Digital Capitalism in the 2020s: Dividing the World

Digital Capitalism in the 2020s: Dividing the World

Digital capitalism developed in the United States in the crucible of World War II. Momentum came from high-tech weaponry, led by radar, early computing machines, and atomic bombs; and from the global war’s acceleration of information-processing demands for logistics. With the erection of a permanent US war economy to support US global power during the battles against socialism and radical nationalism that followed,1 a new political-economic formation began to emerge.

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  • Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.
  • Herbert I. Schiller, Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500. Norwood:Ablex, 1981. Herbert I. Schiller, Culture Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Compare Cedric Durand, “Scouting Capital’s Frontiers,” New Left Review 136, July/August 2022: 34.