The news that Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and one other ISP have banded together legally to pursue actions against spammers, may be welcomed by many as one of the more progressive actions of these giant companies.
Nevertheless there are contradictions involved. As there are in all things. Whatever their origins, some of them idealistic, in the early days of the internet, these are now also giant finance capitalist entities vying to control what was once a virtual realm of anarchist freedom. Their other actions show how typically of modern finance capitalist entities they are trying to control the market from top to bottom. And now they are in a cartel of intimidating power arguably trying to restrict the ancient freedoms of the individual. But which individual. Humble individuals like us may welcome them attacking spammers. Slightly fewer, their attack on pornographers. But also they will be setting up cartel systems to be able to track down anyone whom the authorities regard as a terrorist or perhaps a revolutionary. Wait for the news report within 12 months that they are tracking down major financial criminals on the internet (ie fraudsters whose activities in fact will be much smaller in size that these giant finance capitalist organisations). According to traditional marxist formulae, capitalism the eve of the socialist revolution. That is even more so with finance capitalism. The extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of monopolistic finance capitalist entities, is an expression in terms of ownership, of the underlying vast complex social reality of modern production. At a time when socialist revolution seems a distant fantasy of the last century, inexorably contradictions move forwards in ways that may still surprise us. The news of the anti-spamming cartel is from one point of view progressive, from another reactionary. Only with the use of dialectics can the working people of the world see a forward path around the stamping feet of these giants, and topple them over. Chris Burford London
