Post-capitalism

Post-capitalism is an economic system which has evolved beyond capitalism. While communism is one proposed form of post-capitalism, other theories and ideas also posit the eventual end of capitalism.

Technology as a driver of post-capitalism

Much of the speculation surrounding the proposed fate of the capitalist system stems from predictions about the future integration of technology into economics. The evolution and increasing sophistication of both automation and information technology is said to threaten jobs and highlight internal contradictions in Capitalism which will allegedly ultimately lead to its collapse.

Automation

Technological change which has driven unemployment has historically been as a result of ‘mechanical-muscle’ machines which have reduced the need for human labour. Just as horses were once employed but were gradually made obsolete by the invention of the automobile, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout history. A modern example of this technological unemployment is the replacement of retail cashiers by self-service checkouts. The invention and development of ‘mechanical-mind’ processes or “brain labour” is thought to threaten jobs at an unprecedented scale, with Oxford Professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimating that 47 percent of US jobs are at risk of automation. If this leads to a world where human labour is no longer needed then our current market system models, which rely on scarcity, may have to adapt or fail. It is argued that this has been a factor in the creation of many of what David Graeber calls 'bullshit jobs', where, in large bureaucracies, production of anything is not the goal, but exist solely for reasons such as providing sociological benefit to the manager employing them.

Information technology

Post-capitalism is said to be possible due to major changes information technology has brought about in recent years. It has blurred the edges between work and free time  and loosened the relationship between work and wages. Significantly, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. Information is abundant and information goods are freely replicable. Goods such as music, software or databases do have a production cost, but once made can be copied/pasted infinitely. If the normal price mechanism of capitalism prevails, then the price of any good which has essentially no cost of reproduction will fall towards zero. This lack of scarcity is a problem for our models, which try to counter by developing monopolies in the form of giant tech companies to keep information scarce and commercial. But many significant commodities in the digital economy are now free and open-source, such as Linux, Firefox, and Wikipedia.

See also

• Anti-capitalism