Christian Marazzi: Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy (2002/2008)

“The Swiss-Italian economist Christian Marazzi is one of the core theorists of the Italian postfordist movement, along with Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, and Bifo (Franco Berardi). But although his work is often cited by scholars (particularly by those in the field of “Cognitive Capitalism”), his writing has never appeared in English. This translation of his most recent work, Capital and Language (published in Italian in 2002), finally makes Marazzi’s work available to an English-speaking audience.

Capital and Language takes as its starting point the fact that the extreme volatility of financial markets is generally attributed to the discrepancy between the “real economy” (that of material goods produced and sold) and the more speculative monetary-financial economy. But this distinction has long ceased to apply in the postfordist New Economy, in which both spheres are structurally affected by language and communication. In Capital and Language Marazzi argues that the changes in financial markets and the transformation of labor into immaterial labor (that is, its reliance on abstract knowledge, general intellect, and social cooperation) are just two sides of the same coin.

Capital and Language focuses on the causes behind the international economic and financial depression of 2001, and on the primary instrument that the U.S. government has since been using to face them: war. Marazzi points to capitalism’s fourth stage (after mercantilism, industrialism, and the postfordist culmination of the New Economy): the “War Economy” that is already upon us.

Marazzi offers a radical new understanding of the current international economic stage and crucial post-Marxist guidance for confronting capitalism in its newest form. Capital and Language also provides a warning call to a Left still nostalgic for a Fordist construct—a time before factory turned into office (and office into home), and before labor became linguistic.”

Introduction by Michael Hardt
Translated by Gregory Conti
Originally published in Italian by DeriveApprodi, 2002
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2008
Foreign Agents series
ISBN 1584350679, 9781584350675
180 pages

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David Easley, Jon Kleinberg: Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (2010)

Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the Internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2010
ISBN 0521195330, 9780521195331
736 pages

publisher
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Francesca da Rimini (ed.): A Handbook for Coding Cultures (2007)

“A Handbook for Coding Cultures provides a lasting companion to the inspiring projects and topical currents of thought explored in the Coding Cultures Symposium and Concept Lab. Six invited writers and groups from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, England, Italy and Hong Kong share their experiences of building imaginative digital tools, social networks, open labs and internet-based knowledge platforms for communication and creativity. Complementing these commissioned texts are contributions from our guest artists from Canada, England and Jamaica. Artist statements from Symposium speakers completes this snapshot of contemporary cultural practice.”

Publisher d/Lux/MediaArts and Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, 2007
d/Lux/Editions/02
ISBN 9780975136935

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