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Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism
In this highly readable and thought-provoking work, Nick Dyer-Witheford assesses the relevance of Marxism in our time and demonstrates how the information age, far from transcending the historic conflict between capital and its laboring subjects, constitutes the latest battleground in their encounter.
Dyer-Witheford maps the dynamics of modern capitalism, showing how capital depends for its operations not just on exploitation in the immediate workplace, but on the continuous integration of a whole series of social sites and activities, from public health and maternity to natural resource allocation and the geographical reorganization of labor power. He also shows how these sites and activities may become focal points of subversion and insurgency, as new means of communication vital for the smooth flow of capital also permit otherwise isolated and dispersed points of resistance to connect and combine with one another.
Cutting through the smokescreen of high-tech propaganda, Dyer-Witheford predicts the advent of a reinvented, "autonomist" Marxism that will rediscover the possibility of a collective, communist transformation of society. Refuting the utopian promises of the information revolution, he discloses the real potentialities for a new social order in the form of a twenty-first-century communism based on the common sharing of wealth.
Dyer-Witheford maps the dynamics of modern capitalism, showing how capital depends for its operations not just on exploitation in the immediate workplace, but on the continuous integration of a whole series of social sites and activities, from public health and maternity to natural resource allocation and the geographical reorganization of labor power. He also shows how these sites and activities may become focal points of subversion and insurgency, as new means of communication vital for the smooth flow of capital also permit otherwise isolated and dispersed points of resistance to connect and combine with one another.
Cutting through the smokescreen of high-tech propaganda, Dyer-Witheford predicts the advent of a reinvented, "autonomist" Marxism that will rediscover the possibility of a collective, communist transformation of society. Refuting the utopian promises of the information revolution, he discloses the real potentialities for a new social order in the form of a twenty-first-century communism based on the common sharing of wealth.
360 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 5, 2020
If I'd read this book as a series of excerpts I think I'd give it a 4 or higher. The ideas here are great, even if you don't agree with all of them. I think the author brings a lot of clarity to a central problem of history: the relationship between technology, society, and struggle. You'll get a tour of prior though on the subject from techno-optimists and cynics both on the political left and right and how those group's viewpoints transformed from the end of WW2 to the modern day (the 90s).
He has two central arguments:
1. That technology is shaped not just by the predominant mode of production (capitalism) but the _struggles_ endemic to that mode of production (the labour movement, feminism, etc.) That both are encoded in the structure of our advancements and also that these advancements, while designed to maintain this order, also offer opportunities for its undoing
2. That modern, "information-era" has not destroyed the struggle against it OR secured itself from any attempt at attack but has actually proliferated the struggle outside the conventional workplace and into every facet of society, opening up the possibility for a socialist coalition from all sectors (assuming such organizing can ever be done).
By proving out these two points, he manages to maintain the Marxist argument that technology is shaped by the mode of production while not succumbing to the cynicism or primitivism that sometimes plagues left thought. On all that, I think this book is great.
My main critique is that the middle is kind of a slog and is just basically making these two points over and over and over again. I think part of it is that this book was written at the 90s and what was once perhaps prescient is now just the world we live in. Not the author's fault, but I kind of felt like all the good content was at the beginning and end of this book.
He has two central arguments:
1. That technology is shaped not just by the predominant mode of production (capitalism) but the _struggles_ endemic to that mode of production (the labour movement, feminism, etc.) That both are encoded in the structure of our advancements and also that these advancements, while designed to maintain this order, also offer opportunities for its undoing
2. That modern, "information-era" has not destroyed the struggle against it OR secured itself from any attempt at attack but has actually proliferated the struggle outside the conventional workplace and into every facet of society, opening up the possibility for a socialist coalition from all sectors (assuming such organizing can ever be done).
By proving out these two points, he manages to maintain the Marxist argument that technology is shaped by the mode of production while not succumbing to the cynicism or primitivism that sometimes plagues left thought. On all that, I think this book is great.
My main critique is that the middle is kind of a slog and is just basically making these two points over and over and over again. I think part of it is that this book was written at the 90s and what was once perhaps prescient is now just the world we live in. Not the author's fault, but I kind of felt like all the good content was at the beginning and end of this book.
September 30, 2022
While it is a good book that elucidates how Marx is relevant through the analysis of Internet, computers, telecommunications, automatization and genetics, Dyer is profoundly anti-leninist: his politicals proposals are (therefore) a bad joke.
Also his critique of neoliberalism is so bad he doesn't even considers postmodern groups as an effect of the accelerated economic phenomena that are EXCLUSIVE to neoliberal times.
Read this if you have doubts about how marxism is related with the cyber communication phenomena, but tread with extreme political caution.
Also his critique of neoliberalism is so bad he doesn't even considers postmodern groups as an effect of the accelerated economic phenomena that are EXCLUSIVE to neoliberal times.
Read this if you have doubts about how marxism is related with the cyber communication phenomena, but tread with extreme political caution.
December 17, 2013
A quasi-survey of contemporary Marxist dialogues and trajectories, particularly as they relate to the impact of technology upon our everyday lives and upon the relations between labor and capital. The author does a more balanced job than most of presenting the benefits and drawbacks of technology, capitalism, and a new marxism as they relate to quality of life, organizing potential, and the future. Since this has been published, we are already seeing signs of countries beginning the conversation about things like guaranteed annual incomes for citizens and the basic delinking of money and labor. Regardless of your views on capitalism or marxism, there is going to come a point when so much work has been automated or made highly efficient that humans have no labor to sell (or there simply aren't enough jobs for the number of people). The system will be forced to change.
November 5, 2025
Although this book is dated, it really did lay out a foundational analysis of the direction of neo-liberal capitalism and the mutations of struggles and class compositions that would lead directly into the current phase of capitalism. Revisiting it feels like a blast from the past, the days in which struggles in the imperialist core were informed by the anti-globalization movement and the memory of how this book actually grasped the processes of that period of capitalism and the class struggles behind the inchoate anarchistic conceptions.
To be clear, and as should be obvious from what I've written and published, I disagreed with Dyer-Witheford's anti-Leninist Marxism. I think that now it is clear that, if we are Marxists at this conjuncture, some notion of the party form and the inheritance from the Russian and Chinese Revolutions is necessary. Indeed, I wrote about this in my first book. But, despite this disagreement, I have a lot of respect for this book because it was my "gateway drug" to Marxism. Before I read it, I was an anarchist completely convinced there was nothing worthwhile to be gleaned from the Marxist experience. This book convinced me otherwise, resonated with my experiences as an anti-globalization activist in the late 90s, and ended up propelling me towards Maoism against its own theoretical commitments. That is, since it laid out the importance of Marxist analysis––and demonstrated the strength of this analysis––it was only a matter of time that I would take that ruthless criticism to heart and end up in a place beyond the boundaries it drew, undermined by the historical materialist logic it encouraged. And actually Dyer-Witheford, now, is not entirely opposed to the Leninist and Maoist style of party organizing he was reacting against in this book.
To lay out all my cards, here, Dyer-Witheford was my wife's favourite professor in her undergrad. She and her best friend at the time even took him to an International Noise Conspiracy concert when they were touring for that album that named him and his book in their liner notes. This is why I read his book in the first place, while I was pursuing my MA, because I'd met him and knew how he impacted the woman who would become my wife. I even remember how, despite being one of of the big "autonomist Marxists" in the late 90s who (along with Harry Cleaver) had encouraged people to read Negri, Tronti, and other "operaismo" Italians, he was really annoyed by the publication of Hart and Negri's Empire.
To be honest, the reason I'm revisiting this book is because I was recently an external examiner for a doctoral candidate and Nick was on the same committee. And years earlier he showed up at my book launch for Continuity and Rupture in his city. In both situations he functioned as a completely curious intellectual committed to the overthrowing of capitalism. Despite what he wrote about the Leninist trajectory in Cyber-Marx, at my book launch he interacted as a fellow traveller, pretty much into whatever fucks up international capitalism is great, and really wanted to know more about Maoism. And at the doctoral defense he actually spoke about the importance of the notion of the vanguard party before I did, due to his long friendship with Jodi Dean, despite everything he said about the party form in this book. When we talked at the end of this defense, I was struck again by the fact that Nick is an activist-scholar who, at the end of the day, is more interested in how to end capitalism than his own theoretical commitments.
Four stars because this book brought me to Marxism. One star missing because it was caught in the anti-Leninist ethos of the anti-globalization period. But only one star because Nick is still intellectually curious and supportive of the very party politics his younger self seemed to dispense with when he wrote this book.
To be clear, and as should be obvious from what I've written and published, I disagreed with Dyer-Witheford's anti-Leninist Marxism. I think that now it is clear that, if we are Marxists at this conjuncture, some notion of the party form and the inheritance from the Russian and Chinese Revolutions is necessary. Indeed, I wrote about this in my first book. But, despite this disagreement, I have a lot of respect for this book because it was my "gateway drug" to Marxism. Before I read it, I was an anarchist completely convinced there was nothing worthwhile to be gleaned from the Marxist experience. This book convinced me otherwise, resonated with my experiences as an anti-globalization activist in the late 90s, and ended up propelling me towards Maoism against its own theoretical commitments. That is, since it laid out the importance of Marxist analysis––and demonstrated the strength of this analysis––it was only a matter of time that I would take that ruthless criticism to heart and end up in a place beyond the boundaries it drew, undermined by the historical materialist logic it encouraged. And actually Dyer-Witheford, now, is not entirely opposed to the Leninist and Maoist style of party organizing he was reacting against in this book.
To lay out all my cards, here, Dyer-Witheford was my wife's favourite professor in her undergrad. She and her best friend at the time even took him to an International Noise Conspiracy concert when they were touring for that album that named him and his book in their liner notes. This is why I read his book in the first place, while I was pursuing my MA, because I'd met him and knew how he impacted the woman who would become my wife. I even remember how, despite being one of of the big "autonomist Marxists" in the late 90s who (along with Harry Cleaver) had encouraged people to read Negri, Tronti, and other "operaismo" Italians, he was really annoyed by the publication of Hart and Negri's Empire.
To be honest, the reason I'm revisiting this book is because I was recently an external examiner for a doctoral candidate and Nick was on the same committee. And years earlier he showed up at my book launch for Continuity and Rupture in his city. In both situations he functioned as a completely curious intellectual committed to the overthrowing of capitalism. Despite what he wrote about the Leninist trajectory in Cyber-Marx, at my book launch he interacted as a fellow traveller, pretty much into whatever fucks up international capitalism is great, and really wanted to know more about Maoism. And at the doctoral defense he actually spoke about the importance of the notion of the vanguard party before I did, due to his long friendship with Jodi Dean, despite everything he said about the party form in this book. When we talked at the end of this defense, I was struck again by the fact that Nick is an activist-scholar who, at the end of the day, is more interested in how to end capitalism than his own theoretical commitments.
Four stars because this book brought me to Marxism. One star missing because it was caught in the anti-Leninist ethos of the anti-globalization period. But only one star because Nick is still intellectually curious and supportive of the very party politics his younger self seemed to dispense with when he wrote this book.
October 12, 2023
A great, dense read with valuable introductions to a range of groups involved in struggles with high technology capitalism. A little dated in 2023, the advent of the social media age changed quite a lot that this book is obviously unable to deal with.
Recommended.
Recommended.
July 22, 2022
Only problem is that it was written pre-current social media powered internet. Analysis is a touch dated because of that.
February 16, 2017
A well written and enjoyable overview of contemporary Marxism, focusing on the currents of the Autonomist tradition born out of the collapse of Fordism and social unrest of the postwar period. Some of the specific examples are a little dated- not surprising considering the book was written before "web 2.0" or any of todays new social media platforms. But most of the analysis is still surprisingly relevant...we've just gone a little further down the paths described. Especially striking to me was the section discussing Deleuze and Guattari's recognition of the possibilities of a "postmodern fascism". That is, the liberatory potentials of our hyper-networked social and economic worlds that Capital has unwittingly produced can also be sucked into a black hole of nationalism, racism, xenophobia, etc... It seems we are undergoing this type of fascist reterritorialization at the moment...
May 12, 2014
This book is an excellent account of technology and Marxism and the rise of new post-industrial and information age perspectives. This is a fascinating topic, and Dyer-Witheford does a very good job in clearly introducing the basics of differing theories such as Bell's post-industrial society and Toffler's ideas. He also introduces the varying interpretations of Marxist thought on this perspective with the clear differences between a more scientific socialist approach and the 'technology as totalitarian' Marcuse style approach, both of which derive from Marxism. Dyer-Witheford criticised both approaches; instead he argues for an approach heavily based on the ideas of the Italian autonomist thinker Negri in particular, and argues for technology as a site of struggle between labour and capital and how labour can take technology back from capital. Much of the book is concerned with this issue, though he also addresses postmodernism and the links between postmodernism and the information society and its eternal rivalry with Marxism.
This book is definitely worth reading for anyone who has an interest in the links between technology and politics and/or Marxism.
This book is definitely worth reading for anyone who has an interest in the links between technology and politics and/or Marxism.
May 11, 2013
Great analysis of autonomous Marxism and applying it to digital technology. If one is to start reading a background on Italian Marxist thought, this is where you should start.
July 22, 2013
What a ride! I appreciate and thank Mr. Nick for countless repetitions otherwise I wouldn't grasp these fascinating deliberations. Shame there was more references than the text but hey...
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April 1, 2009Reviewed here.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews