Paul Mason at The Guardian has quite a rant:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun about socioeconomic change being driven by the free use information technologies. I don't clearly understand what he means by "capitalism" or "market". He refers to some obscure writings by Karl Marx in 1858 (The Fragment on Machines) as anticipating the changes he foresees. I found this interesting and to make some kind of sense to my early-morning still-unfolding brain. But then it occurred to me how dependent the whole current and future (as Paul Mason anticipates) enterprise is on extraordinarily difficult-to-produce-products: integrated circuits and complex full-function machinery made with multi-layer circuit-boards filled with surface mount components and carefully crafted firmware and software. Right now, most of the world is entirely dependent on the products of numerous large and sophisticated companies, most prominently Intel. The amount of capital and organisation (which requires social, legal and economic stability) required to design, produce and test Intel CPUs is prodigious. To the extent that this is "capitalism" (and I am pretty sure a lot of it falls within whatever it is about "capitalism" that Paul Mason would like to see eradicated), then I think there is going to have to be some kind of symbiosis or truce, rather than a complete replacement of "capitalist" socioeconomic arrangements. - Robin _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
