Pandemic Technology

 “Global Civil War – Capitalism Post-Pandemic” by William I. Robinson, 2022

Robinson’s thesis is that the CoVid pandemic super-charged capital’s world-wide movement into a Fourth Industrial era of technology – that of advanced digitalization of nearly everything – labor, profits, military issues, surveillance and commodification.  This is thru AI, robots, cloud data computing, 5G, the Internet of Things, blockchain and ‘immaterial’ commodities. The results are increasing inequality, financialization and exploitation of the earth’s resources.  Like Peter Phillips, he thinks the transnational capitalist class (TCC) is leading this effort.

The Pandemic

What are the details?  Robinson first discusses the vast increase in inequality across the world.  The pandemic ran up the number of millionaires and billionaires as they took advantage of the crisis, with an 88% increase in wealth for the top group.  This though $9 trillion was lost in the general world economy as it went into a deep recession in 2020. Trillions were doled out by national banks to keep corporations afloat.  The pandemic is one of the key recent ‘restructurings’ of capital according to him – in the 1930s under Roosevelt, in the 1970s with the advent of neo-liberalism, in the 2007-2008 crash that ushered in austerity and damaged neo-liberalism and now the 2020 pandemic, which is prompting a digital restructuring of capital globally.  

The pandemic allowed capital to move work to the internet for many white collar jobs.   It increased robotization.  It led to new algorithms, making work more productive and resulting in fewer employees. It elevated the role of TCC corporations, which were further able to escape national economies.  The pandemic led to an over-accumulation of capital but without a productive or profitable outlet.  This situation results in speculation, internal drives for privatization and national and military conflicts to stave off stagnation. Equity firms buying houses fits into this strategy for instance.  Robinson also applies Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.  When capital invests in machines instead of labor, moving from variable capital to fixed capital, this pushes down profit rates. As all profits come from labor and nature, the capitalists ‘naturally’ begin to squeeze global labor more and increase exploitation of the last bits of the earth.

Accompanying the rise in inequality was a jump in digital surveillance and police action, spurred by technical fixes to deal with the plague.  China was a leader in this method, but other countries followed suit and he details examples of each.  Populations were subject to a high level of national control around movement, killing the tourist industry, stranding citizens and grounding planes.  While flirting with the ‘lab leak’ theory, Robinson understands the majority of new diseases are ‘zoonotic’ – coming from human invasions of formerly pristine animal environments - so the Wuhan ‘wet market’ is the very likely culprit.  Regarding China, even in 2020, U.S. investors owned $1.1 trillion equity in Chinese entities.  In 2023 it went to $1.26 trillion.  Both economies are entwined in spite of the conflict.     

Technology Expansion

In 2019 about half the planet was on-line, with 5.2 billion smartphones in operation.  Now it is 7.2 billion in 2024.  The misnamed ‘sharing economy’ and 3D printers saw huge increases in 2019.  In 2019, digital services made $1.9 trillion, half of all services world-wide.  In 2022 global IP traffic hit around 15,700 GB per second.  All of these have increased since he wrote the book.  This is why ‘intellectual property’ has become so valuable, a tech understanding essential to almost any job and why ‘intangible assets’ for corporations outweigh ‘tangible’ ones.  Paper currency is more and more going out the window to boot, though according to Robinson world capital had $14.4 trillion in digital cash in 2020, showing its inability to find investment opportunities. 

The pandemic, according to Bank of America, most profited tech services, new media and entertainment, e-commerce, data centers, biopharma and bio-tech, on-line medical diagnostics, industrial and military automation, software, semi-conductors, cloud services, renewable utilities and food and household staples. Robinson contends that this grouping is part of the new ‘bloc of capital.’  He contends this reflects capital reaching a limit to global ‘extensive expansion’ and turning to internal ‘intensive expansion.’  The goal is ‘laborless production’ and even ‘zero marginal costs.’  For instance automation has reduced agricultural employment picking things like fruit and nuts in California by 11%. He contends, as have others, that automation is coming for every sector of jobs, even middle-class professionals.  

On-line work weakens the class

Isolation is the social product engineered by working at home or in scattered, small offices and shops.  It reflects the reduction in size of huge auto factories like River Rouge, mini-steel mills and the export of production to China and Mexico.  This is being partly counteracted by the growth in huge logistics warehouses like Amazon, but even in these locations workers are monitored and fewer due to robots. 'Essential workers' were the blue-collar exception but, as in the slaughterhouses, they got sick and died in higher numbers.  Isolation and automation breaks up the social ties and links among workers, especially the digital proletariat. The huge growth in ‘independent contractors,’ ‘gig’ jobs and temp labor emphasizes this point.  This all helps capital.

The Answer?

Robinson has 3 outcomes to this last phase of capitalist restructuring.  Either a class revolution, a rise of fascist dictatorships or an environmental and barbarous collapse of world civilization.  These are all extreme poles, but they reference present tendencies.  Robinson runs through a familiar, anodyne list of large Left protests before and during the pandemic in 2019-2020 – among them huge strikes in India, the French Yellow Vests, Chinese labor disruptions and protests against police brutality across the world after the murder of George Floyd  The quantity of conflicts went way up worldwide.  Robinson notes that revolutionary organization, a socialist goal and theory are missing, so the ‘quality’ is not yet there.  International coordination is another, as ‘socialism in one country’ wasn’t possible in the last century, nor in this one.  Another is that being ‘anti-state’ or trying to reform the state ignores the state’s absolute connection with the economy.  As if the police are a stand-alone entity!  In this context he writes against the ideologies of post-modernism and identitarianism as being absorbed and promoted by a wing of capital. 

One cheery rebellion Robinson highlights is the 2019 Sudanese political revolution which ousted a corrupt dictator from Khartoum.  Unfortunately his book was written before the brutal reversal of that revolution and descent into a bloody and long-lasting civil war.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the genocidal bombing of Gaza are also missing.  His main point is that neo-liberalism no longer suffices as a capitalist answer to the world’s problems.  This is the conundrum the U.S. Democratic Party faces but will ignore. 

Which leads us to his second option – fascism. Protests did not just originate from the Left but from the Right and Libertarianism – although some reformist ‘leftists’ still can’t understand this. The growth in elected authoritarians like Trump, Orban, Netanyahu, Putin, Erdogan and Modi reflect this. It’s the ‘democratic dictatorship of the oligarchs and petit-bourgeoisie’ to my mind.  On their shirttails are ultra-right to fascist militias, organizations, religious sects and internet podcasters - some even pretending to be ‘anti-war’ or ‘anti-imperialist.’    

Fascism is a particular response to capitalist crisis according to Robinson, trying to appeal to a plebian base, but violently supporting capitalist accumulation by blaming everyone but the monied ruling class.  This method is no secret.  The U.K.s Brexit was a good example.  It showed the reactionary rot of nationalism, which is a compliment to irrationalism, fundie religions, racism and ethno-politics in the backasswards arsenal of the Right.  Robinson understands that the TCC appreciates pro-business efforts, but not outright fascist or authoritarian tacks so far.  They would rather have improved and widespread policing instead of Brownshirts and illegal violence.    

Robinson's main influence is Gramsci, though Gramsci didn't dwell on this economics.  Robinson understands that the 'spatial' displacement of crises is no longer as possible. A guide of cyclical, structural and systemic crisis is Robinson's template to understanding breakdowns and restructuring under capital.  Cyclical crises occur on a regular basis, like recessions and depressions.  Structural ones demand a fundamental change in accumulation and technology, which is what is happening now with the 4th industrial revolution.  The third, a systemic crisis, spells doom for capital itself … something no one can predict but one can prepare for.  Take your pick.

Prior blogspot reviews, use search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “The Global Police State” (Robinson); “Giants – the Global Power Elite” and “Titans of Capital” (both by Phillips); “The Long Depression” and “Capitalism in the 21^st Century” (both by Roberts); “Zombie Capitalism,” “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles” and “The Enigma of Capital”  (both by Harvey); “Dead Epidemiologists” (Wallace); “Pandemic – CoVid Shakes the World” (Zizek); “Who Get’s Bailed Out?” “Going Viral” or the word “technology.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / November 20, 2024