Book presentation: Digital Solidarity — Overcoming Capitalist Technology

With Aline Blankertz (Applied Economist) and Malte Engeler (Legal expert in data protection law and data economy)

A project by Gruppe Florida in cooperation with RLS Sachsen

Digital technologies are currently the spearhead of capitalist accumulation and destruction. Digital platforms, data centers, and AI intensify forms of exploitation and technological dominance. Left-wing responses often remain at the level of regulation and individual technology appropriation.

The book "Digital Solidarity" addresses this and asks: How can the logic of capitalist digitalization be overcome to consistently align technologies with needs?

Aline Blankertz and her co-author Malte Engeler show how tech-libertarian ideologies shape and distort even progressive ideas of digitalization. They analyze the ambivalence of bourgeois concepts such as privacy, open source, and digital sovereignty and subject them to fundamental criticism. Building on this, they advocate for the connection of left-wing struggles – from hacking and socialization to the use of digital technology in other economic systems. In this way, they develop the perspective of a radically different, anti-capitalist, technology-critical, and solidarity-based digitalization.

Aline Blankertz is an applied economist and currently works as Tech Economy Lead at Rebalance Now for the democratic shaping of the economy.