--- schema_version: "library-reader-v1" source_type: "original_book" title: "Digital Capitalism" author: null edition: null publisher: null year: null isbn: "2021022153" library_document_id: "50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed" source_sha256: "746bfc1e2253e11737253daad663d7176077b6b54343c2c35f6f132990452fbc" pdf_physical_page_count: 343 pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0 range_start: 110 range_count: 10 html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed?start=110&limit=10" markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed.md?start=110&limit=10" previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed.md?start=100&limit=10" next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed.md?start=120&limit=10" --- # Digital Capitalism > 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=110 | PRINTED_PAGE=96 Lukács’ Critique of Quantification In HCC, Lukács develops a critique of the logic of quantification that he sees at the heart of reified thought and bourgeois consciousness. It lies in the “nature of capitalism to” reduce “the phenomena to their purely quantitative essence, to their expression in numbers and numerical relations” (HCC, 6). Capitalism uses the sciences in order to assess and optimise investments, labour-time, capital accumulation, commodities, power, etc. Capitalism is the society of accumulation that is based on the logic of capital, which is transferred into different realms of society, such as politics and culture, in order to accumulate not just money, but also decision-power and definition-power. In order to accumulate, you need to assess existing quantities as foundation for identifying strategies of how to increase them. At the end of the process, the result is quantified in order to identify strategies of what to do when the accumulation process starts all over again. Capitalism has to develop ever newer forms of rationalisation and new methods of production in order to increase productivity, reduce costs and accumulate capital. The history of capitalist technology is therefore a history of rationalisation and the development of ever newer methods of quantification. If we follow the path taken by labour in its development from the handicrafts via co-operation and manufacture to machine industry we can see a continuous trend towards greater rationalisation, the progressive elimination of the qualitative, human and individual attributes of the worker. (HCC, 88) Modern philosophy has developed together with technologies of rationalisation (HCC, 113). Lukács argues that reification’s reduction of totalities to partialities is not limited to the economy, but also affects bureaucracy, the state, the law, and culture (HCC, 98–100). The logic of computing is reductionist and anti-dialectical: “The methodology of the natural sciences which forms the methodological ideal of every fetishistic science and every kind of Revisionism reject the idea of contradiction and antagonism in its subject matter” (HCC, 10). Mathematical logic cannot see “the whole system at once” (HCC, 117). It reduces explanations to basic principles (reductionism) and believes in the exact predictability and calculability of the world (determinism) (HCC, 117). Lukács (HCC, 89–90) quotes Marx in order to show capitalism’s fetishism of quantification: “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything; hour for hour, day for day” (Marx 1847, 127). Lukács writes: “Thus time sheds its qualitative, variable, flowing nature; it freezes into an exactly delimited, quantifiable continuum filled with quantifiable ‘things’ (the reified, mechanically objectified ‘performance’ of the worker, whole separated from his total human personality)” (HCC, 90). In the essay The Question of Educational Work (first published in 1921), Lukács (2014, 91–92) argues that the bourgeois belief in the power of quantification and the natural sciences was reflected in the mechanical determinism advanced by both bourgeois economics and revisionist social democracy. Critical thought, in contrast, has to do “away completely with all forms of fatalism” (Lukács 2014, 93). It stresses human qualities such as the capacity of humans to change the world. 96 Theorists ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=111 | PRINTED_PAGE=97 Freelancers not just face a peculiar form of exploitation, but have also self-organised in order to resist precarity. As a result, unions such as the Freelancer’s Union and the Independent Workers’ Union have been created that put an emphasis on being platforms for self-organised struggles of freelancers and other non-traditional workers. Lukács’ Critique of Quantification Revisited: the Critique of Big Data Analytics Big data analytics is the newest methodological trend of quantification in almost all academic fields. It is a method that gathers large amounts of data and applies algorithms and mathematical analysis (such as correlation analysis) to this data in order to identify patterns, relations, correlations and predict behaviour that allows “to monitor, manage, and control citizens” (Mosco 2017, 8). As a reaction to the rise of big data, a series of critical studies of big data analytics and its implications for society has emerged (see e.g. Andrejevic 2014; Beer 2018; Boyd and Crawford 2012; Couldry and Mejias 2019; Chandler and Fuchs 2019; Van Dijck et al. 2018). Big data analytics’ fetishism of quantification has led uncritical tech enthusiasts such as the former editor of the neoliberal Wired magazine Anderson (2008) to argue that big data results in the “end of theory”: “With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves […] [When] faced with massive data, this [traditional] approach to science – hypothesize, model, test–is becoming obsolete. […]”. Chapter Three | History and Class Consciousness 2.0 97 The Reification of Communication Technologies ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=112 | PRINTED_PAGE=98 Big data positivism’s quantitative methodology disregards the qualitative aspects of the analysis of society, such as ethics, morals, critique, theory, emotions, affects, motivations, worldviews, interpretations, political assessments, power, social struggles, or contradictions. The danger is that big data analytics advances uncritical, instrumental knowledge that serves dominant interests in the execution of capitalist rule and domination. Another danger of big data analytics is that the social sciences and humanities are colonised by a combination of computer science and business studies that tries to root out critical thinking and critical theory by instrumental big data reason. Big data analytics is one of the newest developments in the history of tools of reification that Lukács analyses and criticises. Chen et al.’s (2012) article is one of the most cited articles that contain “big data” in the title7. The authors identify big data analytics as “business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) 3.0” that follows after the two stages of BI&A 1.0 (statistical analysis and data mining applied to structured data collected through enterprise systems) and BI&A 2.0 (text and web analytics applied to unstructured web contents). [B]ig data and big data analytics have been used to describe the data sets and analytical techniques in applications that are so large (from terabytes to exabytes) and complex (from sensor to social media data) that they require advanced and unique data storage, management, analysis, and visualization technologies. (Chen et al. 2012, 1166) The authors argue that big data analytics will have “big impact” (Chen et al. 2012, 1168) on society. They list purely positive impacts in the realms of the economy, politics, science and technology, health and wellbeing, and security and public safety that include “increased sale and customer satisfaction”, the improvement of “transparency, participation, and equality”, increased “scientific impact”, “[i]mproved healthcare quality”, and “[i]mproved public safety and security”. Chen, Chiang, and Story’s article is typical for mainstream research on big data: it is the expression of highly reified thought that argues that pure quantification as represented by big data analytics will radically transform society and only have positive impacts that will improve life in society in many respects. Possible negative consequences are not analysed and discussed, which is the consequence of the abstraction of the analysis from society as totality and its social relations of power. 98 Theorists 7 ISI Web of Knowledge: search conducted on July 29, 2018: With 863 citations, the article was the second most cited work containing “big data” in the title. ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=113 | PRINTED_PAGE=99 Big data analytics tends to forget about class and domination. Its fetishism of quantification sees society as a thing constituted by large quantities of data and disregards the social qualities that make up society. Big data analytics is what Lukács describes as a “fetishistic science” that disregards “contradiction and antagonism” (HCC, 10) and the totality. Big data analytics is certainly a major trend in research and academia. Its digital positivism has, however, been challenged by approaches such as critical digital and social media studies, critical digital sociology, and critical digital humanities (Fuchs 2017; Lupton 2015; Berry and Fagerjord 2017). 3.5 Conclusion We can summarise this chapter’s key results: • In HCC, Lukács conceives of society based on a dialectic of subject and object that avoids the pitfalls of voluntarist spontaneism and mechanist fatalism. In later works, he clarified the mediating role of language and communication in the dialectic of subject and object: communication is the mediating process in the dialectic of subject of object that produces and reproduces social relations. There is a dialectic of work and communication (communication at work, the work of communication); • Lukács shows in HCC that the reification of consciousness has objective foundations in capitalism’s commodity structures and forms an element of ideologies that justify capitalism by naturalising structures and practices of domination. In contemporary capitalism, social media have become a medium of communication, where reified thought is communicated and challenged. Especially the communication of right-wing authoritarian ideologies and its elements of strong leadership, nationalism, the friend-enemy-schema, and militarism is prevalent on corporate social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; • Cultural and media labour constitutes a new form of reification: by fostering creativity and self-determined labour, it appears as and creates an aura of nonalienated labour that deflects attention from the fact that such labour is often highly insecure and precarious; • Private ownership/profit-orientation, advertising, and ideology operate in new ways in the realm of social media and on the Internet, which results in the colonisation of the online public sphere by the interests of corporations, celebrities, and political elites; Chapter Three | History and Class Consciousness 2.0 99 Conclusion ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=114 | PRINTED_PAGE=100 • Lukács’ critique of reification entails a critique of technological fetishism and the logic of quantification. In digital capitalism, this analysis matters in several respects, including the critique of digital determinism and digital positivism; • Digital determinism fetishises digital technologies by presenting them as autonomous subjects that bring about revolutionary technological changes of society that are either purely positive or purely negative; • Big data analytics is one of the newest developments in the history of tools of reification that Lukács analyses and criticises. Big data analytics is a form of digital positivism and fetishistic science that disregards qualities, contradictions, and totalities. It advances uncritical, instrumental knowledge that serves dominant interests by being used as a tool of reification. History and Class Consciousness’ critique of reification, ideology, and reified consciousness remains highly topical in the age of digital capitalism and big data. Lukács analysis allows us to critically analyse how social media, big data, and various other Internet technologies are used as tools of reification. Those new technologies are deeply embedded into capitalist and dominative structures does however not imply that there are no alternative potentials and no alternative forces at work in the realm of digital technologies. Lukács opposed deterministic analyses, which implies that although exploitation and domination are ubiquitous in capitalism, there is always the possibility for critical consciousness and critical action (praxis). In reified computing and technology, the instrumental logic of quantification, capital, and bureaucracy subsumes human activities and destroys solidarity. At the same time, modern technology has created new potentials for co-operation and socialisation. Computing operates at different levels. A socialist framework of society and technology does not need to abolish computing but needs to transform its design so that technologies are human-centred, humans in collective processes control the design and use of technology, and quantification is subsumed under the logic of humancentredness. For example, socialist design does not mean to abolish social media, but to make them truly social so that privacy violations, intransparent algorithms, targeted advertising, individualism, and the accumulation of reputation are no longer design principles and are substituted by privacy-friendliness, direct human communication, collective production, co-operation, solidarity, creative commons and transparency and the openness of algorithms as design principles. Digital technologies such as the Internet are today also used by activists for challenging exploitation and domination (Fuchs 2014). Digital commons projects such as 100 Theorists ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=115 | PRINTED_PAGE=101 Wikipedia and alternative online media (e.g. Democracy Now! and Alternet) challenge the capitalist shaping of digital technologies. Furthermore, there are potentials for public service Internet platforms and platform co-operatives that challenge the logic of the corporate digital giants (Fuchs 2018b). These are attempts to create a non-reified, commons-based and public and commons-based digital media landscape. One crucial lesson we can learn from Lukács is that revolutionising the digital media landscape so that the capitalist Internet can be transcended towards a commons-based Internet can neither be achieved by technology nor by single individuals, but only by critically conscious humans who organise themselves as political collectives and engage in class struggles that transform technology and society. Only human praxis can create a commons-based Internet and a socialist society. Lukács stresses that the creation of workers’ councils is a form of class struggle that “spells the political and economic defeat of reification” (HCC, 80). In the digital age, where users are producers and there is a variety of digital workers, the creation of platform co-operatives that are owned by workers and users as well as public service Internet platforms that are publicly owned are part of the struggle of the working class against digital capital’s power. In addition, we today find the use of social media and apps as communicative weapons in social struggles. Examples are the use of social media in various Occupy movements (Fuchs 2014) and in the Chinese working class’ struggles against corporations such as Foxconn (Qiu 2016). Another important realm of class struggle in digital capitalism is the demands of gig economy workers for better working conditions that are voiced with the help of the Internet (see e.g. Cant 2020; Ravenelle 2019; Woodcock 2019). Digital media today are not just tools of reification, but also tools of class struggles by which the contemporary digital proletariat has the opportunity to perfect “itself by annihilating and transcending itself, by creating the classless society through the successful conclusion of its own class struggle” (HCC, 80). References Chapter Three | History and Class Consciousness 2.0 101 References ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=116 | PRINTED_PAGE=102 102 Theorists ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=117 | PRINTED_PAGE=103 Chapter Three | History and Class Consciousness 2.0 103 References ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=118 | PRINTED_PAGE=104 104 Theorists ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=119 | PRINTED_PAGE=NOT_DETECTED Chapter Four Adorno and the Media in Digital Capitalism 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Adorno’s Demonisation 4.3 The Digital Culture Industry 4.4 Digital Authoritarianism 4.5 Digital Society or Capitalism? 4.6 Conclusion References 4.1 Introduction In 2019, there was the 50th anniversary of Theodor W. Adorno’s death. On this occasion, there have been new publications by and about Adorno and events asking how relevant Adorno is today. This chapter was presented as a keynote talk at one of these events, namely at the conference “Adorno and the Media” that took place on 13 December and 14 in Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and its Center for Art and Media (ZKM). The chapter asks: how relevant is Adorno for the critical understanding of digital capitalism? It situates Adorno in the context of contemporary media and communication study, especially the analysis of the interaction of digital media and society. Section 4.2 focuses on why dismissals and vilifications of Adorno are wrong. Building on Adorno, section 4.3 analyses the digital culture industry. Section 4.4 deals with digital authoritarianism, a phenomenon that it is highly relevant in times when authoritarians such as Donald Trump have almost 70 million followers on Twitter. Section 4.5 asks Adorno whether we live in a capitalist or a digital/informational society. 4.2 Adorno’s Demonisation There is a lack of engagement with Adorno in communication, media, and cultural studies, where Adorno is regularly demonised and dismissed with one-line prejudices that ignore the complexity and totality of his works. The typical argument goes like this: “Adorno was a pessimist who saw humans as passively manipulated. He considered instrumental society to be without alternative and thought political change was hopeless. His theory is false and outdated”. DOI: 10.4324/9781003222149-4 下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed.md?start=120&limit=10)