​An amazing, accessible work of scholarship. Wood’s The Origins of Capitalism contests the dominant “commercialization model” of economic development, which “begs the question” by assuming the development of capitalism as an inevitable result while recounting the origins of capitalism. In the “commercialization model,” rationally self-interested individuals exchanged goods and services with each other for all of human history; a specialized division of labour develops; this is supplemented by technological development in production. Capitalism becomes the end stage of a natural evolution in the narrative—a quantitative increase and not a qualitative break—when homo economicus is liberated from “unnatural” limitations (i.e., feudalism). Free from political, cultural, societal, etc. obstacles to economic rationality, the market and commercial society signifies “the perfection of freedom” (p. 16) for the rational self-interested human being.
 
Towns and their inhabitants—the town-dwellers or burghers (bourgeois)—occupy a special place in the commercialization model. In this narrative, towns and their rational bourgeois inhabitants are thought to have been relatively autonomous; their pursuit of mercantile activity is said to have slowly broken through and overcome the unnatural imposition of feudalism on “human nature.” Following this logic, a strange slippage occurs and the bourgeois (town dweller) becomes conflated with the capitalist, as it is in the contemporary usage of the word.
 
In her history, Wood locates the origins of capitalism in a specific time and place: in the English countryside. Prior to capitalism, rural peasants had their surplus labour appropriated from them through extra-economic means, or “by means of direct coercion, exercised by landlords or states employing their superior force, their privileged access to military, judicial, and political power” (p. 95-96). Extra-economic appropriation can be distinguished from appropriation under capitalism, which happens by “purely ‘economic’ means” (p. 96). In the latter system of appropriation, direct producers must sell their labour-power on the market for a wage to access the means of production and for their own reproduction (basically, to live); in this system, capitalists do not need direct coercion (or extra-economic powers) to appropriate surplus labour.
 
Very specific structural aspects of English agriculture weakened the extra-economic powers of the English elite class while giving them increased economic powers of surplus extraction. Additionally, in English agriculture, a large tenant farmer population was dependent on renting land, which increasingly became priced according to the market, not tradition. Given these circumstances, tenant farmers competed on the market for access to land and for access to consumers; these market imperatives obligated tenants to improve productivity. As Wood remarks, the market is an imposition, not a vehicle for liberty. Tenant farmers who were more productive gained additional access to land while others lost access completely; rural England became a society of larger landowners and the dispossessed, leading to the “famous triad of landlord, capitalist, tenant, and wage labourer” (p. 103).
 
The concept of “improvement” (the word “improve” finds its origins in acting for profit—one can think of it roughly as “into-profit”) formed alongside the new ideology of agrarian capitalism. The new ideology brought forth its philosophers and philosophy. Wood demonstrates this with an extended discussion of John Locke’s Theory of Property, which justifies enclosure of the commons if it is done to improve the property in terms of exchange value, or commercial profit.
 
Contrary to prevalent histories, agrarian capitalism then supported the development of industrial capitalism—the former preceded the latter. Dispossessed wage labourers (without access to land and social reproduction) sold their labour in the market and formed the first market of mass consumer goods and were sustained with a more productive agricultural sector. As capitalism and its exigencies for profit and productivity spread outward from England, Wood claims that this “compelled other countries to promote their own economic development in capitalist directions” (p. 142). A single spark can start a prairie fire.
 
After her rereading of the origins of capitalism and her dismantling of the commercialization model, Wood devotes the final section of the book to discuss the implications for studies on capitalism and imperialism, capitalism and the development of the modern nation-state, and modernity and post-modernity (she wants to salvage the Enlightenment tradition)—this goes beyond the scope of the present book review

​A short but dense book. Han describes the expulsion of the negativity of the Other in contemporary society, leaving only the positivity of the Same. The expulsion of the Other, rather than being understood as a clearly delineated concept, can be understood more as a modality of our neo-liberal capitalist society mediated by hyper-communication in the age of social media, big data, and a highly developed information and communications technology ecosystem.
 
Han uses a variety of themes and theoretical traditions to describe the contemporary modality that exists with the expulsion of the Other. I provide a quick overview of some of the ideas. Individuals under neo-liberalism lack an experience of profound anxiety and boredom, which would force an evental reckoning and open up a new horizon for Being; instead, there is “ontological indifference” (p. 31).  Neo-liberalism subjectivizes individuals and submits them under the imperative to authenticity, forcing individuals to produce themselves as a commodity. As a commodity, individuals compete and are compared with others; as individuals strive to differentiate themselves, they become same Others, instead of atopic, incomparable Others. The compulsion to authenticity is a narcissistic compulsion that leads to depression and self-harm; self-love and self-harm are connected: “To escape this torturous emptiness today, one reaches either for the razorblade or the smartphone” (p. 25). As individuals actively self-commoditize, they are alienated not only from their work, but also from themselves, expressing “itself pathologically as a disorder of body image” (p. 39) and resulting in anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating.
 
Han describes the digital world as one largely devoid of the presence of the Other. The digital world is gapless, lacking generative thresholds (think rites of passage). Digital worlds lack the materiality and the negativity of objects (counter-bodies; ob-jeter) and the bodily experiences of the voice and gaze of the Other. For Han, the digital space is “a digital echo chamber in which subjective spirit encounters nothing but itself” (p. 60), where the presence of the Other is eliminated. There is no experience with the uncanny, the wonder of art and philosophy, that liberates “the Other from the categorial web of subjective spirit” (p. 60). Instead, the gapless space of the digital world suppresses silence, suppresses language; instead of a “poetics of attentiveness” we have an “economy of attention” (p. 64).
 
Han uses a generative immunological metaphor to sound out the expulsion of the Other in the social body. The negativity of the Other in the social body is like an infection that promotes antibodies. Without the Other, there is only the positivity of the Same; the excess of the Same leads to adiposity and an accumulation of fat—binge eating—for which there are no antibodies. Instead of communication, there is only accumulation; binge-watching and binge-eating share similar roots. Contemporary society is not a repressive society, where an external, negative force prohibits, forbids, and denies individuals; instead, it is one that exploits freedom and liberates the subject to produce itself authentically, as a commodity. The digital space mediates the new permissive society, instead of the repressive gaze of a disciplinary society, digital spaces are immersed with gazeless, aperspectival screening.
 
Han ends the book with a chapter on listening. In a society full of noise, Han writes that it is the listener who is “a resonance chamber in which the Other speaks themselves free” (p. 71). Listening is an act of caring for the other, an act of participation in the existence of the Other, of feeling the suffering of the Other. By listening, we move from the time of the self, a time marked by the logics of productivity and efficiency, to the time of the Other, a time of de-production, of community, and a time of celebration. 

​A Mishimaesque character study. The novel follows the widow Etsuko, who accepts her father-in-law's invitation to join the family in the multi-generational family home in rural farm country Maidemmura; she later becomes the father-in-law's mistress. Her father-in-law, the widowed patriarch Yakichi, was an upper class executive. He has three sons, whose families live with him. Kensuke, the oldest, is sickly, indolent, and cynical, and lives with an admiring Chieko; Yusuke, the youngest, is in Siberia, and leaves behind a wife and daughter; finally, there is Ryosuke, the middle child and deceased husband of Etsuko. Living with the family are their servants Miyo and Saburo.

The family exists as a bubble in Maidemmura--they are rich transplants from Tokyo and exist in a separate social and economic milieu with distinct mores, tastes, accents, and behaviours. They have an understated disdain for the other rural inhabitants in Maidemmura. Mishima details the familial politics that happens in the bubble; there is gossip, particularly on the side of Kensuke and Chieko, and providing a refracted image of Etsuko through their discussions.

Etsuko is also made known through the narrative and descriptions—"Etsuko walked as if she were pregnant. It was an ostentatiously indolent walk" (p. 7, this perhaps refers to Etsuko's violation of social norms of propriety for a woman in Japan in that age)—and the reader's privileged access to her own inner monologue. One interesting application of the latter is on page 16-17, when we read Etsuko's diary along with Yakichi and his peeping eyes—what is written in the diary is a foil and a disguise for Etsuko's actual thoughts (this reminded me of James Scott's hidden transcript). Mishima also makes use of the flashback (this is a cinematic convention brought into literature, as per critical commentary on Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night) to describe Etsuko's failed, loveless marriage with Ryosuke. Her marriage is a story of desperate attachment to a cheating husband; the husband is later rendered helpless due to typhoid (which for Etsuko, becomes an opportunity) and dies a gruesome death.

Etsuko's thirst for love attaches itself to the young, handsome, and vital Saburo, who comes from the countryside to work as a farmhand on Yakichi's property. Saburo is close to nature and uncorrupted by urban life, much like the lovers in Mishima's Sound of Waves; however, unlike the two lovers, being "undeveloped" manifests in an absence of any ideas about love. The reader is offered access to his thoughts at certain points in the novel and they are unremarkable. He has none of the urbanite Etsuko's sophisticated accumulations about love and longing; he exists as an object of desire.

Mishima teases the reader by keeping mum about the nature of their romance: the novel begins with Etsuko's purchase of two woolen socks (is this a gift to a lover?), describes Etsuko's encounter with Saburo in a green plot of land by a creek (the spot of their first romantic tussle?)—these hints are concluded by Mishima's explicit denial of his suggestions, a variation of "nothing happened."

Etsuko, calm and collected, is later captured by jealousy, turning shrill, uncontrolled, and vengeful—the novel ends in Mishimaesque fashion, in a puddle of violence: love is bound to death, blood bound to desire.

Srnicek's Platform Capitalism is an important contribution for understanding the economic structures of the current moment, given the dominance of the platform capitalism model (ideologically and economically), the centralization of power by Big Tech during the COVID-19 pandemic (adoption of digital tech), and the Big Tech Anti-Trust hearings in the U.S.

There are roughly three parts to Srnicek's investigation: 1) historicization of platform capitalism; the current manifestation of platform capitalism is the result of previous crises and as a part of the logic of capitalism; 2) a typology of the various platforms; and 3) the future of platform capitalism.

Platform capitalism, while appearing as a novel emergence, is connected to the past few decades of capitalism. Srnicek focuses on three crises in capitalism in particular: the 1970s downturn, the boom and bust of 1990s, and 2008 financial crisis.

Srnicek's story begins in the post-World War II period, marked by social democratic policies and a large manufacturing sector that provided stable employment for a large number of workers. Manufacturing at that time was marked by a "just-in-case" approach (in contrast to "just-in-time" manufacturing) that justified retaining workers and inventory in reserve. From the 1970s, competition from Japanese and German manufacturers led to an influx of manufacturing goods, a downward pull on prices of goods, and reduced profitability. Firms responded by slimming down their operations (moving from “just-in-case” to “just-in-time” manufacturing) and through a frontal assault on labour power and labour unions, leading to the outsourcing of jobs overseas and contracting labour on increasingly flexible and low wage contracts.

The boom-and-bust period of the 1990s was marked by speculative investment in the Internet, which was still unmatched at the time of the writing of the book (2017). The amount of capital invested led to the construction of key digital infrastructure, like “millions of miles of fibre-optic and submarine cables… major advances in software and network design… and large investments in databases and servers” (p. 22). When the bubble burst, and the bust came, government response came in the form of “asset-price Keynesianism” (p. 24). Instead of deficit spending, the government cut interest rates, leading to investments of capital in financial assets and housing. Loose monetary policy is one of the legacies of the boom-and-bust period.
 
Finally, during the financial crisis of 2008, the government took on large deficits to bail out Wall Street, turning “high levels of private debt … into high levels of public debt” (p. 26). Continuing the trend from the boom-and-bust period, key interest rates fell to near-zero levels. Due to the rise in deficits, federal governments started to impose economic policies of austerity, cutting budgets and raising taxes. In place of fiscal stimulus, governments began to create new types of monetary policy, principal among them quantitative easing, in which money is created by the central bank to purchase various forms of assets, lowering the interest rates of longer term assets and leading to investors seeking higher yields in riskier investments, like in the many untested tech companies in the market today. Meanwhile, the new dominant tech companies in the market are able to move intellectual property to low tax jurisdictions to evade taxes, draining government revenues even further, and leading to a vicious cycle of “tax evasion, austerity, and extraordinary monetary policies” (p. 33). While this is happening, there is trend towards precaritization of work and long-term unemployment.
 
It is in the rubble of these historical and economic trends that platform capitalism is situated. Thanks in part to the boom-and-bust period of the late 1990s, there is a large amount of infrastructure to record, collect, and analyze behavioural data. Data can be used for the following functions: 1) algorithm development for competitive advantage; 2) “coordination and outsourcing of workers”; 3) “optimization and flexibility of productive processes”; 4) “transformation of low-margin goods into high-margin services; and 5) “data analysis,” which is “itself generative of data, in a virtuous cycle” (p. 42). Further technological advancements are expanding the type of data that can be collected and it is making data collection increasingly cheaper.
 
Platforms are a new business model optimized to make use of the new raw material, data. Srnicek defines them as “digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact” (p. 43) as intermediaries that enable user-generated content. Through the platform, businesses are able to record user interactions and user activities. Given these characteristics, digital platforms benefit from “network effects”, where “the more numerous the users who use a platform, the more valuable that platform becomes for everyone else” (p. 45)—social media sites like Facebook are obvious examples. The importance of network effects means that platforms naturally strive toward monopolies, given cheap marginal costs that allow them to scale rapidly. In contrast to the lean business models used by the manufacturing sector in the post-1970s era, platforms use “cross-subsidization” to attract and retain users, where some functions are given for free and are subsidized by other functions that generate the revenue.
 
Finally, design considerations are important for platforms. Design attracts and retains users (i.e., UX) and, more importantly, design of platforms sets the ground rules for interactions and platform governance. Despite apolitical pretensions, platforms are both political in nature (as they represent a system of governance) and affect politics—this is hardly a controversial statement given the events of the past few years (e.g., Cambridge Analytica, the Rohingya genocide, etc.).
 
Srnicek identifies five different types of platforms:
 
1) Advertising platforms: The first iterations of platform capitalism and the primary revenue generating model of Google and Facebook.
2) Cloud platforms: Cloud platforms offer services like storage, computing power, applications, etc. and are becoming basic infrastructure for the digital economy; also allows privileged access to data.
3) Industrial platforms: Platforms are entering traditional manufacturing; industrial IoT produces data and allows for optimization of production processes.
4) Product platforms: Product platforms rent out products; in the case of digital products, they take advantage of zero marginal costs for digital products (e.g., Spotify), while for physical products like Rolls Royce aircraft engines, data is used for maintenance and repair.
5) Lean platforms: Lean platforms like Uber and Airbnb are often assetless and embody the results of previous economic crises; they rely on precarious labour and are driven by the cheap availability of capital—they are rarely profitable.
 
Srnicek ends with a discussion on the future of platform capitalism by focusing on intra-capitalist competition. As per the previous discussion, platforms tend toward monopolies to exploit network effects; these monopolies can be harder to overcome for new businesses due to access to data and established networks. Platform competitiveness is based on data collection and analysis, and the various great platforms tend to converge and encroach into each other’s markets to occupy key positions (e.g., Uber’s attempt to buy a mapping provider). As Srnicek writes, “companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, Uber, and General Electric (GE) are also direct competitors” (p. 108). While there is a trend towards convergence, large platform companies are looking to silo their platforms and create enclosed ecosystems to tie their users to the platform, potentially leading “from an open web to increasingly closed apps” and “driving the internet to fragment” (p. 113).
 
Srnicek calls for public platforms instead of mere state regulation of corporate platforms. These platforms would be outside of the purview of the state and would not function as a part of the state surveillance apparatus, instead, it would be controlled by the public. These could be offered as public utilities, and the data collected could used democratically, instead of being extracted by private platforms.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." begins the famous introduction of A Tale of Two Cities, establishing the theme of dualities (e.g. best and worst, wisdom and foolishness, Light and Darkness, England and France, etc.). The readers are soon introduced to two characters, a pair of doubles, who embody this contradiction: the aristocratic French Charles Darnay and the English Sydney Carton. Both characters lack family ties (one cast away ties to his aristocratic origins and the other is an orphan) and both fall in love with the French-English Lucie Manette.

The structure of the novel also follows the theme (I have not done a thorough evaluation of this). There are two trials in the novel, one at the beginning and one at the end. Both are for the life of an innocent Charles Darnay. Twice it is Sydney Carton and his amazing likeness to Darnay that saves the French aristocrat. Dr. Manette is brought to England from France to be returned to life; Sydney Carton is brought to life through his sacrificial act.

The tale takes place during the French Revolution, but there is little recognition of the Revolution as an epochal Event; the abdication of the French King and Queen happens with barely a comment; the context of the Revolution seems merely borrowed so that Dickens can write about class conflict and the absolute destitution of the lower classes, while setting the story in both England and France.​

​I think it was E.M. Forster in his book, Aspects of the Novel, where he commented that Dickens' characters are "flat" as opposed to "round"; there is little that Dickens' characters say or do that is unexpected. Charles Darnay is always Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette is always Lucie Manette; they are as flat as a minor character like Stryver. Dr. Manette is a bit rounder. I like Sydney Carton because of his redemptive act (I'm actually not sure if this makes him a "round" character, but it certainly makes him a lot more interesting than the others).