9 Conclusion
We have made the case that the economic crises of 2008 and 2020 gave rise to two powerful new socio-economic phenomena: state capitalism and platform capitalism. The new state capitalism, forged in response to disillusionment with neoliberalism in the context ofthe global economic crisis, has seen states bolster or revive older mechanisms of intervention like state-owned enterprises and subsidies. Meanwhile, they have experimented with newer techniques such as taking golden shares in private firms and pursuing ‘market-conforming’ industrial policies. These have worked well for individual states in the short run, offering the possibility of a rupture with neoliberal orthodoxy. But their cumulative and long-run impacts appear more concerning – not least because their beggar-thy-neighbour economics and spiralling definitions of ‘national security’ generate mounting and increasingly disruptive geopolitical tensions.
At the same time, the business sector has been transformed by the success of a small number of giant firms pursuing platform capitalist business strategies. Rather than trying to compete in particular product lines, these firms intermediate transactions at scale by enclosing the circulation of capital and exchanges within their proprietary digital ecosystems. Within their platforms, they design and control the protocols governing interactions among users. As such, they have become increasingly infrastructure-like, as businesses and societies are increasingly dependent upon their privately owned digital ecosystems. Platforms, moreover, are highly spatially concentrated – with the large majority based in a handful of cities in either the United States or China.
Each trend has separately received considerable scholarly attention and analysis, but few have stopped to ask exactly how the resurgence of states as powerful and interventionist economic actors relates to the rise of giant, technologically sophisticated digital platform firms whose operations span national boundaries and concentrate power in private hands. Although states and platform firms’ interests do sometimes diverge, our core contention is that their relationships are increasingly close and their interests symbiotic. While platform firms carefully cultivate a ‘Californian ideology’ of opposition to state power, in fact, they have – in the United States and China alike – sought and received extensive state protection and support, especially in their international operations. States have provided steady and reliable custom for platform giants, especially for military and national security purposes, while offering considerable support to their overseas operations. Meanwhile, platforms have embraced connections with states eager to project power internationally – an aim for which platforms are the ideal vehicle, due to their vast scale, governance capacities, and their emerging role as owners and operators of critical digital infrastructure.
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