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 1 month 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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[โ€“] MidnightPocket@hexbear.net 16 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

A strategy needs to be developed concerning:

  1. Industrial work being jettisoned from the imperial core. Organizing a factory is much more tried-and-true than organizing a litany of decentralized business ventures that are constantly acquired by corporations participating in labor aristocracy. At this point the west needs entirely different organizing tactics based on material analysis invented to supplement traditional tactics.

  2. The insane modern speeds that false consciousness is injected/reinforced into/within the (western?) proletariat.

  3. The US dollar hegemony makes it far too easy for the US empire to find supplicant agents in any nation to do their bidding. Whether this takes the form of bribing comprador leaders, fascist death squad financing, or fomenting color revolutions - it is just all too accessible given that the US dollar is accepted as gold everywhere and can be printed for any project the US deems worthy of any effort whatsoever.

[โ€“] TerminalEncounter@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

For 1, while the mass character of the industrial/factory proletariate is diminished in the sense that there's literally fewer of them - there's still some pain points with longshoremen, logistics in general, some manufacturing, (John Deer, UAW, etc), mining, agricultural labor, etc.

Itd be really nice to bring in sectoral scale bargaining or even better revive the IWW. Back in the early 20th century they were organizing hotel workers alongside rail workers.