The Role of Technology in Political Economy: Part 1
by
Yochai Benkler
/ July 25, 2018
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terms
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I see technology as imposing real constraints, and providing meaningful affordances that are sufficiently significant, at least in the short to mid-term, to be a substantial locus of power over the practice of social relations. And yet, technology is neither exogenous nor deterministic, in that it evolves in response to the interaction between the institutional ecosystem and the ideological zeitgeist of a society, such that different societies at the same technological frontier can and do experience significantly different economic and political arrangements. In the short to mid-term, technology acts as a distinct dimension of power enabling some actors to extract more or less than their fair share of economic life; in the long term, technology is a site of struggle, whose shape and pattern are a function of power deployed over the institutional and ideological framework within which we live our lives. The stakes are significant. A left that ignores the implications of technology as a site of meaningful struggle risks falling into a nostalgia for the institutions of yesteryear. But a left that continues to disdain the state and formal institutions, and to imagine that we can build purely technological solutions to inequality risks abandoning the field to the Silicon Valley techno-utopian babble that has legitimated the extractive practices of oligarchy’s most recent heroes.
I see technology as imposing real constraints, and providing meaningful affordances that are sufficiently significant, at least in the short to mid-term, to be a substantial locus of power over the practice of social relations. And yet, technology is neither exogenous nor deterministic, in that it evolves in response to the interaction between the institutional ecosystem and the ideological zeitgeist of a society, such that different societies at the same technological frontier can and do experience significantly different economic and political arrangements. In the short to mid-term, technology acts as a distinct dimension of power enabling some actors to extract more or less than their fair share of economic life; in the long term, technology is a site of struggle, whose shape and pattern are a function of power deployed over the institutional and ideological framework within which we live our lives. The stakes are significant. A left that ignores the implications of technology as a site of meaningful struggle risks falling into a nostalgia for the institutions of yesteryear. But a left that continues to disdain the state and formal institutions, and to imagine that we can build purely technological solutions to inequality risks abandoning the field to the Silicon Valley techno-utopian babble that has legitimated the extractive practices of oligarchy’s most recent heroes.
The most influential economic explanations of rising economic inequality in the past thirty years give a central role to technology, and specifically to the role of skills-biased technical change (SBTC) and the economics of superstars in winner-take-all markets. Both have functioned to naturalize and legitimate emerging patterns of inequality, and to limit the bounds of institutional discussion about the range of feasible interventions that would alleviate inequality while preserving the innovation dynamic on which contemporary rise in standards of living depends. [...]
really digging that he goes into the way these narratives are entwined with real-world effects
The most influential economic explanations of rising economic inequality in the past thirty years give a central role to technology, and specifically to the role of skills-biased technical change (SBTC) and the economics of superstars in winner-take-all markets. Both have functioned to naturalize and legitimate emerging patterns of inequality, and to limit the bounds of institutional discussion about the range of feasible interventions that would alleviate inequality while preserving the innovation dynamic on which contemporary rise in standards of living depends. [...]
really digging that he goes into the way these narratives are entwined with real-world effects
As David, Amy, and Jed’s manifesto at the launch of this blog captured, the theoretical premise of political economy is that “politics and the economy cannot be separated. Politics both creates and shapes the economy. In turn, politics is profoundly shaped by economic relations and economic power. Attempts to separate the economy from politics make justice harder to pursue in both domains.” The role of a political economy of technology is similarly to develop an institutional-political understanding of technology, and to recognize that arguments that treat technology as exogenous and mediated through pre-political and roughly-efficient markets are descriptively mistaken and normatively stultifying.
As David, Amy, and Jed’s manifesto at the launch of this blog captured, the theoretical premise of political economy is that “politics and the economy cannot be separated. Politics both creates and shapes the economy. In turn, politics is profoundly shaped by economic relations and economic power. Attempts to separate the economy from politics make justice harder to pursue in both domains.” The role of a political economy of technology is similarly to develop an institutional-political understanding of technology, and to recognize that arguments that treat technology as exogenous and mediated through pre-political and roughly-efficient markets are descriptively mistaken and normatively stultifying.