/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Capitalism has changed a lot since Marx lived. Some people say it has not changed much. But it has. We are now in what many call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Technology moves very fast even if the mode of production itself is still in place. Goods are changing too. Machines and software now do much of the work. Companies do not always sell software as something you buy once and own forever. Instead, they rent it to you. You pay every month. You do not truly own it. It's not like the food you eat. This does not prove Marx was wrong. It can actually support his method, if we see his ideas as a study of real social systems that change over time. The commodity, or good for sale, has not disappeared. It has changed shape. It has become more abstract and varied in its specific forms. When some commodities become a subscription, buying and selling does not end. The purchaser's true ownership ends. Companies learned that in the digital age, control brings more profit than simple ownership. The commodity is no longer just a thing. It is a controlled stream of access. Profit comes again and again over time. This is not a world beyond capitalism. It is capitalism finding new ways to control time and space. Automation also does not destroy capitalism’s basic rules. But it creates problems for them. If human labor creates value, and machines replace workers, then the system weakens its own base. Yet capitalism does not simply fall apart. It adapts. It grows through finance. It strengthens copyright and patents. It creates artificial scarcity, even when goods could be copied easily. It turns genocide into a spectacle for people to watch and get anxious about happening to them. Social media turns daily life into data that can be sold. The factory has not vanished. It has spread into warehouses, data centers, and computer systems that track workers. Wage labor still exists. It is just more divided, watched, and pushed across the globe to find the cheapest workers. This shows a new tension. Technology can now produce goods in great amounts, often at very low cost. But the system of private ownership and profit limits access. Subscription models, digital locks, and cloud systems are legal tools that keep control in private hands. Capitalism is not stuck. It is active and flexible. But it still faces crises. It survives by reorganizing power in more complex ways. It makes production global and social, yet keeps profit private. It also harms the planet. This deepens the conflict between the many who work together and the few who own the results. The task is not to simply say capitalism is finished. It is also not to treat new technology as proof that we have moved beyond it. We must study how power works in the digital age. We must ask how data becomes capital, how large platforms act like toll gates, and how insecure jobs keep workers under pressure even as productivity rises. Only then can we judge whether these changes make the system more stable, or whether they sharpen the tensions that could lead to a new form of socialism.