Capital Muslim Issue cover

Capitalist Abstractions

I had a meeting in the city recently and could not find a car park to save myself. I found myself circling the same block over and over, and over again. I was late, and in a hurry. 

As I rounded a familiar corner for what felt like the tenth time a man part way down the road ahead waved at me. I pulled up to wind my window down. ‘Here, you can have my parking spot. I still have a few hours left on this ticket.’ He handed me the ticket with a look of genuine goodwill and went about his day.

Relief! I could feel my grin ear to ear. I reverse parked into what I was convinced was the only vacant parking spot at that moment in the city. I thrust the second-hand ticket marked ‘pay and display’ on the dashboard, gathered my things, shut and locked my car, and turned on my heels to head up the road in the general direction of my meeting. 

‘Excuse me mate.’ A voice hit me in the back mid stride. I swung around. ‘You need to pay for that parking space.’ It was a parking inspector, employed by the city. 

‘No, its ok’ I said ‘The guy that had the park before me… he handed me his ticket. Its good until two thirty.’

‘I know. I saw that.’ He was standing beside my car now with his iPad out ‘But you still have to buy your own ticket. One for you and for your car, to use the space.’ There was a confidence in his voice that discouraged me for a moment.

I second guessed myself: ‘But the ticket is still valid… I have time… to use.’

The parking inspector rolled his eyes. ‘No, the tickets are non-transferable. It says so on the ticket machines.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That man paid for his car to be parked in that space for a certain period. You need to pay for your car to use that space now.’

‘But there is still time on the…’

‘On his ticket.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If I allow you to park there, I am allowing the man who paid for the space once, to use it twice. Effectively he is getting two car parks for the price of one.’

‘But it is the same car park.’

‘Used twice.’ Our parking inspector had become smug. 

I don’t mind admitting I was puzzled. Is this how capital works?

The Alien

Karl Marx considered capital as wealth in the form of money or assets that are used to generate more wealth. According to Marx capital should be viewed, not just the money or assets themselves, but through the social relationships and power dynamics that arise from their ownership and use as well. With this in mind, Marx developed a belief that capitalists are able to generate wealth by paying workers less than the value of the goods and services they produce, because this surplus value was the source of their profits. Because of this, he argued, the goal of capitalism is the accumulation of wealth, rather than the well-being of workers or broader society. 

Marx’s theory said that the drive for profit in capitalist society leads to economic crises and instability, as well as to the alienation of workers from the products of their labour and from each other. This is because workers sell their labour power as a commodity in exchange for wages, while capitalists own and control the products of their labour in order to generate profits. This creates a situation where workers are separated from the products of their labour and do not have control over the conditions of their work, which can lead to a sense of alienation. Additionally, the pursuit of profit leads to economic crises and instability, as capitalists seek to extract more and more value from workers and the environment, leading to overproduction, underconsumption, amongst other things.

Indeed, the Industrial Revolution transformed the economic and social landscape of the West throughout the nineteenth century. It built cities, it built factories, and it built wage labour. Alongside this, a culture emerges: modernity. When I think of industrial society, I like to think of Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur; well dressed and strolling the streets of the European industrial city, pausing idly to glance through the large glass windowpanes of crisp shop fronts, browsing the wares within, curious yet disinterested: ‘I wonder what kind of people wear outfits like that …’ ‘I wonder what it would be like to wear an outfit like that…’ ‘I wonder what it would be like to wonder what it would be like to wear an outfit like that…’ Marxists call this bourgeois. Capitalists call this leisure. 

The flâneur is the idiosyncratic aimless wanderer: detached and uninvolved and simultaneously deeply aware of themselves as the observer of modern life as it matures within the industrialised city. Romantically, consciously, and deliberately an alien to the city around them, the flâneur portrays indifference whilst simultaneously acting as a purveyor of the social tapestries that surround them. For critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, the flâneur is a meaning maker, moving with ease and confidence through the humdrum and cobbled streets of the city. Benjamin’s flâneur treats the city as the vascular system of the modern life, reading cultural coding’s with reflexivity, seeking out new sensations and experiences, and making astute observations about the hidden meanings and contradictions of modern urban life. Benjamin believed that this kind of critical engagement with the city was essential for understanding the complexities of modernity and its impact on human psychology and culture.

Fast forward 150 years to consumer culture, and capitalism nurtures a complex ecosystem where the acquisition of goods and services are seen as a means of achieving happiness, social status, and personal fulfillment. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who wrote ‘I am what I have’ in his 1949 existentialist piece Being and Nothingness. Sartre, was cynical of the view that humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment, instead arguing that we are haunted by the notion of completion. Sartre's existentialism argued that true fulfillment could not be found through external objects or social status, but only through an authentic engagement with the world and the self. Sartre believed that the human condition should be characterized by a fundamental and perpetual incompleteness, an awareness of our own limitations and mortality, which drives us to seek meaning and purpose in our lives. Consumer culture, for Sartre, offers only a temporary and illusory escape from this sense of incompleteness, rather than a true path to fulfillment.

This is a maturation of modernity, where the drive for profit leads to the production of goods not based on human need but to create demand – through desire - and generate profit. Workers, who are paid wages disproportionate to the value of the goods they produce, are in turn encouraged to consume beyond their needs. And beyond their means. The ability for consumers to access credit to fund their lifestyles are set up, through traditional banking systems, and then through alternate lending facilities. The alienation of the worker is further exacerbated, owed to their disengagement from the products of their labour, and through a false sense of happiness through consumerism. Further, through globalization, another characteristic of modernity, alienation develops as workers are forced to compete for jobs and resources, creating a sense of isolation and division. This competition also creates a situation where workers are pitted against each other instead of working together to improve their conditions. And a complex web of othering emerges thanks to the global industrial complex.

With this, the landscape of industrial cities changed, with the demise of the city arcade in favour of the development of large department stores. The department store offered a new system of commercial space that was organized around the logic of consumption. Instead of exploring the city's streets, the modern consumer could navigate the neatly arranged aisles of the department store and engage in a more structured form of consumerist behaviour. It altered the way that goods were produced, marketed, and consumed in capitalist societies. It represented a new form of commercial space that was designed to cater to the desires and aspirations of the modern consumer. Bourgeois and leisure came together in the form of the middleclass.

The cunning of consumerism was its ability to nurture the spirit of the flâneur as the essence of the modern consumer. The department store and other commercial spaces offered consumers the illusion of individuality and transcendence within the context of a highly structured and commercialized environment. In this sense, the consumer was offered a sense of freedom and autonomy within the constraints of consumer culture. Someone who wants to look and feel like a surfer can purchase the identity of a surfer, having never stepped foot in the ocean. Similarly, someone who wants to look and feel like a businessperson, a farmer, a truck driver, can purchase these identities. Labels help here too. Someone who does not eat meat is not a non-meat eater, they are a vegetarian. The conscious consumer makes a point of only purchasing products that are sourced and produced by ethically and morally astute means. 

This is a complex interplay between the individualism and the seductive power of commercial spaces and consumerist fantasies; self-referential, reflective, highly individualistic, highly stylistic, and seemingly detached and transcendent all at once. A gorgeous superimposition is at play here: the consumer consumes, but in their consumption must not look like they are consuming, they must feign disinterest, consume precisely in a way that appears imprecise, consume not simply products, but consumerism itself. Wherever you go, there your consumerist self is. 

The Anxious

Fast forward a further 50 years, and we have British-Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman sketching out the notion that the modern self is an unfulfilled project and modern life a vocation for us all to face up to. In ‘liquid modernity’ people are consumers first and citizens, friends, or family members second. We have human rights and consumer rights. This is a culture of individualism, hedonism, and instant gratification where the individual reigns supreme. For Bauman ‘the self’ is granted the right to choose their own models of happiness and befitting lifestyle. The self is formed and performed through the consumption of cultural products, as individuals constantly try on and discard different identities in a never-ending quest for self-actualization. This process is facilitated by the fragmentation and diversification of contemporary society, which offers a wide range of cultural and informational resources that can be used to construct and perform different identities. At the same time, this process of identity formation is inherently unstable and ephemeral, as the identities that are constructed and performed are constantly subject to change and revision in response to changing circumstances and social contexts.

There is a kind of irony here – where the object of your consumption is you. But it is not you as you are now, it is a you that you will be, after the transaction. A version of you that exists in the future, just out of reach, always out of reach. Because once you have consumed, there is another version of you, on the horizon, waiting to be purchased. 

The liquid self-reinforces a sense of impermanence and instability in people's lives. The emphasis on consumption eclipses the alienation of the worker and creates a sense of anxiety as individuals constantly strive to maintain or improve their social status and personal identity through the acquisition of goods and services. This anxiety can be especially acute for marginalized groups, such as those who are economically disadvantaged or socially excluded, who may feel that they are unable to participate fully in consumer culture and are therefore excluded from its benefits.

I remember infomercials in the 1990’s; those long and urgent commercials that implored you to use the telephone keypad to pin in your credit card details. A well-spoken woman with a British accent and a headset microphone would apply make-up to another women, silent, sitting on a bar stool smiling and satisfied; ‘…and it’s as easy as that, two minutes and you can look like a Hollywood star in your own home.’ I remember a bald man in his mid-forties, in snug polo shirt, selling a ‘commercial grade ladder for the domestic man about the house.’ I remember kitchen utensils that enabled you to cook like a Michelin chef, car polish that gave your car a show room shine, and an introduction to French program that would have you speaking fluently in just 6 weeks. 

My brothers and I would lie on our backs on the loungeroom floor, with our feet up on the television cabinet – much to mums’ disgust. Even in our youth, we understood the message loud and clear, we needed to buy more, buy better, and buy faster in order to define ourselves in this world. And then we would watch Friends – the television show about six friends and the quirky happenstance of their lives living in New York City. We would wonder to ourselves, ‘What would life be like in a large apartment in New York City be like…’, ‘What would my life be like if I had all those nice things around me…’, ‘What would my life be like if I met my friends at a café every day…’, ‘What would my life be like if I wore those clothes…’, ‘What would my life be like if I ate what they ate…’

Of course, my brothers and I were watching these at home, through television sets, like the large glass windowpanes of Parisian shop fronts. We were no longer well-dressed flâneurs strolling the city streets, or wandering well structures department stores, we had become lounge room flâneurs, consuming the culture from the comfort of our own homes. 

I’m reminded of the quintessentially postmodern film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher (1999). Our heroes, Jack , played by Edward Norton, and Tyler, played by Brad Pitt, meet at a bar for a drink. Jack’s apartment has just inexplicable exploded and everything he owns has been destroyed. 

Jack laments: ‘I don’t know, it’s just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself that’s it, that’s the last sofa I’m gonna need. Whatever else happens, I’ve got that sofa problem handled. I had it all. I had a stereo that was very decent, a wardrobe that was getting very respectable. I was close to being complete.’

‘Shit man, now it’s all gone.’ Tyler is nonchalant about the whole thing.

‘All gone.’

‘Do you know what a duvet is?’ Tyler probes. 

‘A comforter.’

‘It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter gather sense of the word? No. What are we then?’ Tyler has a point to make.

‘We’re, uh, you know, consumers…’

‘Right. We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty… these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.’ Tyler is building to something here.

‘Martha Stewart!’

‘Fuck Marth Stewart! Marth’s polishing the brass on the Titanic, it’s all going down man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strine green stripe patterns. I say, never be complete. I say, stop being perfect. I say, let’s… let’s evolve. Let the chips fall where they may. But that’s just me. I could be wrong. It could be a terrible tragedy.’ 

‘Nah… It’s just stuff. It’s not a tragedy. But…’

‘Well, you did lose a lot of versatile solutions for modern living.’

‘My insurance is probably going to cover it so…’ Jack pauses. ‘…. What?’

Tyler: ‘The things you own end up owning you.’

I owned a copy of Fight Club. Well, I purchased a copy of the book by Chuck Palahnuik that the movie was based on. It was part of the curriculum for a gender studies course I took during my undergraduate in the early 2000s. I remember discussions about masculinity and identity, and consumerism and materialism, and rebellion and anarchy, and mental health and dissociation, and power and control. And then we watched the movie and discussed Brad Pitts body and homoeroticism. These topics of discussion were in vogue at the time. Films like American Beauty, Donnie Darko, American Psycho and V for Vendetta came out around the same time as Fight Club, each providing a commentary on the complex relationship between the self, the city, the product and capital, a symptom of advanced capitalism. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I wonder what my life would be like to have muscles like Brad Pitt…’ ‘I wonder what my life would be like if I was Brad Pitt, with his muscles, playing the role of Tyler Durden…’  ‘I wonder what my life would be like if I was Brad Pitt, being Tyler Durden, rebelling against capitalist society…’

As the modern world had become a postmodern world, what emerged was a culture that said access to capital was no longer predicated on labour. Or, at the very least, labour was not the only way to access capital. Rather, it was predicated on our ability to consume. Or, more precisely, it was predicated on our ability to embrace the plurality of self in the postmodern world, and consume as such. This point was especially valorised to the middle classes of the West. Moreover, postmodernism promoted a constellation of economic activities, to not only garner a wage, but open access to lines of credit and micro-potentials for wealth building activities (e.g., investing in stocks or starting small business) which enabled new and different forms of social mobility (often reflected in the characters portrayed on television shows).

However, as Ziauddin Sardar has pointed out, postmodernism transferred meaning to consumer products in a way that undermined non-western cultures, creating an illusion of plurality and a force for assimilation of the Other. In the name of plurality, postmodernis actually consumed the Other in totality, to the point of eradication. And, while it may be true that access to capital has become easier for some, many still faced significant barriers to accessing capital and building wealth. 

Yet, the attributes of postmodernism penetrated. If access to capital is easy, what is the point of working? If we know that the corporations’ we work for fundamentally don’t care about us, society, or the planet, why do we continue to work for them? If the system serves a small number at the expense of all of us, why don’t we create our own path to become one of those small number? Once you have deconstructed the postmodern onion, as Umberto Eco articulates in Foucault’s Pendulum, there is nothing at the core: all is meaningless.

The Adjustment

Today, the inherent contradictions that have always been part of the DNA of capitalism are now blatantly apparent. The plurality of voices once marginalised by modernity, co-opted by postmodernism, are assertively foregrounding themselves, demanding to be heard, demanding change, demanding equity. The environment is at its tipping point, and will probably kill us if we don’t change. And old orthodoxies die hard, as those and that which came before, claw to hold onto what was once true and real. So, capitalism is on the move again. Its looking to adjust.

As such, economists and policymakers have been exploring new ways to think about and measure different forms of capital. We now promote intangible assets like human capital, intellectual property, and cultural capital, as well as environmental assets like carbon credits and water rights. And emerging technologies like cryptocurrency and tokenization have opened up new opportunities for creating and trading different forms of capital. This is a more holistic view of the economy and seeks to take into account a wide range of factors, including social and environmental impact of capitalism, and aims to create more sustainable and equitable economic systems.

Of course, we are not talking about one economic system. The global economy is made up of many economic systems. And there is a rapid pace of emerging economic systems that reflect changes in the global economy and the nature of capital. The knowledge economy, for example, is an economic system that is based on the production and distribution of knowledge, information, and other intangible assets, and has found its growth alongside industries such as technology, finance, and professional services. In the knowledge economy, economic value is created through the application of knowledge, expertise, and creativity to solve complex problems, develop new products and services, and drive innovation. This can include activities such as research and development, software development, data analysis, and other forms of knowledge-intensive work.

The gig economy, on the other hand, is a system of work in which individuals are hired on a short-term, freelance, or contract basis to perform specific tasks or projects. In the gig economy, workers are typically paid for their output or results rather than their time and may work for multiple clients or platforms simultaneously. The gig economy is celebrated for its flexibility and adaptability and is often associated with the rise of digital platforms and the increasing use of technology to match workers with short-term job opportunities. 

This is different to the sharing economy, in which individuals and organizations share resources, such as goods, services, or space, with each other. This can include activities such as peer-to-peer sharing of transportation (e.g., ridesharing), accommodations (e.g., home-sharing), and goods (e.g., tool-sharing). The sharing economy is often enabled by digital platforms that facilitate the exchange of resources between users. 

Which hints at the platform economy, another emerging system that is enabled by digital platforms and networks. This is an economy in which digital platforms connect buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, or service providers and customers, to facilitate the exchange of goods, services, or information. The platform economy is characterized by its scalability, network effects, and data-driven decision-making. And finally, the circular economy, an economic system in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible, through strategies such as recycling, reuse, and repair. The circular economy aims to reduce waste and promote sustainability, while also creating new economic opportunities. The circular economy is often associated with industries such as manufacturing, construction, and energy, but can also be applied to other sectors such as fashion and food.

Here, we’re a long way from Marx. These emerging economies, and their supporting technologies, are often celebrated as being more decentralized, networked, and collaborative. And most significantly, proponents of a neo-capitalist agenda want us to believe, this is an adjustment that seeks to meet the cultural and social shifts of the consumer globally. The consumer, no longer alien or anxious, is the horse leading the cart of capitalist change. Advocates admit, there are a few issues that need to be ironed out: a lack of regulation, issues around job security, the erosion of worker protections, lack of transparency and privacy, monopolistic behaviour, and data ownership. And let’s not forget, the increasing concern around rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining. But – many argue - this adjustment is fertile ground for entrepreneurship, innovation, and free enterprise like we have never seen before in human history. 

I don’t mean to be glib. This is a highly nuanced conversation. And there are many, economists and otherwise, watching these adjustments and championing campaigns of caution, resistance, or revolution. They make problematic the horse and cart notion, and make explicit that the adjustments to capitalism are fundamentally market driven, and in fact further exacerbate the failures of system as a whole. But those are matters for another time. What is interesting to me is the impulse to (re)define and/or (re)invent economies within a certain set of pre-existing principles, values, and behaviours. What is interesting to me is the way that desire has achieved a macro presence, where things like emerging economic systems, entrepreneurship and innovation are fetishised in the same way consumer products are. What is interesting to me is the way in which we seem to be deconstructing the onion of capitalism until there is nothing at the core: it is valueless. 

What I am interested in exploring is this idea of value adjustment and its relationship to us, the worker, the consumer, the person. 

The Abstract

I found myself pondering this very matter over the weekend. At seven my eldest son has started to develop his own taste in music. He knows what he likes and asks me to play him the songs he wants to hear. We stream our music through Spotify at the moment, and Cassidy watches me select the songs closely. 

‘Dad, sometimes the name of the song is the same name as the album.’ He prides himself on his ability to make keen observations.

‘That’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, the band usually picks the name of the album. Maybe they felt that that particular song was a special one on that album, so they named the whole album after that song.’

‘Wait – what’s an album again?’ He scrunches up his nose trying to remember if we have discussed this before. Cassidy is a child of the streaming generation. 

‘Well,’ I begin to explain, ‘a musician or a band will often record a series of songs and release them to the public all at once. That’s called an album.’

‘What’s release mean?’

‘Sell.’

‘Oh. So, you brought that whole album from a shop?’

‘Oh. Well. No. Those albums are all on Spotify.’

‘So, Spotify own all the albums?’ 

‘No. Not exactly.’

‘So, Spotify just gives us the albums for free?’

‘No. We pay Spotify.’

‘We pay Spotify for something that they don’t own, and that we don’t own after we pay for it either?’

‘Um. Yes.’

‘That sounds really dumb Dad.’

There is nothing like a conversation with your seven-year-old to remind you of your place in the world. 

He is right though. In many ways – I am dumb. I am paying monthly instalments for access to a library that I do not own, and have no control over (Neil Young recently removed all his work from Spotify, much to my regret). This is a library that is owned by a large corporation, scantly regulated by any real governing body, who fundamentally wields profound influence over both the music industry and me with my online playlist. And whilst I convince myself that the ability to access any music I want at any time, I know this subscription is just another way I am giving away data about myself; such is the pervasive nature of today’s omnipresent cyberspace. 

In fact, cyberspace is my city arcade, my department store, my infomercial. My mobile phone is the glass windowpane of a Parisian shop front, and I am your flâneur for the now. I swipe the glass of the mobile phone screen, moving through the virtual realm in a manner that is unique only to me, browsing products, services, content, and media. This is a far more intimate consumer experience than anything offered before in history; it gives me the undeniable sense (or illusion) that I am in full control of my own consumer experience. But it is not really me that is navigating through cyberspace, it is my online profile, data that is representative of me in the virtual realm. In this way I am an abstraction of a flâneur. I am engaged with Spotify, with the music streaming platform, but I am disengaged from it too. I am wise to the contradictions of my engagement in this world, but I do it anyway; I know it opens an astonishing world of music for me, but simultaneously nails me down to an algorithm and a payment plan. It exists within my phone, but I don’t own it. Let’s follow this idea deeper.

Vilém Flusser, a media theorist, considered this idea of abstraction, the implications of which we are only beginning to comprehend. Flusser's concept of the Ladder of Abstraction argued that in our quest to understand the world, we have created a distance between ourselves and reality; we increasingly interpret reality through technical images. These images do not require human intervention because they are produced by devices that are automated, hermetic, and programmed. This means they are the highest degree of abstraction from the molecular level of matter. Flusser believed that our immersion in the universe of technical images has fundamentally altered our experiences, perceptions, values, and behaviors, thus transforming our way of being in the world.

According to William Gibson, space can now be viewed as an infinite collection of data abstractions stored on every computer in the human system, connected by complex networks that operate outside the constraints of linear time. This hyper-connectivity of networked spaces is altering our experience of time and the human condition itself, as our sense of self becomes increasingly abstracted across these spaces. Put another way, our online and offline lives are becoming increasingly intertwined. As we spend more time online, we are constantly creating and consuming data, which in turn creates new possibilities for how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. At the same time, the ways in which our data is being collected, analysed, and used by companies and governments erodes privacy, autonomy, and control over our own lives.

For example, I am sure my phone is spying on me. Well, maybe not spying on me in the traditional sense of spying, but listening to me, and memorising what I say, and watching what I do online, and memorising, and in turn providing me with information it thinks I may need when it thinks I need it. I understand how algorithms work: they are automated decision-making systems used by social media platforms to tailor content and advertising to users based on their data, which can create filter bubbles and reinforce existing biases. Moreover, I know companies are now using AI-powered algorithms to generate ad copy and even design advertising graphics. Like Google's AutoML system, which has been used to design display ads (which, by the way have repeatedly outperformed human-created ads in user engagement tests). Additionally, I am aware that Facebook has created a tool called ‘Dynamo’ that uses machine learning to optimize ad campaign budgets and placements for better performance. 

So, my abstraction is the automated process of collecting and analysing large amounts of my data to create simplified models or representations of my behaviour and preferences. This process of abstraction allows the platform to provide content and advertising that is more likely to be relevant and engaging to me. This is where I am presented with social media influencers, those social media users who have large followings and promote products or services for payment or benefits, often without disclosing their relationship with the brand. This creates a false sense of endorsement for the product, but I know that, and keep swiping. Or not. Sometimes I pause and purchase. It just depends. 

Abstraction also exists through native advertising and product placement; content that is made to look like regular editorial content, so it is more difficult for me to identify as inauthentic. This is a sophisticated form of product placement and is often subtly integrated into the storyline or background. These tactics rely on the abstraction of advertising content, making it even more difficult for me to distinguish between advertising and editorial content. So here we have abstraction squared, an abstraction of advertising content presented to an abstraction of me, the cyber-flaneur. 

You may have heard of astroturfing. This is another form of abstraction. Astroturfing creates fake grassroots campaigns or social media accounts to promote a product or service or influence public opinion. This tactic relies on the abstraction of the true identity of the individuals or organizations behind the campaigns, as they present themselves as genuine grassroots movements or individuals when in fact they are being paid or sponsored by a particular company or interest group. Considering what we have learned so far, perhaps we can call this abstraction cubed? 

The worker is abstracted, as technology becomes integral to our daily routines. Whether it's time and task tracking software, customer support chatbots, or work pattern analysing algorithms, our interactions with technology are being closely monitored and analysed to enhance productivity and efficiency. Within workplaces, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking can now be measured and reported on. Moreover, the same technologies are used to monitor and analyse worker behaviour. Beyond Marx’s alienation, the worker had become a set of data points, where their skills and expertise are measured and commodified through the prism of technological instruments. This is a form of capital that is highly ephemeral, where the workers are, it would appear, estranged from them self and their labour, and are instead seen as a prosthetic to the economy. Our abstraction sees us become data. Our value is our data. Or, more precisely, value is this world is our data. 

The Arrival

Our old friend Karl Marx once said that the ‘human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual...but the ensemble of the social relations.’ What he is suggesting is that we are not isolated individuals, but rather are defined by our relationships with others in society. In other words, our identities and actions are shaped by the social and economic systems we inhabit. This is a central tenet of Marx's theory which, as we all know, posits that human history is driven by the struggle between different classes in society over control of the means of production. Marx believed that capitalism was a fundamentally exploitative system that would eventually collapse due to its own internal contradictions, leading to the emergence of a more equitable and just society.

Today, our relationship with others in society is mediated through technology. This leads to our abstraction and eventual transformation into data. As we engage with technology, our digital footprints are created and collected, subsequently utilized to make decisions regarding our experiences with technology, such as personalized recommendations and targeted advertising. As we continue to rely on technology to mediate our interactions with the world, the significance of our digital selves is surpassing that of our physical selves in certain domains. This has profound implications for our understanding of identity and the way in which we relate to one another and our environment. Beyond alienation and anxiety, abstraction is capitalist desire manifest. And whilst abstraction obliterates the self in a way that creates economic value where value did not exist before, it is our unfettered willingness, against all wisdom, to yield to this desire that underscores the profound contradiction that continues to propel capitalism. As much as things change, we arrive back at where we started.

I’m with my parking inspector, still making sense of his two for the price of one parking space argument. We’re at an impasse. And I decide to concede and pay for the park. 

I get to the café, just in time for my meeting. But after five minutes the person I’m meeting hasn’t arrived. 

I send him a text, ‘Hi, I’m sitting down that back of the café. Let me know what coffee you would like me to order you.’

The reply is immediate, ‘Oh! I am so sorry - I thought we were meeting online.’