Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1233
C. Fuchs
This piece is the introduction to the special issue “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism” that the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique published on the occasion of Friedrich Engels’s 200th birthday on 28 November 2020. The introduction introduces Engels’s life and works and gives an overview of the special issue’s contributions.
{"title":"Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism. (Full Issue in One PDF)","authors":"C. Fuchs","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1233","url":null,"abstract":"This piece is the introduction to the special issue “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism” that the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique published on the occasion of Friedrich Engels’s 200th birthday on 28 November 2020. The introduction introduces Engels’s life and works and gives an overview of the special issue’s contributions.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"144 1","pages":"1-194"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76793271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1223
Christopher Leslie
The idealism that Fredrich Engels seeks to defeat in Dialectics of Nature today pervades online discourse and pedagogies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The deterministic view that STEM is dedicated to unleashing the inherent power in objects for the service of privileged societies fails to understand the basic principles that Engels proposed. Engels exposes his contemporaries’ flawed understanding of science and technology and provides interdisciplinary examples that exemplify a different way of thinking. Outside of China, Engels’s ideas have been used suggest that social considerations cannot be a part of science because they limit the free exchange of ideas. Within China, particularly after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, these ideas have been the basis of new thinking about the relationships among developers, the government, and the people. Moreover, readers of Dialectics of Nature who are familiar with the basic tenets of Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as social constructivism and actor-network theory, will not be so impressed with the idea that social theory has no place in understanding science and engineering. This analysis suggests avenues of cooperation for international science studies. In addition, it provides a starting point for pedagogies to promote the development for science and technology that reduces inequality and supports the notion that the liberal arts have an important place in the study of science and engineering, an insight known as STEAM.
{"title":"Revisiting Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in an Age of Digital Idealism","authors":"Christopher Leslie","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1223","url":null,"abstract":"The idealism that Fredrich Engels seeks to defeat in Dialectics of Nature today pervades online discourse and pedagogies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The deterministic view that STEM is dedicated to unleashing the inherent power in objects for the service of privileged societies fails to understand the basic principles that Engels proposed. Engels exposes his contemporaries’ flawed understanding of science and technology and provides interdisciplinary examples that exemplify a different way of thinking. Outside of China, Engels’s ideas have been used suggest that social considerations cannot be a part of science because they limit the free exchange of ideas. Within China, particularly after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, these ideas have been the basis of new thinking about the relationships among developers, the government, and the people. Moreover, readers of Dialectics of Nature who are familiar with the basic tenets of Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as social constructivism and actor-network theory, will not be so impressed with the idea that social theory has no place in understanding science and engineering. This analysis suggests avenues of cooperation for international science studies. In addition, it provides a starting point for pedagogies to promote the development for science and technology that reduces inequality and supports the notion that the liberal arts have an important place in the study of science and engineering, an insight known as STEAM.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"28 8 1","pages":"78-96"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83427377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1229
C. Fuchs
This piece is the introduction to the special issue “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism” that the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique published on the occasion of Friedrich Engels’s 200th birthday on 28 November 2020. The introduction introduces Engels’s life and works and gives an overview of the special issue’s contributions.
{"title":"Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Introduction.","authors":"C. Fuchs","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1229","url":null,"abstract":"This piece is the introduction to the special issue “Engels@200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism” that the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique published on the occasion of Friedrich Engels’s 200th birthday on 28 November 2020. \u0000 \u0000The introduction introduces Engels’s life and works and gives an overview of the special issue’s contributions.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"31 1","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80349294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1213
Dimitrios Kivotidis
This paper is a contribution to the argument that Engels’s work remains topical and may provide us with the analytical tools necessary to approach contemporary manifestations of capitalist contradictions. Based on Engels’s work on political economy (with emphasis on his contribution to the labour theory of value and the articulation of the law on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) it will critically review the concept of “surveillance capitalism” as developed by Shoshana Zuboff, in order to explain central aspects of the process of digital surveillance. In particular, it will criticise the view expressed by Zuboff that surveillance capitalism constitutes a break with capitalism’s past and can be tamed through an enhancement of democratic accountability and regulation. Marxist contributions to the critique of digital surveillance have already approached this phenomenon in a many-sided manner. This paper builds upon these contributions and suggests that the exponential growth of digital platforms can be explained as a direct result of the development of capitalist contradictions, especially the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production as expressed in the law of the falling rate of profit.
{"title":"Break or Continuity? Friedrich Engels and the Critique of Digital Surveillance","authors":"Dimitrios Kivotidis","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1213","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a contribution to the argument that Engels’s work remains topical and may provide us with the analytical tools necessary to approach contemporary manifestations of capitalist contradictions. Based on Engels’s work on political economy (with emphasis on his contribution to the labour theory of value and the articulation of the law on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) it will critically review the concept of “surveillance capitalism” as developed by Shoshana Zuboff, in order to explain central aspects of the process of digital surveillance. In particular, it will criticise the view expressed by Zuboff that surveillance capitalism constitutes a break with capitalism’s past and can be tamed through an enhancement of democratic accountability and regulation. Marxist contributions to the critique of digital surveillance have already approached this phenomenon in a many-sided manner. This paper builds upon these contributions and suggests that the exponential growth of digital platforms can be explained as a direct result of the development of capitalist contradictions, especially the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production as expressed in the law of the falling rate of profit.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"44 1","pages":"97-112"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75843534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1217
S. Azhar
This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing on the theoretical paradigm proposed by Engels in his pioneering contribution, The Conditions of the Working Class in England (CWC). Using a host of empirical sources – surveys, oral narrations, medical and legal journals, and journalistic accounts – the paper develops a political-economic understanding of the working conditions of contemporary crowdworkers while paying close attention to the national and gendered disparities within them. Following Engels’s dialectical mode of presentation in the CWC, the paper proposes a framework that contextualizes the lived experiences of crowdworkers in relation to: 1) the technological infrastructure of platforms, 2) emerging contractual and managerial modes of exploitation, 3) the gendered and racial articulation of labour extraction via Engels’s notion of inter-worker competition, and 4) the macro dynamics of “surplus population” that push workers into precarious employment. The paper argues that the four qualitative attributes of capitalist labour identified in the CWC have experienced quantitative transformation under digital capitalism and at the core remain fundamental to a theoretical appreciation of the impact of digital capital on the lived experiences of the global digital working-class.
{"title":"The Conditions of the Global Digital Working Class: The Continuing Relevance of Friedrich Engels to Theorising Platform Labour","authors":"S. Azhar","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1217","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing on the theoretical paradigm proposed by Engels in his pioneering contribution, The Conditions of the Working Class in England (CWC). Using a host of empirical sources – surveys, oral narrations, medical and legal journals, and journalistic accounts – the paper develops a political-economic understanding of the working conditions of contemporary crowdworkers while paying close attention to the national and gendered disparities within them. Following Engels’s dialectical mode of presentation in the CWC, the paper proposes a framework that contextualizes the lived experiences of crowdworkers in relation to: 1) the technological infrastructure of platforms, 2) emerging contractual and managerial modes of exploitation, 3) the gendered and racial articulation of labour extraction via Engels’s notion of inter-worker competition, and 4) the macro dynamics of “surplus population” that push workers into precarious employment. The paper argues that the four qualitative attributes of capitalist labour identified in the CWC have experienced quantitative transformation under digital capitalism and at the core remain fundamental to a theoretical appreciation of the impact of digital capital on the lived experiences of the global digital working-class.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"75 1","pages":"154-170"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74165660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1218
A. Baki̇oğlu
One hundred and seventy-five years ago, in his book titled The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels wrote about the ways in which the mine workers were exploited within the capitalist system. Classical economists believed that with the improvements in technology, capitalism would create egalitarian employment opportunities for everyone. In their opinion, the coal which served as a catalyser for the classical modernization had no place in the age of digital technology. However nowadays, especially in various developing countries such as Turkey, in the production of coal mines, the existing working conditions are the same as the ones that were applicable one hundred and seventy years ago and the exploitation of the labour of the workers continues. Notwithstanding, digital technologies serve for the control of capitalist production instead of the wellbeing of the workers. Coal has always had an important role in the historical continuity and discontinuity periods of capitalism. Considering the unbreakable link between the exploitation of nature and capitalist accumulation of capital, giving up coal and switching to renewable energy sources does not seem possible. The dialectical link between technology consumption and technology production is also one of the most important reasons for coal production to continue. This article argues that in Turkey today, the technology used in coal mine craft prioritises the control of labour rather than prioritizing the working comfort of the mine workers.
{"title":"Digital Capitalism and Coal Mine Workers","authors":"A. Baki̇oğlu","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1218","url":null,"abstract":"One hundred and seventy-five years ago, in his book titled The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels wrote about the ways in which the mine workers were exploited within the capitalist system. Classical economists believed that with the improvements in technology, capitalism would create egalitarian employment opportunities for everyone. In their opinion, the coal which served as a catalyser for the classical modernization had no place in the age of digital technology. However nowadays, especially in various developing countries such as Turkey, in the production of coal mines, the existing working conditions are the same as the ones that were applicable one hundred and seventy years ago and the exploitation of the labour of the workers continues. Notwithstanding, digital technologies serve for the control of capitalist production instead of the wellbeing of the workers. Coal has always had an important role in the historical continuity and discontinuity periods of capitalism. Considering the unbreakable link between the exploitation of nature and capitalist accumulation of capital, giving up coal and switching to renewable energy sources does not seem possible. The dialectical link between technology consumption and technology production is also one of the most important reasons for coal production to continue. This article argues that in Turkey today, the technology used in coal mine craft prioritises the control of labour rather than prioritizing the working comfort of the mine workers.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"30 1","pages":"68-77"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82802525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1182
G. Charalambous
The aim of this article is to identify and discuss a number of labels that have been increasingly used to describe, categorise and study the contemporary radical left – the movements and parties of the socialist tradition and its contemporary derivatives – pointing to the deeply political implications of these trends. More specifically, ‘extremism’, ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’ as signifiers of what left radicalism looks like are scrutinised in terms of both the political logic and the historical background behind their use, and the challenges they raise for emancipatory, progressive politics. A plea for recasting contemporary social and political struggles for equality and rights is subsequently articulated, the central conviction advanced being terminological: the left’s struggles today must rise above the verbal smoke of the predominant discourse about this political space. It is a key task to appropriately qualify those terms that taint contemporary radicals with colours which do not represent them or fall far short from defining them. Put simply, if the radical left is to succeed electorally and channel its vision into society effectively it needs to reclaim its chief identity trait in the public sphere: left radicalism itself. Reclaiming radicalism entails a number of strategic tasks. These are laid out in terms of imperative discursive articulations, which are, however, paralleled by particular political actions on the ground that can either confirm or undermine any terminological claims.
{"title":"Reclaiming Radicalism: Discursive Wars and the Left","authors":"G. Charalambous","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1182","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to identify and discuss a number of labels that have been increasingly used to describe, categorise and study the contemporary radical left – the movements and parties of the socialist tradition and its contemporary derivatives – pointing to the deeply political implications of these trends. More specifically, ‘extremism’, ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’ as signifiers of what left radicalism looks like are scrutinised in terms of both the political logic and the historical background behind their use, and the challenges they raise for emancipatory, progressive politics. A plea for recasting contemporary social and political struggles for equality and rights is subsequently articulated, the central conviction advanced being terminological: the left’s struggles today must rise above the verbal smoke of the predominant discourse about this political space. It is a key task to appropriately qualify those terms that taint contemporary radicals with colours which do not represent them or fall far short from defining them. Put simply, if the radical left is to succeed electorally and channel its vision into society effectively it needs to reclaim its chief identity trait in the public sphere: left radicalism itself. Reclaiming radicalism entails a number of strategic tasks. These are laid out in terms of imperative discursive articulations, which are, however, paralleled by particular political actions on the ground that can either confirm or undermine any terminological claims.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"70 1","pages":"212-230"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90766375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-27DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1221
K. Fuchs-Kittowski
The contradictory character of matter is the starting point of Friedrich Engels’s dialectical principles. Matter can move itself, thus producing ever new possibilities of development and gradually leading to the formation of qualitatively higher forms of movement of matter. In this dialectical conception of development, the explanation of qualitative change is fundamental. Starting from the understanding that the inner contradiction is the source of development and its potential, the transition to a new quality is verifiable. Probabilistic laws are the expression of the unity of necessity and chance in the real possibility. Limiting conditions, like specific structures, informational coupling and whole-part relationships and selection processes, restrict the field of possibilities opened by physical laws. This restriction of possibilities on the lower level opens up new possibilities of development on the higher level, where the transition to a new quality is realised. Materialist and dialectical thinking is the important basis of a theory of biology that is neither physicalist nor vitalist, of a theory of computer science that is neither physicalist nor dualist. Mechanistic thinking – reductionism, the denial of the specific qualities of the different forms of movement of matter – leads to philosophies that reduce the human being to an animal or computer and is both dangerous and inhuman. Computer science needs to engage with the history and application of materialistic and dialectical thinking. It needs to grasp the dialectical unity of similarity and difference between automaton and human in the concrete process of digitalisation and automation. It must overcome the widespread, increasing interest in reducing the human being to an automaton, in order to maintain the unique quality of the human being. It must protect and enhance the special qualities and abilities of human beings. The danger of anti-dialectical thinking, of modern forms of reductionism and the possibility, indeed necessity, of creating a better society, free from profit, greed and war is discussed in this paper in the context of Engels’s 200th birthday.
{"title":"On the Categories of Possibility, Limiting Conditions and the Qualitative Development Stages of Matter in the Thought of Friedrich Engels","authors":"K. Fuchs-Kittowski","doi":"10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1221","url":null,"abstract":"The contradictory character of matter is the starting point of Friedrich Engels’s dialectical principles. Matter can move itself, thus producing ever new possibilities of development and gradually leading to the formation of qualitatively higher forms of movement of matter. In this dialectical conception of development, the explanation of qualitative change is fundamental. Starting from the understanding that the inner contradiction is the source of development and its potential, the transition to a new quality is verifiable. Probabilistic laws are the expression of the unity of necessity and chance in the real possibility. Limiting conditions, like specific structures, informational coupling and whole-part relationships and selection processes, restrict the field of possibilities opened by physical laws. This restriction of possibilities on the lower level opens up new possibilities of development on the higher level, where the transition to a new quality is realised. Materialist and dialectical thinking is the important basis of a theory of biology that is neither physicalist nor vitalist, of a theory of computer science that is neither physicalist nor dualist. Mechanistic thinking – reductionism, the denial of the specific qualities of the different forms of movement of matter – leads to philosophies that reduce the human being to an animal or computer and is both dangerous and inhuman. Computer science needs to engage with the history and application of materialistic and dialectical thinking. It needs to grasp the dialectical unity of similarity and difference between automaton and human in the concrete process of digitalisation and automation. It must overcome the widespread, increasing interest in reducing the human being to an automaton, in order to maintain the unique quality of the human being. It must protect and enhance the special qualities and abilities of human beings. The danger of anti-dialectical thinking, of modern forms of reductionism and the possibility, indeed necessity, of creating a better society, free from profit, greed and war is discussed in this paper in the context of Engels’s 200th birthday.","PeriodicalId":45788,"journal":{"name":"TRIPLEC-Communication Capitalism & Critique","volume":"36 1","pages":"125-139"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87016397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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