Digital Capitalism and its Limits : Technotopia, power and risk

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has been described as the next big leap in digital capitalism. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing and robotisation, we are led to believe, will bring more progress, growth and development while also helping us to resolve the deep and multiple crises the world is in. Billions are being invested in these technologies, accompanied by sharp geopolitical rivalries to secure an edge in the control over them.

Volume 8 in the Democratic Marxism series invites readers to think more deeply and critically about digital capitalism and its limits. While most governments in the world, including South Africa, have accepted a techno-nationalist narrative and have deliberated on the risks for the planet and humanity, the volume interrogates the effects and consequences of advances in artificial intelligence and heightened technological innovation and industrialisation on employment, democracy and the climate.

Viewing the grand social engineering of 4IR through a Marxist lens, the volume contributors engage critically with the class project of digital monopoly capitalism and its powerful totalitarian tendencies. They question the dangerous technotopian imaginary shaping this digital techno-shift, the implications of algorithmic data extractivism, the securitisation of already weak market democracies, the social consequences of digital learning, lack of regulation, and the power dynamics in the labour process.

Anchored in techno-realism, the interdisciplinary perspective captured in this volume puts forward alternatives for democratisation and a just transition to protect human and non-human life. ; The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has been vaunted as the next big leap in digital capitalism. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing and robotisation mark this shift that promises not only more progress, growth and development but also solutions to the multiple crises the world is in. However, the billions being invested in these technologies are accompanied by sharp geopolitical rivalries to secure an edge in the control over them. Volume 8 in the Democratic Marxism series, Digital Capitalism and its Limits, questions the dangerous technotopian imaginary shaping this digital-techno shift to examine the risks and power dynamics involved. Contributors delve into the implications of algorithmic data extractivism, the securitisation of already weak market democracies, the social consequences of digital learning, regulatory lags and power dynamics in the labour process, as well as the possible emancipatory futures of such technologies. Anchored in techno-realism, this volume invites us all, from an interdisciplinary perspective, to think more deeply and critically about digital capitalism. We need to reject aspects of it in the public interest, and we may need to democratise it and subject it to a just transition to protect human and non-human life.