s for real human contact, nor can they bypass other factors standing in the way of such networks. As Graeber notes, hidden behind a computer screen it is often the place that the least amicable aspects of individuals, be they racism, sexism or elitism, are more prominent. Finally in world where access to such resources is fundamentally skewed an emphasis on them as the sole means on which to build resistance will ultimately fail. Such ideas have not bypassed Abahlali;

‘We are for the technologies that allow us to connect with people more easily - cellphones, internet and so on. We like them. But the problem, is that the rich have access to these technologies - producing, selling and using them and so they are most often used against us (even though we do use them in our struggles too - especially cellphones and now that we have our own website too). We have to find a way to put these technologies in common so that they can be for everyone.’

Arguably such an awareness of the acute limitations of globalised telecommunications was missing from the alter-globalisation movement. Described as ‘the first political movement born of the chaotic pathways of the internet’, inclusive via ‘new communication technologies’, the very structure of the movement has been described as reflective of ‘internet-based organising’. There seemed a widespread belief that the apparent reality of technological globalisation was both a means to global resistance and a tool of the dissident. Rather it is evident that any movement born ‘of the chaotic pathways of the internet’, until the date that such a system is not, on the whole, confined to the Global North, will be a movement born of the Global North itself. In this way exclusion of vast swathes of the globe is inherent to the mode of organization itself, and argument I will further extend in a broader analysis of the alter-globalisation movement as a whole.

In conclusion then while the internet has its obvious uses I think it is massively overhyped as a challenge to capitalism or the embryo of a new world. Its a means of communication not a means of emancipation.