A Two-Hour Verdict and a Siege Lasting Several Days
May 19, 2:00 PM. In California yesterday, a trial ended in two hours, and in Sejong today, a negotiation reopened after being besieged for days. The two scenes are 9,000 kilometers apart geographically and involve different parties. But placing them on the same plane reveals two faces of the state clearly.
Yesterday, at the Oakland Federal District Court, a panel of nine jurors did not unanimously side with Elon Musk. Deliberation took less than two hours. A $150 billion lawsuit, a three-week trial, and a verdict in two hours. The court dismissed the claim on the grounds of statute of limitations, and the judge immediately signaled a dismissal of any planned appeal. The superficial issue of the trial was the legality of OpenAI's for-profit conversion. But the substance revealed during the proceedings is simpler. Musk attempted to merge OpenAI into Tesla in 2017 and 2018, and poached key researchers. In other words, what he opposed was not the for-profit conversion itself, but the for-profit conversion that escaped his grasp. Musk merely disguised the battle between two monopoly capital blocs — Microsoft-OpenAI and Musk-xAI-SpaceX — in the language of humanity's interests.
What the court did was rapidly suture a dispute within the capitalist class. The technical basis of statute of limitations, the swiftness of a two-hour verdict, the finality of an appeal dismissal notice. The efficiency of settling a $150 billion dispute in less than half a day. This is the classic way the state handles contradictions between capitalist factions. Whoever wins, AI data centers keep running and accumulation does not stop. When the system is secure, the state speaks in the language of law. Efficient, predictable, and formal.
Now look at Sejong. On the same day, the labor-management negotiations at Samsung Electronics led to a final showdown two days before a strike. The talks, which ended without conclusion yesterday, resumed at 10 AM today. But the real trial of this negotiation was already taking place outside the mediation table. The minister's visit to the union office, the prime minister's address to the nation, the president's tweet, the court's injunction. Within days, the executive and judicial branches besieged the labor dispute of a single workplace. Here, what the state handles is not capitalist vs. capitalist, but the conflict between capital and labor. Moreover, it is the risk that the core artery of South Korea's accumulation system might stop. As the Bank of Korea quantified, a 0.5 percentage point drop in GDP, a loss of 30 trillion won. In this case, the neutral procedure of the courts is too slow and weak. The state does not wait for the courts. It mobilizes the entire executive branch to besiege the negotiation table, and the court operates as one axis of that encirclement.
What the asymmetry between the two trials reveals is the nature of the capitalist state. In the face of disputes within capital, the state speaks in the language of law. Statute of limitations, jury verdict, dismissal of appeal. Efficient, formal, and cold. In the face of conflict between capital and labor, when the heart of accumulation is threatened, the state speaks in the language of force. Visit, address, tweet, injunction. Within days, the entire state apparatus targets a single negotiation table. The efficiency of the former and the all-out war of the latter are two sides of the same coin. Both aim for the uninterrupted operation of the system. Only, one absorbs and sutures the dispute, the other suppresses and blocks it.
With this ruling, the last legal obstacle blocking OpenAI's IPO has disappeared. SpaceX is also expected to release its prospectus this week and list on Nasdaq in June. The AI industry will be reshaped into a three-way war among Microsoft-OpenAI, Google-DeepMind, and SpaceX-xAI, with tens of billions of dollars flowing into data centers. Musk lost the trial but not the war. xAI has been absorbed into SpaceX as a subsidiary, and the funds raised from SpaceX's IPO will go to the Colossus data center. The defeat in the Oakland courtroom is merely a chapter in a larger monopoly competition.
In Sejong, no one has lost yet. But the state's siege is already tightening, and the time remaining until the strike continues to shrink. Oakland and Sejong — the two trials, in different ways — one through suturing, the other through siege — are saying the same thing. The accumulation of capital does not stop.
Yesterday, at the Oakland Federal District Court, a panel of nine jurors did not unanimously side with Elon Musk. Deliberation took less than two hours. A $150 billion lawsuit, a three-week trial, and a verdict in two hours. The court dismissed the claim on the grounds of statute of limitations, and the judge immediately signaled a dismissal of any planned appeal. The superficial issue of the trial was the legality of OpenAI's for-profit conversion. But the substance revealed during the proceedings is simpler. Musk attempted to merge OpenAI into Tesla in 2017 and 2018, and poached key researchers. In other words, what he opposed was not the for-profit conversion itself, but the for-profit conversion that escaped his grasp. Musk merely disguised the battle between two monopoly capital blocs — Microsoft-OpenAI and Musk-xAI-SpaceX — in the language of humanity's interests.
What the court did was rapidly suture a dispute within the capitalist class. The technical basis of statute of limitations, the swiftness of a two-hour verdict, the finality of an appeal dismissal notice. The efficiency of settling a $150 billion dispute in less than half a day. This is the classic way the state handles contradictions between capitalist factions. Whoever wins, AI data centers keep running and accumulation does not stop. When the system is secure, the state speaks in the language of law. Efficient, predictable, and formal.
Now look at Sejong. On the same day, the labor-management negotiations at Samsung Electronics led to a final showdown two days before a strike. The talks, which ended without conclusion yesterday, resumed at 10 AM today. But the real trial of this negotiation was already taking place outside the mediation table. The minister's visit to the union office, the prime minister's address to the nation, the president's tweet, the court's injunction. Within days, the executive and judicial branches besieged the labor dispute of a single workplace. Here, what the state handles is not capitalist vs. capitalist, but the conflict between capital and labor. Moreover, it is the risk that the core artery of South Korea's accumulation system might stop. As the Bank of Korea quantified, a 0.5 percentage point drop in GDP, a loss of 30 trillion won. In this case, the neutral procedure of the courts is too slow and weak. The state does not wait for the courts. It mobilizes the entire executive branch to besiege the negotiation table, and the court operates as one axis of that encirclement.
What the asymmetry between the two trials reveals is the nature of the capitalist state. In the face of disputes within capital, the state speaks in the language of law. Statute of limitations, jury verdict, dismissal of appeal. Efficient, formal, and cold. In the face of conflict between capital and labor, when the heart of accumulation is threatened, the state speaks in the language of force. Visit, address, tweet, injunction. Within days, the entire state apparatus targets a single negotiation table. The efficiency of the former and the all-out war of the latter are two sides of the same coin. Both aim for the uninterrupted operation of the system. Only, one absorbs and sutures the dispute, the other suppresses and blocks it.
With this ruling, the last legal obstacle blocking OpenAI's IPO has disappeared. SpaceX is also expected to release its prospectus this week and list on Nasdaq in June. The AI industry will be reshaped into a three-way war among Microsoft-OpenAI, Google-DeepMind, and SpaceX-xAI, with tens of billions of dollars flowing into data centers. Musk lost the trial but not the war. xAI has been absorbed into SpaceX as a subsidiary, and the funds raised from SpaceX's IPO will go to the Colossus data center. The defeat in the Oakland courtroom is merely a chapter in a larger monopoly competition.
In Sejong, no one has lost yet. But the state's siege is already tightening, and the time remaining until the strike continues to shrink. Oakland and Sejong — the two trials, in different ways — one through suturing, the other through siege — are saying the same thing. The accumulation of capital does not stop.