James W reviews McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead. Nearly a year has passed since the publication of McKenzie Wark’s short book Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? More than half of that time has been spent in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis which has impacted the course of history in wa ...
I read this review a while ago (didn’t realize I was dealing with an old school cth’er, definitely make the whole thing funnier), but didn’t read the book and therefore landed on “?”
(I knew a few people who had read the book and didn’t come away from it as unfavorably, and I respect their opinions)
I will ask you instead a related question (in my mind):
In my mind (not having read wark) it’s sort of adjacent to all of this. He contends that, viewed through the lens of control theory, capital functions not only as the ultimate controller of human labor, but also crucially supplies the “sensing instrumentation” by which we measure the value of things
I’ve really enjoyed the framework since reading it, and think it offers a different way of thinking about the role of “data” etc (“vectorialism”ish, again, not having read wark herself) under our particular monopoly capitalism. I suspect capital has always had a fondness for information in order to survive, essentially.
Im light of this, modern capitalist “data” is ultimately a marginally useful thing that can provide moderate profit amplification, but not enough to really justify the energy currently put into it (but capitalists also need to do something with surplus, as well as make-work schemes, so dog tracks like “advertising data markets” can usefully exist).
I personally fear these discussions are a little “academic”, and don’t place a ton of importance on them, even though I find them interesting
I read this review a while ago (didn’t realize I was dealing with an old school cth’er, definitely make the whole thing funnier), but didn’t read the book and therefore landed on “?”
(I knew a few people who had read the book and didn’t come away from it as unfavorably, and I respect their opinions)
I will ask you instead a related question (in my mind):
Have you read or watched Ian Wright’s talk on Capital as a real god?
In my mind (not having read wark) it’s sort of adjacent to all of this. He contends that, viewed through the lens of control theory, capital functions not only as the ultimate controller of human labor, but also crucially supplies the “sensing instrumentation” by which we measure the value of things
I’ve really enjoyed the framework since reading it, and think it offers a different way of thinking about the role of “data” etc (“vectorialism”ish, again, not having read wark herself) under our particular monopoly capitalism. I suspect capital has always had a fondness for information in order to survive, essentially.
Im light of this, modern capitalist “data” is ultimately a marginally useful thing that can provide moderate profit amplification, but not enough to really justify the energy currently put into it (but capitalists also need to do something with surplus, as well as make-work schemes, so dog tracks like “advertising data markets” can usefully exist).
I personally fear these discussions are a little “academic”, and don’t place a ton of importance on them, even though I find them interesting