tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is a Marxist journal
of media and communication studies. Its special issue “Digital/Communicative
Socialism” asks: What is digital/communicative socialism? The special issue
will publish peer-reviewed contributions that explore perspectives on
digital/communicative socialism in respect to theory, dialectics, history,
internationalism, praxis, and class struggles. Marx and Engels saw socialism as the movement for a society that is
based on the principles of equality, justice, and solidarity. They distinguish
different types of socialism, of which communism is one, whereas reactionary
socialism, bourgeois socialism, and critical-utopian socialism are others. Rosa
Luxemburg summarises the history of socialism:
“Socialism goes back for thousands of years, as the ideal of a social
order based on equality and the brotherhood of man, the ideal of a communistic
society. With the first apostles of Christianity, various religious sects of
the Middle Ages, and in the German peasants’ war, the socialist idea always
glistened as the most radical expression of rage against the existing society.
[…] It was in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century that the
socialist idea first appeared with vigor and force […] the socialist idea was
placed on a completely new footing by Marx and Engels. These two sought the
basis for socialism not in moral repugnance towards the existing social order
nor in cooking up all kinds of possible attractive and seductive projects,
designed to smuggle in social equality within the present state. They turned to
the investigation of the economic relationships of present-day society”.
Marx and Engels argue that socialism is grounded in the antagonistic
class structure of capitalism that pits workers against capitalists. In the
19th century, the socialist movement experienced a split between reformist
revisionists and revolutionary socialists. After the First World War, the
Communist International and the Labour and Socialist International were
created. After the collapse of the Second International, there was an
institutional distinction between Socialists and Communists. Whereas reformism
dominated the Socialist International, Stalinism became dominant in the
Communist International. The notion of “socialism” became associated with
social democratic parties and the notion of “communism” with communist parties.
From a historical point of view, both Stalinism and revisionist social
democracy have failed.
With the rise of neoliberalism, social democracy turned towards the
right and increasingly adopted neoliberal policies. When Tony Blair became
British Prime Minster in 1997, his neoliberal version of social democracy
influenced social democracy around the world. The crisis of capitalism and the
emergence of new versions of socialist politics (Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Podemos, Syriza, etc.) has reinvigorated the debate
about socialism today.
tripleC’s special issue explores perspectives on the digital and
communicative dimensions of socialism today.
In the intellectual realm, the socialist debate has e.g. resulted in the
vision of the renewal of a class-struggle social democracy (by Jacobin-editor
Bhaskar Sunkara in the book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical
Politics in An Era of Extreme Inequality) or the vision of fully-automated
luxury communism (formulated by Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani in the book Fully
Automated Luxury Communism). Such contributions show that for a renewal of
socialism, we need intellectual and theoretical foundations that inform class
struggles in digital/communicative capitalism. There were earlier contributions
to the discussion of computing and socialism, such as André Gorz’s notion of
post-industrial socialism, Radovan Richta’s work on the role of the scientific
and technological revolution for democratic communism, Autonomist Marxism’s
readings of Marx’s “Fragment of Machines”, Fernando Flores’ and Stafford Beer’s
roles in Chile’s Project Cybersyn during the Allende presidency, Norbert
Wiener’s and Joseph Weizenbaum’s reflections on a humanistic instead of an
imperialistic and instrumental use of cybernetics and computing, etc.
The special issue seeks contributions that address one or more of the
following questions:
- Theory:
What is socialism today? What are the communicative and digital
dimensions of socialism today? What is communicative/digital socialism? What
theoretical approaches and concepts are best-suited for understanding
digital/communicative socialism today? Does it or does it not make sense to
distinguish between digital/communicative socialism and digital/communicative
communism? Why or why not?
- Dialectic:
What are the contradictions of digital capitalism? How does
digital/communicative socialism differ from and contradict
digital/communicative capitalism?
- History:
What lessons can we draw from the history of socialism, communism,
social democracy and Marxist theory for the conceptualisation and praxis of
digital/communicative socialism today?
- Internationalism:
Socialism is a universalist and internationalist movement. What are the
international(ist), global dimensions of digital/communicative socialism today?
- Praxis and class struggles:
What strategies, demands and struggles are important for
digital/communicative socialism? How can socialism today best be communicated
in public? What class struggles are there in the context of communication and
computing? What are the roles of communication and digital technologies in
contemporary class struggles for socialism? What is the role of social
movements, the party and trade unions in the organisation and self-organisation
of digital and communication workers’ class struggles for socialism? How should
socialist class politics, unions and strikes look like today so that they
adequately reflect changes of the working class and exploitation in the age of
digital capitalism? What is a digital strike and what are its potentials for
digital socialism?
Submission
Abstracts can be submitted per e-mail to christian.fuchs@triple-c.at,
using the form published.
Please do not make submissions that omit a completed form.
Submission deadline is Monday, July 15, 2019.
Feedback on acceptance/rejection will be provided at latest until July
31, 2019.
The deadline for the submission of accepted papers is October 13, 2019.
The maximum length of full papers is 8,000 words. Articles should in the first
stage of submission (October 13) not be longer than 7,000 words so that there
is space for additions as part of the revision process.
All accepted articles will be peer-reviewed and published in a special
issue of tripleC.
The special issue will be published open access. There are no APCs.
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