The Inhumans of Late Capitalism page (not to be confused with the Humans of Late Capitalism social media accounts which is a similar but entirely different horse entirely) has over 178.6k followers, all eagerly waiting for the next juicy post making fun of our dystopian everyday lives.
As many of you have probably realized by now, capitalism is far from a perfect system. But what’s the alternative? Does one even exist? Anyone who’s ever opened up a history book knows that communism isn’t an alternative—it’s just a more brutal dystopia that resulted in the deaths of millions of people. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
However, things might not be as grim nowadays as we think. For instance, Paul Mason writes in The Guardian that we might be entering the postcapitalist era without even noticing it. The forces driving this are information technology, the rise of the sharing economy, and new ways of working. Mason’s point of view is refreshing because he paints a bright and sunny picture of the future, instead of one where we’re all doomed and fighting global warming, zombies, and the plague on all fronts.
According to Mason, information technology has reduced the need for work, blurred the “edges between work and free time,” and “loosened the relationship between work and wages.” The amount we have to work will further diminish as automation increases. But that’ll still take a while because our way of thinking has yet to catch up with the power of robotics.
Mason also states that we’re “seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services, and organizations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world—Wikipedia—is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.”
In other words, we’re seeing various new forms of work, ownership, and businesses that will (in the long run) change our society as we know it. But whether or not it’ll be a postcapitalist society or something else entirely, we’ll find out in a few decades.
