Apolitical Blog

Today, unbounded technological freedom and communication on the web are switching into a form of total control and surveillance. For Byung-Chul Han, social media resembles a digital panopticon keeping watch over the social realm and exploiting us indefinitely. In contrast to Betham’s panopticon, today’s occupants actively communicate with each other while willingly exposing themselves. The “freedom” digital control society celebrates so much is only able to remain existent because of the occupants voluntary self-illumination and exposure. From there, we can see that data is not surrendered, rather offered out of an inner need. Now then, transparency is deemed by all to be a heil of freedom! The freedom to know everything about someone! Because now, under the immaterial mode of production contemporary capitalism rests itself upon, more information and more communication mean more productivity and growth. [ 12:46 PM ] Information then represents a specific economically positive value...

For Marx and Engles, commodity fetishism was crucial for a theory of ideology in a capitalist society. For them, ideology was based upon a distinction between the nature of social reality and the widely experienced distortion of said reality by subjects. Their concern was with the social origins of untruths rather than of truths, the origins of the structures which hide the insights of material reality and the inherently social characteristic of said reality. Commodity fetishism for Marx was the commodity form’s ability to distract the social relations and material labor that went into the commodity, from the minds of the consumers. When subjects consumed commodities, there was a social phenomena he saw occurring where there was a collective forgetting, a collective amnesia you could say, of the labor that went into the commodity, and the social relations that allowed the commodity to get to them.  With this, we can see that Marx’s theory of ideological distortion through commodity...

    Before I begin, I think it is necessary to critique the theory of atomized individualism. The philosophy of atomized individualism believes that “...society is made up of a collection of self-interested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms." That last part, the underlying belief that all individuals are acting as completely separate atoms, and just form a collective of individuals called “society” is a belief that doesn’t hold up if we truly dive in and critique it. Before I bring forward a thought experiment, let's first break down “individuality.” At its core, individuality supposes some human difference, a uniqueness. Alright, now let’s dive in with a thought experiment. Think about a human being inside of a vacuum for me. Inside of this hypothetical vacuum, would a human be able to conceptualize their individuality? Would they be able to conceptualize a concept of uniqueness? How about the very concepts that make up our understandin...

Before the diagnosis starts, I want to make sure all readers understand some terms I will use throughout the piece.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fordism vs. Post-Fordism      Throughout this piece I will mention the terms “Fordist” and “post-Fordist” as pre-labels to capitalism. Before the paper continues, I want to explain what these terms necessarily mean, and the difference between the two ways of capitalist production. Fordist capitalism is characterized by classic industrial work. Filled with assembly lines, the production of material goods, and clear work-boss factory hierarchy, Fordist-capitalism is what the average young teenager still thinks of when they hear “work.” A spot on the production line, doing your specific boring job, and being at the will of your factory boss.  According to Marxist economist Christian Marazzi, the switch from Fordism to post-Fordism happened on a very specif...