"Cordell, Arthur: DPP" wrote:
> some futureworkers may be interested in this book.
> ==========================================================
>
> TITLE: Capitalism and the information age :
> the political economy of the global communication revolution /
>
>
Here's a short review of this book:
Book Review
Vol.1 : No.4
Robert W. McChesney, Ellen Meiksins Wood and John
Bellamy Foster (eds),
Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political
Economy of the Global
Communications Revolution
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998)
pp. 254, ISBN 0-85345-989-4 (pbk) $16 ISBN
0-85345-988-6 (hbk).
Reviewed by
Ben Bagdikian,Emeritus Professor and Dean,The
Graduate School of
Journalism,University of California, Berkeley
A communications satellite can ignore national
boundaries and cover a third of
Planet Earth - a metaphor for escalating
superpower intrusion into the politics
and culture of world societies, while its
intricate engineering feeds the
technological euphoria that obscures the
antisocial realities of the 'information
superhighway'.
This book of fourteen essays by a variety of
authors is a useful antidote. It
exposes the dark side of the new communications
and currently popular
words like 'globalization' and 'on-line
democracy'. It reminds us that there is the
not-so-hidden hand of the most powerful media
corporations of the world
whose multimedia content is largely designed to
get citizens to resign to the
conservative status quo and to get them addicted
them to compulsive
consumption. Professor Robert W. McChesney of the
University of
Wisconsin at Madison, for example, warns that
'globalization' has 'a distinctly
undemocratic edge as it effectively forces
national governments to comply
with the needs of globally mobile capital' in
which the inequality of workers is
a given. The Internet - often seen by
enthusiasts, some of them progressives,
as the modern medium for individual thought - to
McChesney is a method by
which to overwhelm political dissenters through
the system's rapid
commercialization.
As Ken Hirschkop writes: '...reading the
exclamations of the technologically
enthused...one senses that what excites them is
not what it can do for the
sober and responsible citizen, but the dizzying
possibilities it opens up for
those of a mischievously anarchistic bent'. Even
that prophet of digital heaven,
Bill Gates, admits that 'virtual equity is far
easier to achieve than real world
equity.' Modern history is full of expectations
that machines will bring social
justice. Hirschkop encapsulates a central point
when he (and Chomsky, later)
notes that 'access to information was never the
central problem'. There is, he
writes, a plentitude of information, more than
enough to inform those working
for positive social change. Real change is not
that painless. Monthly Review
editor Ellen Meiksins Wood discounts some
theorists who see a significant
leap in 'postmodernism' as a more fragmented
stage of capitalism. It is all, she
writes, the uninterrupted continuation of
capitalistic development. The popular
myth of some new 'electronic republic' is also
rejected by Michael Dawson
and John Bellamy Foster in their essay, 'Virtual
Capitalism'. Using the new
media for marketing, large corporations have
acquired an even greater portion
of national wealth, increasing the gap between
rich and poor, with the 300
largest corporations in the world now accounting
for 70 per cent of foreign
direct investment and 25 per cent of world
capital assets. This view,
reflected by others in the book, is the reverse
of the optimistic view of Andy
Pollock's last essay. Pollock sees possibilities
that new communications might
increase powers of political action by the Left,
though it is optimism couched
in subjunctive 'woulds' and 'coulds'. (A
generation ago, McLuhan's 'global
village' also gave this view a sunny glow.)
In his 'Global Village or Cultural Pillage?',
Peter Golding furthers the point,
referring to the creation of information 'haves'
and 'have-nots'. He too warns
that no technological magic will produce social
justice until creation of an
underlying world order with 'commitment to
liberty, equality and community'.
Similarly, Heather Menzies, of Carleton
University, points out that
communications technology has accelerated 'the
transfer of assets from the
public sector to the private and the
consolidation of power into the hands of
larger corporate units'. The corporations simply
buy the knowledge and skills
they need while in the real world there is
downsizing, unemployment and
underemployment. Jill Hills notes that during
this period the Northern
Hemisphere gained and the Southern Hemisphere
lost, that declining
communication costs have increased private
ownership and aided the
domination of the United States in international
organizations compatible with
American trade.
Nicholas Baran reminds us that superior products
are often discarded by
dominant firms in favour of quicker profit
margins or for fear of losing control.
Taxpayers often pay to create the superior
products that are then
appropriated for corporate use and profit. 'The
Internet', Baran writes, 'was a
brilliant technical achievement that never would
have happened in the free
enterprise marketplace.' But now it is a shopping
mall and many of its socially
useful characteristics may soon disappear. The
'shopping mall' metaphor, if
applied to schooling, would be the shifty
operations of Channel One, the
corporate program that promised to install
computers and electronic
equipment into classrooms without charge (but
quietly retained ownership) on
condition that each school guarantee that during
90 per cent of the school
year, 90 per cent of its students view Channel
One's twelve minutes of
broadcasting per day. Those twelve minutes are
ten minutes of 'news' and
two minutes of commercials. No editing of
commercials is permitted. Michael
Apple writes that by 1991, 5.4 million students,
a third of all 13- to
18-year-olds, were having to watch Channel One in
school hours. (The
numbers seem inflated, given 1991 census
population figures for that age
cohort; a more current figure would show that
Channel One has lost ground in
recent years. A 1997 website of Channel One
itself claimed only 8.1 million
teenagers - though any number above zero would be
repellent.)
Peter Meiksins shows how the decentralized
production facilities of
corporations make it easier to get rid of
recalcitrant and unionized workers,
while simultaneously the new communications
permit economic power to
become even more tightly centralized. By
contrast, US unions and consumer
groups are given a lesson by Elaine Bernard and
Sid Shniad in their description
of unified social action by Canadian unions and
consumer groups, who built
effective resistance to the worst depredations
upon workers and consumers
when that country followed the trend to
deregulation and conservatism.
With his usual clarity and precision, Noam
Chomsky stresses what appears in
other essays, that capitalistic warfare against
unions and public services has
not been done in dark of night. 'It was
completely public. The reason it's not
well known is because neither the educational
system nor scholarship...pays
any attention to it.' Chomsky's frequent
co-author, Edward S. Herman, also
addresses the propaganda issue by noting how
successful it has been in
foreign policy: governmental declarations (and
therefore the major news)
reported repression within 'unfriendly' countries
but were silent or approving
about it within 'friendly' nations.
While there is much repetition, perhaps
inevitable in a collection of widely
separated essays, Capitalism in the Information
Age is a useful antidote to
the endless political, corporate and journalistic
suppositions of revolutionary
freedoms represented in the new communications.
So far 'the
communications revolution' has run parallel with
the growing gap between rich
and poor everywhere. Social justice has never
been the automatic product of
a machine.
--
http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
