Omnivorousness, or, Capitalism 2.0

Abstract

This article focuses on answering the question of whether a new capitalist society is emerging before our eyes, one whose outlines we can already see, though we cannot fully describe it. What kind of society accompanies the global economic system, conventionally referred to here as capitalism 2.0? The article assumes that, just as the industrial revolution was decisive for capitalism 1.0, the digital revolution – still ongoing – is crucial for capitalism 2.0. The answer to the question of the new capitalist society assumes a progressive process of autonomization of capitalism as a technological and economic system, in the sense of diminishing control over it, taking into account the existing patterns of collective action of social actors. In the phase of industrial capitalism, these were primarily social movements and trade unions, whose effectiveness is now visibly declining in societies of the global North.
The article draws on three concepts that differ significantly but seem to share a common view of capitalism as an autonomous economic system. Niklas Luhmann draws on his concept of self-direction, autopoiesis: capitalism reproduces itself through its own actions, indifferent to human intentions and actions, which explains capitalism’s ability to evolve independently of political or social control. Alain Touraine employs the concept of financial capitalism and emphasizes the silence of social actors in the face of global economic crises. Much suggests that the social movements he examines have failed to influence the logic of the system in the 21st century, which – as Luhmann would say – operates “by its own codes.” Shoshana Zuboff, in turn, demonstrates the extent of the instrumental power of impersonal corporations, which gradually exclude individual and collective agency, not through ideology or repression, as in totalitarian political systems, but through anticipatory behavioral modification. The article questions the thesis that collective mobilizations of an emancipatory nature, developed during capitalism 1.0, will be effective in the new conditions of capitalism 2.0.