Rob Lucas - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Other articles by Rob Lucas
South Atlantic Quarterly, 2020
Attempts to imagine a shift beyond capitalism often tend to fixate on the terms of the old social... more Attempts to imagine a shift beyond capitalism often tend to fixate on the terms of the old socialist calculation debate: plan versus market. At its deepest level, though, capitalism is not fundamentally a matter of the distribution of goods, for underlying this is the possession of land. In thinking about the end of capitalism it is thus useful to return to the question of its origin as the second agricultural revolution in human history. If capitalism finds its roots in an agrarian transition, we might also locate its supersession at this level—in a third agricultural revolution.
New Left Review, 2018
Growing domination of companies over users, malicious functionalities, tracking and widespread s... more Growing domination of companies over users, malicious functionalities, tracking and widespread surveillance. The leading campaigner for software freedom discusses the present technological landscape and the political relevance of the campaign for free software.
Endnotes, 2015
A chronicle of #BlackLivesMatter, situating this movement in the history of race politics and str... more A chronicle of #BlackLivesMatter, situating this movement in the history of race politics and struggles in the US. Traces the shifting meaning of black identity in a context of growing surplus populations managed by incarceration and police violence.
New Left Review, 2015
In The Structure of World History, Kōjin Karatani attempts a radical reconstruction of historical... more In The Structure of World History, Kōjin Karatani attempts a radical reconstruction of historical materialism, from early nomadism to post-capitalist society. Mauss, Hobbes and Marx mobilized as companion thinkers of exchange; Kant as ethico-political prophet. Rob Lucas queries the speculative history of one of Japan’s leading public intellectuals.
New Left Review, 2012
Advances in information technology have generated both delirious boosterism and gloomy prognoses ... more Advances in information technology have generated both delirious boosterism and gloomy prognoses of computer-assisted decline. Rob Lucas engages with the sceptical current exemplified by Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, tracing its conceptual underpinnings and identifying its lacunae—political, economic, historical.
New Left Review, 2010
The working life of a web developer, between the contending pressures of capital’s needs and the ... more The working life of a web developer, between the contending pressures of capital’s needs and the programmer’s craft ethic. What forms of solidarity are available within the horizons of ‘immaterial labour’?
Book Reviews by Rob Lucas
New Left Review, 2020
Rob Lucas on Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Google and Facebook as pioneers... more Rob Lucas on Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Google and Facebook as pioneers of a troubling new regime of capitalist accumulation.
New Left Review, 2016
Rob Lucas on Paul Mason, Postcapitalism. The present crisis interpreted as the stalled transition... more Rob Lucas on Paul Mason, Postcapitalism. The present crisis interpreted as the stalled transition to a new mode of production, augured by info-tech’s ascent.
New Left Review, 2014
Rob Lucas on Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?. A utopian capitalist proposal to rewire the web ... more Rob Lucas on Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?. A utopian capitalist proposal to rewire the web and save the middle class.
South Atlantic Quarterly, 2020
Attempts to imagine a shift beyond capitalism often tend to fixate on the terms of the old social... more Attempts to imagine a shift beyond capitalism often tend to fixate on the terms of the old socialist calculation debate: plan versus market. At its deepest level, though, capitalism is not fundamentally a matter of the distribution of goods, for underlying this is the possession of land. In thinking about the end of capitalism it is thus useful to return to the question of its origin as the second agricultural revolution in human history. If capitalism finds its roots in an agrarian transition, we might also locate its supersession at this level—in a third agricultural revolution.
New Left Review, 2018
Growing domination of companies over users, malicious functionalities, tracking and widespread s... more Growing domination of companies over users, malicious functionalities, tracking and widespread surveillance. The leading campaigner for software freedom discusses the present technological landscape and the political relevance of the campaign for free software.
Endnotes, 2015
A chronicle of #BlackLivesMatter, situating this movement in the history of race politics and str... more A chronicle of #BlackLivesMatter, situating this movement in the history of race politics and struggles in the US. Traces the shifting meaning of black identity in a context of growing surplus populations managed by incarceration and police violence.
New Left Review, 2015
In The Structure of World History, Kōjin Karatani attempts a radical reconstruction of historical... more In The Structure of World History, Kōjin Karatani attempts a radical reconstruction of historical materialism, from early nomadism to post-capitalist society. Mauss, Hobbes and Marx mobilized as companion thinkers of exchange; Kant as ethico-political prophet. Rob Lucas queries the speculative history of one of Japan’s leading public intellectuals.
New Left Review, 2012
Advances in information technology have generated both delirious boosterism and gloomy prognoses ... more Advances in information technology have generated both delirious boosterism and gloomy prognoses of computer-assisted decline. Rob Lucas engages with the sceptical current exemplified by Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, tracing its conceptual underpinnings and identifying its lacunae—political, economic, historical.
New Left Review, 2010
The working life of a web developer, between the contending pressures of capital’s needs and the ... more The working life of a web developer, between the contending pressures of capital’s needs and the programmer’s craft ethic. What forms of solidarity are available within the horizons of ‘immaterial labour’?
New Left Review, 2020
Rob Lucas on Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Google and Facebook as pioneers... more Rob Lucas on Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Google and Facebook as pioneers of a troubling new regime of capitalist accumulation.
New Left Review, 2016
Rob Lucas on Paul Mason, Postcapitalism. The present crisis interpreted as the stalled transition... more Rob Lucas on Paul Mason, Postcapitalism. The present crisis interpreted as the stalled transition to a new mode of production, augured by info-tech’s ascent.
New Left Review, 2014
Rob Lucas on Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?. A utopian capitalist proposal to rewire the web ... more Rob Lucas on Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?. A utopian capitalist proposal to rewire the web and save the middle class.