\pm\ntd 2/98 final versions
New Technologies, the Welfare State, and the Prospects for
Democratization
By Douglas Kellner
"human beings make their own history, but not under circumstances of their own choosing." Karl Marx
"They who control the Microscopick, control the World."
Thomas Pynchon
The current explosion of new technologies and furious debates
over their substance, trajectory, and effects poses two major
challenges to critical social theory and a radical democratic
politics: first, how to theorize the dramatic changes in every
aspect of life that the new technologies are producing; and, secondly,
how to utilize the new technologies to promote progressive social
change to create a more egalitarian and democratic society in
an era marked by rampant technological development and the seeming
victory of market capitalism over its historical opponents.
In this article, I first want to suggest some ways to theorize
the current technological revolution without falling into either
technological or economic determinism, as well as the modes of
technophilia or technophobia. I will argue that one needs to theorize
the spread of new technologies and series of transformations that
we undergoing: 1) in the context of the current stage of capitalist
development, as a crucial part of the global restructuring of
capitalism, and thus to think together the current development
and imbrication of technology and capitalism; and 2) as embodying
a set of artifacts and practices that themselves can be restructured
and reconstituted to carry out individual and group projects,
as well as following the imperatives built-into the technologies.
In carrying out this hermeneutical process, one needs to avoid
the extremes of either exaggerating or downplaying the autonomous
role of technology in this process, as if technology were either
the demiurge of the contemporary world, or an unimportant
epiphenomenon of a much greater force, such as capitalism or human
self-development. In addition, one must avoid two extremes which
would either denigrate and demonize technology in the mode of
technophobia, or celebrate and deify it in the mode of technophilia.
Instead, a critical theory of technology attempts to develop a
dialectical optic that avoids one-sided approaches in theorizing
and evaluating the genesis of the new technologies and their often
contradictory effects.
I also want to develop democratic and activist perspectives on
the new technologies, suggesting some ways that they might be
used for such things as self-valorization and empowerment, democratization,
and progressive social transformation, in opposition to their
roles of strengthening the forces of corporate and state domination.
I do not want to fall either into the utopianism of the boosters
of new technologies, or into the pessimism and defeatism of those
who merely see new technologies as an instrument of capital and
the state. In pursuing the political effects of new technologies,
I take on the issue of the Information Superhighway and the fate
of the welfare state and will argue that the welfare state is
falling victim to the global restructuring of capital and that
the new technologies are serving as the matrix of a new dominant
ideology that identifies technological progress and human well-being
with new technologies and the market, while presenting the state
as an obsolete force of domination and bureaucratic state apparatus
that is seen as an impediment to progress, freedom, and other
positive values. In this view, it is the market and individual
entrepreneurship that has made possible the dramatic technological
revolution of the present and any state regulation is seen as
an impediment for further progress. Such an ideology is used to
dismantle the welfare state and must thus be put in question and
subjected to ideological critique.
For a Critical Theory of Technology
While many dominant discourses on technology exhibit one-sided
technophilic or technophobic approaches, I would argue that we
need to develop a critical theory of technology in order
to sort out positive and negative features, the upside and downside,
the benefits and the losses in the development and trajectory
of the new technologies. It is necessary, I believe, to counter
promises of technological utopia, that computers will solve all
our problems, produce jobs for everyone, generate a wealth of
information, entertainment, and education, connect everyone, and
overcome boundaries of gender, race, class -- claims that we hear
from Bill Gates, Clinton and Gore, Tony Blair, and others. But
we also need to counter technological dystopia, that computers
are our damnation, that they are vehicles of alienation, mere
tools of capital, the state, and domination.
Both approaches are one-sided and reveal the need for a dialectical
theory that plays off extremes against each other to generate
a more inclusive position, indicating how technology can be used
as instruments of domination and emancipation, as tools of both
dominant societal powers and of individuals struggling for democratization
and empowerment. A critical theory of technology requires a substantive
vision of what technology is, what it does and what it could do,
as well as a normative vision that delineates positive and negative
uses. This requires articulation of a standpoint of critique,
from which one can make distinctions between positive and negative
uses of technology.
The critical theory of the Frankfurt School, which I am drawing
upon in this article, criticizes existing institutions, social
relations, and phenomena from a normative standpoint through which
existing realities can be judged deficient and oppressive. I would
suggest that those forms and uses of technology that enhance positive
values such as democracy, community, freedom, self-development,
and the like should be deemed life-enhancing and meritorious,
while those forms and uses of technology which promote domination
and oppression while undermining democracy, community, freedom,
creativity, and other positive values should be criticized as
blameworthy. Of course, often one cannot make such a clear distinction,
there can be unintended consequences of introducing new technologies,
and technologies are often highly ambivalent, combining positive
and negative functions and effects.
Still, one needs a dialectical normative optic to develop a critical
theory of technology that spells out its positive and negative
-- or ambivalent -- aspects. This is not to reject radical critiques
of technology, or of specific technologies, out of hand, for often
the critiques are valid and important. It is a mistake, however,
to dismiss technology per se as merely a mode of domination and
oppression, though it may be so in many cases and threaten positive
values. Technologies, like the computer, for instance, were initially
used and developed by big government, corporations, and the military
as a centralized instrument of social control and power and were,
with much justice, criticized in the 1960s for contributing to
big institutional domination, the dehumanizing and disempowerment
of humans, and the proliferation of destructive and life-threatening
weapons systems. Yet in the 1980s and 1990s computers were recreated,
made "personal," and are significantly different in
their constitution and effects than their earlier incarnations.
A critical theory of technology thus creates a historical specific
and normative critique of technology. It not only attacks life-negating
and oppressive aspects of technology, but valorizes empowering,
democratizing, and positive forms and uses. Crucially, it attempts
to discover and invent ways that technology can serve the interests
of human emancipation and well-being, while aspiring to delineate
emancipatory functions and uses for technology -- which may require
the reconstruction of existing technology and the creation of
what Marcuse called a "new technology" that synthesized
art and technology (1964: 227f.; see the discussion in Kellner
1984 and development in Feenberg 1991 and 1995).
As for the standpoint of critique and the normative criteria
that differentiate emancipatory from oppressive constructions
and uses of technology, they themselves are historical, evolving,
and subject to change and development. Conceptions of democracy,
freedom, and human well-being are constantly shifting and so one's
normative standards are historical, subject to the vicissitudes
of history. The Frankfurt School, for instance, shifted in the
1930s and 1940s from socialist conceptions of critique, that would
evaluate phenomena from the standpoint of whether they promoted
or retarded the growth of socialism and/or promoted capitalism
and domination, to what they called "immanent critique,"
which took the norms of existing society as yardsticks to measure
and criticize failures to realize these norms. Thus, the Frankfurt
School in the 1930s assumed the validity of the norms of enlightenment,
democracy, human rights, individualism, freedom, and other positive
Enlightenment ideals to criticize the suppression of these norms
in existing fascist, communist, and capitalist societies. In Dialectic
of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno (1972) argued that
these values had turned into their opposite, that enlightenment,
rationality, culture, and other bourgeois ideals had shifted from
a form of emancipation and progress to one of oppression and domination,
as science, technology, industry, and instrumental rationality
created machinery of war, death camps, and nuclear annihilation,
as well as systems of social control and oppression. Henceforth,
they attempted to develop new strategies of critique and opposition
to the new forms of technological domination and power.
A critical theory of technology may also deploy strategies of
immanent critique, but may wish to develop stronger conceptions
of democracy, freedom, and the good society than notions currently
in play and should carry out critiques of ideological notions
of democracy, empowerment, and freedom being promoted by the avatars
of new computer and multimedia technologies. This, of course,
is an immense task and my present reflections can only contribute
to making a few observations on theorizing new technologies in
the context of threats to the welfare state and democracy in the
current global restructuring of capitalism and the ways that technology
is both central to this process and yet provides potentially progressive
uses and effects.
What is at stake, therefore, is theorizing at once how new technologies
can be used as instruments of domination and how new technologies
can be used for democratization, for creating a more egalitarian
society, and for empowering individuals and groups who are currently
disenfranchised and without power -- a task that I will undertake
in the following sections of this paper.
Technocapitalism and New Technologies
In place of current conceptions of postindustrial society, the
information society, or postmodernity, I would propose conceptualizing
the development and implementation of new technologies in terms
of a theory of technocapitalism. I believe that current conceptions
of the information society and emphasis on information technology
as its demiurge are by now too limited; the new technologies are
modes of information and entertainment, and it is becoming
harder and harder to separate them. Moreover, they are part and
parcel of a global restructuring of capitalism and cannot be adequately
theorized without taking this into account.
Indeed, I would argue, first, that the new technologies are much more than solely information technology, but are also technologies of entertainment, communication, and play, encompassing and restructuring both labor and leisure. Previous forms of entertainment are rapidly being absorbed within the Internet, and the computer is coming to be a major household appliance and source of entertainment, information, play, communication, and connection with the outside world. As clues to the enormity of the transformation going on, as indicators of the syntheses of information and entertainment in the infotainment society, I would suggest reflections on the massive mergers of the major information and entertainment conglomerates that have taken place in the United States during the past two years which have seen the most extensive concentration and conglomeration of information and entertainment industries in history, including:
CBS and Westinghouse: $5.5 billion
MCA and Seagrams: $5.6 billion
Time Warner and Turner: $ 7.5 billion --
Disney/Capital Cities/ ABC $19 billion
NBC and Microsoft/ megabillions
These mergers bring together corporations involved in TV, film,
magazines, newspapers, books, information data bases, computers,
and other media, suggesting a coming implosion of media and computer
culture, of entertainment and information in a new infotainment
society. There have also been massive mergers in the telecommunications
industry (in the U.S. between Southwest Bell and California Bell
and New York and Atlantic Bell, with a merger between AT&T
and major regional systems almost occurring, and with MCI negotiating
a $37 billion merger with WorldCom, which topped British Telecommunications
and GTE offers). The corporate media, communications, and information
industries are frantically scrambling to provide delivery for
the wealth of information, entertainment, and other services that
will include increased internet access, cellular telephones and
satellite personal communication devices, and video, film, and
information on demand, as well as Internet shopping and more unsavory
services like pornography and gambling.
Consequently, the mergers between the immense information, computer,
and entertainment conglomerates disclose a synergy between new
technologies and media, which combine entertainment and information,
undermining such a distinction. These mergers call for an expansion
of the concept of information revolution, or information society,
into concepts of the infotainment society in order to highlight
the imbrications of information and entertainment in the new media
and technologies of the present. Together, these corporate mergers
and the products and services that they are producing constitute
a new form of technocapitalism and new infotainment society that
it is our challenge to theorize and attempt to shape to more humane
and democratic purposes than the accumulation of capital and corporate/state
hegemony.
I thus want to argue that this synthesis of entertainment and
information in the technological and information revolution is
part of the creation of a new infotainment society that itself
is part and parcel of a global restructuring of capitalism. Few
theories of the information revolution and the new technologies
contextualize the structuring, implementation, marketing, and
use of new technologies in the context of the vicissitudes of
contemporary capitalism. The ideologues of the information society
act as if technology were an autonomous force and either neglect
to theorize the interconnections of capital and technology, or
use the advancements of technology to legitimate market capitalism
(i.e. Gates 1995). More critical theorists of the momentous changes
in the contemporary society often fail to theorize the ways that
the restructuring of capital are connected with technological
revolution. Offe (1985) and Lash and Urry (1987 and 1994), for
instance, see important changes in the economy, polity, culture,
and society, but see this as a disorganization of capitalism,
as its unravelling, rather than as reorganization.
While most of the prophets and promoters of the information society
tend to be technological determinists, many of the (neo)Marxists
who criticize its ideologies and practices tend to be economic
determinists. Both economic and technological determinisms, however,
often neglect the role of continuing conflict and struggle, the
possibilities of intervention and transformation, and the ability
of individuals and groups to remake society to serve their own
needs and purposes. In all determinist conceptions, technology
and society are conceived as matrixes of power and domination,
while humans are seen as passive objects of manipulation and empowering
uses of technology are not considered. With Lewis Mumford (1934),
however, we should insist that humans take command of their social
circumstances and technology, shape their social environment to
enhance their life, and use technology to empower themselves and
democratize society. Technics are instruments that can be actively
deployed by human beings. Although they are shaped by social forces
to serve specific ends, they can be reconfigured, reshaped, and
deployed against the purposes for which they are designed. This
is close to what autonomous Marxists call self-valorization, as
opposed to capital-valorization, using the technics of production
and communication against capitalist relations of production and
values (see Negri 1989).
But to avoid the romanticism of voluntarism and humanism, we
need to be clear concerning the precise economic, social, political,
cultural, and technological forces that are currently restructuring
every aspect of life and develop strategies based on this knowledge.
I introduced the term "technocapitalism" to describe
the synthesis of capital and technology in the current organization
of society (Kellner 1989a). Unlike theories of postmodernity (i.e.
Baudrillard 1993) which often argue that technology is the
new organizing principle of society, and not the economic relations,
I propose the term technocapitalism to point to both the
increasingly important role of technology and continued primacy
of capitalist relations of production. I would argue that contemporary
societies continue to be organized around production and capital
accumulation, and that capitalist imperatives continue to dominate
production, distribution, and consumption, as well as other cultural,
social and political domains. Workers continue to be exploited
by capitalists and capital continues to be the hegemonic force
-- more so than ever after the collapse of communism.
The term technocapitalism points to a configuration of capitalist
society in which technical and scientific knowledge, automation,
computers, and high tech play a role in the process of production
analogous to the role of human labor power, mechanization of the
labor process, and machines in an earlier era of capitalism, while
producing as well new modes of societal organization and forms
of culture and everyday life. We are in a parallel situation,
I believe, to the Frankfurt school in the 1930s which was forced
to theorize the new configurations of economy, polity, society,
and culture brought about by the transition from market to state
monopoly capitalism which was producing new forms of social and
economic organization, technology, and culture with the rise of
giant corporations and cartels, a capitalist state to help organize
capitalism whether in a fascist or a state capitalist form, and
with culture industries and mass culture serving as new modes
of social control, new forms of socialization, and a new configuration
of culture and everyday life (Kellner 1989a). My thesis is that
today media culture and new technologies are vitally transforming
every aspect of social life in a process that is creating new
forms of society, sometimes described as postmodern society, the
information society, cybersociety, global postFordism, and various
other terms.
In terms of political economy, the new postindustrial form of
technocapitalism is characterized by a decline of the state and
increased power of the market, accompanied by the growing power
of globalized transnational corporations and governmental bodies
and the decline of the nation-state and its institutions. To paraphrase
Max Horkheimer, whoever wants to talk about capitalism, must talk
about globalization, and it is impossible to theorize globalization
without talking about the restructuring of capitalism (see Cvetkovitch
and Kellner 1996 and Kellner 1998a). Much of the literature of
globalization, however, follows the same discourses as on technology
that celebrate or denigrate it. Much of the critical literature
on globalization follows a capitalist logic model that sees the
logic of capital as producing new forms of economy, along with
new technologies and forms of domination, and thus theorizes globalization
as imposing a new form of domination. In the following section,
however, I want to discuss prospects of a globalization from below
that deploys new technologies to promote the values of democratization
and the interests of groups struggling against capitalist globalization
and domination.
Technopolitics
Critics of the Internet and claims for cyberdemocracy frequently
point to the military origins of the 'net and its central role
in the practices of dominant corporate and state powers. Yet it
is amazing that the Internet for large numbers is decommodified
and is becoming increasingly decentralized, becoming open to more
voices and groups. Thus, cyberdemocracy and the Internet should
be seen as a site of struggle, as a contested terrain, and progressives
should look to its possibilities for resistance and circulation
of struggle. Dominant corporate and state powers, as well as conservative
and rightist groups, have been making serious use of new technologies
to advance their agendas and if progressives want to become players
in the political battles of the future they must devise ways to
use new technologies to advance a progressive agenda and the interests
of the oppressed and forces of resistance and struggle.
There are by now copious examples of how the Internet and cyberdemocracy
have been used in progressive political struggles. A large number
of insurgent intellectuals are already making use of these new
technologies and public spheres in their political projects. The
peasants and guerilla armies struggling in Chiapas, Mexico from
the beginning used computer data bases, guerrilla radio, and other
forms of media to circulate their struggles and ideas. Every manifesto,
text, and bulletin produced by the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation who occupied land in the southern Mexican state of
Chiapas in 1994 was immediately circulated through the world via
computer networks. In January 1995, the Mexican government moved
against the movement and computer networks were used to inform
and mobilize individuals and groups throughout the world to support
the Zapatistas struggles against repressive Mexican government
action. There were many demonstrations in support of the rebels
throughout the world, prominent journalists, human rights observers,
and delegations travelled to Chiapas in solidarity and to report
on the uprising, and the Mexican and U.S. governments were bombarded
with messages arguing for negotiations rather than repression;
the Mexican government accordingly backed off their repression
of the insurgents and as of this writing in December 1997, they
have continued to negotiate with them.
Frantz Fanon (1967) described the central role of the radio in
the Algerian Revolution, and Lenin highlighted the importance
of film in promoting communist ideology after the revolution.
In addition, audiotapes were used to promote the revolution in
Iran and to promote alternative information by political movements
throughout the world (see Downing 1984). The Tianenaman Square
democracy movement in China and various groups struggling against
the remanents of Stalinism in the former communist bloc and Soviet
Union used computer bulletin boards and networks, as well as a
variety of forms of communications, to circulate their struggles.
Opponents involved in anti-NAFTA struggles made extensive use
of the new communication technology (see Brenner 1994 and Fredericks
1994). Such multinational networking and circulation of information
failed to stop NAFTA, but created alliances useful for the struggles
of the future. As Nick Witheford (forthcoming) notes: "The
anti-NAFTA coalitions, while mobilizing a depth of opposition
entirely unexpected by capital, failed in their immediate objectives.
But the transcontinental dialogues which emerged checked -- though
by no means eliminated -- the chauvinist element in North American
opposition to free trade. The movement created a powerful pedagogical
crucible for cross-sectoral and cross-border organizing. And it
opened pathways for future connections, including electronic ones,
which were later effectively mobilized by the Zapatista uprising
and in continuing initiatives against maquilladora exploitation."
Thus, using new technologies to link information and practice,
to circulate struggles, is neither extraneous to political battles
nor merely utopian. Even if material gains are not won, often
the information circulated or alliances formed can be of use.
For example, two British activists were sued by the fastfood chain
McDonald's for distributing leaflets denouncing the corporation's
low wages, advertising practices, involvement in deforestization,
harvesting of animals, and promotion of junk food and an unhealthy
diet. The activists counterattacked, organized a McLibel campaign,
assembled a McSpotlight website with a tremendous amount of information
criticizing the corporation, and assembled experts to testify
and confirm their criticisms. The five-year civil trial, ending
ambiguously in July 1997, created unprecedented bad publicity
for McDonald's and was circulated throughout the world via Internet
websites, mailing lists, and discussion groups. The McLibel group
claims that their website was accessed over twelve million times
and the Guardian (February 22, 1996) reported that the
site "claimed to be the most comprehensive source of information
on a multinational corporation ever assembled," and was indeed
one of the more successful anticorporate campaigns (visit http://www.envirolink.org/mcspotlight/home.html).
Many labor organizations are also beginning to make use of the
new technologies. Mike Cooley (1987) has written of how computer
systems can reskill rather than deskill workers, while Shosana
Zuboff (1988) has discussed the ways in which high-tech can be
used to "informate" workplaces rather than automate
them, expanding workers' knowledge and control over operations
rather than reducing and eliminating it. The Clean Clothes Campaign,
a movement started by Dutch women in 1990 in support of Filipino
garment workers has supported strikes throughout the world, exposing
exploitative working conditions (see their website at http://www.
cleanclothes.org/1/index.html). In 1997, activists involved in
Korean workers strikes and Merseyside dock strike in England used
websites to gain international solidarity (for the latter see
http://www.gn.apc.org/lbournet/docks/).
Most labor organizations, such as the North South Dignity of Labor group, note that computer networks are useful for coordinating and distributing information, but cannot replace print media that is accessible to more of its members, face-to-face meetings, and traditional forms of political struggle. Thus, the challenge is to articulate one's communications politics with actual political movements and struggles so that cyberstruggle is an arm of political battle rather than its replacement or substitute. The most efficacious Internet struggles have indeed intersected with real struggles ranging from campaigns to free political prisoners, to boycotts of corporate projects, to actual labor and even revolutionary struggles, as noted above.
Hence, to capital's globalization from above, cyberactivists
have been attempting to carry out globalization from below, developing
networks of solidarity and circulating struggle throughout the
globe. To the capitalist international of transnational corporate
globalization, a Fifth International of computer-mediated activism
is emerging, to use Waterman's phrase (1992), that is qualitatively
different from the party-based socialist and communist Internationals.
Such networking links labor, feminist, ecological, peace, and
other progressive groups providing the basis for a new politics
of alliance and solidarity to overcome the limitations of postmodern
identity politics (on the latter, see Best and Kellner 1991, 1997,
and forthcoming).
Moreover, a series of struggles around gender, sex, and race
are also mediated by new communications technologies. After the
1991 Clarence Thomas Hearings in the United States on his fitness
to be Supreme Court Justice, Thomas's assault on claims of sexual
harassment by Anita Hill and others, and the failure of the almost
all male U.S. Senate to disqualify the obviously unqualified Thomas,
prompted women to use computer and other technologies to attack
male privilege in the political system in the United States and
to rally women to support women candidates. The result in the
1992 election was the election of more women candidates than in
any previous election and a general rejection of conservative
rule.
Many feminists have now established websites, mailing lists,
and other forms of cybercommunication to circulate their struggles.
Younger women, sometimes deploying the concept of "riotgrrrls,"
have created electronically-mediated 'zines, web sites, and discussion
groups to promote their ideas and to discuss their problems and
struggles. African-American women, Latinas, and other groups of
women have been developing web sites and discussion lists to advance
their interests. And AIDS activists have used new technologies
to disseminate and discuss medical information and to activate
their constituencies for courses of political action and struggle
Likewise, African-American insurgent intellectuals have made
use of broadcast and computer technologies to promote their struggles.
John Fiske (1994) has described some African-American radio projects
in the "technostruggles" of the present age and the
central role of the media in recent struggles around race and
gender. African-American "knowledge warriors" are using
radio, computer networks, and other media to circulate their ideas
and counter-knowledge on a variety of issues, contesting the mainstream
and offering alternative views and politics. In addition, activists
in communities of color -- like Oakland, Harlem, and Los Angeles
-- are setting up community computer and media centers to teach
the skills necessary to survive the onslaught of the mediazation
of culture and computerization of society to people in their communities.
Obviously, rightwing and reactionary groups can and have used
the Internet to promote their political agendas as well. In a
short time, one can easily access an exotic witch's brew of ultraright
websites maintained by the Ku Klux Klan, myriad neo-Nazi groups
including Aryan Nation and various Patriot militia groups. Internet
discussion lists also promote these views and the ultraright is
extremely active on many computer forums, as well as their radio
programs and stations, public access television programs, fax
campaigns, video and even rock music production. These groups
are hardly harmless, having promoted terrorism of various sorts
ranging from church burnings to the bombings of public buildings.
Adopting quasi-Leninist discourse and tactics for ultraright causes,
these extremist groups have been successful in recruiting working
class members devastated by the developments of global capitalism
which have resulted in widespread unemployment for traditional
forms of industrial, agricultural, and unskilled labor.
The Internet is thus a contested terrain, used by Left, Right,
and Center to promote their own agendas and interests. The political
battles of the future may well be fought in the streets, factories,
parliaments, and other sites of past struggle, but political struggle
today is already mediated by media, computer, and information
technologies and will increasingly be so in the future. Those
interested in the politics and culture of the future should therefore
be clear on the important role of the new public spheres and intervene
accordingly.
New Technologies and the Vicissitudes of the Welfare State
Since the New Deal, welfare state liberalism has been the dominant ideology of state capitalist societies, the institutions of the welfare state have been their accepted structure and safety net, and its ideology the dominant legitimating discourse, the common sense, within which understanding, discussion, and debates unfold. The institutions of the welfare state and their legitimating ideology were successfully challenged, however, by Thatcherism and Reaganism in the 1980s producing a new common sense, a new hegemony.
But underneath these political shifts, the move from liberal
to conservative political ideology and hegemony was the global
restructuring of capitalism, the move from Fordism to Post-Fordism,
from an industrial society to a postindustrial one, from an economy
grounded in big manufacturing to one based on knowledge and information.
In order to globally restructure capitalism, capitalist corporations
and interests needed less government regulation, less taxation,
and less restrictions on how they could use and invest capital.
The result was a dismantling of those governmental institutions
and practices that protected individuals from predatory institutions
and forces in favor of a new high-tech neo-liberalism that promises
wealth and prosperity through the untrammeled development and
institutions of new technologies in the creation of an information
superhighway.
I would indeed go so far as to claim that the information superhighway
is the dominant ideology and the information society is
the dominant project of the contemporary technocapitalist society.
It is hyped to the maximum by the U.S. media because these corporations
are the major players in this project, because the same corporations
that own big media are merging with computer and information industries,
and thus the new technologies are both a source of profit and
of social power and prestige. Thus, while one could envisage competition
between the established media institutions and new institutions
of the information and computer society, their mergers have created
a situation where the media are cheerleaders and promoters of
the new technologies and the information superhighway.
My argument is that the libertarian individualism and "free
market" entrepreneurialism associated with the discourses
of the new technologies and information superhighway are part
of the ideological arsenal against the Welfare State which associates
Big Government with harmful regulation, excessive taxes, and wasteful
welfare spending. The prestige and power of the new computer culture
thus feeds into "free market" ideologies and mitigates
against statist and welfare discourses. The discourses of the
new technologies articulate with ideologies of individualism which
have long been functional for capitalism.
In addition, Bill Gates' notion of a "friction-free"
capitalism (1995) also covers over the messiness, conflictedness,
and suffering created from the reorganization of capitalism in
which there are necessarily winners and losers, and tremendous
pain from dislocation, downsizing, and economic downward mobility,
uncertainty and anxiety. In general, there can be no friction-free
capitalism as capitalism itself depends on competition, antagonisms,
and what Schumpeter called "creative destruction." It
is an ideological illusion and fantasy to believe that capitalism
could eliminate friction, conflict, and suffering, especially
through the market-mechanism alone which is predicated on self-interest
and a Darwinian logic of the survival of the fittest.
Yet from another register, the very discourse of crisis, especially
financial crisis, is also used to dismantle the welfare state.
Such a conservative strategy was visible in the Reagan-Bush era
and is being played out in the Clinton era. The mechanism was
the running up of a massive federal deficit, resulting from large
tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and individuals, increased
military spending, and the cutting of "inefficient"
and costly government. In practice, this meant huge federal deficits
and an actual increase in the state sector, though the excess
federal expenditures tended to go into military programs with
a corresponding cut in social programs.
While the liberal democratic ideology of the Clinton Administration did not mandate or celebrate cutting social programs and the welfare state, a certain economic logic of fiscal crisis was used to legitimate and even demand such cuts. But the "crisis" was not only a product of conservative economic policies, but the restructuring of capitalism itself with its proliferation of new technologies and subsequent corporate downsizing, reorganization, and restructuring.
As for the future of the welfare state, Saskia Sassen reports
that at high-level capitalist enclaves such as the 1997 meeting
at Davos, major representatives of the capitalist system fear
that capitalism is getting too mean and predatory, that it needs
a kinder and gentler state to ensure order and harmony, and that
the welfare state may make a come-back. Since such discourse reminds
one of George Bush's 1989 Inaugural speech and its discourse of
a "1000 points of light" and "friendlier and gentler
nation," followed by his invasion of Panama and orchestration
of the Gulf war, one should be suspicious and take such bromides
with a grain of salt. In fact, the Clinton administration has
followed the Reagan and Bush administrations in dismantling the
Welfare State and I see no place in the emerging structure and
ideology of technocapitalism for a reinvigorated Welfare State.
In fact, I see two models of capitalism currently competing:
a Microsoftcapitalism advocated by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Newt
Gingrich, and of course Bill Gates and the proponents of the information
superhighway. They all claim that the information superhighway
is going to bring more jobs, wealth, and prosperity to the nation,
as well as better education, more information and entertainment,
and greater democratization. But their discourses are by and large
libertarian and free-market liberalism, celebrating the market
and individual and not the government. To be sure, Clinton and
Gore talk about reinventing government, but so far their reinvention
has been limited to increasing deregulation and dismantling the
Welfare State.
The optimism and cheerfulness of the Microsoftcapitalism discourse of the information superhighway is countered by a hard military capitalism that sees a coming clash of civilizations (Huntington 1996), intensified strife with China (Bernstein and Munro 1996), and new dangers and conflicts such as cyberwar, narcoterrorism, and new exotic forms of warfare. Such discourses continue the ideology of the Warfare State in the post-Cold War era and promote increased military spending, alertness, and readiness for intervention. Such discourses have no room for the Welfare State and argue that it is impossible to have more guns and more butter and are perfectly willing to sacrifice the Welfare State to build-up the Warfare State to yet new heights of power and destructiveness.
Some Concluding Remarks
In the light of the projects of technocapitalism to dismantle
the Welfare State, it is up to citizens to create new public spheres,
new politics, and to use the new technologies to discuss what
kinds of society we want and to oppose the society we don't want,
to demand more education, health care, welfare, and benefits from
the state, and to struggle to create a more democratic and egalitarian
society. But one cannot expect that generous corporations and
a beneficent state are going to make available to citizens the
bounties and benefits of the new information economy. Rather,
it is up to individuals and groups to promote democratization
and progressive social change.
Thus, to globalization from above of corporate capitalism, one
could support a globalization from below, from individuals and
groups in struggle using the new technologies to create a more
egalitarian and democratic society. Individuals and groups all
over the world are using the new technologies to advance progressive
goals and the new public spheres of cyberspace are more open to
cultural and intellectual intervention than the media spaces controlled
by the giant corporations. Social struggles ranging from native
peoples in the Mexican state of Chiapis, to dockworkers in London,
to anti-corporate campaigns worldwide against McDonald's and Nike,
have used the new technologies against the dominant corporate
powers. Moreover, groups like African-Americans, Latinos, gays
and lesbians, and others excluded from the democratic dialogue
are using new technologies to promote democratization and advance
their interests (see Kellner 1995 and forthcoming).
Of course, the new technologies might exacerbate existing inequalities
in the current class, gender, race, and regional configurations
of power and give the major corporate forces powerful new tools
to advance their interests. In this situation, it is up to the
people, to us, to devise strategies to use the new technologies
to promote democratization and progressive social change. For
as the new technologies become ever more central to every domain
of everyday life, developing a progressive technopolitics in the
new public spheres will become more and more important.
Changes are certainly happening, we are undergoing a Great
Transformation, but we are, I believe, too early in the beginnings
of this adventure to determine its structure, social relations,
cultural forms, and effects. It is clear, however, that a technological
revolution is going on, that it will have massive effects, and
that it is a great challenge to us concerning how we will theorize
and actually use the new technologies -- or whether they and the
forces that control them will themselves use us in their projects.
Thus, it is not only a challenge to social theorists to theorize
the new technologies and their effects, and to activists to devise
strategies for using the technology to promote progressive political
change, but it is a challenge to each individual to determine
how they will live the new technologies and cyberspaces, how they
will themselves deploy them, and whether they will ultimately
be empowering or disempowering, and democratizing or dedemocratizing.
For as long as human beings have vision, goals, and autonomy,
they can design, shape, and restructure their technologies, as
well as being shaped and constrained by them.
Notes