“Rare earths,” a list of metals with futuristic names such as yttrium, lanthanum, or neodymium (and 14 others), are used everywhere: from the construction of rockets and turbines to the manufacture of batteries and medical devices—and, of course, smartphones.
But the “rare earths” do not fall clean from the sky. They are mined—with everything that entails. Ninety percent of global production comes from China, where the most significant deposits have been found. This gives Chinese capitalism an exceptionally central position in the global balance of power.
But the work of mining is carried out with the intensity (and the indifference) of the great and demanding global demand. It is also done illegally. In any case, the mining and processing of “rare earths” has all the capitalist materiality one could imagine.
Who, then, talks about “immaterial” capitalism, actually meaning “information” that is circulated, exchanged, collected, accumulated—yet whose electronic components “cannot be seen with the naked eye”? It is a stupid idea. But not only that. It is an attempt to “dematerialize” one part of violence and exploitation.