Digital Capitalism and its Limits Technotopia, power and risk by Michel Bauwens

ISBN: 9781776149407

Wits University Press, 1 May 2025

Paperback, 208 pages

Digital capitalism promises progresss, development and an end to the planetary crisis. Through a Marxist lens, contributors interrogate the implications of heightened technological innovation on employment, weak market democracies, climate change and labour power dynamics and alternatives for emancipatory futures in a digitalised world.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has been vaunted as the next big leap in digital capitalism. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing and robotisation mark this shift that promises not only more progress, growth and development but also solutions to the multiple crises the world is in. However, the billions being invested in these technologies are accompanied by sharp geopolitical rivalries to secure an edge in the control over them. Volume 8 in the Democratic Marxism series, Digital Capitalism and its Limits, questions the dangerous technotopian imaginary shaping this digital-techno shift to examine the risks and power dynamics involved. Contributors delve into the implications of algorithmic data extractivism, the securitisation of already weak market democracies, the social consequences of digital learning, regulatory lags and power dynamics in the labour process, as well as the possible emancipatory futures of such technologies. Anchored in techno-realism, this volume invites us all, from an interdisciplinary perspective, to think more deeply and critically about digital capitalism. We need to reject aspects of it in the public interest, and we may need to democratise it and subject it to a just transition to protect human and non-human life.