Capitalism and the Information Age

“Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution.” (Robert W. McChesney, Ellen Meiksins Wood & John Bellamy Foster, editors.) New York: Monthly Review Press.

Not a day goes by that we don’t see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of “globalization.” How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential for democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Taken together, the essays reveal how the new information technologies have been grafted onto a global capitalist system characterized by vast and growing inequality, economic stagnation, market saturation, financial instability, urban crisis, social polarization, graded access to information, and economic degradation.

See more about this book at: Monthly Review Press

Translations:

• Korea (1998).   Communication Books.
• Turkey (2002).   Raslanty Publishing.

Selected Reviews:

• Australian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 58, No. 3 (September 1998). By Greg McCallum.
• Choice, November 1998. By Michael Perelman.
• Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring). By Christopher Sterling.
• Contemporary Sociology. Independent Publisher, September-October 1998, p. 46. By William D. Bushnell.
• Development in Practice, Vol. 9, No. 3.
• Discourse & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1998): pp. 135-136. By Johannes Angermuller.
• European Journal of Communication, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2000). By Edward A. Comor.
• Informatief (Belgium), September 1998, p. 5.
• Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1998): pp. 512-514. By Ben H. Bagdikian.
• International Studies Review, Vol. 1m No. 3 (Fall 1999): pp. 140-145. By Deepa Kumar.
• iX (Germany), no, 4, 1999. By Rainer Fischbach.
• Labour & Industry, April 1999, p. 163. By Carlos Carll.
• Monthly Review, Vol. 50, No. 7 (December 1998), pp. 55-58. By Ben H. Bagdikian.
• Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2000). By James Cornford.
• Public Relations Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn 1998): pp. 401-403. By Ray E. Hiebert.
• Revolutionary Democracy, By Nasis Tyabji. http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n1/reviewinfo.htm
• Today’s Books, 3 August 1998, p. A3.
• WorldViews, July-September 1998, pp. 5-6.