Marx and the power of the internet
Capitalism then and now: the cult author Dietmar Dath shows exciting links between Marx and the present.
Mr. Dath, why is it worthwhile to occupy ourselves with Karl Marx 200 years after his birth?
Because all the problems he tries to solve, and some of which he was the first to name, persist. For example, we still see that goods which are produced not by a few, but in huge production units, serve to profit of only the few. One case is the internet, which was made possible only by taxpayers’ money, namely by government research, especially by the US military. The big internet companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook are now scooping the cream off the top. Marx defined the still essential difference between utility value and exchange value: what good is a product for those who use it? And, on the other hand, who makes money with it?
In your column “What does Karl Marx say?” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung you criticize “casual attempts at updating” the Marxian way of thinking. Is it easy to misunderstand Marx?
Marx didn’t think in black and white terms, but also looked for things in capitalism that have a historical benefit – for example, the enormous wealth it produces. No other system in history has done this. Only capitalism has made humanity so rich that it has become free to pose the question: How do we want to live? In many left-leaning theories today you have the feeling that they're about levelling down: we all get a little poorer and help each other. Marx, however, was concerned with how we can make further progress from the progress made. We shouldn’t forget that Marx formulated his ideas about a rich society as it then existed in England and Germany. That didn’t apply to Russia, and so hardly to the later Soviet Union, which tried to implement his ideas.
Marx formulated his ideas about a rich society.
How can Karl Marx show us new ways today?
Marx thought and saw historically how the modern capitalist world prevailed against the feudal aristocratic world: in the cities new wealth was created for the citizens, which they could turn into political power. We have to ask ourselves: where are the sources of wealth today? Where do things arise that make life easier? This brings us again to the internet, if not only to it: as in Marx’s time people thought about the factory in politics, today we could think even more about the possibilities of networked work in politics.
Interview: Johannes Göbel
