Interop, comcom and Big Tech

 “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation” by Cory Doctorow, 2023

Doctorow made a stunning appearance on Democracy Now! on Feb 26, 2025, attacking Musk and Oligarchic Tech in new theoretical flavors and he didn’t repeat the same rhetoric we hear all the time. By the title you might think he’s some kind of libertarian communist, but Wikipedia says he’s a member of DSA.  This book is about how to begin to partly socialize Big Tech – from Amazon to X – using technical and political tools.  In the end he’s really a proponent of small business entrepreneurship, as he thinks a breakup of the big monopolies is impossible.  He’s not anti-capitalist, as he does not call for social ownership and control of these oligopolies.  He thinks anti-trust law has been fatally bowdlerized, as every business segment in the U.S. is now dominated by a small oligarchy of companies. 

Capital automatically develops private monopolies and oligopolies, and that has been proved by its history.  Until the system is fundamentally ‘rewired’ they are inevitable.  The actually of these massive companies heralds them as part of a socialist transformation of society, something Doctorow ignores. 

This wonky book is for people who have some familiarity with computerization and its history, or want to learn about it.  Doctorow is a leader of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Creative Commons, but he writes as a journalist and public intellectual, not an academic.  The key buzz word here is ‘interoperability’ – which he simplifies to ‘interop,’ or ‘competitive compatibility’ and ‘comcom’ for short.  What this means is the monopoly/oligopoly control of Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta/FB and Microsoft can be weakened using law and tech to seamlessly open their ‘walled gardens’ to other vendors. According to Doctorow Apple is the best at maintaining their walled garden, especially their app store and enforcement of repair ‘rights.’  This applies to similar businesses too, from VIN-locking auto companies to the 'smart' home.  

This book is mostly concerned with laws, standards, mandates and contracts to my mind. Big firms use lawyers, bought bourgeois politicians and captured regulators in place of competition. This involves patents, trademarks and secrets, copyrights, non-competes, tortious interference claims, non-disclosure, terms-of-service and other intellectual property (IP) rights.  It mentions many of the legal cases that involve IP – Betamax/Sony re VCRs, Internet Explorer re search engines, Napster re audio downloads, Apple v Microsoft Office, DOJ v. IBM (IBM won) and the endless AT&T breakup. The phrase ‘consumer welfare’ became the legal logic behind monopoly’s alleged benefits, due to its ability to simplify and cut costs for consumers.   

Doctorow uses the image of a big tech firm as a ‘feudal’ castle that will protect its peasants from marauders and thieves, but will not protect the peasants from the castle’s feudal lord once they are inside the walls.  This relates to the problem of escaping a tech like Facebook.  These “switching costs” are high unless you can continue to communicate with those left on Facebook.  Doctorow says this is the role of interoperable tech, which would allow you to do just that.  Just like leaving an actual castle, unless the castle wall is opened to let in legitimate princes and outsiders. 

Other examples are software ‘repair’ blocks on cars, equipment, tractors, phones and more, which force users to go back to the seller of the product, the ‘dealer’ so to speak, to get anything fixed. The big firms oppose the ‘interoperability’ of others fixing their stuff.  No one wants repair blocks, but legal struggles in courts have yet to break down these locks. The U.S. passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protects these locks in 1998, Clinton time, so the government backed up the oligarchs. These kind of laws have spread to other countries, with the exception of the EU.  On another front, Doctorow exposes the practice of ‘notice and takedown’ regarding alleged on-line IP infringement and ‘fair use’ as rife with censorship, extortion and other problems.  

Interop?

The EU passed a Digital Markets Act to allow interoperable technologies, Application Program Interfaces (API), reverse engineering and the like to achieve tech universality.  But Doctorow says that firms ‘cheat’ and use a barrage of highly-paid lawyers and a ‘thicket’ of other laws to push back. It is part of their business plan.  For instance a ‘Right to Repair’ law was passed in Massachusetts in 2012, but is still held up in court.  Even U.S. army procurement is subject to huge replacement-part costs due to being locked into single suppliers.  Doctorow says “We have tried to make Big Tech better for decades.  That project has been an abject failure.”  This is why he claims he is pushing for the reforms of technical and legal comcom as solutions. It seems to me this might take decades too. 

Doctorow supports ‘technological self-determination,’ where a ‘federation’ of services connect and work together to provide a seamless internet – the early dream of the tech idealists and optimists.  This all seems to be possible only through the abolition of private corporate property in the dominant sectors of the economy, in this case tech.  This would break their economic, legal and political power.

Doctorow has a short section on Apple providing back-doors to Chinese (he does not mention the U.S.) surveillance of communications, VPNs and encryption.  He also briefly discusses all the problems on the internet – surveillance, fraudsters, identity theft, trolls, harassers, sexual abusers, privacy, algorithms and block-chains in short sections.  His explanations of how interoperability might help with this are weak. For instance he wants moderation by the community over a clunky ‘rules-based’ AI approach to trolling. Is that when we shut down a troll or crude insulter in the comments or by a site admin?

If you are interested in ways to weaken Big Tech, this book might appeal.  It does show a legal and technical way to universalize tech, but what is missing is any discussion of the ultimate role of the profit motive in blocking interoperability.   

Prior blogspot reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive using these terms:  “technology,” ‘internet,’  

May Day has many left books on technology.  I got this at the Library!

Red Frog / April 11, 2025              

Absurd Individualism

 “Rhinoceros” a play by Eugene Ionesco, 1959

“Rhinoceros” is a play by the ‘absurdist’ Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco. I attended it on April 6, 2025 at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, MN, USA.  Unlike the liner notes by Pangea World Theater, this play was inspired by Ionesco’s contact with the rise of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania in the 1930s.  Romania was Ionesco's home country.  The liner notes claim it is also about ‘the spread of Communism’ – which speaks to a political sentiment by someone in the theater perhaps, but not originally by Ionesco.  

One version of the play

I did a word search on several .PDFs of the play as well.  One character in an office in the play, Botard, does not believe in the rhinos, even though others have seen them.  Botard comes off as an arrogant dope.  Botard is also identified as a ‘union’ member in this translation of the play.  One of the .pdfs does not contain the word ‘union,’ while the other does.  Seemingly union people are oblivious according to that translation.  Botard also makes a comment about people seeing rhinos as an ‘opiate of the people’ – a clear Marx quote.  Aside from a reflection on his personality, Botard raises this in connection with fascism being a ‘mass delusion,’ much like religion or the Protocols of Zion.  In one .pdf the phrase was found, in another it was not – again referencing which translation was used by Pangea.

Historically it was the Left that was most aware of the rise of fascism, and the chief battler against it.  Berenger, the hero of this play, is not a leftist.  He is an individualist taken from Ionesco himself.  He alone opposes his friends and neighbors becoming rhino fascists.  But he would certainly be an ally of the Left in any anti-fascist front.

This points to certain other modernizations of the play to make it more current or acceptable in language. Computer words are projected onto walls behind the scene, a Pepsi is mentioned, as is #MeToo, and so on. A cat is trampled on by a rhino and this cat becomes symbolic of the cruelty of the rhinos.  Innocent, centrist and ignorant people believe that this rhino ‘epidemic’ will pass, but they are gradually caught up as conformists of a sort. If you’ve had people you are close lose themselves in conspiracy theories and right-wing bullshit, you know what the play is talking about.  Berenger’s best friend turns into a rhino in front of him, getting a rubber hoof and horns.  This reminds one of Kafka’s older story “The Metamorphosis,” where a man turns into an insect one morning.

The two manager/capitalists in the play also become rhinos, as does ‘the logician.’ The transformation of the logician especially affects Berenger, as this seemingly ‘rational’ person has also succumbed. Yet the play makes fun of the logician repeatedly, as empty ‘theses’ and predicates are shown to mean nothing in the real world.  Ionesco, after all, was a materialist of sorts, which is why human society and the ‘human condition’ struck him as absurd.  He knew humans die and that made their ‘logic’ and struggles somewhat pointless and inaccurate.  

On the philosophic front, the phrase ‘natural’ is repeated as the logic of the rhinos.  They are closer to nature as full-on animals, unlike the humans Berenger stands for and represents.  Berenger is a flawed character – drinks heavily, is frequently late, doesn’t seem to work much – but he is also kind and forgiving, unlike the rhinos. The dead cat, the odious noises and grunts of the rhinos, the thundering hooves, the hard green hide, the blinding bandanas – all repel the audience member. But even Berenger finds the rhinos to be, in a way, beautiful compared to his fat, old body.  Yet he does not succumb.

Ionesco is hoping that decent individuals will rebel, agreeing with Camus.  The flaw in the play itself is that Berenger is alone, even in his village.  His weak woman friend deserts him at the end as well.  There is no collective resistance, as befits the tortured existentialist intellectual, just his isolated fortitude.  As anyone knows, fascism, or any oppressive system, cannot be defeated by lone individuals.  It might start there but it cannot end there. Wikipedia notes that Ionesco actually sympathized with the Italian pacifist “left-libertarian Transnational Radical Party” in real life.   

“Rhinoceros” will be showing at the Southern Theater until April 19.  Prices vary based on what you want to pay.  The theater was half full for this matinee, which is followed by a chat with the actors.  The lead, Berenger, is outstanding.  For some others, their voices were not directed or projected towards the audience, so what they said was lost in mumbles.  The play especially dragged at the end.  A live musician and pre-recorded sounds provide the soundtrack.    

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “rhinoceros,” “theater,” ‘play,’ ‘existentialism,’ ‘fascism.’    

The Cultural Marxist / April 8, 2025

The Poetry of Possibility

 Political Poems by Aman Aman 

6.

The powerful and rich sent us into nothing.

Into minds abstraction.

Endless endless.

In the end to find a broom.

Or to find tools old bygone.   

Nothing new to clean shits.

Huts for us.

For themselves they would build strong mansions and bungalows.

All at a cheap price.

Enough for everyone again to toil.

Landless farmers too toil the same.

For the poor there would be dirt laden houses.

Stinking sewages.

As if the rich and powerful don't. The middle classes left with choices.

But everybody want to live in mansions.

Nobody knows a healthy toils price.

Technology only to replace men.

Those men left to toil again.

Whence come your wealth?

Is all market?  

11.

Things I cannot speak

I cannot speak about socialism freely

I cannot speak why I love for the sake of love.

I cannot speak what man has done to man and woman in history.

I cannot speak of beliefs gone old.

I cannot speak of how many kids have the imperialist war killed.

I cannot speak of the nation's name who did it.

I cannot speak why I am and not a nationalist.

I cannot speak of things I cannot do.

I cannot speak of laws I didn't break.

I cannot speak of the cost of meal I had as a middle class man.  

I cannot speak why poverty is not needed.

I cannot speak why wars are not needed.

I cannot speak of the reason of social diseases.

I cannot speak about the mixture of Dadaism and religion.

I cannot speak of the remains of dead memories and dead bodies.

 

18.

Let's speak for the toilers in every field.

Let's speak of the farmers, and workers.

Let's speak of modern slaves.

Those who have to listen to their household masters.

Let's speak not just to give voice to them.

But also we need to fight with them.

For they have kins too.

Why are the farmers and workers committing suicides?

While the capitalist asphyxiate you with their wealth.

Why do we have a generation of sick desk workers?

Let's speak also about 4 hour day work?

Why is there underemployment, while others toil relentlessly.

There must be something wrong about capitalist logic

Why do we eat food without nutrition?

While the landlords fields remain fallow.

Let's speak about the toilers in every field.

 

25.

A tirade and physical attack is going against communism.

Some say that equality cannot be attained.

Children! Cannot be treated equally.

Everything has been decided.

Some will live in mansions, others in flats and huts.

Many are there on the pavement.

Feelings can only arise from actions and not love.

And then there are people who say 'why' are there wars?

Peace is the only eternal thing!

But violence can be done in multifarious ways.

They exist both in a 'subject' and through objects.

Hearts bleeding for stoical expressions.

Only for love.

But for rare connoisseurs a plaything.

Art's deception does not lie in representation but in becoming rare!

Everyone desires to communicate.

Not just through objectivity.

But also as a finite subject who can think.

Bare existence is not life!

It's death in disguise.

27.

Till relativity heaves as a human emotion,

Till the objects can be only seen in the light of human relativity.

Till shelter, health, food becomes immanent.

Till the sun and the moon are same for everyone.

Till the dogs left on the road live by plenty.

Till we don't have gang wars.

Till nations fall into love with each other.

Till ownership of the means of production vanish.

Till we have ample light for everyone who are drowning.

Till we have sufficient emotions for those who are sick.

Till the beauty of mermaids and mermen can be seen by everyone.

We all will be magical realists till then.

 

33.

Brothers.

Brothers are not just who fight for your ego.

Brothers are also those who see your weakness.

And fight within you.

I have brothers in the whole world.

Brothers who are sick.

Brothers who are impoverished.

Brothers whose inner light has been destroyed.

Brothers who are fighting fascism.

I am with my brothers.

May your inner light guide you.

 

37.

Bombs

We're living in times when bombs have been necessitated.

It's not a mistake of Russia or Ukraine,

It's a problem of normalizing authoritarian structures.

Tolstoy gave an example,

When we authorize a single man,

against humanity,

then things go wrong.

It's not simply Hamas or the Israeli state.

It’s not only America and the West.

It's not only Indians who are slowly becoming nazis.

Our past can be known.

Greatness does not only lie in the past.

But in an even future.

Prior blogspot reviews on this topic, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using this term:  'Poetry.'

The Cultural Marxist / April 4, 2025

College-Library Browsing #18: The Problem of ‘Stability’

 “Marxism – Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?” by Paul Mattick, 1978/1983

That title got your attention.  He actually answers ‘no.’  Mattick is not a professor, but was a life-long activist in the labor and Marxist movement.  As a youth he was a member of the Spartacus League in Germany, played a role in the 1919 German revolution, joined the KPD/KAPD and was involved in the 1923 German revolution and the fight against the Kapp putsch.  He then emigrated to the U.S. and joined several Marxist formations, then the IWW – even speaking at Chicago’s Dill Pickle Club – and evolved into a council communist.   He later wrote works critical of both Keynes and Marcuse from the left.

I’m only going to look at the last chapter of the book, as the rest is overly familiar and a bit rhetorical.  Mattick held to the ‘state-capitalist’ theory about the Soviet Union and China, insisting that a state-owned economy was exactly the same as a privately-owned one.  He saw Leninism as leading to a replay of this.  I’m not going to debate those ideas, but only reference some of his original points about how bits of Marxism could be useful to capitalists.

The great conundrum of revolutionary Marxism, as opposed to bastardized reformist versions, is the objective conditions it must operate in.  Mattick himself lived through periods of revolutionary upheaval and a return to relative stabilization in the central capitalist states. This made a deep impression on him.  To Mattick, revolutionary Marxism “functions today as an ideology in anticipation of such a practice” – that practice being revolutionary implementation by an active workers’ movement.  “It cannot operate under ‘normal’ conditions of capitalist production.”  Hence what he is saying is no mystery – only a long capitalist crisis can bring out revolutionary action guided by class struggle.

Note, he has no transitional approach between reform and revolution, which seems to be a weakness of both reformism and ultra-leftism.  Nor does he see a ‘transitional’ phase of a workers’ dictatorship between capitalism and the withering away of the state towards actual socialism.

“The great mass of workers acclimatize itself to ruling bourgeois ideology…” in this period.  Given both fear and limited security, only conditions will push the great mass of workers to revolutionary action.  Mattick seems to give credence to an automatic ‘final crisis,’ and an ‘objective failure of accumulation.’ He also realizes the end point might be barbarism and world destruction too.  So the role of socialism could be an attempt to ‘save the world.’  Are we reaching that point?  That is another discussion.

In the meantime, how do Marxism and capitalism ‘co-exist?’ Mattick:  “The history of capitalism is also the history of Marxism.”  The grave-diggers trudge along, since graves are still to be dug, though perhaps better paid for a while. The impact of capitalist stabilization has promoted reformism in a Marxist cloak.  It built social-democratic nations and reforms, unionism, the ‘welfare state,’ some freedom for former colonies and demands for social equality.  It turned into ‘evolutionary theory.’

Marxism, having lost hold of most large groups of workers, retreated to the universities and spread among some intellectuals.  It infused sociology, geography, history, psychology, some political science and even, in places, economics.  For instance Keynesianism is a capitalist attempt at incorporating tenants of Marxism – specifically the role of the state and the financial status of ‘consumers’ – i.e. workers.  This is the ‘under-consumption’ thesis some Marxists like the MR school adopted.  A number of radical economists understood the ‘cyclical’ nature of capitalist booms and busts, but never pinpointed the sputtering profit engine as the culprit. Some thinkers understood ‘conspicuous consumption.’ National ‘industrial planning’ also became a thing in mature economies.  State-driven development was adopted in many newly-freed former colonies to jump-start some kind of capital growth and 'modernization.'  Even globalization itself, knitting the world together by imperialist means, was a way towards a socialized world economy.  

To Mattick, capitalist ideology penetrated into the workers’ states as ‘Marxism-Leninism,’ which he sees as a hold-over from the Second International.  The state became ‘capitalist.’ He sees it as veiling labor exploitation using Marxist verbiage.   Even he admits that Marx did not theorize a stage like this.  Far beyond accusations of state exploitation is the economy of China.  It nurtures an actual and massive capitalist sector.  They have a yellow star on their flag celebrating the ‘patriotic bourgeoisie,’ so this is not some new thing.  The idea that Chinese ‘socialism’ is simply the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy has been refuted by many, including Marx.  Mattick would agree.

Another way class struggle and Marxism infuse capital is to push it towards state intervention in the chaotic market; while also pushing it towards gains in productivity to offset labor. This has been a boon to the tech sector, sort of a dialectical dance where the pressure from workers is one thing that makes companies move towards robots, AI, computerization and automation.  An analysis of the job losses in the 1980s and 1990s by Kim Moody shows automation was more damaging than Mexico or offshoring. Yet human labor and nature are the source of all value, so this poses a key dilemma for capital.  

On another front, trade unions and forces like social-democracy and Eurocommunism became both sources of strength for labor, but also were integrated into the system and thus served to discipline workers in various ways. This situation is reflective of a sort of general stabilization after WWII.  Mattick in 1978 writes “…at this point the future of Marxism remains extremely vague.” Workers feel organized action is necessary, but they also need to fill their individual and family needs at the same time.  This means class consciousness is ambiguous. He finally writes: “The history of revolutionary Marxism has been the history of its defeats.”

Cheery, aye?  Mattick, like every organized and conscious Marxist in countries with growing economies, has had to negotiate between this ‘stability’ and a seemingly unrealistic goal.  However world capital at present, like it always does, is changing again.  Bourgeois 'democratic' neo-liberalism is opposed by theocracies, military dictatorships, autocracies and oligarchies, but also by various forms of ‘illiberal’ authoritarianism, as the ‘center’ is failing to hold.  This is because capital itself is coming up against various limitations.  Profit rates, the environment,  national structures, military conflict, debt and more are impeding the smooth flow of a stable world capitalism.

We are in a new period which may open up revolutionary possibilities in the center and ‘peripheral’ countries both. In the terminology, it’s called a ‘conjuncture.’  In fact, given the development of capital across the world, this simple meta-geographic understanding about 'center' and 'periphery' should also change.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “council communism,” “German Revolution,” ‘Marx,’ "Dill Pickle."    

May Day has many Left theory and semi-theory books – anarchist, council communist, Marxist, social-democratic, ‘Marxist-Leninist.’  I got this one at the college library!

Red Frog / April 2, 2025