Since the 18th and 19th centuries mass capitalism has been the dominant economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic system in the world and particularly in the western world that gave it birth. On this fact both the major apologists and polemicists for and against mass capitalism, Adam Smith and Karl Marx respectively, agree.
Mass capitalism is an economic system, a system of exchange, with its own theology, a theology propagated by the high priests of mainstream economic theory who postulate—though they don’t see it as postulation hence the use of the term theology here--that humans are rational and that human greed is ultimately good for all. It is an economic system that dominates western and increasingly global politics because modernity and its mass capitalism are bureaucratic and the higher in the bureaucracy one is the more monies one makes and the more power and authority one has. This allows those in the higher realms of the bureaucracy to use their power and authority, to leverage their status, in a multitude of political, cultural, geographical, and demographic ways. They lobby, for instance, the American government and have a greater ability to lobby successfully compared to those with middling power and authority and those with low levels of power and authority because in capitalist societies money, as the proverb goes, talks. It allows those with money, power, and authority to use these monies and this power and authority for cultural purposes. When they buy art they impact the “value” of the art they buy. When they contribute monies to symphony orchestras they impact the type of music that will be programmed. When they engage in risky behaviours that come back to haunt them the world has to listen because, as happened as recently as 2008, their “coughs” wreak havoc on the increasingly integrated global economy. Those with monies typically live longer, have less deaths in childbirth, and have less child deaths than those with moderate or limited monies who live in poverty.
The noted Swiss film maker Jean-Luc Godard, a director who has been categorised as part of the French nouvelle vague or New Wave by critics and historians, often used the “profession” of prostitution, as a metaphor for mass capitalism in his many films. In his 1980 film
Suive qui peut (la vie), [English title
Every Man for Himself], for example, Godard stages a scene—I hope I am remembering this right as I have not seen the film since it was released--in which a businessman, sitting at a desk choreographs a scene for his entertainment in which one of his cronies has sex, including anal sex, with a prostitute while another character in the film voyeuristically looks on. The message of this film, of course, is that workers are exploited by their bosses and their sycophantic flunkies in the lower upper levels and middle levels of capitalist bureaucracies, something that makes the English title of Godard’s film not quite accurate given the realities of power and authority imbalances within economic bureaucracies.
Godard, of course, is a polemicist who critiques capitalism in Suive qui peut (la vie). One does not, however, have to buy into Godard's normative polemics for the exploitation scene in the film to be descriptively accurate. Those in the highest and higher levels of capitalist bureaucracies do have more power and authority than those beneath them (pun intended). They do have labourers working underneath them (pun intended) who do their bidding, at least officially. They do make more money than those in the middle and lower levels of the bureaucracy. And the relationship between capitalist bosses and those beneath them (pun again intended) is one akin to that between a john and prostitute, one in which the john pays for a commodity, in this case sex, and one in which, arguably for some, he or she who is paying and playing is in an exploitative relationship with the worker who is doing the work, in this case the exploited sex work.
Though
Suive qui peut (la vie) was made in those days of yore before the postmodern age with its digital media arose, very little has actually changed in the brave new postmodern digital world. The economy is still dominated by the few. These few oligarchs who run the few dominant corporations of the economy continue to, while not monopolise power and authority hold the lion’s share of it and as a consequence have a massive influence on the political culture of the West, which itself dominates the global economy. They continue to maintain this power and authority thanks to the greater social, economic, political, and cultural capital they have and which they are able to transfer to their heirs via primary and secondary socialisation. They continue to believe that they are the best and brightest and blessed by nature and/or god. They continue to benefit demographically from a system, particularly in the United States, in which economic, political, cultural, and demographic—health care, for instance--is inequitably and irrationally distributed (irrational because of all the unnecessary redundancies in the US health care system). Despite all the initial utopian rhetoric that the internet would bring “liberty" and “freedom" and “democracy” (all ultimately empty vessels into which are poured several cultural meanings) to humankind the internet, including its numerous porn sites, remain dominated by mega or uber capitalist bureaucratic corporations like Google, Amazon, Mega (formerly Facebook) and Apple, to note a few, and massive inequities.
As I have noted previously on this blog, I have been engaged in ethnographic work for several years on the social media site YouTube which is owned by Google. Google, like many capitalist bureaucratic corporations of the modern era, is an economic giant whose earnings rival the gross national and gross domestic products of some nation-states around the world. It is a political giant lobbying governments in its interests. It is geographical giant in t that it is global. It is a demographic giant in that millions if not billions of consumers “buy” or “consume" its products, products that for some have no inherent value since it is, they argue, impossible to quantify the value of knowledge labour. And it is a cultural giant.
Despite the rhetoric of utopian digital media cheerleaders social media forms like YouTube are quite similar to other cultural and communication forms of the past. Like capitalist cultural communication corporations of the past social media forms are bureaucratic with remuneration, power, and authority inequitably distributed within them. Like capitalist communications bureaucracies of the past there are those who work for the communications corporation and those who run the corporation. YouTube, for example, like other social media corporations, takes a significant cut of the revenue generated by its “employees”—something many would argue is inherently exploitative--along with advertising monies it generates and plays, as did and does commercial television, over its videos unless one buys a VIP package from the corporation. Like capitalist media corporations of the past those who run the brave new digital communications corporations establish standards for the corporation and censor that which does not meet those corporate community standards. Like capitalist corporation communications forms of the past “employees” can be “fired. YouTube”employees”, for instance, who do not bring in enough revenues—reportedly 10,000 views over a period of time—are made redundant. Like the knowledge industries of the past the brave “new” social media are not interactive beyond the comments sections boxes below the videos in YouTube which may or may not be read by those who make the videos largely for monetary gain that voyeuristic consumers watch on social media sites like YouTube, comments, including the comments of most of those who do the reaction videos of films and television shows themselves, that are largely mundane and banal—lowest common denominator--and focused on a summary of the story and plot and whether the reactor and commentator liked what was being reacted or not. In other words, they, generally speaking, function in order to establish a community of the like-minded with their like-minded echo chambers and ostracisation of any who “deviate” from the constructed or fetishised norms. In this regard they function like most films and television shows of the past and like society and culture in general, they recapitulate socialisation for conformity and create and recreate, in the process, self-satisfied and self-righteous identity groups which are ethnocentric, hardly the cosmopolitanism some polemicists for the brave new digital media envisioned in their radiant brave new digital future narratives. Like capitalist corporate communications media of the past avant-garde artsiness and real critical criticism is barely present on social media, the content of which is mostly a vast wasteland of popcorn culture. Like the corporate media of the past Western media, and particularly American media and American English predominates. Social media, in other words, continues to mirror broader society and culture.
The more things change...
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