Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?

Description

In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that the all-pervasive presence of data in our networked society has given rise to a new mode of production, one not ruled over by capitalists and their factories but by those who own and control the flow of information. Yet, if this is not capitalism anymore, could it be something worse? What if the world we're living in is more dystopian than the techno utopias of the Silicon Valley imagination? And, if this is the case, how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyse this new world of information, but the ones to change it, too. Drawing on the writings of the Situationists and a range of contemporary theorists, Wark offers a vast panorama of the contemporary condition and the classes that control it.

McKenzie Wark is the author of Molecular Red, General Intellects and The Beach Beneath the Street, among other books. She teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.

A provocative and compelling exploration of our digital world as it crashes towards ecological disaster. Counter-intuitive, insightful, and imaginative, Capital is Dead is a timely reminder that there are things worse than capitalism - and we may just be living through them. -- Nick Srnicek McKenzie Wark's call for an experimental, vulgar form of revolutionary approach to digital commodification is a challenging read, full of provocative observation. -- Andy Hedgecock * Morning Star * Wark has long been a brilliant scholar of Marxism, Situationism and Poststructuralism, rewriting the canon of critical theory. -- Dave Beech * Art Monthly * Wark takes a flamethrower to these ideas through a reading of Marx that burns away the metaphors of phantasmagorical fetishes, such as the commodity form, the spectacle, and false consciousness, that have occupied much critical theory to date. -- Vince Carducci * Popmatters * Thoughtful and compelling. -- Garrett Pierman * Marx & Philosophy *