“The Internet is an assembly line, and it has taken our freedom away”

What is the role of science and technology in the modern evolution of capitalism? And is the Internet still a means of communication, or is it increasingly a means of connecting and integrating in the new organisation of work? The person asking these question is Lelio Demichelis, the lecturer in Economic Sociology at Insubria University. The answers may be found in the book “La religione tecno-capitalista. Suddividere, connettere e competere” (The techno-capitalist religion. Subdividing, connecting and competing), recently published by Mimesis, in the Eterotropie series.

In this book on contemporary capitalism, Prof Demichelis (who has studied the transformation of capitalism in the last thirty years and the Internet) analyses the conflicting relationship between capitalism, technology and democracy. Starting with Walter Benjamin, who, in 1921, already defined capitalism as a religion, he develops and extends the model to what he calls the techno-capitalist religion.

Professor Demichelis, let’s start from the title “The techno-capitalist religion. Subdividing, connecting and competing”; what kind of society are we talking about? The current, the future, the possible, the avant-garde or the standard?

It is the world of today, there’s nothing about the future, we are increasingly inside it, but, precisely because we are inside it, we’re struggling to see it as a whole and its operating mechanisms. But I should explain something, to avoid misunderstandings. What do we mean by ”religion”? The belief in a transcendental God, of course. But the concept of religion was also used throughout the twentieth century to define such phenomena as the big totalitarian and big political ideologies of the day. These were defined as “secular religions”, that is, they promised to create a new man and an entirely new society, now and here on earth, not in a some faraway place. According to the historian Emilio Gentile, religious characteristics could be found in Fascism, and, according to George Mosse, also in Nazism. And in communism, of course, according to the French liberal sociologist Raymond Aron. In 1921, the philosopher Walter Benjamin already wrote about capitalism as a religion. And Max Weber spoke about a relationship between Protestant ethics and the spirit of the capitalism. The religious ancestors of modern civil power with Christianity were finally analysed, more recently, by Michel Foucault. And the political philosopher, Carl Schmitt, a conservative, claimed that all of the modern political forms were derivations of religious theology, albeit secularised.

Thus, the concept of “secular religion” is an old one. But today, it can also be compared with technology, and technology exists only if it is capitalist, therefore: ”techno-capitalist religion”. And technology intended not as a single machine but as an apparatus of machines, such as the Internet, where each personal computer and each individual mobile apparatus exists only if it is connected to the Internet. Thus, the ”techno-capitalist religion” is a new, no longer political, but economic and technical, secular religion.

And what would its religious characteristics be?
Like the policies of the 20th century, but different from those, this, too, creates its own gods (finance, the markets, The Internet), temples and holy places (the stock exchanges, the market, the Internet itself, Apple stores, Silicon Valley), icons and saints (Steve Jobs, the smartphone), appropriate education (having to be connected, having to be flexible and fast, drawing attention to yourself on the Internet, social networks, which are less and less social, and more and more business-oriented, and, the letter that Draghi and Trichet wrote in 2011 to the Italian government); it produces a sense of guilt (debts paid off through the austerity and mass impoverishment of the last few years, in order to save banks that are too big to fail), its own theology (believing that the market is the one and only possible reality; that everything has to be market; even schools, culture, museums, and family, since, all too often, we are asked to run the family like a company; and the Internet, the only means to live and exist). But it is a religion that no longer connects people with God, or the church, but with the market, and the Internet; they are all connected, and always in competition with everyone. Of course, this concept has nothing against the Internet, there is no “technophobia”, but neither is there an immature “techno-enthusiasm”, but a rightful critical thought (this is why we need sociologists). The truth is that the market and the Internet ceased long ago to be simple instruments, and became something we don’t control any more. And to think that the Internet is democratic and free is nonsense; the Internet was free, at the beginning, but, today, it is, above all, a huge oligopoly. In the past, it genuinely was a means of communication and sharing; but today, it’s an instrument for connecting and controlling (Big Data, and not only).

Competing and connecting seem to be the only two paradigms; you talk about “governing these processes, which, by nature, are automatic, not neutral, and which have escaped human and democratic control”. How can we make them “secular” again?
Connecting and competing: because working online has always been based on division and on reassembling the divided work. Foucault talked of subdivision and personalisation, and then about totalisation and reassembly. According to Adam Smith and his pin factory, this is how capitalism works; it’s the logic of every technical and industrial structure. First we subdivide, in order to increase productivity and the production speed, then we reassemble the whole. And we always have to do this better and faster (competition will not wait).

This is why we need the Internet. We should acknowledge that the Internet (the work that passes via the Internet) is similar to the old assembly line. The new, great transformation has been a shift from the Fordism of, and in the factories (where everything had to be concentrated, albeit subdivided), to the personalized Fordism of today (VAT registration, freelance work, the Uber model, certain forms of the sharing economy, the makers, etc., where everything is even more subdivided and personalised, but increasingly integrated and connected via the Internet). Work appears to be creative, free and independent, but, in fact, it is increasingly the same old assembly line, only in a different way. What is more, the Internet, which, 20 years ago, promised us that we would work less and struggle less, in fact, has increased the pace at which we work; there is no more distinction between living time and working time, and the exploitation of people has increased.

We think we have a job that is finally all ours (they tell us we must be entrepreneurs of ourselves), but, maybe, we have become as alienated as in Marx’s day. We no longer control the market and the Internet; in fact, the markets work automatically (according to Draghi), and the growth of the Internet is infinite and unlimited. We have two self-regenerating powers; they produce the order which, in turn, regenerates them endlessly; they are increasingly strong and powerful for the very fact that we don’t control them. However, liberal democracy is only liberal if there is a division of powers (legislative, executive and judicial), and there is mutual control and balancing.

But today, who is it who controls and balances the power of the markets and the power of the Internet, which have increased excessively?
Nobody. If anything, people do what the markets demand, indiscriminately, as with the European policies of austerity. And so, we must democratise the Internet and the markets, by limiting their power. There is democracy when the people establish the objectives and prepare the means to achieve them.  Today, it is the markets and technology that establish society’s objectives. We experience unceasing technological and market innovation, but we are unable to innovate in the political and social sense. Democracy has got stuck, sovereignty is no long in the hands of the people, but something that the people do not control.

If technology and capitalism are a religion, then we need to find, once more, a sense of secularism with respect to this “secular religion”, preventing society from turning into a market and a network. Like science and technology, the “net” changes all relationships, even the social ones, but what are the dangers?

The danger is that of a society modelled on the needs of the market and technology, and not on those of people and of the environment. The danger is that of confusing the market for society; the market for democracy, the Internet for freedom and democracy. But, in fact,  they are different things, often (increasingly often) opposites that clash.

Today, we are increasingly connected, but increasingly alone; increasingly competitive, but less and less sociable and supportive. We have forgotten critical thinking and the intellectual power of doubting, putting our faith in the truth of the market and of the Internet. We no longer consider work to be a right, we have turned it into an item of goods; we have stopped planning our futures, handing this task over to the markets and technology (which are indifferent to the greenhouse effect and climate change). We think less and analyse less, despite a conviction that we live in a society of knowledge.

In democracy, if power (sovereignty) belongs to the people, we must take back the power to decide and to plan, even if the markets and technology do not agree. This is the sense of the book.