What is New in New Capitalism?

Abstract

As the new types of economy (digital, gigonomics, sharing economy, etc.) are more and more frequently discussed in the scientific literature, while novel concepts of new capitalism regularly emerge, the author of the article investigates the origins of these constant changes and turns to contemporary social theory for answers. As a starting point, the author takes the books of two Marxists, Douglas Kellner and David Harvey; both were published in 1989, in the symbolic year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. To construct a narrative, the author employs the idea of the periodization of the American culture of the long nineties (1989-2001) by the American cultural critic Philip Wagner and the concept of external and internal globalization by the social theorist Robert Hassan, who in his turn grounds his reflections on the idea of flexible accumulation by Harvey. Using the example of the film "Fight Club", the author shows how the colonization of the internal human experience by capital took place after 1989. Thus, in the 1990s, capital, by depriving people of sleep, began to profit not only from the economy built on knowledge, but also from emotions, as reflected in social theory at the turn of the millennium. Further, briefly describing several recent concepts of capitalism (data capitalism, computational capitalism, semiocapitalism, biocognitive capitalism), the author notes that the creators of the theories, focusing on the digital economy, do not take into account the factor of external globalization, and most importantly forget about financial capitalism, on which, ultimately, the economy depends. The article concludes that the dynamics of capital development were predicted by David Harvey back in 1989, and that his concept still has a high heuristic potential