TikTok's seizure is a lesson in modern capitalism
The neoliberal state exists not to promote 'free markets'
Although the headlines talk about a “TikTok ban”, what is actually happening to the social media platform is US-based capitalists are using the US state is to seize TikTok through a forced sale. This illustrates an important principle of modern neoliberal capitalism: that the state is wielded as a tool by the capitalist classes to serve their interests.
It is a common misunderstanding of neoliberalism to believe it is about free markets. You might imagine a big slider between the state and the market. The more you turn the dial towards the market, the more neoliberal it is. At a very coarse level this can sometimes be true, like the Obama/Heritage Foundation Affordable Care Act forcing Americans to buy private health insurance from corporations. But in the general case, neoliberalism involves the ruling classes exerting control over the state and using it to extract more and more wealth from the planet and its people. The seizure of TikTok gives us insight into how the ruling classes do this.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company that is owned by Chinese capitalists. Even if the PRC is a socialist country governed by a communist party, there is still a class of capitalists who own businesses like TikTok. In the Chinese socialist tradition, these capitalists who are thought of as the national bourgeoisie. These are capitalists whose interests are largely aligned with the nation’s interests and against the interests of imperialists. Mao identified the national bourgeoisie and that regarding the revolution it was “possible and necessary to unite with them” in 1948. Today, the PRC’s national bourgeoisie has driven and benefitted from China’s rise, but the relationship is always tenuous. Every few months we see a headline that a Chinese banker has been sentenced to severe penalties for insider trading or other bourgeois crimes.
Analogously to the Chinese national bourgeoisie, there are capitalists in the US whose interests are aligned with the US nation. The classic capitalist adage “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” was coined (in slightly different wording) by the CEO of GM who also served as the US empire’s Secretary of Defense. We can think of such capitalists as the US national bourgeoisie, but only up to a point, as the US holds a unique role in the world at this point in history. The US is the seat of the imperial core; the US military and US financial institutions rule over most humans on earth. In this unique position, the line between the US national bourgeoisie and the international bourgeoisie is porous. Peter Thiel holds several passports, nearly all of Apple’s quarter-trillion dollar cash hoard is stored overseas, and the most wealthy similarly store their wealth overseas and travel around the world on multiple passports.
This week news has come out confirming the narrative of a state-assisted seizure of TikTok by the imperial capitalists: Steve Mnuchin, chief financier under the Trump administration, is planning a bid to take ownership of TikTok. It’s no surprise that elements of the capitalist class compete for control over productive forces. What makes this story interesting is that it reveals how the US state has been captured by the imperial capitalists and used for its own ends. If the campaign is successful, the capitalists of the international bourgeoisie, led by Mnuchin and his ilk, will end up billions of dollars richer while securing control over a communication platform they will use to their own ends.
The instrumentality of the state towards capitalist ends is not unique to the US or the imperial core. In Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, a 2017 book by Peter Pomerantsev, the author details several stories of Russian oligarchs gaining and losing Russian companies. As one oligarch falls out of favor with the Putin regime, they are handed a contract to sign handing over control of their business to another oligarch whose fortunes are rising. If they refuse they will see jail or worse. This is the norm in the neoliberal state of Russia, and it is likely to become the norm in the US as well. Late capitalism is not a system of free markets, it is a class project of markets controlled by the state to the benefit of the capitalist classes even as they struggle amongst themselves.
Other narratives have been put forth to explain the TikTok crisis. Mostly they are bad faith arguments, but they are worth examining. Doddering political leaders in the US from both parties have made incoherent arguments that appeal to a principle that a nation-state should have control over its communication infrastructure. There is no such universal principle, but the claim can be examined historically. Obviously the US empire had no problem with Facebook and similar US-owned platforms becoming dominant in almost every nation on earth. When I worked at Facebook the narrative inside was that the PRC will rush to adopt Facebook because doing so would gain the rising nation prestige. When Xi was named President of the PRC insiders were shocked as it revealed a new direction, that China would compete with US-owned platforms rather than adopting them. Facebook ruling over China was no problem, but Chinese platforms gaining traction in the US could not be countenanced.
Of course the hypocrisy of “national platforms for me but not for thee” is not a contradiction. Nation-states compete with and impose upon each other; that’s what the nation-state is for. But should the US control communication platforms that other countries must subscribe to? Thus far this system has resulted in atrocities like the Facebook-mediated genocide in Myanmar and flash-mob pogroms in India. The US satellite state of Israel turns off the internet in occupied Gaza when it sees advantage in doing so. Even if it makes sense for a nation-state to control its platforms, the US is again a special case. Seeing the effects of American-controlled media around the world, the US is the last entity that should have any say in the platforms in other nation-states.
Another narrative advanced by imperialist media is that TikTok and its algorithm are responsible for the rise of support for the Palestinian cause against the US-Israeli occupation. TikTok has indeed enabled westerners to see videos of IDF soldiers committing atrocities. A viral meme the IDF brass seems unable to shut down involves IDF soldiers wearing the lingerie of Palestinian women whose homes they have destroyed. Western critics blame the TikTok algorithm for guiding youth towards content critical of the imperial project, but if TikTok has had any effect on western impressions of the empire it is merely through accurately depicting the reality on the ground in an ongoing genocide.
The Israeli colonial administration’s call for seizing TikTok serves multiple ends. Even conservative westerners have come to admit that Netanyahu is campaigning for Trump’s reelection, as the prevailing sentiment in Israel is that the US is preventing the IDF from winning the war on Gaza due to wokeness. Blaming TikTok for western youth’s growing criticism of the occupation distracts from the horrid reality of the genocide while pushing the flailing Biden administration to adopt a policy that will be incredibly unpopular among American youth: banning their favorite app. Biden must lose for Netanyahu to win, and the feckless Democrats are playing right into this strategy.
But the story about the occupation is secondary to the protectionist seizure of TikTok by American capitalists. As socialists, we don’t really have a dog in this fight between rival capitalists. The DSA has put out a statement condemning the seizure which correctly focuses on the US state’s attempts to censor online discourse while beating the war drum against China. The TikTok campaign is a dangerous precedent in an imperial nation teetering on the edge of fascism. Our real lesson is in observing the structure of the neoliberal state and how it is used by capitalists in their struggles against each other and against us.