this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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What are some qualitative differences that capitalism has in the 21st century as opposed to classical Marx era capitalism? (hexbear.net)
submitted 4 months ago by iByteABit@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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When reading through Marx I can't help but think that capitalism has gotten even worse today than it used to be back then, meaning that the actual mechanisms that drive capital now need much more exploitation and in more forms than they used to.

Also I wonder if some changes of capitalism have also caused the working class to be so completely numb. Workers of the 19th and 20th century knew that the capitalists have opposite needs to them and only through fighting them could they stand to improve their situation. However today people just seem uninterested to really fight for themselves despite the proletariat being a much larger percentage of society compared to the past. I know I'm leaving out some important struggles going on when I'm saying this, but it still makes me wonder what made workers in the past centuries so much more class conscious.

I don't believe that much, if anything, that Marx critiqued about capitalism has changed on a structural level, but the flow of capital is so complex today, and the collected capital has become so much larger, that it begs the question if this has created some superstructures of capitalism today.

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[–] iByteABit@hexbear.net 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I would challenge this claim, in Marx's time Congolese workers would have their hands cut off for missing quotas, or worse.

I was thinking more about things like insane price gouging, monopolies the likes of Nestle, meta-capitalists like Blackrock, making workers self evaluate themselves and push themselves without any command, extreme competition to find work, and others.

Of course the actual working conditions back then were much worse, working extremely long hours doing mostly manual labour and also actual violence like you mentioned.