Let us have a closer look at the structure of the structural distribution of profits of the world’s 2,000 largest corporations according to the data in the table. Finance capital controls 33.7% of these corporations’ profits, the culture and digital industry 17.7%, manufacturing and construction 13.1%, energy and utilities 9.8%, and the mobility and transport sector 9.4%.
These data show that it is an exaggeration to claim that digital capitalism is capitalism’s dominant moment. There are multiple, intersecting, and interacting capitalisms. Capitalism’s “individual sectors […] are themselves economically intertwined” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, 96). Digital capitalism is linked to finance capitalism via venture capital investments into digital start-ups and the listing of digital corporations on stock markets. Digital and cultural capitalism requires energy inputs, which links to classical resources and hyper-industrial capitalism. Global communication advances the increased transportation of people and goods, which is why the digital/culture industry and the mobility/transport industries are interacting. Contemporary capitalism is at the same time finance capitalism, digital capitalism, hyper-industrial capitalism, mobility capitalism, etc. All of these dimensions interpenetrate.
Adorno’s insight that we need to look at society from the perspectives of the productive forces and the relations of production is complicated by what Marx termed the antagonism between the productive forces and the relations of production. There is an antagonism between the informational, networked productive forces and the digital and informational class relations. This relation is antagonism between digital capital and the digital commons. It becomes evident in phenomena such as intellectual property rights VS. digital gifts/non-commercial Creative Commons, for-profit open access VS. non-profit open access, ad-funded for-profit Internet platforms VS. nonprofit Internet platforms, capitalist platforms VS. platform co-operatives, etc.
Chapter Four | Adorno and the Media in Digital Capitalism
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Digital Society or Capitalism?