My father was the epitome of a liberal individual. The irony is that he was also a lifelong Marxist. In order to live, he had to sell his work to the bosses of the steel mill in Eleusis. But he spent every lunch break wandering through the open courtyard of the Archaeological Museum, enjoying newly discovered ancient stelae that showed ancient technologies were much more advanced than previously thought.
He would return from work around 5, and after a short afternoon siesta he was ready to join our family life or take notes from academic articles and books he was reading. In short, his life in the factory was clearly separated from his private life.
That was the time when leftists like us were ready to admit that capitalism, if nothing else, at least provided us with personal sovereignty, albeit within clearly defined limits. No matter how hard it was to work for the bosses, a person could set aside a part of his life just for himself and remain autonomous in it, make his own decisions, be free. We knew that only the rich really have freedom of choice, while the poor are only free to lose. We also knew that the worst kind of slavery is one in which slaves learn to love their chains. But we were able to appreciate that limited right to have our own life.
Today's young people are denied even that small consolation. From the moment they walk, we implicitly teach them that they should see themselves as a brand, and a brand that will be judged on perceived authenticity. (Which includes potential employers: “No one will offer me a job,” a graduate once told me, “until I find my authentic self.”) In today's online society, marketing your own identity simply cannot be bypassed. Public display of private life is one of the most important tasks of today's young people.
Before posting a picture or video, before rating a movie, sharing a photo or a tweet, they have to ask themselves who they will attract and who they will reject. They must discover which of their potential "authentic identities" is the most appealing, constantly testing the limits of their own opinion against what they believe might be the average opinion of online public opinion makers. Since today every experience can be recorded and shared, they are constantly obsessed with the question of whether they should do it. If there is no opportunity to share experiences, they can be imagined, which is done. Every choice we make, with or without witnesses, is another step in the process of carefully constructing an identity.
One does not have to be a leftist to notice that the right to part of the day when we are not for sale has practically disappeared. The irony is that the breakdown of the liberal individual is not due to fascist black shirts or Stalinist commissars. The decline occurred when a new form of capital invited young people to respond to the most liberal commandment of all: to be themselves. Of all the modifications to human behavior that cloud capital has been able to implement and monetize, that is probably the most impressive, crowning achievement.
Possessive individualism has never been good for mental health. The techno-feudal society that cloud capital has created makes it even more disastrous, because the fence that gave the liberal individual a refuge, the possibility to withdraw from the labor market, has been demolished. Cloud capital has scattered the individual into a mass of fragmented data, turned it into an identity made up of choices expressed by clicks manipulated by algorithms in ways we cannot fathom. Thus we got individuals who are not so much possessive as possessed; or should we say, individuals who have no capacity for self-ownership. The ability to focus is impaired by co-opting attention.
We haven't lost our willpower. No, our attention has been hijacked by the new ruling class. And since the algorithms of cloud capital are known to reinforce patriarchy, the worst stereotypes and pre-existing repressive relationships, those who suffer the most are the most vulnerable - women, the mentally ill, the marginalized and the poor.
If we have learned any useful lesson from the example of fascism, it is the understanding of man's susceptibility to demonizing stereotypes, as well as the ugly attraction (and power) of emotions such as fear, envy and contempt that such stereotypes evoke in us. In the current social reality, the cloud brings us face to face with the dreaded and despised "other". Since there is seemingly no blood or pain in online violence, we are more ready to respond to the "other" with provocative, derisive language and anger. Techno-feudalism offered bigotry as an emotional compensation for the anxiety and frustrations arising from difficulties in focusing and constructing an identity.
Content moderators and regulations on hate speech are of no help here, because the described mechanism is immanent to capital in the cloud and algorithms optimized to increase the rentier inflows of large tech companies using precisely hatred and discontent. Lawmakers cannot regulate algorithms perfected by artificial intelligence that even its creators do not understand. For freedom to have a chance of survival, cloud capital must be socialized.
My father believed that finding timeless beauty to focus on, as he did in the courtyard of the museum at Eleusis, was the only defense against the demons that circled the human soul. I've been trying to do it my own way for years. But in an age of techno-feudalism, isolated individual efforts will not be of much help. The solution is not to reject the Internet, turn off the phone and pay with cash instead of a card. If we don't come together, we will never succeed in civilizing and socializing cloud capital - and finally free people's minds from its grip.
A great contradiction awaits us here: the founding liberal idea of freedom as self-ownership can only be preserved by a fundamental reconfiguration of ownership rights over the means of production, distribution, collaboration and communication that have been moved to the cloud. The revival of the liberal individual calls for exactly what liberals despise: a new revolution.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: Đ. Tomić)
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