Heiko Feldner
(Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies, Cardiff University)
Abstract:
The systemic illiteracy of the capital valorisation economy towards its social conditions of existence manifests and perpetuates itself most effectively in the shape of three powerful mythologies: first, the historical grand narrative of ‘1989’, which interprets the unceremonious demise of communism in Europe as a triumph of free market economics and liberal democracy; second, the economic tale of ‘creative destruction’ according to which only a new science and technology offensive could redeem us from the global economic crisis we have entered in 2008; and, third, the libertarian ‘end of work society’ discourse, which renders the decomposition of contemporary work society as a blueprint for a post-capitalist world beyond work. Mutually reinforcing in their denial of the historical finitude of capitalism as a mode of production and way of life, these mythologies shield us from the traumatic realisation of the depth of the eco-economic catastrophe that is unfolding in uncanny slow motion before our eyes. Against this background, my paper looks at the ‘digital revolution’ as a paradigm of economic development, prosperity and growth. How does it relate to the above mythologies? What part, if any, did it play in the history that connects 1989 with 2008? Can it contribute to alternative forms of social synthesis beyond the valorisation of human labour, collaborative forms that may overcome the crisis of modern work society without sliding inadvertently into the abyss of de-civilisation, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt predicted we most probably would. This paper will explore these and other questions through the lens of Marx’ critique of the value-form of social mediation as the historical a priori of capitalist work societies – an unconscious social matrix which pre-configures and encodes the modern world as we know it.
Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK, and general editor of Bloomsbury’s Writing History series on modern historiography and historical theory. While his recent work focused on the 2008 global economic crisis, he is currently writing a future history of capitalism, entitled The Meaning of 1989.