Hi all,
let me shortly introduce myself: I worked on this field of cultural and
technological progress since my doctoral dissertation in Business
Information Systems Engineering in 2002, with focal point on all these
resulting questions when it is assumed that technological progress is
stepping on and possibly set to a maximum; questions like where
actually is a limit to automation (calculable mashines), it it
justified to replace human work by mashines, how, what are the
conditions, which socioeconic conditions could highly developed
industrial production systems lead to.
In 2014 i publshed some little scetches on this ("Projekt
Postkapitalismus"), and i found that Felix Stalder had mentioned this
in a foot note in his' book "Kultur der Digitalit�t", which then has
led me here to this list. You will find that my English is very bad, i
have to apologize for this and will do my very best to give you all an
idea of what i intent to say.
If we find that the development of capitalism is structured into
large-scale patterns like stated by the mentioned long wave economic
theories, my impression is that the core factor that drives
developments is increase of productivity, whatever factors (cultural,
political, economical) around this are influencing the actual
developments.. Intelligent use of advanced mashinery plus skilled
workers plus access to energy and raw materials made societies rich,
and the reached level of technology and knowledge (cultural-ethical as
well as engineering knowledge) marks the characteristics of each
historical period. The very characteristicum of the contemporary
period, after these roughly 250 years of (successfull) history of
industrialized capitalism, to me seems to be the fact of saturation of
demand; the fact that the aggregated demand of top-level incomes is too
low to fully deploy the total of offered and available production
capacities. If societies and earnings were more equal, of course this
lack of demand would be less grave, but i think this will have to be
recognized as a typical strucure element of highly developed industrial
societies, that they will reach a point of development, where fully
employed production capacities exceed any level of demand and
purchasing power.
Once this level is reached, we see on one side symptoms like endless
attempts to increase demand, the characteristic overflow of capital and
zero ore even negative interest rates, and the increase of purely
finacial and unproductive investments.
One the other side, within the production mashinery, we see a change of
the direction of development: not only increase of productivity, but at
the same time increase of flexibility, which means: not fordistic
uniform products in high numbers of pieces, but highly individual,
customized products, which possible are produced not in masses on
stock, but as lotsize-one-products, on demand.
This development is following a different ideal of production: not the
speed of the production of uniformed goods, but the production of
consumer-defined goods on demand, and the separation of fabrication and
design.
Now if there is production technology avalable at a level development
high enough, it is possible to transfer ptoduction of goods at acertain
proportions from private enterprizes to public enterprizes or services.
And if this is possible and realized, this would create a change of
socioeconomic powers which define whats on the daily agenda.
Currently private companies and all belated institutions, media and
scientific organization have enormous powers, and political
institutions are more and more helpless to impose all regulations
necessary to keep a real wealth-creating economy going. We will see
TTIP in place rather than some sort of regulations of working hours,
e.g., or higher taxes on company profits.
So, to resume, we need a strengthening of the public, and these
developing high-sophisticated means of production now make it
imaginable and possible, that public enterprizes and organizations
produce goods, which then turn to be less commodities, than values of
use. It is important to understand at this point, that public
enterprizes in this sense would offer a sort of universal production
capacities, which then can be used by users (or companies and product
designers) to have indivudualized goods produced. The designs of these
goods would have to bought from somewhere else, from goods designers,
which then only produce these designs, but not the complete product
Possibly this seems a bit utopic. But it seems (to me) there is no
alternative. Sharing "economy": is no ecenomy; an economy is an
organized collaboration to PRODUCE wealth, but sharing does not mean to
produce, but to SHARE (already produced) wealth. If it is possible to
share wealth it is OK, but 1. this will sharpen the problems we already
have with lack of demand, and 2. it will not deliver a template to
create a new order of (wealth producing) ecenomy.
Non-profit-organizations will not solve this scetched problems of lack
of political power neither, not very likely. And finally
peer-production: whole societies won't be able to rely on these types
of organizations, which are not own legal subjects, which e. g. cannot
develop production plans and pledge to them, or sign delivering
contracts, and so on.
I would like to push forward this idea: we will develope to be an
automaton-society. Mashinery will do a more and more growing part of
everything that has to be done to create good and sustainable living
conditions for everyone. If these mashines are there, the question will
come up, who owns them. We will have to develope a kind of mashinery
that is suitable to be owned by the public.(e.g. the mashinery of
Mercedes-Benz as it is now is NOT suitable to be owned by the public).
Production technology is developing into this direction already, but
this development has to be strengthened, and the resulting posibilities
and chances have to be realized.
So, i hope this could be or at least could contain some 'pudding' for a
call to arms.
Cheers, Ludger
-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: <nettime> Fwd: Re: Forms of decisionism
Datum: 2016-07-17T16:37:59+0200
Von: "Felix Stalder" <fe...@openflows.com>
An: "nettim...@mx.kein.org" <nettim...@mx.kein.org>
I begin to worry about the theory of the three crises, which Brian,
building on "regulation school" research and "long wave" economic
theories, has put forward, which has been at the core of the
techno-politics project in which I'm deeply involved, and which
informed many of the the most productive threads within nettime over
the last, say, 5 years.
<...>
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
