What we see with the spirit of networks is a discourse that is able to respond to both the systemic concerns of capitalism and its humanist critique. The digital discourse is the legitimation discourse of a new phase of capitalism. It offers a spirit of capitalism that on the one hand sustains, cements, and legitimizes capitalism and on the other hand sets new tests for its legitimacy. The spirit of networks is still very much committed to the end of the old versions of capitalism inasmuch as it is ultimately about the endless accumulation of capital. But it is also a new spirit of capitalism to the extent that it provides new guidelines for the means of the new capitalism, demanding more participation, more democratization, more personal expression, and more interpersonal relations.
THE SPIRIT OF NETWORKS AND THE DECOMPOSITION OF THE FORDIST C<sub>L</sub>ASS COMPACT
The spirit of networks should be understood not only in terms of the new particular and “local” demands of capitalism (such as the demand from workers to be flexible) but also in terms of a wholesale and “global” transformation in the political culture of post-Fordist society. At that level, the spirit of networks should be understood as a new legitimation model that responds to the crisis of the old legitimation model—that of the welfare state—and substitutes it (Habermas 1973). The spirit of networks facilitates the crystallization of a new constellation of power that characterizes the post-Fordist phase of capitalism. The tripartite social compact that characterized the Fordist, national phase of capitalism—laborstate-capital—has been flipped, as Ram (2006) puts it, substituting one actor—the state—with network technology as the third tip of the triangle. With network technology—and the social, economic, cultural, and political networks that it underlies—capital’s route to labor (and vice versa) in post-Fordism is mediated by networks, thereby bypassing the state. The post-Fordist and global phase of capitalism is characterized by the constitution of (technological) networks as the containers, organizers, and mediators of the social relations between capital and labor (Ram 2007).
This new constellation is highly consequential for the question of legitimacy. By partaking in the social compact of Fordism, the state enjoyed a high level of legitimacy based on the power it could exert vis-à- vis capital and labor. In fact, the state enjoyed legitimacy to such a degree that it not only managed large parts of economic life but also played a central role in social and cultural life as well. Under post-Fordism, as the state is cut off from this tripartite compact, its legitimacy is hampered and in turn it loses its leverage as a dominant actor in social life, including in spheres pertaining to the management of material reproduction: work and the economy.
Networks as the Techno-political Culture of Post-Fordism
221