Blockchain and the Distributed Reproduction of Capitalist Class Power

* Article: Herian, Robert. Blockchain and the Distributed Reproduction of Capitalist Class Power. In: Gloerich, Inte; Lovink, Geert and De Vries, Patricia eds. MoneyLab Reader 2: Overcoming the Hype. Institute of Network Cultures, 2018, pp. 43–51.

URL = https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/05-robertherian.pdf

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Excerpt from Robert Herian:

"The issue of blockchain as a means of reproducing capitalist class power does not begin (or end for that matter) with the technology itself but with people. Those who engineer and build the technology might care about blockchain solely as an intellectual challenge. The extent to which it is possible to separate those who, for instance, engineer a piece of software or build a platform from those who seek to exploit the technology (for the purposes of not simply generating personal fortunes in the short to medium term but also for the sheer thrill of the process of being an active economic subject) becomes less clear when they are one and the same person, namely a so-called tech entrepreneur. For this cabal of tech-minded libertarians and anarcho-capitalists blockchain technology ofers an opportunity to leverage new markets and enable, as David Golumbia argues, ‘a wide range of extractive and exploitative business practices’ that ultimately ‘increase the power of corporations and capital outside the scope of any attempts by democratic polities to constrain them’.

When discussing technology it is easy to forget the people behind it. Likewise, it is easy for those selfsame people to hide behind the technology and ultimately use it to both facilitate and conceal their desires and motivations. Desires that can be markedly different from those to which the technology appears to be aimed — or, at least, towards which they tell the world the technology is aimed."