Aside from the more faniciful passages, the biggest problem I have with the book is that, while he does a lot of parsing of different theoretical paradigms--dismissing a good deal of the other work out there as outdated or unable to account for change--his main argument makes his "alternative" quite contradictory. Because while he points out the ways that capital is operating on a global scale, his alternative is posited as being only relevant to the already technology rich areas of the world. This is not a tiny problem. I don't object to an insular strategy that is only relevant for one area--that is probably the only way to go. But, despite spending much of the first sections arguing with Bell's post-industrial society, he basically makes the same mistake I saw Bell making, to my mind anyway (it's been a while since I read it and I lost patience about halfway though and started skimming). Namely, that the post-industrial thesis doesn't say we'll be outsourcing all of our labor: it just says that we'll overcome the problems of capitalism by not having to work anymore--the economy will simply function with less labor: we'll have progressed beyond that.
Dyer-Witheford is right (I think) to point out that this teleological understanding of the "stages of growth" is almost totally lifted from Marx. It was also the key theory of economic growth theorists (and Cold Warriors) like Walt Rostow. The problems with the latter are well rehearsed (even if some of the benefits are now overlooked). But the real problem with all of them is that they fail to see the system operating on the scale that D-W sees it working, that is, on a global level. Without moving to either a dependency or world systems argument, it seems the both of the latter descriptions had at least reminded us (at a moment when this scale was intensifying) that if we are getting deindustrialized, it isn't because we are able to endogenously produce all that we need with our own "creative class:" it's because someone else is industrializing and the crumbs left here are for people willing to make sure that we still have a portion of the pie. He bases this prediction off of some fragment in the Grundrisse where Marx predicts that the "general intellect" will ultimately be able to be harnessed to produce value.
All of this is basically on par with proposals I have heard that make the "creative economy" into a development model. For one such model, cf: Shalini Venturelli "From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy." http://www.culturalpolicy.org/pdf/venturelli.pdf Whatever the role of information assymetry in economic development, I don't think having that squared up is the only thing that has to be done. Then again, I am one of those people who don't believe there is much truth to the idea of creating capital out of the circulation of capital. I figure someone, somewhere is getting the shaft, either by buying an overpriced stock or currency or working for an exploitative wage.
D-W isn't totally unaware of these problems, but his answers remain largely unconvincing, retreating from the "alternative" to say that, basically, there is still possibility for resistance usingthe tools of technology, and positing (basically) a set of revolutionary intellectuals that will help bring this general intellect about (presumedly without a state run education institution). In other words, he virtually abandons the socio-economic argument to focus more on the political strategic argument (not surprising for an autonomist) and this is basically a catalog of possible refusals and reversals at different moments rather than a coherent strategy. D-W is probably saying much more than this that I missed and much of his intellectual engagement with other social and economic theorists is interesting, but, for all its paeans to global capitalism, it remains pretty parochial. Again, as a sort of starting strategy for a particular locale the problem with it is that it denies the material interconnection on which it would necessarily rely and says little about changing those external relations except in terms of dispersing knowledge. Judging from the fierceness that IPR is being defended, this is obviously important, but you still can't eat a patent.
-s
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dwayne Monroe" <idoru345 at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 2:48 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Comments on Cybermarx?
> Doug:
>
> In other words, it's not a model for running a real
> economy, but for free-riding off a money economy
> financed by others?
>
> =================
>
>
>
> People who insist that Open Source and other
> non-balkanized methods of production and distribution
> are models for how the present muck-up can be replaced
> are mistaken in my view.
>
> It would be more accurate to say that OSS makes the
> process of producing, obtaining and modifying software
> less onerous *within* the existing cage (to paraphrase
> Simone Weil, it's like having a cell with lovely
> accommodations).
>
>
> On the other hand, I think "free riding" is a bit off
> the scanner inasmuch as the money economy always
> absorbs and benefits from these activities, shouting
> to the contrary notwithstanding (note IBM's embrace of
> OSS as a countermeasure against MSFT - an action Sun
> Micro has recently mimicked).
>
>
> .d.
>
>
>
> ---------
>
> http://monroelab.net/blog/index.html
>
> <<<<<>>>>>
>
> I'm sending the two of you to hell to take more lessons from your dead
> teacher!
>
> White Lotus Chief Bai Mei
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>