Algorithms All the Way Down: People Die, Capital Does Not
For this interview I spoke to Ian Wright (@ianpaulwright), the author of the Dark Marxism blog which explores Marxism and the occult. Ian is also a programmer who has worked in machine learning and artificial intelligence. During the discussion we spoke about what Marx means when he refers to capital as a "real God", how capital is like an algorithm controlling our lives in ways we often don't fully comprehend, and venture communism. Ian also provides a case for why the Left should tak...
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Transcript
All right. Hello, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And for today's guest, I have Ian Wright, who is the author of a really interesting blog called Dark Marxism. I've I've perused it quite a bit. It's a really interesting mix of Marxist theory, as well as kind of, like, different occult type of concepts blended in into Marxism and kind of, like, I guess you could kinda say horror and, a really interesting approach to thinking of capitalism and capital as kind of like almost like a horror movie sometimes when I when I read your work which I I actually really enjoy. But, yeah, Ian, maybe for those who don't know you, would you like to give a proper introduction to yourself? Yeah. Well well, thanks for the introduction, and thank you for inviting me onto your your podcast podcast.
Yeah. I'm a computer scientist and economist. So, I have a PhD in artificial intelligence. Then a bit later in life, I decided I wanted to study economics in-depth. So I continued to work, pursuing a PhD in economics part time at the Open University in The UK. So I spent some time in academia, but most of my career, I've been in industry. I've been working on commercial applications of machine learning for over twenty years now. So at the moment, I'm working on some technology that integrates deep learning with logic based programming. So I'm a person who's very interested in machine learning. But outside of my day job, my real passion is Marxist theory, economics, and politics. So I published more technical work in in journals. I've contributed to a few books. But I I mainly write, as you mentioned, fairly accessible articles, I hope, on on my blog when I get the time. And for whatever reason, my work tends to be fairly, philosophical. But, occasionally, I do get my hands dirty with economic modeling
and data. So I think that about sums me up. Nice. So, that's really interesting. Does I mean, does your, normal day job, do they know about your, your dark Marxism blog?
No. No. They don't.
Okay. We're in the same position then.
That's pretty funny. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just not something, it seems. Yeah. Of course. Quite on brand, when I'm doing my machine learning stuff.
Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, has has, like, your work on machine learning I imagine that's done some had some influence on you in your, I mean, political thinking.
Yeah. I think more generally, being a computer scientist and being someone who's been a programmer from a very young age has given I think it that kind of job gives you, an insight into into causality at quite a deep level and the complexity of systems. And I think it it does help that kind of training, when it comes to thinking about complex systems such as social systems and economic systems.
Mhmm. Yeah. What's also interesting, of course, like I mentioned before, is that you you you make a lot of kind of, comparisons between in your in your writing on your blog around Marxism and kind of the occult. So I was wondering if maybe for you, if you want to explain a bit, for you, what are some of these relations between Marx
and and the occult? Well, I think Capital is something of a of a Victorian gothic horror novel in some respect. I think it's right to talk about horror. And, you know, Marx frequently refers to the occult and and, you know, spooky stuff in general, both in his early work and his later work. And I think there's a simple reason why. I mean, one of the fundamental fundamental points of Marx's critique of capitalism is that it's a system with emergent, you know, regularities that we create through our own social activity. But then these laws, these regularities then operate independently of our collective conscious control. So we're at the mercy of the markets, of the business cycle, of booms and busts. And, you know, through no fault of our own, we might suddenly lose our jobs, lose our employment. And these economic phenomena affect us a bit like the weather does. It's stuff that just happens to us, and we accept it. So, you know, ancient people, in order to explain the weather and other natural phenomena, you know, like the movement of the stars and planets, epidemics, crop failure failures, you know, plenty of other things, In order to explain what was going on, they supposed that, you know, extra mundane or higher beings were in control. In other words, gods. And, you know, the majesty and power of the ancient gods in the human imagination was really an inverted projection of the misery and the weakness and powerlessness of early humanity. So our ancient material conditions gave rise to these religious beliefs. And Marx says, look, capitalism creates new kinds of forces, new social forces that we're all subject to. And therefore, capitalism also has a material basis for the emergence of new kinds of superstitious belief systems. And that's why Marx makes use of religious and a cult language because he's trying to, I think, illustrate that basic point. He's trying to shock us out of our common sense framework that unconsciously assumes that capitalist society is either eternal and natural or at least, you know, free from backward superstition. But, in fact, Marx is saying, look. It it's not. So, let me give you some examples of that because the occult and and spooky stuff, immediately begins in Marx's most famous, work, Capital. So as everyone knows who's read it, he starts with the commodity, and commodities are, you know, very ordinary things. Nothing mysterious about them at all. But he states that the scientific analysis of the commodity reveals, begin, quote, it's a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. And, you know, why why would he say that? Well, if we look at the older belief systems that I mentioned with that I mentioned, you know, we're off we often see completely bizarre and fantastic, magical affinities or magical correspondences between things like the planets, gods, human fate, and even animals and plants and minerals. All these different kinds of things were thought to have a cult or hidden prophecies that they shared in common. And therefore, they all somehow mysteriously connected to each other. You know, for example, salt, was believed to ward off demons because salt is a preservative and demons corrupt and destroy. That's the kind of magical thinking. Right? And so there's an affinity between all these things. But these kinds of magical affinities, they're really puny. They're nothing compared to what, universal commodity production achieves because we consider everything we see around us, all the things and activities in the world are, despite all their different appearances, are in some mysterious sense also really the same. You know? So, clowning at a children's party is the same as 200 rounds of shotgun ammunition, just to be dramatic, or or one month of computing time on a high spec machine in the cloud is the same as one tonne of potatoes. And we treat them as the same because in the market, they can all have precisely the same economic value and therefore may be exchanged with one another. And then Marx is saying, look. This is very strange. Even though we take it for granted, it's really strange. And perhaps it's even stranger that we don't consider it to be strange. And that's why Marx talks about, quality fetishism. Because fetish fetishism is where people worship an object because they believe it embodies some aspect of a spirit or a deity. In the past, you know, people believe that their temple statues were the living embodiments of their gods, that the god was actually present. And, you know, they they perform special rituals to ensoul the statues with the presence of the god. And many Christians even today, believe that, you know, bread and wine, after suitable magical operations, embodies a divinity that they call Christ. And we like to think we've put all that superstitious nonsense, behind us, but Marx is pointing out, you know, that's all hubris. We still haven't escaped that religious mystification. We all, you know, we all accept that commodities have prices, that everything has a number attached to it, and that these numbers have a huge influence on our lives in terms of what we can and can't do. You know, the movement of these numbers, the quantities in our bank accounts, they largely determine the kinds of lives we lead, yet the vast majority of us can't explain what those numbers actually represent. You know? A meter represents length. A second represents time. Celsius represents temperature. What what does $1 represent? What does it mean? Nothing? Something? Anything at all? You know, people really struggle with it. And and not only ordinary people, but also the vast majority of economists, if they bother to ask themselves that question. And so Marx does get spooky. He does get into the occult. He says that economic value has a a ghostly objectivity. Because although it's it's real, we can't find it in the body of the commodity just as we won't be able to find the god in the body of the statue. You know? Due to our own social practices, our own collective rituals, all the commodities become in sold by this additional ghostly property, which we call value. And so in systems of commodity production, Marx says, this is another quote, the productions of the human brain appear to be independent beings endowed with life. And so we fetishize this economic value. We think qualities naturally have this property, that they must have this property. We forget that behind value is our own social activity, which we could change. And so this fetish becomes even more pronounced with the most special thing of all, which Marx calls, the god of commodities, which we call, you know, money. Because money, especially in its very base forms like silver and gold, exercise of, you know, a fascination upon us. They cast a spell upon us, which far exceeds any, you know, intrinsic properties of the metals themselves because money has this magical power to command and control others, to get people to do what we want. It's a it's magical. It has an occult power. And, you know, in the communist manifesto, there's, there's a fantastic quote where Marx says modern society has, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells. You know, what what does he mean there? Well, we know that we know that capitalism did away with all the feudal constraints. You know, the power of religion, the patronage, all the monarchy, that was all weakened. We know that capitalism unleashed the power of money, markets, and the free flow of capital and labor. But the unintended consequence of these new social relations was the emergence of these new economic laws, these regularities that control our lives. No single person, institution, even government can control them. And in that sense, we have summoned forth something new, something bigger than ourselves, something demonic, something horrific that has become our master. But our our imaginations haven't really yet caught up with what this new thing actually really is.
Yeah. There is I mean, even Marx I mean, one of Marx's, like, most famous quotes is like, you know, there's a specter, haunting Europe. Like the specter of communism, of course, is is is another occult thing that he says. And I mean, only now that I'm actually thinking about, you know, trying to make this connection am I realizing actually he does talk quite a lot about the occult, in certain respects. He's not I think sometimes Marx gets this, in my opinion, incorrect judgments that he's, like, hyper I don't know if this is the right term, but, like, hyper rational or, like, very dry in his analysis. Well, actually, I think he's he's in in certain ways a little bit mystical in certain ways. And or trying to use the mystical to sort of, bring to light kind of the things that we are treating as being, completely normal, but to maybe anybody else's eyes or to an alien of sorts, would see as being quite strange. Yeah. Just because we embody it, we kind of are maybe unable to kind of see it in in a normal way. That's exactly right. It's very difficult to take, an anthropological
viewpoint on your own society because you're born into it and accept, the social rules as, almost naturally given. And and Marx does intentionally draw parallels with earlier modes of production and earlier belief system to show that although capitalism is a step forward, it is an advancement. It's none nonetheless limited and incomplete, hasn't yet achieved full modernity, because it's still stuck with religious mystification. It still reproduces some of the older superstitions but in this new and occulted form. And, people don't see it. They don't see the superstitious and religious nature of capitalist society because it portrays itself as secular, modern, and commercial, and rational. You know, that's why I often call capitalism an occult mode of production because people people don't really understand the hidden levers of capitalism.
They don't understand what's really controlling things. Yeah. I I mean, I wonder if just that there's an occult in nature to almost probably any other mode of production in the sense that you are sort of one unit in a larger system, of feedback and control that it's very difficult just for, like, one person to possibly comprehend all of its moving parts, which may still be the case, I wonder, you know, in our in our, you know, future in our future socialist or communist society, whether or not there will still be these, types of, occult, occult types of concepts.
Yes. Well, the the hope is, and and Marx does express this, the hope would be that, you know, this is as I said rather dramatically, that only, once communism is established will real history begin. And what what he means by that is only will we then consciously determine the course of our own history. Mhmm. And up to this up to that point, the idea is that we because we don't fully understand this complex systems we create. Yeah. We're we're subject to occult forces at the moment, but then maybe once we reach the yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Just like ancient peoples, we don't get it. We don't really get what happened.
I yeah. I see that. I sometimes I had a I had a I was just thinking about this now. It just popped in my head. I had a friend who's also, you know, a socialist who kind of, he he he contends that communism is kind of a a Christian political ideology a bit sometimes. But in that, I think what you and at first, I was like, no. That's kinda silly. But then I kind of think, like, well, maybe he's right. Because he kind of sees, like, communism as, like, like, communism is sometimes perceived by communist as being kind of almost similar to, like, the way that Christians view heaven.
Yeah. I mean, it is it is easy to draw such parallels because there are some structural similarities in that both Christianity and and communism aspires to build a better kind of society or achieve a better state of affairs. Some some variants of Christianity that could only be really happen until, last judgment or or when you die and go to heaven, but there's also a sense of Christianity. You wanna actually build it in the here and now. I think they disagree about that Christians. Yeah. So there are structural similarities there. Just like communists.
Like communists.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think one of so, like, of course, we're we're we're going to talk about, how this all relates to crypto as well, I think in a bit. But one of the quotes that I also wanted to mention that I, that I think I was exposed to because of because of you, was this quote from Capital Volume three, which Mark says, Capital claims the ownership of all wealth which can ever be produced and everything it has received so far is but an installment for its all engrossing appetite. By its innate laws, all surplus labor which the human race can ever perform belongs to its Moloch. So if you're someone who is, has been very deep into, Web3 or crypto stuff, you'll immediately recognize Moloch as being like kind of this, occult I mean, a general occult figure that has been claimed now by people like from Gitcoin and from these other Web3 types of places as being the the god of coordination failure is how they describe it. I think which is really interesting. So I was like when when when I read that quote, I was like, oh, my gosh. Marx talked about Moloch way before any of these crypto people did. Not necessarily in the same of course, not in the same way. I think the all these occult figures always have, like, a million different interpretations. But, but he was using it in the way how, I guess yeah. As as the problems with capital, and then Web three people are talking about it as the problems of lack of coordination, which to me, I think, like, relating to what you were saying earlier about how we are kind of overtaken or, like, we are ruled by capital or in lots of ways and only through communism, which I would define as being, like, having democratic control over, the the forces and the means of production ultimately by the end at the end of the day. So things are are are not governed by by capital, are not governed by sort of market forces, but governed by, like, I mean, for lack of maybe a better word, but, like, democratic deliberation, where we're all just sort of, like, able to democratically input what we want and what we don't want. And those are the things that become reality instead of sort of having things imposed on us by whoever has the most money, whoever has, you know, power through capital.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that this, Moloch quote because, you know, I think Marx and Marxists typically don't use this language, but the point is that capitalism is like a a local maximum that we've got stuck in. And capitalism is a is a an example of coordination failure. Absolutely. And, you know, why, you know, when when Marx says things like that, Moloch, it's it's you know, he's a good writer. Bess, he's a good writer. You know, people will read that. Well, why why that god? Because the bible betrays Moloch as a greedy god who demands very costly sacrifice. Right? Including, sacrifice of children, kids. And people will read this and think, well, you know, that's a nice analogy. Yes. We do sacrifice our time to make profits for the owners of capital. And and our children with, child labor laws. And certainly in, Victorian times and other parts of the world today, children are indeed being sacrificed. But, you know, that's where peep typical readers will stop because they can't imagine that Marx might actually mean what he says, that capital is, as a matter of fact, a kind of god. Because unlike previous social formations, capitalism doesn't recognize its own god or its own worship of it. You know, this god of capitalism, which we might might talk about at some point, is a cult. You know, we don't see it. So, you know, you know, there's different ways of reading Marx there.
So getting to the the main piece that you wrote that I really wanna get to or this main idea was this piece in your blog called Marx on Capital as a Real God. So could maybe we can talk about that. What what does Marx mean by capital as a real god? Yes. Indeed.
So when Marx talks of certain kinds of social relations, instantiating his words an entity, a real god, what he's doing there is contrasting capitalism with previous social formations that dealt with imaginary gods. So that that's the contrast. Right? So all gods are imaginary in the sense that they are entities in our imagination and our belief systems. But some gods are purely fictitious because they wouldn't exist independently of our beliefs about them. So to take a a noncontroversial example, father Christmas is a kind of an imaginary deity. Our beliefs about him have real effects. You know, we put up Christmas trees, leave out cookies and milk, but he isn't really real. And if we all stop believing in father Christmas, then, you know, he would go the way of earlier gods and other kinds of rituals. But, you know, and the more powerful imaginary gods, which billions of people still believe in today, they continue to exert an enormous influence on human society even if they are, depending on your point of view, purely fictitious entities. So when Marx talks about a real god, he's pointing out a difference that some gods actually exist in the sense that they have real effects even when no one believes in their existence. That's what a real as opposed to an imaginary god is. And Marx introduces this term in some comments, written in 2644 on the liberal philosopher James Mill. And he does it in the context of discussing, money. But Marx's real god is not a god of money. He's not simply talking about the worship of material goods or worship of money or people getting corrupted in greed in that. That's an aspect of it. But love of money is like an individual psychological attitude, and Marx as real god is not reducible to individual psychology. Instead, Marx Marx as real god is an objective entity that helps to create and form such attitudes in us. And so, you know, to really understand how capital is a real god, I think I need to talk about, control theory for a moment, which is the scientific theory of how certain kinds of systems can autonomously pursue their own goals and control aspects of their environment. So control systems give a handle on this kinda entity like picture that Marx, draws. So cybernetics, I think many people know, emerged in the early twentieth century, and it proposed that many different kinds of systems, you know, mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, social system. They can all exhibit a particular kind of, causal structure called the negative feedback control loop. And so a simple example is a thermostat in your home. You fiddle with the temperature dial that sets the goal of the system. It turns the heating system attached to it off and on until the temperature of your room hits the goal, and then it doesn't need to do anything. And it does all that autonomously. That's a very simple example of negative feedback control. You know, the temperature in our bodies is is, controlled by a similar kind of biological homeostatic mechanism, but, you know, that's not implemented in terms of metal wires and plastic, but in terms of nerves, enzymes, and so on. So so control systems of all different kinds are autonomous entities and, and they're goal directed entities. And they can be really simple, like a thermostat, or really quite complex, like an animal brain, which is like a very elaborate form of control system. And and this is where we get to the crunch, really, because, there's a very significant control loop, control system hiding in plain sight that affects all aspects of modern life. And to see it, we need to just look at some simple economic facts. So as we all know, the main institution of economic production in capitalist society is is the firm. And the vast majority of firms are composed of roughly two kinds of people, those that supply labor and receive wages, those that supply capital and receive profit. And the capitalists extract the profits from the firm. They can only spend a fraction of their profits on luxury goods because if they spent all of it on luxuries, their capital would diminish relative to other capitalists who invested in new profitable activities. So that's a basic competitive imperative. Profit must be reinvested, and that's a prime directive for anyone who has possesses capital. So those that have a lot of capital, they don't put it in one venture. That'd be too risky. They have a portfolio of investments, and they spread their risk.
This also just sound just just to say this I mean, for people who are maybe unfamiliar with, like, Marxist work, this is also I think it's funny. I sometimes I listen to these types types of, like, financial independence, types of, people, you know, preaching for people, how they can reach financial independence. And, like, in some ways, Karl Marx was, like, the first, you know, rich dad poor dad type of author. And but in the in the sense that he was just kind of, like, observing the ways in which people maybe come into the power of being a capitalist and then maintain that power as a capitalist, which is pretty usually pretty basic for the most part, like, financial advice that that that that, you know, like, rich people kinda give each other or, like, you know, that they sell to others in order to become rich. Well, he he was, you know, the first and foremost thing to remember about Marx is he was a scientist,
and he was a social scientist, and he was observing the facts of his day. We also must remember that Engels, his his best friend, was was a capitalist, owned a factory in in in Manchester. And, some of that profits from those exploited workers found its way into into Marx's pocket. And, Marx also, did gamble a bit on the stock market. So he was someone who learned from,
also from experience and not just from, I guess, distance or,
reading. Yeah. He lived he lived in all over Europe and, spent his his days in London, which is a big financial capital, even then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he he I mean, this stuff is is in marks. It's usually in, in what mostly in volume three that many people don't get to, but he he was a keen observer of financial markets and and the financial speculation, financial class. So yeah. Yeah. And so each capital has this portfolio. Right? And, and it's right it's right here with the, maximizing returns from a portfolio of investments that we find the, like, the the top part of the causal structure of a control system. So every individual circuit of profitable investment, which we can view as, like, a super individual social practice. It's a social practice that's repeatedly performed by people. It actually has its own goal state, its own sensory inputs, its own decision making, its own ability to act upon the world in which it's embedded. Now, of course, all that's implemented through the decision making and actions of large numbers of people, but it's not reducible to those actions. It's an emergent social phenomenon. And the goal of the capital is to maximize profit. It looks at the differential profit rates across its investment portfolio. And the financial capitalists or the experts they employ, they compare these different profit rates, and they withdraw capital from poorly performing investments, inject it into high performing investments continually. And that instantiates a controller, which is a ceaseless scramble for profit.
For those who are maybe unfamiliar with cybernetics as well, which is like a really interesting for me, it's like a super interesting field, topic, to work in or to to think about through a framework. You know, there's kind of like this like an elementary feedback control system. You know, we have, like, where, you know, cybernetics is trying to kind of, like, abstract the basic parts of a system no matter where that system lies. So if it's like a in a computer, inside of, like, bugs, if it's a social system, there's it's kind of like abstracted parts. So you can think of, like, you have a sensor, which is seeing what's happening within the system, an estimator, which is taking measurements of that of what the sensor is seeing, a controller, which, you know, based on its, has, like, particular beliefs to it, and then an actuator, which kind of makes decisions based on those beliefs. And then it creates this loop where what the actuator does then does something, and the sensor senses what those changes are. So, like, I would I I I've never seen it before, but I would love to see just kind of like a a basic cybernetic diagram of capitalism,
as a way to kind of illustrate these these. I have a diagram. I know. Amazing. Great. I'll I'll send it to you. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's perfect. Yeah. That's that's exactly right. And, if a control system, successfully controls and reaches its goal state, it's has a very interesting causality because it be it can become the actual cause of its own inactivity. There's lots of very subtle and interesting things about control system from a philosophical point of view. But in the context of capitalism and capitalism as as a controller, we can see its effects. Right? You know, because at the commanding heights of the global economy, there's an enormous ensemble of individual capitals that are manically scrambling for profit. And they're reacting to these profit signals received from every productive activity that it that it owns or partially owns. So each capital is withdrawing and injecting its money, you know, from different geographical regions, different industrial sectors. So the entirety this is the the titanic nature of it. The entire entirety of the world's resources, including the working time of billions of people, they're repeatedly marshaled and remarshalled from from low towards high profit activities. That's that's the controller. That's what's happening. That's what's in charge. And, you know, these a capital lives much longer than any individual human that might own it. You know, so the people control by capital, the workers supply labor to firms, capitalists extract profits. They're mere replaceable components of the social control loop. People die. Capital doesn't. That's exactly right. They they inherit the capital. They become you know, we say it's often we say capitalists possess capital, but it's more accurate to say that capital, capital possesses them, and they become we're all possessed partially by it. We've become subject to this impersonal domination of these objective and economic laws that no one controls. We're not in control. Something else is in control. And what that is is precisely the real God. It manifests whenever a private sum of money becomes sufficiently large to function as profit seeking capital.
I can see your, the influence of your work in machine learning and artificial intelligence, here. Like, like, it's very clear, and I think it's it's really interesting. It's like one of the things that we we've spoken about before, before the podcast about, kind of thinking of capital or the logic behind capital as a kind of algorithm that controls much of our lives and our economy, like how like how you describe it. And, you know, that that also means we're thinking of this still aligns. This is just basically another way of saying that capitalism is a control system. And we're talking about cybernetics. And, you know, artificial intelligence is just is basically cybernetics just with a different name because the guy who did artificial intelligence specifically, I think he, like, really didn't like a Norbert Wiener or something like that. It's kinda some kind of silly thing. But artificial intelligence and cybernetics are very very closely related, if not if not more or less the same thing. And so, like, by yeah. I mean just, like, thinking of if you are someone maybe who is maybe more on the technical side right now who's listening, you could think of you know, you could reduce all this to if if you want the takeaway point is maybe that capital is an algorithm that is sort of like a cybernetic system or artificial intelligence that is, in some ways controlling the way that we or in a lot of ways controlling the way that we that we act and the way that we relate to one another. And that produces particular outcomes that the artificial intelligence that what capital, essentially wants, and you are kind of just the host of that. Yeah. Yeah. We can definitely think in that way. And,
I think perhaps an artificial intelligence, not a very intelligent artificial intelligence, quite stupid artificial intelligence is probably better than the Artificial stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's fine to think of it as an algorithm. Mhmm. You know, it happens to be implemented on, people rather than logic circuits. But Right. The slight problem I have with the concept of the algorithm is it isn't isn't quite sufficient to capture the full social reality, that we find ourselves in because, you know, an algorithm terminates. It has a beginning and an end, but capital is a control system. You know, it's loopy. It doesn't stop unless it's we've it's forced to somehow. And and this idea of a control system is is crucial. And and capital is is entity like. It is like an artificial intelligence, but with very primitive cognition. And the concept of an algorithm doesn't really capture that. You know, capital is a very specific kind of non terminating algorithm. And, and the other thing is the algorithm doesn't really capture the religious nature of of capitalism. The point of emphasizing that capital is a real god isn't just to make it dramatic and write fun things, but to actually theorize historic relationships between precapitalist and capitalist social formations because capitalism carved out this new commercial realm, you know, free of feudal constraints, free of religious interference. It created this commercial realm. And in doing so, it constructed an ideological image of itself as entirely secular, modern, rational, free of superstition, but it's but it's not. You know, our worship of false gods continues just in this newly highly developed form. And I I to try and make this point, I have this aphorism that people seem to like, which is any sufficiently advanced religion is indistinguishable from economics. Economics is created a secular realm. It acculted the fact that it's still worship of a real god. Still a kind of sacrificial religion. So thinking in terms of algorithm is fine, but it doesn't capture all that rich social reality.
Yeah. Of course. Of course. So just to maybe also to to to play devil's advocate here. Do you worry that sort of thinking thinking of capital in this way, does it do you ever fear that it takes away people's agency within within the system of of of capitalism?
Yeah. That that's, that's a, you know, that's a very good question. And, and it it it it may it allows us to make an important point, I think, which is, you know, we always have the freedom to make our own decisions. You know? We have wiggle room to to express, who we are, our individuality, but we always make decisions bit within a space of possibilities determined by forces not under our control. Now some of those constraints are natural. You know, we can't jump over a mountain, but there are also social constraints, such as how much money we have. Now some of those monetary constraints do indeed reflect natural constraints. You know, we can't escape the fact that there's only so much productive power in the world, only so much, material natural materials, only so much time that we have. But one of the main points of Marx's critique of capitalism is that monetary constraints don't only reflect unavoidable natural constraints, but they also reflect entirely avoidable and unnecessary social constraints that simply arise from how we happen to organize the production and distribution of economic goods. And so those constraints are necessary, and we could get rid of them if we organize ourselves differently. And Marx, you know, ruthlessly criticized the economic science of his day for completely missing that important distinction, for thinking that our space of possibilities is more constrained than it actually is. And that's still true holds true for modern economics, which is a kind of, apologetic blend of science and essentially anti worker, capitalist ideology. So to answer your question, does capital, as a real god remove our agency? And in a very important sense, it actually does. It absolutely does because it implicitly compels us to behave in certain ways. It it partially creates the kind of beings that we are. You know, we humans in the loop, both the workers making and the capitalists taking. We're all dutifully performing our lot lot, you know, our social roles. And we can't easily do otherwise because we all need to get our hands on the money. We all need to worship the fetish. We all want to get closer to the godhead. But but the control of the real god isn't is not complete. You know? We're not merely workers and capitalists. We're not merely social roles. We do have spaces where we can be truly ourselves. I think it's sort of recognizing
I don't know. Maybe for me and I don't know if you think similarly, but there's kind of like a a contradiction between how we are kind of, imposed to live our lives, through this, you know, this this capital as a real god being a a very, like, potent force in how we relate to one another and how we, deal with the the Earth and the world around us and people on it as well. And then with kind of, what are, like, actually intrinsic human desires or your human, like, capabilities and and needs. Like, there is, there's clearly a mismatch between the way that capitalism is modeled and the way in which it is also projecting its power to create that that model as being reality. And then with not with the actually real as well humanity, I guess, for for for lack of a better term. Yes. Absolutely.
There's a clear mismatch. It's one of those kind of elephants in the room thing that that is so it's so, universal and obvious. We can accept it as somehow, that we have to accept this mismatch. Right? Right. That that that that that that there's been a small number of people on the globe who have way too much luxury consumption. They they earn more in their sleep than workers would do in their lifetimes. You don't have to lift a finger. And they and yet there's billions around the globe who are struggling to leave a dignified life whose real human needs are not being met. And and that's that's absolutely the case. And one of the fundamental ways we can increase our agency and expand the space of possibilities is to rid ourselves of these unnecessary constraints. And this is why I write some of the things I do because because most people don't don't see themselves as subjects of a real god and don't see how their lives are unnecessarily impoverished, the best kind of prison is the one you don't think you're actually in. And and the first step to avoid being controlled by capital and to achieve more agency is to realize that you are, in fact, partially controlled by it, and it does shape you. And to get to that realization requires cutting through a lot of economic and political ideology to get the true
nature of our social system. It's funny. I've been kind of thinking about how in the past, you know, much, much older human societies would sometimes go to war with each other and but that war would kind of be represented as, like, each of their gods going to war with each other as well. And so, like, even though you, like, you live under capitalism, you may be an atheist, you're still ruled by God. So in in some ways, I wonder if maybe we need our own God to, to fight the the God of capital.
Well, yeah. I mean, exactly. That's why his history, historical appreciation is so important. It wasn't so long ago. It was just a few 100 years ago. Groups of people in England were fighting each other under banners that were, house banners of, of, lords who owned a lot of land. You know? Red rose, white rose, the house of this and that. Games of Thrones kind of stuff. Right? People peasants were killing themselves for their feudal lords. And now, workers still, kill themselves for nation states and the flag that they live under. When really, all the nation states are also controlled by the real god, and it's just different kind of incarnations of the same real god in competition with itself. It's just organized under the rubric of a nation state and patriotism, and people kill each other en masse for hopefully, we'll look back on this period of time in history and and and think what the hell were they thinking about in the same way we look back at,
you know, ancient ancient wars and battles over fictitious gods that were Right. Right. Mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, as well, I think you could probably argue that people go I mean, companies also go to war with one of that that do cause economic violence in in that,
in that wake. That's absolutely true. The one of the, advances of true advances of the bourgeois revolution was to have a, a commercial realm where competition for resources was within the rule of law, and was constrained and didn't spill out over into, directly into violence. Although it's obviously backed up by the the the, monopoly of power of the nation state, but within that commercial, that's an advance. That's an advance of civilization.
Yeah. I think liberals may argue that capitalism has been great because we've moved war from being this, like, brutish, you know, thing into the free market. And now we have this incredible amount of peace around the world at the moment because we've we've done this. I think that's that would be their argument. Right? But, of course, it sort of glosses over the, immense amounts of, imperialism that sort of, undergirds it, and the amount of colonialism that happened, already from it and the amount of economic violence that's done to the, to the global South. And,
yeah. I don't know how anyone can hold that position because, obviously, the the history of, the twentieth century was, I think, the bloodiest in all of humanity's history. And and and that was wars between supposedly modern liberal
nation states, rich nation states, you know. So So one of the reasons, of course, I spoke to you or reached out to you was because you have, a pretty big interest in the world of blockchain and and cryptocurrencies. And, you know, from what you've said so far, I'm sure a lot of the, I guess, more left wing skeptics would be perhaps on board with a lot of things that you say. But then I guess they would be maybe a little bit confused by why you would find interest in cryptocurrency, which is, you know, to their eyes, the most, like, fundamental, you know, embodiment of capital as a real god and technologized in a way that is just insurmountable and is, like, the worst thing in the world. Yada yada yada.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm wondering what what it is that interests you about crypto,
you know, having coming from from from what we've talked about already. It's easy to understand why most Marxists are hostile to crypto because, you know, there's no there's it's made it's yet to make any obvious contribution to abolishing the rule of of capital. It's it just appears to be, speculation, gambling, you know, hysterical market price reactions, scams, frauds, Ponzi Ponzi schemes. It's it just appears insane. And, you know, it does seem to tack hard right. So some of the Bitcoin maximalists, for example, the hard money proponents, you know, those that believe that Bitcoin is axiomatically a perfect standard of economic value, they are quite suspect, even perhaps proto fascist. And on the surface, it just seems like the whole space is just a joke or, at worst, quite sinister. But for those who can get over that and dig into the, the technology, then, actually, there is another barrier. So some people do get over that. Right? They get into the idea of a smart contract and then, you know, which we all know is code that is incorruptible, operates autonomously. But for many, that just seems dystopian because who wants machines to be in charge? You know, the left wants to humanize the economy, not encode capital in the form of these unstoppable algorithms. So it's easy to see why there's a lot of hostility from the left, but I have a completely different attitude. And I think that's because, I am quite an orthodox Marxist. And, also, in my day job, you know, I'm a coder, so I know what this kind of technology can do. I'm I'm not a blockchain developer. I don't work on the, EVM, but I do understand the technology fairly deeply. So I can cut through some of this, surface ugliness. And, one of the points I want I want to make to, many of you on the left who remain skeptical is that a major point of Marx's critique of capitalism is that we, in an important sense, and as we've discussed, we're already controlled by an algorithm. You know, Marx never stops making the point that things have got out of our control. So that algorithm happens to be implemented to our activity, you know, through social conventions, paper contracts, laws, what have you. But it's already an algorithm. So it's not a question of whether we we should be partially controlled by algorithms because we all do already are. That horse has bolted. It bolted some hundreds of years ago. Right? You said we're already living in the algocracy. We already are and have been for a long time. And the real question is precisely what kinds of algorithms we participate in and partially control us. Right? What kind of algorithms, not the existence of them. So the other thing is, you know, I'm a historical materialist, so I don't see revolution as a as a violent event, but as a as a process that's always happening and necessarily so. And, yeah, I think if we look at human history and despite, reversals and long periods of of stasis, it exhibits cumulative progress. We continue to discover better ways to live and better ways to organize ourselves, and that process hasn't finished. And one of the main drivers of progressive social change is technological innovation. You know, Marx makes there's a famous aphorism of Marx. The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord, the steam mill, the society with the industrial capitalists. Now technological change obviously doesn't automatically lead to fundamental social change, but it can be an incredible stimulus to it. I think I was looking at your, your website and reading some of your motivations for being and it seems very similar to mine, which is we can use these tools, especially those that are that are very relevant to social organization. And because the blockchain is a genuinely new kind of thing, something we haven't seen before, and it's in its very earliest stages. So, I I got interested in in Bitcoin from quite early on. I thought it was, fascinating that by solving some of these fundamental issues in distributed computing, it was suddenly possible to create a form of money without the need for the coercive power of of a nation state. That that was new. Right? That hasn't happened before, and it seemed very significant to me. But my mind was really blown when I read about, Ethereum in, 2014 because, you know, Bitcoin just moves a measure of value around. But Ethereum was intended to be Turing complete, and you could trust it to correctly run an algorithm. And the ultimate guarantor of trust isn't a ruling class backed up by a nation's army and therefore not trustworthy at all. But in principle, us, the people, and who are incentivized bottom up to run these, cryptographic proofs using our own personal property. In this case, you know, hopefully, a cheap computer. But so in other words, Ethereum opened up this new space of possibilities where social rules can be enforced not by an untrustworthy central authority, but collectively by the people as the whole. And this seems to me to have, you know, potential to be, you know, radically democratic and and progressive.
Yeah. I could go I could go on there. Yeah. I mean, there's there's there's a lot of threads in it. I think, yeah, we both think similarly in this. For me, yeah, I think the Ethereum was definitely much more much more interesting to me when I came across it. I think the kind of my impression is that when, a lot of people a lot of people on the left who look into maybe Ethereum or smart contracts or cryptocurrency, like, they're they immediately go to a what I would can only call, like, a techno pessimism. So, like, of course, like, there are plenty of academic Marxists who have written a plethora of different books and articles about techno determinism, techno utopianism, you know techno optimism, all about, you know, coming from the perspective of trying to critique Silicon Valley and, you know, the rise of tech and which a lot of it, I mean, I I agree with. But I think sort of the at in certain respects, I'm I'm glad there is a skepticism towards technology. In other respects, it feels as well sometimes the pendulum has swung too much. It's gone the complete opposite direction where we've gone back to techno determinism, but now it's just in a pessimistic life that whatever technology is created is going to be like it can only be bad or it can only be, pessimistic, from the perspective of the left. So like when you're when we were talking about what comes to my mind, you know, algorithm of cap like, capital being an algorithm, I think people on the left are literally thinking that that this is a literal algorithm that is only for capital. But I think that sort of loses, like, a whole breadth of, of of of understanding or, like, maybe imagination as well of, like, what is or understanding what the full design space, really is. Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the interview or find the content I make important, you could pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theboxingsocialist, which really helps since making this stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. As a patron, you'll get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to bonus content, like Q and A episodes where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. You may also get bonus content like what I recently did by releasing the full interview that I had with Vitalik Buterin a week early before anyone else. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it, So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out.
I mean, I think the the the left is is is a very broad church and is is very different kinds of ideas and beliefs under that that label. Right? And, I think I would I would distinguish radical critique of capitalism from revolutionary critique of capitalism. And and and, there's one I like and one I don't like. And radical critique of capitalism is essentially a sophisticated form of whining about the way things are. And revolutionary criticism of capitalism is understanding understanding what capitalism is as a social system at the deepest most scientific level so we can identify real possibilities for change, for intervening in the system and changing it. And from that perspective, technology is a is a contradictory thing. It's it is invented under the rubric of of capital, and it's distorted and corrupted by its use under capital. But that that isn't all there is to to technology. There's also other ways to use it. And and and there's revolutionary ways to to use technology, and there's ways to pick it up as a tool and promote progressive historical change. And so I'm ultimately a technological optimist because, I believe it's good that humans acquire greater quality powers.
That's a that's a spicy take.
I'm totally a technological optimist. I I I I think, the the technology and science gets a bad rap on the left under capitalism because many radical critics of the left don't fully understand, that the nature of the capitalist system. And so some of the symptoms of capitalism, the way science is corrupted and misused, the way technology is corrupted and misused, that gets the blame rather than the fundamental social relations of capitalism themselves.
So for me, I have this kind of, like, awkward relationship between between these two these two spaces, I think, in that I think that it it's like it's just like such a it is just an extremely niche niche space to be in of trying to kind of synthesize, you know, different concepts, that's prominent on left wing political thought and the different concepts that are, you know, prominent within within the crypto space. And sometimes I there there are really interesting, syntheses, but, you know, it it's because there's so much to learn about left wing political theory and then there's so much to learn about crypto, like, it is quite a lot of knowledge. So it is quite difficult. Like, it doesn't it's it's difficult to to get people's attention to it, difficult. Like, it doesn't it's it's difficult to to get people's attention to it because it's not easily you know, you can't wrap your head easily around it too. Like, I I always have this struggle of, like, but you have to understand, you know, that, you know, blockchains are peer to peer and, you know, sometimes it was decentralized in this way, but not in this way. And, you know, there's, like, a lot of things to kind of, explain. But I wonder if maybe you have better better thoughts or, like, easier, thoughts on what you think maybe, the left can learn from crypto?
Right. I I mean, it's true that it crypto isn't an easy space, technically speaking. Right? It it is actually a a very deep technical area even for trained computer scientists. And, we we can't we can't expect people without that training to really grok it at that level. And, you know, I I started giving talks in 2015 about what I called, the the blockchain and algorithmic socialism. And I did give that to, to fellow Marxists and and other left wing, people. And they were very interested in it, you know, because it is it is intrinsically interesting. But, I couldn't fully communicate, why I had the conviction that this technology was like a genie that was now out of the bottle, but it was gonna be something that was fundamentally going to, change the way, society runs, either in a capitalistic way or in, post capitalistic ways. You know? I I think this technology is here to stay. I think it's an important but but getting that across to people can sometimes be hard. Even, computer scientists say, well, why don't you just use a database? And you want to just slide your head and go, do you not understand? The point is about eradicating trust and corruption out of these social relations. And, that can be hard to do. So it's it's it is tricky, as you say. So what I think the left could learn from crypto, is, I'm quite passionate about this. I don't think I really haven't written about it at all or spoken about it, but this is something I'm passionate about. So it's the importance of innovation, of of trying to build entirely new things. Because I think parts of the left, especially in the in the anglophone countries that I'm I'm familiar with, they become quite conservative and tradition bound, especially when it comes to a worker organization. But we we we mustn't forget that every kind of working class institution, trade unions, worker co ops, you know, reformist parties, vanguard parties, com communes, all these things. Right? Once they didn't exist, they had to be invented. And they were creative acts in response to and, like, an intolerable narrowing of the possibility space by the the rule of of of capital. Now those kind of traditional working class organizations are essential. The sites of class struggle. They're not going away because capitalism creates the need for them. Capitalism creates its own adversary. Right? But if we if we wanna keep our eye on the prize, I think we also have to be critical of them. And the uncomfortable truth, which is is hardly mentioned on the left, is that all these institutions have failed. They've completely and utterly failed. And even saying that in left circles raises hackles. Right? Because there's such an emotional attachment to the tradition of this heroic class struggle. And the left can be really nostalgic even when that history is a history of of defeats. But, you know, the empirical data is in. These organizational forms have coexisted with capitalism for, like, over a hundred and fifty years now. Right? We can never say never, but there's very little evidence to think that they're gonna be capable of establishing a new kind of society. So the left, I think, desperately needs new ideas for organizational forms that, you know, really gain traction with working people. It needs new kinds of organizations that transcend national brown boundaries, which organically grow to include hundreds of millions of people around the globe. The left needs to think bigger, needs to think more creatively. And it's it's always harder to notice the absence of something rather than the the presence of something. And I think a lot of the left haven't noticed something really missing in our theory and practice. And I think, the crypto space in contrast is very dynamic, very experimental, is building applications which aren't hugely relevant to socialism yet, but do grow organically to pull in, millions of people. And, I think there's a large number of people in the crypto industry right now, certainly not Marxist, but they're not extreme libertarians. They're not just straightforward apologists for capitalism. They're not free market ideologues, but they're critical like like we are of capitalist society. And they gen genuinely want to change it for the better. So, I was listening to your, first part of your interview with, Vitalik Buterin, last evening. I think, you know, he's not a Marxist. He might even be hostile to it, but that that is a Vitalik is a rare genius with an amazing vision, and his heart's in the right place. And I think with complex, ambitious technologies like Ethereum, and the kind of things that will get built on it, No one or one group has all all the answers. It's gotta be a joint effort of like minded people. And I think I think there are I mean, you probably know better than I do, but I think there are quite a lot of people in crypto who want to build radically more democratic, more egalitarian, more meritocratic, more dynamic, more peaceful, less militaristic kinds of societies. Societies aren't, you know, ruled by a minority class that grabs, you know, disproportionate amount of the society's resources. So I'd like to see crypto becoming a more a bit more Marxist and some Marxists become a bit more crypto. And, yeah, maybe good things will have maybe good things will happen. Yeah. For sure. You've got an experiment.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I like I like a lot of what you said. I think, what was really interesting actually when I spoke to Vitalik, one of the things I wanted to mention, because he kind of alluded to it, I think it's it might be in the second part. But I asked him, you know, what, what types of things would he like to see from the left? Because actually, he has, you know, unironically has, expressed interest in left wing use cases for crypto, like, openly before. And of course that, you know, that that that probably that question that he when he when he gave that question was probably not answered by anyone on the Left, at least not via Twitter, because, you know, 99% of people on the Left kind of don't engage, with this type of inquiry, or this space. But one of the things that he said when I asked him about what he wanted us to see, on what are left wing use cases was about approaching things from an internationalist lens, which is, you know, I I was, like, really happy to hear that actually because I I have also thought about that as well that I think, you know, a lot of the times we're kind of in traditional, like, left wing politics, we are kind of restricting our thoughts around, you know, direct action or for political action solely within the realm of our national borders. And when I think that doesn't necessarily that doesn't necessarily have to be the case and should not be the case in a world where capital is global or capital is international, and their their power I mean, they take advantage of, you you know, what what crypto people have called the legal arbitrage, you know, using different different countries for different things due to their laws and just taking advantage of those loopholes. It's you know, it maybe sounds ridiculous at the moment because we don't really do it now, but why don't we do that as well, in in in a lot of ways? You know? I I think in in the past, I think it's kinda funny actually that the left has has used legal arbitrage before in that, a lot of left wing thinkers were sort of exiled to other countries or they they fled to other countries in order to, like, not be persecuted. But I think they're you know, that that that idea can can be expanded on quite a lot If you want to, for example, manage a strike, within a company that has a supply chain that, you know, passes through five different countries or whatever, that you can coordinate between these different different unions in different countries or different union members or just you know, if they're not in a union just, workers within the company to create to have coordinated action. And to use, you know, a very resilient form of a database is probably like a good technological bet than it is to use a single database to to manage all that because a single database is very probably easy to find by whoever, you know, the company is, but it's very difficult to find if you have thousands of nodes across the world with different legal jurisdictions whose countries don't like each other. So they're not gonna let, you know, the police or the army from another country go and, enter their borders so that they can stop you from from managing this. It's like there's I think there are, like, these types of, cracks, these international cracks in the system between the sort of constant battles that are happening happening within the the bourgeoisie, I guess you could say, that is happening on through markets largely, that we can, like, sneak into those cracks and and, you know, get in there and and and make them wider, so to say.
Yes. I I I basically agree with everything you said. I think I think that the point is it's not that it's desirable for working class organizations and revolutionary and reformist politics to be international. It's not it's not desirable. It's a necessity. It's an absolute necessity because, as you said, capital is global. It, it is a law unto itself. It is more powerful than nation states. I mean, just recently, the conservative party in The UK, made some kind of policy fumble, and, international capital started to tank the pound and, guilts or bonds. I can't remember which. And they had to retreat. They had to backtrack immediately. So even if a left wing, political party, which isn't the Labour Party in The UK, got into power, Soon, they started to do anything that would, threaten the, interest rates on on on on savings, on capital savings, and was anti business in any perceived to be. The country would be in difficult macroeconomic condition very quickly. So and it's the same with strike striking. Right? These many of these companies are are global. They can shift production around very quickly, very easily. So if they get some intelligent workers in country a, they can move production to country b. It's gotta be international. And sadly, most of the working class organizations are national based. And that's, in many ways, a regression from the initial ideals of communism, which, you know, when Mark said, international workers of the world unite. You know, workers of the world unite. And the the first, political, institution he set up was the, excuse the Victorian language, the International Working Men's Association, the International Working Men's Association. It was always international. And some of the the biggest debates within Marxism were about, whether it was possible to build socialism in one country. And many Marxists said, no. It's absolutely impossible. It's gotta it's gotta spread. He can't do it. So internationalism is absolutely key. And the fact that, Vitalik Buterin is is mentioned that I completely and utterly agree with. Blockchain does give us the means to organize internationally, ease in more easier ways and in new ways.
Right. And with, I think, this added property of resilience, rather than, I think, in some ways, some, left wing organizing is done perhaps internationally or through tools that can be international, I. E. The Internet. But, you know, we're using centralized platforms owned by, you know, the very capitalist class that you want to overthrow eventually. So maybe perhaps it makes sense to think about, you know, the left needs its own technical infrastructure, basically, or at least needs a more neutral infrastructure than Google or Facebook is.
Yeah. I think absolutely. I think that's I think that's obvious to me at least. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe to end it off,
you know, you mentioned that it's algorithms all the way down. And so we might as well choose what algorithms we should live by. So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts, you know, from your maybe in your background in, in working with algorithms, how do we create algorithms that we would rather live by? Big question. Big task. Big task.
That that is the question. That is the historical problem that we face and we need to solve. So how long have you got? And I'm I'm serious. How long do you have? Because I I can't give you an I can give you an answer. It's gonna take about five, ten minutes. I I have no I have nothing planned today. So Alright. Let me try and be brief, because it is such an important question. It's no good. We're just being, as I mentioned, sort of sophisticated whiners or whingers if we can't point to something that would work differently and that you could imagine actually being built. We we have to propose an alternative. So, yeah, what algorithms would we like to live under? And so, yeah, so let's let's let me try and answer that. So I'm I'm interested in, new kinds of organization, new kinds of social algorithms that are immediately international and that immediately improve the lives of those that participate in them and immediately instantiate, communal property relations and that can grow within capitalist society and eventually replace it. Right? That's what I'm interested. I'm less interested in in piecemeal reforms that can be thrown away as soon as a different political party gets in in power. I'm less interested in in organizational forms that require a lot of self sacrifice in the here and now for some higher ideal that might never be achieved. And I've also got no interest at all in, traditional politics, which is is just repeated, you know, turn taking by indistinguishable political parties that have all been captured by, the nation's, dominant capital. So so, basically, I want social algorithms that enable the majority of the population, you know, those that, at the moment, rely on wage income to exit the capitalist system to escape the rule of capital. So I'm not unlike, many Marxists, I'm not too interested in planning planning algorithms as such. Right? Because I think too often, discussion of planning becomes a very theoretical story about what we're meant to do after
a revolutionary event. It's it's a cart before the horse, I feel like, sometimes.
Yes. Absolutely. And and because the real problem we face is how to manufacture a runaway revolutionary process. I think doing that requires that the working class attain real economic power within capitalism and not just the power to withdraw their labor, but actual real productive power. And those those requirements that I've outlined are quite hard to meet, and, you know, I don't have the answers. But the best thing I've come across that even tries to meet those requirements is, Dimitri Kleiner's venture communism. And and Dimitri Kleiner is another soft engineer, Marxist type, and, you know, he's written on the blockchain. He's created his own coin even, so I think he might be someone you might be interested in. I think he's quite last I checked, the tell he's with a telecommunist in, I think. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're they're they're quite critical. I've, yeah, I've never spoken to Dimitri, though, from but, I've spoken a couple of years ago. Critical of the blockchain. But, I think, his ideas on venture communism and his ideas on the blockchain are worth listening to regardless. Sure. Sure. Yeah. He's definitely a critic. Yeah. Yeah. So if you'd like, I could spend a few minutes describing what venture communism is because it might give some of, your listeners, I you know, ideas about how parts of it could be implemented Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Is that good? Yeah. Alright. So let let let me do that then. So, a venture commune is a type of, voluntary workers association, and the intent is to communally accumulate land and capital. And it has two, key institutions, which is worker co ops and and the commune itself. So I won't say much about co ops because I think most people understand what they are. But, you know, the key difference is is between a co op and a capitalist firm is who owns what. So the ideal worker co op is is owned by its working members, but a capitalist firm is owned by its shareholders. And a capitalist firm, you know, hires in workers at a pre agreed rental price, which is called the wage, and then it sets them to work. And the shareholders then claim the profits generated by this labor solely because of this paper claim, called equity. And that's independent of whether they contribute any labor or any money capital to production or not. You know, one once their initial, investments are paid off, they still have equity. They still lay a claim to the income of the firm. So they earn income essentially just by privilege. But in a worker co op, that reverses the contract between capital and labor. So the worker co op hires in capital, not labor. It hires in capital at a pre agreed rental price, which is the loan interest rate. And, and no one therefore can have equity, or shouldn't do in a worker coop. And it's the working members who claim the profit generated by their own labor, which is then distributed to them according to some, you know, democratic divide the pie, voting mechanism. And the key point is that these aren't these aren't worker coops are not exploitative institutions. So Marx, says, I think somewhere in volume three, that they overcome the antagonism between capital and labor, and we should consider them as transitional forms from capitalist mode of production to a communal one. So a venture commune has a bunch of worker co ops. The the venture commune itself is think of it as a democratic federation of the co op, co ops within it and the members. And the important point is that all the prophecy of the individual co ops is collectively owned by the venture commune. So the means of production are socialized. Right? And the venture commune itself is owned in common because if you're a member of the co op, you're a member of the commune. Right? So all the means of production, all the productive assets of all the co ops is held in common by all the members of the commune. And so no no individual or group of individuals can can accumulate a disproportionate share, of the ownership of of capital. Capital doesn't concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. It's socialized. Because some Marxists say that, if co ops, privately own unequal masses of capital, they can might exploit each other, and that well, market economy of co ops doesn't abolish exploitation. But a venture commune is a counterexample to that. And in a in the commune, the commune doesn't plan production at a macroeconomic level. Those decisions is decentralized as normal and subject to the discipline of the market just as in in capitalism. But the main function of the commune is is democratic stewardship of the com this common stock of productive assets. So that will include activities such as acquiring new property, loaning out productive assets to work co ops, and liquidating and selling that property when it's not needed. And so it exerts macroeconomic control over production because it manages and owns the commune's property. So I think I need to give an example, right, to make that a little bit more concrete. So let's say that you and I would like to, start a widget making business. Love love making widgets. Yeah. So do I, actually. We did factory. Yeah. Fun things like to do. So we need capital to, you know, buy some premises or rent some premises and and buy some widget making machines. Right? So what we could do is we could pitch our idea for our start up to the to a venture commune. And the members of the commune, let's say they really like our idea. They think it's a good business bet. And so they think about it a bit, and then they democratically vote to fund our startup. So we're we're in business. Right? But the funding agreement from the venture communist is quite different from anything offered by a venture capitalist. Right? They're different. And the first difference is that our new widget making company doesn't own its own property. Instead, the commune releases some of its capital funds to acquire the premises and the machines for us, and then it lends this property to us. And in return, we pay the commune a rental fee to use it because all the means of production are owned in common. Right? This is a way of, socializing, the means of production. And the second difference is the venture company owns the productive assets, but doesn't own the actual coop. It doesn't ask for equity in our business because they don't want to appropriate fruits of other people's labor. So instead, the worker co op is, normally by its working members, and that means that the venture commune has no claim on the profits that we make from our widget making company. So what what's happening there is and this is, Dimitri Kleiner's, ideas. Right? What's happening here is something quite subtle, but I think important. The venture commune supports co ops. And because the means of production held in common, then property is neutralized through the mechanism of renting it out to the individual co ops. And what that means is that venture communism can kick start new business ventures that reproduce the communal ownership of capital and the right of workers to the fruits of their labor. Mhmm. And then does that make sense?
Yeah. I mean, I think I guess the, for what's coming to my mind with with a lot of this is the how complicated legally a lot of this must be to actually do it in probably a lot of different jurisdictions because you have, like, set rules on what is considered a cooperative, what is considered like, who has rights to what. Like, legal code kind of, influences this a lot. And but, like, also at the same time, you know, where I think, you know, having understanding this, what is interesting about Blockchains, or using Blockchains or cryptocurrencies is that you can sort of, yeah, get around. You can sort of have similar, not the same, types of guarantees, that maybe that you would get through a legal system. But they are much more malleable to what maybe exactly it is that you're looking for. Like in the case if you're thinking of something for a venture for, like, a venture commune, like, there is no country that has any sort of, like, you know, legal entity that you can register. Like, yeah, this is my venture commune, and you're going to have worker co ops in there, and we're going to share it in this way. There could be a lot of complications, and there could be also maybe a lot of, like, taxes that you have to pay in which, like, you know, the state takes away from you.
Yeah. Absolutely. There's a there's there's, many parts to this. Right? Because, let's say which you can't do this, but let's say you could let's say you could completely automate venture communism as code on the blockchain. Right? Yeah. As some kind of, DAO kind of system, made with extra bits that are linked to real world assets or something like that. Clever coders, perhaps like ourselves, we can perhaps try and create such a thing. We can run it. It's permission Ethereum's permissionless. Put we put it up there, and no one can stop it now. It's off. It's out it's out the genie's out the bottle. People can choose to participate in it or not. They can enter and exit, but it's off. Right? Now perhaps just in itself, all the people that participate in it will start to hit legal obstacles in their nation states wherever they happen to live, and that's definitely a problem. And if it, you know, if, a venture commune, kickstarts thousands of businesses and maybe one of them is a hit, becomes a new Google or Apple, then things will get really start to get really real. There'll be a lot of pressure from, the capitalist class, to shut this down or prevent it or or or it'll be a fight. It'll be a struggle. Class struggle is not getting away from that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And also yeah. I this is like,
I I didn't take, you know there there's some inspiration. I, have read a bit about venture commune communism from them before, and that was kind of inspired a little bit my approach to the project, that I've been working on called Breadchain, which is this federation of different projects, that are exploring, you know, using Blockchain from a more, you know, progressive left wing point of view and and framework. But, yeah, I but with the I guess with the original idea of venture communes, it sounds like to me it requires productive businesses. It requires, like, you know I don't know. I'm just making some up, but, like, a pizza shop, you know, it's or, like, it would require, like, a farm. In in some ways, it reminds me of an ecovillage, or some some ecovillages, where they do try to, you know, be self sufficient in in certain ways, which I think there is a lot of division about that on the left about, like, whether it makes sense to try and make these, you know, pockets of pockets of freedom or, like, pockets of socialism and try to grow from there. Or actually, no. There's plenty of people on the left who say, no. That's, like, useless. We need to kind of command through a general strike and, you know, take over the government, basically. But Yeah. So yeah. That's that's that's that's right.
So first thing is that, when I when I think of a worker co op in the venture commune, I abstract from any particular kind of business. So in my head, it's it's not necessarily the small bakery or the bicycle shop. It could definitely be, tech company that's entirely in the dig digital space. In fact, if it was on the blockchain, it would probably make the most sense to start in precisely that industrial sector. It would be, you know, Web three kind of start ups. It would seem to make sense. So I I don't see it in terms of, local small scale production at all necessarily. And, yeah, and the the other thing is, yeah, there's a there's a huge amount of, discussion about the best strategy on the left. But I think it's just important to have pluralism in in terms of revolution strategy. Right? Because we're scientists, or it should be, we need more experiments, more hypotheses to test out than try. We need to be creative and experimental. Not everyone is interested in blockchain and and and venture communism, and they don't have to be. Right? We don't have to all play by
follow the same fiddle here at all. If we are it should be seen like, the left should be seen as a as a symphony rather than just like a, you know, a a one man band. We're not all playing one instrument.
Absolutely. As as long as we're we have clear clarity on the direction of the overall concerto, you know, that we're all Right. Going in the same direction. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And with that yeah.
There's a lot there's a lot more I could have gone with that, that analogy that just popped in my head. No. I totally agree on having a a plethora of different strategies on the left rather than hyper focusing on one. But, yeah, I don't know if you do you have anything else that you want to add to that? Or
I think I think we've probably said enough. I could talk more about venture communism. You know, there's two kinds of income in the system. You get, profit share from the curve you work in and a basic income from the commune as a whole, and that could be allocated democratically, according to need. And so it it creates a cultural space, and, hopefully, the idea would be to create material productive power to create a cultural space where more even further experiments could be made, where we distribute more according to people's needs rather than what they contribute to the economy. And, you know, I I you can imagine, an international mini economy that springs up that people decide to participate in. And the idea would be that they would get a much better deal as as working people from in the communal sector compared to the capitalist sector, and they get more entry from working people, and it would grow and crowd out the capitalist sector. There's lots of, unfinished business, unfinished thoughts about venture communism. But to me, it's the only thing I've really come across, and I haven't read widely on this. So I'm sure there's other things out there that begins to meet the requirements
of gaining workers' power and real true power. Yeah. Yeah. When you when you talked about actually, when you mentioned actually seeing venture communes, like, not necessarily being, like, potentially being able to to be started as digitally first, it reminds me a bit This is contra I mean, stick with me for a second. It reminded me of the network state idea, from Balaji, Balaji Srinivasan, which is basic which is he he I mean, he himself is an extreme libertarian, pretty right wing, even though he will say that he's not and he votes Democrat or whatever else. He published the book The Network States, which, I'm doing a series on pretty soon. But, this so, like, he his idea is, like, a a libertarian exit type of strategy of let's make, you know, starting we could start with a cryptocurrency that is the start of our new network state, which is basically disparate communities that are, living across the world, in which we have an idea for, like, trying to make our own state and, you know, we have we live by our ideals and, you know, we have our own monetary system that we've created cryptocurrency for. And, you know, it's very startup y, how it sounds, and it's very a lot of it is very bad, a lot of it's very, stupid. But there is, like, a grain of I think why that idea has taken off so much by people with, especially in the crypto world is because there is, like, a grain of, like, something very, very interesting, which is the world has been stuck for so long. It feels in this, like, very rigid structure, and it's clearly not working for people, and they want a way out. Can we find ways to create pockets that can expand into real power of something like a nation state or to push back against, you know, where the real power lies. And I think there there is, in the way that Balaji expresses it, it's quite bad. But there are kernels of truth that are interesting that I think maybe the left could, you know, combining the the the kernels of truth in there with venture communism, I think, could be a really, really interesting idea maze to explore.
Right. Yeah. This this is historical materialism in action. Right? I think, which which because capital is is is, as we discussed, is in control, which is why everything is out of control because it's just accumulate accumulate, and it's a universalizing logic. And its history is one of starting out, arguably in in England, seventeen hundreds, and then it it this this new, way of, producing things and organizing ourselves to spread like wildfire and has done ever since. It's Marx has says, it's a cult that's become an end in itself. And and capital breaks down all barriers to its accumulation. Right? And that includes I think that includes, and it's it's becoming clear increasingly clear, the nation state system itself. And, I think nation states I mean, this is this is dramatizing a bit. In my view, nation states have become prisons for the working class. Right? Capital has free mobility. The working class is imprisoned within nation states. They have no choice. They do not have no ability to exit that system. And, you can see also the, slight concerns of, managers of nation states of how cryptocurrency threatens the ability to control their own currencies and to control, financial transactions that occur under their geographical jurisdiction. There's a upcoming contradiction, I think, between the the aim of capital to completely universalize and break down any national boundaries and, the, attempts by people in geographical locations to maintain, you know, decent standards of living. And that's expressed currently through the nation state system, which is ironically entirely captured by capital and therefore doesn't really represent them at all. So I think it is incredibly important for working people around the world and, the left who were thinking about this in particular to start thinking about, international organization that transcends nation states with the intention of really breaking down those barriers. We do want an international community that is democratic and organizes production on a world scale, in order to make life better for all of us. So if I haven't read, this person. I've heard of him. I think I have a podcast that's queued up to actually listen to it because I'm intrigued by it. Is is it the eight hour podcast on Lex is it the eight hour interview? Yes. Lex Friggin.
Good luck. Good luck. Oh, okay.
Great. Because I am intrigued. But we have to be careful because there'll be people, perhaps, this person who will be pushing for the, transcendence of the nation state system, but they'll just be reproducing our worst as a real god again and again and again. Absolutely. Yes.
Then you can spoiler alert. Really? I mean, you can't expect a VC to to desire to transcend capital as a real god. But No. They are, as I would say, canonically
possessed by the real god. They are actually possessed by, by, representatives.
He's yeah. He's definitely one of those. But, yeah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge and your work. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, and it's been really interesting. If you want to maybe just to finish it off, last thing, if you want to leave your, the places where people can keep up with you and your work.
Yeah. Thanks for the conversation, and thanks for inviting me on. I I really enjoyed it. It was good to actually talk about the stuff and, have a meeting of minds on it. So that was great. So if people are interested, they can follow me on Twitter. My handle is, at Ian Paul Wright. Wright with a w. You can read articles on my blog, which is .marxism.online. And some of my talks are available on YouTube. You just go to youtube.com, and then it's at dark marxism, all one word.
Right. Yeah. I think there you have a really good, presentation, basically of the of the piece that you did on Capital as a Real God that I recommend. And I can put it in the show notes. Thank you. So, yeah. Thanks a lot.