Scrawled in Wax

In what is surely the first instance of such an occurrence, today someone stated an opinion, others disagreed and, to use the parlance of our time, an online shitstorm ensued. The instigator of this particular mess was Billy Bragg and his suggestion that social networks like Bebo owe their users, many of whom who are artists and musicians, some of the hundreds of millions of dollars they make when being sold. That they don’t, Bragg argues, is a form of exploitation.

The reaction was harsh and swift (I know, can you believe it?) and generally fell into two camps: Bragg is naive and does not understand either the role of social networks or the nature of capitalism; or, Bragg is right on and big corporations and the man are all about screwing the artist, man. Mathew Ingram, my go-to writer for even-handed analysis, took the first of these two opinions and argues that since participation in social networks is voluntary, free and provides a service, one cannot seriously suggest that social networking is exploitative. While I think in a literal sense he’s correct, I’d disagree in two ways. First, I’d be wary of the idea that “exploitation is when you take advantage of someone and they are powerless to prevent it” - not so much because of the idea itself, which literally-speakig is ‘true’, but how it’s phrased - it assumes far too much about how much choice people really have. It seems akin to saying that “you have to dress appropriately to get ahead” - yes, one must ‘choose’ to do that, but that you have to choose that or poverty shows the power dynamics at work. You either work through the systems of power or you suffer.

Secondly, Bragg employs some vaguely socialist rhetoric in his piece, which is dismissed out of hand. However, I would argue that there is a form of exploitation in the business of social networks, and argued as such in one of my classic, rambling, vaguely off-topic comments on Ingram’s blog (sorry Mathew!), which I quote here:

“I think the Marxist reading [of social networks] is, on some level, still valid. One of the things the Web was,’supposed to do’ (in my mind anyway) was transfer some of the means of production to the ‘common person’ so that, rather than going to a newspaper or record label, one could for no or very little investment, take control of the mechanisms of distribution, sales, marketing etc.

A potential problem with the monetization of human activity - ostensibly the business model of social networking - is that while individuals spend time doing the things they do (messaging, posting photos etc etc), very unlike work, there is no exchange of labour for a wage. The means of production, far from being democratized, are centralised in the hands of Zuckerbergs and Thiels. I guess there’s an odd contradiction at the core of different aspects of Web 2.0 - some facets do democratise and open new opportunities for people while others, while certainly fun and even helpful, do a lot to maintain the disparities between ‘regular folk’ and those with tonnes o’ capital and influence.

I know this sounds a bit conspiratorial and it probably is - I guess I mean this more analogously than a direct statement of “Facebook is exploitative”. That said, even though I’ve probably oversimplified things it seems like there’s something here worth thinking about in relation to a possible ’set of values’ for Web 2.0.”

My point is that any ideas about Web 2.0 giving the ‘power to the people’ need to be balanced by a sense that social networks monetize communication and, while we are perfectly happy to have them do that, that economic act leaves power still centralised in the hands of what we might loosely call ‘the capitalists’ (i.e. those with capital). While it’s not quite the ’sharecropping’ that Nick Carr claims it is, it doesn’t seem quite like a crazy Marxist conspiracy theory to simply suggest that Web 2.0 carries on the democratic-capitalist tradition of making profit through ‘what people freely choose to do’. This same freedom somehow results in a social system in which a small percentage of people control the bulk of wealth. That’s a grossly oversimplified critique of capitalism, but the critique seems less important here than the link between industrial capitalism and the supposedly-different Web 2.0 sort.

This was all taken up by Mike Arrington who, in a very uncharacteristic move for a tech blogger, deliberately and controversially stated that artists should not expect any revenue from social networks because “recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist”. Nick Carr, in response, carefully and deliberately thought about what Arrington suggested and then delicately called it “the saddest, stupidest sentence [he'd] ever read”. Oh God. What’s going on is obviously a clash of world views and one that isn’t terribly healthy or useful. Carr is obviously incensed at the idea that art is a mere commodity - Carr is nothing if not a conservative humanist when it comes to Art. On the other hand I think it’s important to note, however, that Arrington said that it was recorded music that is the marketing material and not music in general - i.e. that the purpose of recorded music is to drive attention to the artist who then makes a living off playing live. But whether it’s Carr or Arrington, both employ a view of music that either prioritises economics or its cultural import but cannot seem to express how the two are intertwined.

While I am as likely to defend Arrington’s perspective as I am the idea that Art is a pure, untouched thing that needs to be celebrated, the whole kerfuffle does show what’s at stake here as culture becomes a commodity and the ‘net the distribution method: the dominant ideas of what capitalism and art are and should be are, yet again, butting heads. It would be nice if someone paid attention to their interdependence - on the necessity of art to perpetuate and deal with the ideology of capitalism and the necessity of capitalist distribution systems and infrastructure to perpetuate music - but I’m not about to hold my breath. At present, people seem far too ensconced in understanding a cultural-economic phenomenon through only one of those terms, insisting on ignoring the overarching liberal-humanist ideology that can valorize both capitalism as a social form and art as ‘the quintessentially human’. To me, both are bound up together and products of the same thing. Still, all in all, interesting stuff and simply one of many arguments yet to come. What is a shame is that both Arrington and Carr (Carr especially) are very smart - this sort of inflammatory rhetoric, while understandable, doesn’t seem to be conducive to healthy discussion.