Hypercapitalism and Its Discontents

by W.D. Woods

The last few issues of 2600 have had several discussions of "piracy" and the hacking that propels it.  I suggest there is yet another way to look at the issue that does replace these opinions but adds to them by putting piracy into an even bigger picture.  I am not encouraging or condoning any acts; I am asserting that there are a variety of ways to define and reframe hacking and piracy that may challenge the status quo of how they might be understood or labeled.

More and more we live in a global social, political, ideological, and economic system we can call hypercapitalism.  Alternatives to capitalism have gone away to be replaced by capitalist explosions in Russia, India, and China; socialist, Communist, and syndicalist options have been killed off by the "free" market in which everything can be bought and sold by elites.  In many ways, the one percent has won (at least for now).

In such a system, information is created. exchanged, and controlled as part of a governmental and corporate machine dedicated now to the exclusionary ownership of the intangible as much as to the ownership of the material.  Companies own things; companies now own ideas; companies may even own you.  In such an environment, creative products and data are types of commodities to be owned and traded just like anything else.

In the age of mechanical reproduction, it was items (and the labor that produced them) that formed the center of social reality.  Now, in the age of digital reproduction, it is concepts and codes that are the coin of the realm for the first world.  In an age of mechanical reproduction, it is items that are created and exchanged.  In the age of digital reproduction, it is power relationships, mediated by electrons, that are created and exchanged.

Hackers and so-called pirates represent a potent force for the undermining of this economic and political system, especially those who challenge the dominant definition of ownership.  Appropriating art and sharing it is a method of rebellion and liberation and not just a "criminal" activity.  Simply put, hacking and pirating represent new kinds of exchanges subverting the hypercapitalist reality.  Hacking is both a result of and a revolt against hypercapitalism.  Hypercapitalism produces the mechanisms of its own subversion.  Hacking is one of them.  Piracy is another.

Whether intended or not, hacking and piracy are minor skirmishes (with the potential to become major) in what can be called class warfare.  The concept may be old, but the reality we face is all too real.

The mechanisms of control define what is criminal and what is not.  Piracy not only pulls profit from the creator; it much more pulls profit, and ultimately control, from capitalist elites.  "Piracy" implies deviance when, in fact, it is one of the defining characteristics of hypercapitalism.  It is predictable and inevitable protest as much as the Occupy movement is.

Hypercoherence is another attribute of hypercapitalism.  Hypercoherence of systems means that small changes in one arena, organization, or place result in exaggerated change elsewhere.  As dominant as hypercapitalism is now, it is still, at its base, fragile and can be resisted and upended through digital acts, such as appropriation and unfettered exchange of information.

The implication is that even the simplest of hacks, either in a creative, activist, or destructive vein can have accelerated and profound results.  Whether it is meant to be or not, hacking is transgression.

The government response is predictable when the economic and political forces respond with rules, regulations, vague laws, and discipline that do not match the act.  What are at stake are the central mechanisms of control; this is why we see the harsh prosecution of those who liberate information outside of acceptable (as defined by elites) boundaries.

If you fundamentally change the mechanism and results of production, you simultaneously create the mechanisms of revolt and disruption.  There is a re-creation, a mutual co-creation, and this is where the modern system and the modern system crasher come together.  Power elites need to control all aspects of transaction, and the government and corporate entities must defend not only the theft of ideas, but also the entire notion that data and information and art can be seized and disseminated by only a few.

Hacking and piracy are revolutionary actions.  They are a kind of informal and uncontrollable redistribution of wealth.  The models that allowed us in a past outside of hypercapitalism to understand this dual process of ownership and resistance are today as inadequate as the control mechanisms used to create the ownership of things are inadequate to control the ownership of code.

As D351 wrote in 29:2, the hacker community is coming out as anarcho-socialist.  I would argue that it has always been part of this tradition all along.  And we can expect more of this kind of political awareness as the hypercapitalist system begins to reassert itself and more begin to resist.