Stefan Heidenreich

Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value: Towards a Political Economy of the Turing Machine reads the full title of an essay that Matteo Pasquinelli put online as pdf.
We had long debates and I have my doubts about Marx’ concept of value in general (which to me looks like a smokescreen to introduce and hide a moral argument, which turns into an accusation by adding the word “surplus”). Anyway, Matteo’s paper gives an excellent introduction to the various attempts to translate the web-economy into Marxist terms (in my view, a futile undertaking, but however – well explained here).

It is time to move from the white cube of digital creativity and dig deep into the black box of network surplus value and the algorithms designed for the capture of the common.

No doubt, but I wonder if the marxist black and white scheme of exploiters and exploited, of capture and surplus is not simplifying things a bit too much.