Time, Neoliberal Power, and the Advent of Marx’s “Common Ruin” Thesis

Abstract

Marx and Engels warned that class struggle would result “either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” This essay argues that through the effect of neoliberal networked economy, we have had both a “revolutionary reconstitution of society” and the “common ruin” of both bourgeois and proletarian classes. Their “common ruin” is expressed through their lack of viability as the basis for their respective democratic projects—liberalism and socialism. The revolution in information technologies and the rise of the neoliberal network society has transformed the nature of political power that had been founded upon traditional industrial forms of production and social–political organization. The essay develops a theory of technological change and a subsequent transformation in our relationship with time. By emphasizing the dialectic of technological–temporal change in the nature and quality of political power, we see that the very basis of both power and politics has become transformed in ways that negatively affect the potential of democratic forms of power, liberal, or socialist. The essay ends with a call for a new political approach to time, a “temporal sovereignty” to revive and renew the basis of democracy within a networked society.