Was im 17. Jahrhundert die Handelsrouten auf See und in den 1960er Jahren die Radiowellen waren, ist 2014 das Internet und in naher Zukunft das Genom und der Weltall: Die Geschichte des Kapitalismus wiederholt sich, wenn noch unerschlossenes Gebiet vom Wirtschaftskreislauf besetzt wird.
Look at the big picture: [Edward Snowden, a] ‘traitor’ named ‘person of the year’? Leftists allying with right-wing hardliners? Western advocates of civil liberties turning to the private sector to defend constitutional freedoms? Government destroying billions of dollars of value, and hurting its own national champions? Was capitalism just turned upside down? No, it wasn’t. In fact, this is merely history repeating.
In my study of the history of capitalism, I became increasingly familiar with a recurrent historical subject who co-produces new norms of conduct in the uncharted territories of capitalist expansion. I called that subject the pirate organization […] In a nutshell, pirate organizations are groups of individuals who become active when capitalist economies transition into the unknown – the high seas in the 17th century, the airwaves in the 20th century, cyberspace nowadays. During such transitional periods, established value systems become ineffective at categorizing events, leading to apparent paradoxes. Traitor or hero? Occupy or Tea Party? Regulating the private sector or banning government interference? During these periods, pirate organizations represent what social scientists would call an ‘endogenous’ source of change, or what philosophers with a Deleuzian inclination would call a ‘fold’ in capitalism’s ‘plane of immanence’. Pirate organizations typically oppose governments and their protected oligopolies in industries located at the vanguard of the economy.
Zu diesem äußerst spannenden Thema – hier wird im Kapitalismus kontextualisierter, gesellschaftlicher Umbruch erklärt! – gibt es übrigens einen grottenschlechten TedxTalk von Jean-Philippe Vergne.