ImperialismCapitalismTechnologism

My thread

"Imperialism" and "capitalism" have historically gone together. Much of the economic success of European and US "capitalism" rests on huge base of imperial control and exploitation of other countries' resources.

Successful capitalism MIGHT exist without imperialism, but we don't have a lot of good historical examples. (Except for tiny countries that are little more than trading ports. And we can't all live by trade, someone has to actually grow and make stuff.)

Capitalism is closely tied to the development of technology. Though there can be some discussion of the direction of causality.

The NickLand accelerationism story says that "capitalism" and "artificial intelligence" are the same thing. In effect, both are about increasing levels of "abstraction" / "virtualization" / "commodification" etc. Making the physical stuff of the world more fluid and idea based. (Just reading and comparing https://t.co/Y84nDmRNb7 which is quite interesting)

If you allow the term "artificial intelligence" to stretch to include all "information technologies" or any kind of encapsulating human know-how within the workings of a machine, then this equality becomes stronger.

It's a kind of "will to abstraction" throughout history.

But now thinking about TheCollapseOfTheEmpire. The fantasy of capitalism is we replace all the messy physicality with abstract symbol manipulation. For an easy / intellectually stimulating lifestyle.

But that necessity of physicality, of someone actually growing and making stuff, hasn't really gone away. What we've done is brushed it under the carpet, hidden it away behind abstractions. In markets and in databases.

(This, AFAIK is Marx's notion of "alienation")

We like to think of the symbols. But somewhere "else", out in the colonies, on the plantations, in forgotten and ignored places full of forgotten and oppressed people, all that abstract symbol manipulation has to be instantiated in physical stuff and physical labour.

As cheaply as possible.

So this is how "imperialism", "capitalism" and "information technology" are tied together, aspects of the same system. However big and beautiful and complex we build the edifice of symbols and abstractions, it still has to rest on someone's labour.