Abstract
The review discusses the political-economic aspects of the concept of distributed capitalism allowed for by blockchain technology. As opposed to the first era of the Internet, where the industry of financial and information services was dominated by intermediaries, the blockchain era is characterized by development of a new institution of trust; disruption of financial intermediation; economic inclusion of hundreds of millions of citizens in developing countries; an increase in competition and a decrease in inequality. The paper focuses on the content of key political-economic categories being redefined in the blockchain era. First, labor value gives way to creative value which is manifesting itself in cryptocurrencies. Second, exploitation of workers is replaced by digital discrimination. The blockchain revolution is a solution to the problem of discrimination against intellectual property creators, who have to hand over a large part of the value created to intermediaries. Third, capitalism characterized by information monopoly gives place to free competition based on rivalry between cryptocurrencies. Fourth, class struggle is substituted by confrontation between agents of information monopoly system and those of distributed economy. The author considers the main opposition to distributed capitalism to stem from the feudal financial system which loses ground under new conditions, where economic agents may use alternative currencies and interact directly with one other without risk and high transaction costs.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bates, B.: Information as an economic good: a re-evaluation of theoretical approach. In: Ruben, B.D., Lievrouw, L.A. (eds.) Mediation, Information, and Communication. Information and Behavior, vol. 3, pp. 379–394. Transaction, New Brunswick (1990)
Beck, U.: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications, London (1992)
Becker, G.: The Economics of Discrimination. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1971)
Bell, D.: The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Heinemann, London (1974)
Bergson, H.: Creative Evolution. Henry Holt and Company, New York (1911)
Bohme, R., Christin, N., Edelman, B., Moore, T.: Bitcoin: economics, technology, and governance. J. Econ. Perspect. 2(2), 213–238 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.29.2.213
Castells, M.: The Internet Gallaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2001)
Davidson, S., De Filippi, P., Potts, J.: Economics of blockchain. In: Proceedings of Public Choice Conference. Fort Lauderdale (2016). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2744751
Fromm, E.: Escape from Freedom. Avon Books, New York (1966)
Galbraith, J.K.: The New Industrial State. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston (1967)
Hayek, F.A.: Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined. Institute of Economic Affaires, London (1976)
Hughes, T.: The global financial services industry and the bitcoin. J. Struct. Financ. 23(4), 36–40 (2018). https://doi.org/10.3905/jsf.2018.23.4.036
Koeppl, T., Kronick, J.: Blockchain Technology—What’s for Canada’s Economy and Financial Markets? C.D. Howe Institute Commentary 468, 2 February 2017. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.292781
Korneychuk, B.: The political economy of the informational society. Scienta and Societas 1, 3–11 (2007). http://files.sets7.webnode.cz/200000120-bd893be81e/2007_01_sets.pdf
Kostakis, V., Giotitsas, C.: The (A) political economy of bitcoin. tripleC. J. Global Sustain. Inf. Soc. 2, 431–440 (2014). https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i2.606
List, F.: The National System of Political Economy. JB Lappincott and Co., Philadelphia (1856)
MacDonald, T.J., Allen, D.W.E., Potts, J.: Blockchains and the boundaries of self-organized economies: predictions for the future of banking. In: Tasca, P., Aste, T., Pelizzon, L., Perony, N. (eds.) Banking Beyond Banks and Money. NEW, pp. 279–296. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42448-4_14
Marshall, J.M.: Private incentives and public information. Am. Econ. Rev. 64(3), 373–390 (1974)
Marx, K.: Capital. Encyclopedia Britanica, Chicago (1994)
Morabito, V.: Business Innovation through Blockchain: The B3 Perspective. Springer, New York (2017)
Moazed, A., Johnson, N.: Modern Monopolies: What it Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy. St. Martin Press, New York (2016)
Nseke, P.: How crypto-currency can decrypt the global digital divide: bitcoins a means for African emergence. Int. J. Innov. Econ. Dev. 3(6), 61–70 (2018). https://doi.org/10.18775/ijied.1849-7551-7020.2015.36.2005
Reijers, W., O’Brolchain, F., Haynes, P.: Governance in blockchain technologies & social contract theories. Ledger 1, 134–151 (2016). https://doi.org/10.5915/LEDGER.2016.62
Sandstrom, G.: Who would live in a blockchain society? The rise of cryptographically-enabled ledger communities. Soc. Epistemol. Rev. Reply Collect. 6(5), 27–41 (2017). http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3A8
Schiller, H.I.: Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. Routledger, New York (1996)
Schumpeter, J.: The Theory of Economic Development. Transaction Publishers, Brunswick (1912)
Swan, M.: Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O’Reilly, Sebastopol (2015)
Swartz, L.: Blockchain dreams: imagining techno-economic alternatives after bitcoin. In: Castels, M. (ed.) Another Economy Is Possible: Culture and Economy in a Time of Crisis, pp. 82–105. Polity, Malden (2017)
Tapscott, D.: The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence. McGraw-Hill, New York (1995)
Tapscott, D., Tapscott, A.: Blockchain Revolution. How the Technology behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. Penguin Random House, New York (2016)
Toffler, A.: The Third Wave. William Morrow, New York (1980)
Van Dijk, J.: A theory of the digital divide. In: Ragnedda, M., Muschert, G. (eds.) The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequility in International Perspectives, pp. 29–62. Routledge, New York (2013)
Vigna, P., Casey, M.J.: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order. Picador St.Martin’s Press, New York (2015)
Webster, F.: Theories of the Information Society. Routledge, London (1995)
Wessels, B.: The reproduction and reconfiguration of inequility. In: Ragnedda, M., Muschert, G. (eds.) The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequility in International Perspectives, pp. 17–28. Routledge, New York (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Korneychuk, B. (2018). The Political Economy of the Blockchain Society. In: Alexandrov, D., Boukhanovsky, A., Chugunov, A., Kabanov, Y., Koltsova, O. (eds) Digital Transformation and Global Society. DTGS 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 858. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02843-5_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02843-5_25
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02842-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02843-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)