Evgeny Morozov DIREKT 08/ 2020 DIGITAL PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE The social democratic project of the twenty-first century OVERVIEW In the twentieth century the social democrats cham­pioned not only social justice, but also institutional innovation. Taking on the power of the technology giants provides an opportunity to resume this tra­dition and to launch a new social democratic project. Such a future-oriented project should not be con­fined to regulating Big Tech, however – it requires a fundamental rethink of digital infrastructure as a public good. First, the bad news. When it comes to Big Tech, we have lost the plot. By"we", I refer to those of us who, in one way or another, feel a relationship with social democracy or socialism. And by"the plot", I do not mean just our understanding of the dynamics of the digital economy and digital capitalism, but also of capitalism as such and the role that social democracy and socialism should be playing in either countering or counter­balancing it. These days, it is all too easy for social democrats and socialists to get a false sense of the priorities and values that ought to be shaping the social democratic or socialist project, not least when it comes to Big Tech and Silicon Valley. Although it is true that social democrats and socialists have traditionally worried about questions of power, rule of law and legality, these things have never been at the top of their agenda. The values that have actually driven the social democratic and socialist project have always been egalitarianism, social justice and, I would argue – however counterintuitive it might seem – institutional innovation. But it was precisely by inventing new institutions and new practices that social democracy managed to achieve so much. They include the welfare state and codetermination as well as institutions that exist somewhere between capitalism and the public sector. Take the library system. It is an institution that works on an ethos and rationale different from those of the market. We do not try to encourage competition between fifty different libraries in order to produce the best results. We recognize that libraries are a public good that require infrastructure and adequate funding. And we use that public institution in order to promote a set of values that are important to us, such as co­operation and egalitarianism. Our background and our class should not be obstacles to our accessing certain resources. But it is precisely on this point that social democrats and socialists weaken their most important argument: many of these interventions, from the welfare state to codetermination and institutions such as libraries, were not just about promoting egal­itarianism and solidarity. They were also about making society function more efficiently and prompted a significant amount of social and economic innovation. The welfare state is also the most efficient and effective way to structure relations in society because it enables people to take full advantage of the resources available to them and have their say in how society is governed and shaped. The long history of social innovations for which the social democratic project was responsible has almost been forgotten. Instead, over the past few decades, social democracy has seen its main task as being to defend those institutions from the neoliberal assault. Necessary though this is, the result has been to limit the capacity of social democratic and socialist forces to think about technological change and the kinds of institutional innovation necessary in order to direct the economic dynamics involved along a path that is not only more egalitarian but also more efficient and productive – just as social democracy has succeeded in doing with other economic dynamics in the past. >