The single and combined work of Scott Lash and John Urry have become extremely significant in the social sciences in the UK and beyond. In particular, one of their principal ideas that dominant capitalist countries have made a transition to a ‘disorganized’ and ‘mobile’ era founded on digital networks, global flows of people, objects, images and texts, decentralized and flexible work practices, declining industrialized social classes, and a loss of power for the nation-state to regulate flows of finance, has influenced many researchers. Their work has even helped to establish of a new ‘mobilities’ paradigm in the social sciences. Ernest Mandel has also explored the impact of digital technology on capitalist restructuring. Indeed, he claims that from 1945 onwards, a ‘late capitalist’ wave emerged predicated on the rise of factors like automation, the service sector, and new class identities. Unlike Lash and Urry, however, Mandel applies Marxist theory to investigate these changes. The aim of this paper is to draw on Mandel’s ideas to examine critically the account put forward by Lash and Urry. Five areas in particular will be discussed: theoretical differences between Lash and Urry and Mandel; the transition between different phases in capitalism; the changing composition of social class; whether the workplace is now dominated by decentralized and flexible networks; and the relationship between finance, the state and digital technology.
 Los trabajos individuales y combinados de Scott Lash y John Urry han adquirido una gran relevancia en las ciencias sociales del Reino Unido y de otros países. En particular, una de sus ideas principals y más influyente se fundamente en que los países capitalistas dominantes han realizado una transición hacia una era "desorganizada" y "móvil" basada en las redes digitales, flujos globales de personas, objetos, imágenes y textos, prácticas laborales descentralizadas y flexibles, declive de las clases sociales industrializadas y pérdida de poder del Estado-nación para regular los flujos financieros. Su trabajo, sin duda, ha contribuido a establecer un nuevo paradigma de "movilidades" en las ciencias sociales. También Ernest Mandel ha estudiado el impacto de la tecnología digital en la reestructuración capitalista. En efecto, afirma que a partir de 1945 surgió una oleada de "capitalismo tardío" basada en el auge de factores como la automatización, el sector servicios y las nuevas identidades de clase. Sin embargo, a diferencia de Lash y Urry, Mandel aplica la teoría marxista para investigar estos cambios. El objetivo de este artículo es basarse en las ideas de Mandel para examinar críticamente el relato presentado por Lash y Urry. Se discutirán cinco áreas en particular: las diferencias teóricas entre Lash y Urry y Mandel; la transición entre las diferentes fases del capitalismo; la composición cambiante de la clase social; si el lugar de trabajo está ahora dominado por redes descentralizadas y flexibles; y la relación entre las finanzas, el Estado y la tecnología digital.
In the established landscape of research in the social sciences, populism is seen as a type of politics that chiefly revolves around the distinction between the “people” and the “elite”.1 Within this, different forms of populism can be distinguished—ranging from right-wing and authoritarian to liberal-centrist and religious varieties. In the camp of the political left, populism is often cast as essentially a democratic endeavor. Drawing on a conception of inclusive peoplehood, which is not opposed to other vulnerable social groups “below” but solely to the “elite above”, many authors emphasize that it is crucial to pursue a populist strategy in order to overcome existing hegemonies, democratic deficits, ossifications, and class-rule (Grattan, 2016; Howse, 2019; Kempf, 2020; McCormick, 2001; Mouffe, 2018). Throughout the past few decades, the landscape of research on left populism has grown considerably. Various studies have investigated the history of anti-establishment popular movements of the 19th century, such as the Narodniki in Russia or the American Populist Party (Canovan, 1981; Kazin, 1995). Further, research has also looked at how, from the 1990s, anti-neoliberal alliances in Latin America had their momentum, entered governmental office, and established a far-reaching renewal of constitutional orders (Linera, 2014; Weyland, 2013). And in particular, in the last decade, the rejuvenation of left politics in Europe and the United States has often relied on populist approaches (Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019). Taking a more systematic stance, theories of radical democracy have sought to demonstrate that politics in modern societies is structured around the embodiment of the “people” as an empty signifier. From this perspective, it is not by accident that left varieties of populism can be recurrently observed; their persistence reflects that politics is, at its heart, not only concerned with policy-issues but with “constructing the people” (Laclau, 2014). Thus, populism may not be episodic, accidental, or a specific ideology that brings the vital interests of ordinary people to the fore. Rather, it must be seen as a generalizable discursive strategy—in the words of Ernesto Laclau: the “royal road”—when it comes to the strive for political power (Laclau, 2005, p. 67).2 In recent years, a neo-Machiavellian strand of research has emerged that is not so much concerned with the discursive construction of peoplehood, instead focusing on the materiality of social power. Drawing inspiration from the political philosophy of Early Modernity and Niccolò Machiavelli's insights on the exercise of political rule, these approaches assume that societies are constantly split between the “plebian” people and the ruling elites (McCormick, 2001; Vergara, 2020a). Against this backdrop, populism amounts to a plebian politics that “springs from the politicization of wealth inequality in reaction to systemic corruption and the immiseration of the masses, an attempt to balance the scales of social and political power between the ruling elite and the popular sectors” (Vergara, 2020a, p. 238). However, the historical balance sheet of left populisms remains ambivalent. Though recurring attempts to change society through mobilizing the people against the elite can be observed, they have often revealed self-defeating dynamics:3 the collapse into authoritarian government once populism is in power, the inability to account for how complex modern societies actually operate by adhering to an all-too simple people/elite binary distinction; and the arising incapacity to identify reasons for political failure and success apart from stressing that popular mobilizations played a key role (when successful) or were diluted (when unsuccessful). In the current debate on left-populism, however, a broader camp of anti-populist critiques mainly advances objections from a normative angle (Arato, 2016; Cohen, 2019; Urbinati, 2019; Müller, 2014). It is argued that populist forms of politics are, in principle, incompatible with central achievements of liberal democracy, such as pluralism, the separation of powers, or parliamentary representation. They seem to be unavoidably entangled in authoritarian politics and, therefore, in need of being rejected as a course of political action. This article aims to move beyond the rigidified divide between appraisals and rejections of left populism by shifting the field of inquiry: instead of investigating the relation of populism and the political as such or evaluating whether populism is compatible with principles of liberal democracy, it conducts a reconstruction of discussions in the broadly conceived camp of European Social Democracy in the “long 19th century” (Hobsbawm). Thereby, it focuses on how the leading intellectuals of this political current were reflecting on the practical potentials and limitations of a politics that is centered on the popular will. As emphasized by contemporary discourse theoretical approaches to the study of populism, politics in modern societies largely revolves around the role of the people and the conflicts that surround its articulation.4 Therefore, a wide range of people-centered politics can be identified—popular, populist or folky. While the article echoes the definition of populism as people-centered politics that opposes the elites, it stresses not only its inevitability but also its limitations. It scrutinizes populism's internal pitfalls and how it reacts to the contradictions and problems inherent to the structure of the given societal order. Thereby, the article aims at circumventing a transhistorical per se perspective and at a closer examination of the respective social circumstances. The ambition is not to provide an encompassing investigation of the whole theoretical landscape of social democracy, but to look for how some of the leading intellectuals grappled with the problems of a people-centered politics in the light of practical experiences in political struggle. It will be argued that we can identify an intellectual trajectory that dealt with the question of whether a politics that is centered on the popular will as opposed to the elites is able to incite social transformation and collective learning processes or, to the contrary, thwarts them. Admittedly, one should not overlook that there are severe differences between the social democratic mass parties of the 19th century and the contemporary disorganized party landscape. However, the article encourages an investigation that overcomes the juxtaposition of left populisms and other variants of progressive politics such as social movement politics (Arato & Cohen, 2021) or class-politics (Seferiades, 2019). Drawing on the recent work of the historian Christina Morina, European Social Democracy is understood in the following as a broader social movement that extended from the mid-19th century to the First World War (Morina, 2022).5 It was characterized by the advent of new forms of political organization, most notably trade unions and social democratic mass parties. Despite severe internal conflicts, it was driven by a shared approach to history and society that was drawn from the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The defining feature of European Social Democracy was located in a specific mode of social inquiry. As stressed by Morina, activists and intellectuals may have engaged in controversies around a whole set of issues. They all assumed, however, that modern societies take part in the course of historical evolution and that a sound type of political action must be derived from a comprehensive inquiry that clarifies the scopes for social transformation at a given historical moment. The common denominator that constituted coherence within the movement was the that societies a historical as and that a conception of political action must to the problems and contradictions inherent in this to Morina, the not in a perspective, but in the to the They leading intellectuals and activists of European Social from work a of to the and not a in the only to was actually a study of the (Morina, p. 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The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats.
The increasing collective use of distributed application software platforms, programming languages and crypto-currencies around the blockchain concept for general transactions may have radical implications for the way in which society conceptualises and applies trust and trust-based social systems such as law. By exploring one iteration of such generalised blockchain systems – Ethereum – and the historical lineage of such systems, it will be argued that indeed their ideological basis is largely one of distrust, decentralisation and, ultimately, via increasing disassociation of identity, a fear of the body itself. This ideological basis can be reframed as a crypto-legal approach to the problems of human interaction, one whereby the purely technological solutions outlined above are considered adequate for reconciling many of the problems of our collective existence. The article concludes, however, by re-iterating a perspective of law more so as an entirely embodied and trust dependent notion. These aspects go some way to explaining the necessarily centralised role it takes on within societies. They also explain why the crypto-legal approaches advanced by systems like Ethereum – or even the co-opting of blockchain technology by law firms themselves – will only ever be at best efficiency exercises concerned with the processing of data relating to legal affairs, and not the more radical, ambiguous and difficult process of actual legal thought or, indeed, engagement with trust.