Power Under Pressure: Digital Capitalism In Crisis

Abstract

Massive and sustained corporate investment around ICTs developed in response to the economic downturn of the 1970s, within a multifaceted attempt to renew profitable growth. Five core components of this encompassing response were financialization, militarization, wage repression, transnationalization, and accelerated commodification. Yet these axes of a developing digital capitalism eventually converged on a new and deeper financial-economic crisis. May we expect this sector to reprise its earlier role in renewing the accumulation process? How may geopolitical-economic forces be rebalanced?