I’m posting some thoughts at the moment about the ideological shift in politics, economics and society that occurred during the transition to modernity 200 years ago and comparing them with changes occurring now as we entered a period of post-modernity.
I’ve covered off these ideas already in an introduction and I;ve added a post about the political changes taking place. This post will specifically take a look at the changes to economic ideologies in an internet society.
According to Schwarzmantel, another core feature of modernity “was the separation of two orders: state and economy”. For the first time making money was something that was no longer the sole domain of the state.
People were free to create wealth using their newly found individualism. Although these opportunities were limited due to traditional physical barriers: capital, land, education etc, Modernity paved the way for industrialisation, industrialists and mass market capitalism.
Contrast this with today’s post-modernity and while we still have largely a mass market capitalist society (and I’m talking primarily about Western history and economies here) I’d argue the internet is separating markets (ie. wealth creation) further from the ‘capitalist state’ – i.e. the large companies that relied on levering capital to make money.
More specifically, markets are being opened up to the individual in an even greater way. Look at tools like Paypal, designed to allow money transactions globally that by-pass state regulation and banks; look at virtual markets such as the metaverses of SL and WoW where money can be made through creating, buying and selling goods that only exist in a virtual capacity – but a capacity with a market value nonetheless.
Modernity separated the economy from the state, but wealth creation remained largely in the hands of industrialists and ‘big business’. It’s likely that in an age of post-modernity the internet will further emancipate the individual and open even greater opportunities for wealth creation outside of traditional mass markets and the mass market economic systems that have grown up over the past 200 years.
Technorati tags: ideology, post-modernism, modernity, John Schwarzmantel, economy
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