[LINK] Paul Mason on creative use of IT to topple capitalism - yet only capitalism can make ICs

[Robin Whittle]

Paul Mason at The Guardian has quite a rant:


http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun

about socioeconomic change being driven by the free use information
technologies.  I don't clearly understand what he means by "capitalism"
or "market".  He refers to some obscure writings by Karl Marx in 1858
(The Fragment on Machines) as anticipating the changes he foresees.

I found this interesting and to make some kind of sense to my
early-morning still-unfolding brain.

But then it occurred to me how dependent the whole current and future
(as Paul Mason anticipates) enterprise is on extraordinarily
difficult-to-produce-products: integrated circuits and complex
full-function machinery made with multi-layer circuit-boards filled with
surface mount components and carefully crafted firmware and software.
Right now, most of the world is entirely dependent on the products of
numerous large and sophisticated companies, most prominently Intel.

The amount of capital and organisation (which requires social, legal and
economic stability) required to design, produce and test Intel CPUs is
prodigious.  To the extent that this is "capitalism" (and I am pretty
sure a lot of it falls within whatever it is about "capitalism" that
Paul Mason would like to see eradicated), then I think there is going to
have to be some kind of symbiosis or truce, rather than a complete
replacement of "capitalist" socioeconomic arrangements.

  - Robin