PostCapitalism

PostCapitalism Plot Summary

Introduction

The traditional economic system built on markets, wages, and private ownership is being fundamentally transformed by information technology. This transformation is not merely another phase of capitalism but represents the emergence of a qualitatively different economic system. Information technology creates a profound contradiction at the heart of the market economy: while markets require scarcity to function, information naturally tends toward abundance with near-zero reproduction costs. This contradiction cannot be resolved within capitalism's framework and is driving us toward a postcapitalist future. The transition to postcapitalism is already underway, visible in the rise of collaborative production models like open-source software, the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure, and the emergence of economic activities that operate outside traditional market mechanisms. Understanding this transition requires moving beyond conventional economic theories to recognize how information technology is creating new possibilities for organizing production and distribution based on abundance rather than scarcity. By examining these emerging patterns, we can identify pathways toward an economy that harnesses technological potential for social benefit rather than profit maximization.

Chapter 1: The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Limits of Traditional Capitalism

Neoliberalism—the doctrine of uncontrolled markets, privatization, and minimal state intervention—has reached its limits. Since the 2008 financial crash, the global economy has experienced prolonged stagnation despite unprecedented monetary interventions. Central banks have pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets through quantitative easing, yet growth remains anemic, inequality continues to rise, and productivity growth has slowed to a crawl. This economic malaise reflects deeper structural problems than a typical business cycle downturn. The neoliberal model that emerged in the 1980s temporarily restored profitability by weakening labor, financializing the economy, and expanding into new markets after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. However, these solutions have exhausted themselves. Labor has been so thoroughly defeated that further wage suppression yields diminishing returns. Financial innovation increasingly generates instability rather than productive investment. Globalization has reached its geographic limits, with no new territories to incorporate into the market system. Climate change and demographic shifts further undermine capitalism's viability. The ecological crisis demands rapid decarbonization incompatible with profit-driven investment patterns. Aging populations in developed countries create fiscal pressures as the ratio of workers to retirees declines. These challenges require long-term planning and collective action that markets systematically fail to provide. The post-2008 period has seen the emergence of a zombie capitalism—neither fully recovering nor completely collapsing. Governments and central banks have prevented total system failure through bailouts and monetary creation, but have not addressed the underlying contradictions. The result is an economy increasingly dependent on asset bubbles, monopoly rents, and the artificial maintenance of scarcity in an age of potential abundance. This crisis of neoliberalism has created a crisis of legitimacy for capitalism itself. Rising populism, both right and left, reflects widespread disillusionment with a system that has failed to deliver on its promises. The question is no longer whether neoliberalism will survive, but what will replace it—a more authoritarian capitalism or a transition to something beyond capitalism altogether.

Chapter 2: Information Technology's Fundamental Challenge to Market Economics

Information technology represents a fundamentally different kind of technological revolution than those that preceded it. Unlike steam power or electricity, which simply provided new energy sources for industrial production, information technology changes the very nature of what can be owned, valued, and exchanged. Information is inherently non-rival—one person's use does not prevent another's—and can be reproduced at near-zero marginal cost, challenging the scarcity assumptions that underpin market economics. This creates a profound contradiction: information wants to be free, abundant, and shared, while capitalism requires things to be owned, scarce, and exchanged for profit. The market's defense mechanism against this contradiction is to create artificial scarcity through intellectual property rights, digital rights management, and monopolistic platform control. Yet these mechanisms are increasingly costly to maintain and generate growing inefficiencies as they prevent information from flowing to where it would create the most value. Network effects amplify this contradiction by creating winner-takes-all dynamics that undermine competitive markets. Digital platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon achieve dominant positions not primarily through traditional economies of scale but through the self-reinforcing advantages of data accumulation and user lock-in. These monopolies extract enormous rents from their position as gatekeepers, yet they remain vulnerable to disruption by open, collaborative alternatives that eliminate the need for intermediaries altogether. Information technology also transforms the relationship between work and value creation. In industrial capitalism, there was a relatively clear connection between labor time and output. In the information economy, this relationship breaks down. A programmer might spend months developing software that can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost, or might create in an hour an algorithm that generates enormous value. This undermines both wage labor as an organizing principle and price as a signaling mechanism. The rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence accelerates these trends by automating not just manual labor but cognitive tasks previously thought to require human intelligence. This threatens to eliminate vast categories of jobs without necessarily creating equivalent new employment opportunities. The result is a crisis of work itself—how will people earn incomes in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly superfluous to production? Information technology enables new forms of economic coordination that transcend both markets and central planning. Distributed systems can process vast amounts of data and match resources to needs without requiring either the price mechanism or bureaucratic control. Wikipedia, Linux, and countless open-source projects demonstrate that complex, sophisticated products can be created through voluntary collaboration rather than either market competition or hierarchical management.

Chapter 3: The Zero Marginal Cost Revolution and Value Creation

The defining characteristic of information goods is their near-zero marginal cost of reproduction. Once the initial investment in creating information content is made—whether software, music, text, or design—it can be copied infinitely at virtually no cost. This fundamentally challenges traditional economic models based on scarcity, where price tends toward the marginal cost of production. If that marginal cost approaches zero, the price mechanism breaks down entirely. This zero-marginal-cost dynamic is expanding beyond pure information goods to affect physical production through several mechanisms. First, an increasing proportion of the value in physical goods derives from their information content rather than their material components. Modern automobiles, for instance, contain millions of lines of code that determine their performance, efficiency, and features. Second, digital design and manufacturing technologies like 3D printing are reducing the capital requirements for physical production and enabling customization without cost penalties. Third, the Internet of Things connects physical objects to information networks, allowing them to be monitored, optimized, and upgraded remotely through software. The labor theory of value, often dismissed as obsolete, provides crucial insights into this transformation. Marx recognized that automation would progressively reduce the labor content of commodities, creating a contradiction within capitalism. As machines replace human labor, the source of surplus value (exploitation of labor) is undermined, even as productivity increases. Information technology accelerates this process to its logical conclusion—production with minimal human labor input, approaching zero marginal cost. This contradiction manifests in several ways. Firms attempt to maintain profitability by establishing monopolies through intellectual property rights, network effects, and platform control. Yet these monopolies generate inefficiencies by restricting the free flow of information that could maximize social utility. Meanwhile, collaborative production models emerge that operate outside market logic entirely, creating value through voluntary contributions motivated by non-monetary incentives. The accounting systems of capitalism cannot adequately measure or value information-based production. Traditional metrics like GDP fail to capture the value of free services like Wikipedia or open-source software. Corporate accounting struggles to value data assets or knowledge commons. This measurement problem reflects a deeper reality—the information economy operates according to different principles than industrial capitalism, principles that increasingly conflict with market mechanisms. As information becomes the primary source of value in the economy, the contradiction between information's natural tendency toward abundance and capitalism's requirement for scarcity becomes increasingly acute. This creates both crisis and opportunity—crisis for a system built on scarcity, opportunity for a new system organized around abundance.

Chapter 4: The Networked Individual Replaces the Traditional Working Class

The traditional industrial working class—concentrated in factories, mines, and other sites of mass production—has been transformed by globalization, automation, and the rise of networked technologies. In its place has emerged a new social subject: the networked individual, connected to others through digital platforms rather than physical workplaces, and characterized by precarious employment, multiple economic identities, and participation in collaborative projects outside formal economic structures. This networked individual experiences work very differently than industrial workers did. Rather than a stable career with a single employer, they navigate a landscape of temporary contracts, freelance gigs, and project-based employment. Their skills must be constantly updated to remain relevant in a rapidly changing economy. Their relationship to capital is mediated not just through wages but through debt, data extraction, and platform dependencies. The networked individual simultaneously occupies multiple economic positions. They may be an employee during working hours, a freelancer in the evening, a prosumer generating content for social media platforms, and a participant in commons-based peer production projects like open-source software. This multiplicity creates a complex consciousness that transcends the binary class identity of industrial capitalism, where workers primarily understood themselves in opposition to owners. Information technology has blurred the boundaries between work and leisure. People create economic value even when not formally "on the job" through their data trails, content creation, and participation in online communities. This unpaid value creation represents a new form of exploitation, as companies capture and monetize activity that users engage in voluntarily. Yet it also creates spaces for autonomous production outside market relations, as people contribute to knowledge commons and collaborative projects for non-monetary rewards. The solidarity that characterized industrial working-class communities has been replaced by more fluid forms of connection. Digital networks enable people to form communities of interest that transcend geographical boundaries but may lack the permanence and material interdependence of traditional working-class neighborhoods. Political mobilization takes new forms—temporary "swarms" rather than permanent organizations, hashtag campaigns rather than union membership drives. Despite these transformations, networked individuals retain a fundamental antagonism to capital, albeit in new forms. They face exploitation through data extraction, intellectual property regimes that privatize collective knowledge, and financial extraction through debt. Their precarious position makes them potentially more, not less, radical than their industrial predecessors. The protests that erupted across the world from 2011 onward—from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street—demonstrated the political potential of networked individuals to challenge the existing order.

Chapter 5: Collaborative Production as the Seed of a New Economic System

Within the shell of capitalism, new forms of production are emerging that operate according to fundamentally different principles. These collaborative production systems—from open-source software to Wikipedia, from community land trusts to cooperatives—demonstrate that complex, sophisticated outputs can be created without either hierarchical management or price signals. They represent the embryonic form of a postcapitalist economy. Open-source software development exemplifies these new production relations. Projects like Linux coordinate the contributions of thousands of developers worldwide without traditional employment relationships. The resulting products are freely available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute. Quality is maintained through peer review rather than managerial oversight. The system produces software that powers much of the internet's infrastructure, demonstrating that collaborative production can achieve technical sophistication equal or superior to proprietary alternatives. Wikipedia similarly demonstrates the power of collaborative production at scale. Its millions of articles in hundreds of languages represent a knowledge commons created by voluntary contributors. Despite initial skepticism from experts, studies have found its accuracy comparable to traditional encyclopedias. Its governance combines elements of democracy, meritocracy, and consensus-building that differ markedly from both market and state institutions. These collaborative systems are enabled by information technology but extend beyond purely digital products. Community-supported agriculture connects farmers directly with consumers through subscription models that share risk and reward. Maker spaces provide shared access to production tools that would be prohibitively expensive for individuals to own. Energy cooperatives enable communities to collectively own and manage renewable power generation. What unites these diverse initiatives is their organization around use value rather than exchange value. They produce to meet needs and desires rather than to generate profit. They utilize voluntary contributions motivated by intrinsic rewards rather than wage labor. They make their outputs freely available rather than artificially scarce. And they govern themselves through democratic processes rather than either market competition or hierarchical control. These collaborative systems currently exist alongside capitalism rather than replacing it entirely. Many open-source contributors earn their living through conventional employment. Wikipedia's servers run on electricity generated by profit-seeking utilities. This hybrid reality reflects the transitional nature of the current period—postcapitalist practices emerging within a still-dominant capitalist framework. The challenge is to expand these islands of collaboration until they become the dominant mode of production.

Chapter 6: Climate Change and Demographics: The Twin Crises Demanding Transformation

Climate change represents an existential threat that capitalism appears structurally unable to address. The market's short-term profit orientation, its treatment of ecological impacts as "externalities," and its requirement for continuous growth collide with the physical limits of a finite planet. This contradiction creates both necessity and opportunity for systemic change. The scientific consensus is unequivocal: without rapid, far-reaching transitions in energy, land use, urban infrastructure, and industrial systems, global warming will exceed 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels, with catastrophic consequences. These include rising sea levels threatening coastal cities, extreme weather events, agricultural disruption, mass extinction of species, and the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. Market-based approaches to climate change have proven woefully inadequate. Carbon pricing schemes have failed to reduce emissions at the necessary scale and pace. Green investment remains a fraction of what's required. Fossil fuel companies continue exploring for new reserves that cannot be burned if climate targets are to be met. This represents not just market failure but market incompatibility with ecological sustainability. Demographic shifts compound these challenges. Aging populations in developed countries create fiscal pressures as the ratio of workers to retirees declines. Pension systems designed for different demographic realities face unsustainable burdens. Meanwhile, population growth continues in developing regions most vulnerable to climate impacts, creating potential for humanitarian crises and mass migration. The intersection of climate change and demographics requires planning on timescales that markets cannot accommodate. Infrastructure investments must anticipate conditions decades hence. Energy systems must be transformed before price signals would naturally drive such change. Social welfare systems must be redesigned for radically different population structures. These twin crises coincide with the technological revolution in information systems, creating a perfect storm that makes transformation not just desirable but necessary. The good news is that information technology enables forms of economic coordination that could address these challenges more effectively than either markets or traditional central planning. Distributed renewable energy systems can be managed through smart grids that match supply and demand in real-time. Climate models can inform democratic planning processes that incorporate ecological constraints into economic decisions. Social welfare can be reimagined for an era where automation reduces necessary labor time. The scale and urgency of climate change mean that incremental reforms will not suffice. The required transformations in energy, transportation, agriculture, and industry are so fundamental that they amount to a different economic system. The choice increasingly appears to be between postcapitalism by design or collapse by default.

Chapter 7: Project Zero: A Practical Transition Path to Postcapitalism

The transition to postcapitalism requires deliberate action across multiple domains—technological, economic, political, and cultural. Project Zero outlines a practical pathway focused on three interrelated goals: zero carbon emissions, zero marginal costs for basic goods and services, and the progressive reduction of necessary labor time toward zero. This is not a utopian blueprint imposed from above but a framework for coordinated action across multiple scales. The first step is to recognize and nurture the non-market economic activities already emerging. These include open-source software projects, peer production networks, cooperatives, and commons-based initiatives that operate according to different principles than profit maximization. By creating appropriate legal frameworks and institutional support for these activities, we can accelerate their development and expansion. Financial transformation is essential to this transition. The current banking system, oriented toward short-term profits and speculative investment, must be replaced by institutions that direct resources toward social needs and ecological sustainability. Public banks, credit unions, and peer-to-peer lending platforms can provide alternatives to commercial banks. Monetary policy should shift from inflation targeting to funding the zero-carbon transition. Debt jubilees would eliminate unpayable debts that constrain economic possibilities. Information technology must be reclaimed from monopolistic control and deployed for social benefit. This requires breaking up platform monopolies, establishing data as a public utility rather than private property, and developing open protocols that enable interoperability between services. Public investment in digital infrastructure can ensure universal access to high-speed internet and cloud computing resources, creating the foundation for collaborative production at scale. Work itself must be transformed through automation, reduced working hours, and the blurring of boundaries between paid and unpaid activity. As necessary labor time decreases, people could devote more energy to care work, creative pursuits, community building, and ecological restoration—activities that create social value without producing commodities. A universal basic income or universal basic services would ensure everyone's fundamental needs are met regardless of market position. The state has a crucial role in this transition, not as a central planner but as an enabler of democratic economic coordination. Public procurement can create markets for sustainable products. Regulatory frameworks can internalize ecological costs that markets externalize. Investment in research and development can accelerate technological innovation in renewable energy, sustainable materials, and circular production processes. Education systems must evolve to develop the capabilities needed in a postcapitalist society. Beyond technical skills, this means fostering creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and ecological literacy. Learning should be lifelong and accessible to all, recognizing that human development is an end in itself rather than merely a means to economic productivity. The transition will not be smooth or uncontested. Powerful interests benefit from the current system and will resist change. Different regions and sectors will move at different speeds. There will be hybrid forms combining market and non-market elements. Yet the direction of travel can be shaped by conscious collective action informed by a clear understanding of the possibilities that information technology has created.

Summary

Postcapitalism emerges not as a utopian ideal but as the logical consequence of contradictions within contemporary capitalism that cannot be resolved within its framework. Information technology, by creating the possibility of abundance through zero marginal cost reproduction, undermines the scarcity assumptions on which markets depend. Climate change and demographic shifts expose the inability of profit-driven systems to address long-term collective challenges. The networked individual, connected through digital platforms yet experiencing new forms of exploitation, becomes the potential agent of transformation. The transition to postcapitalism requires both resistance to the destructive aspects of the current system and the construction of alternatives within its interstices. Collaborative production models, commons-based resource management, and the progressive decommodification of basic needs can expand from their current niches to become dominant economic forms. This process combines technological innovation, social reorganization, and cultural change in a complex, non-linear evolution rather than a singular revolutionary moment. The outcome is not predetermined but depends on conscious collective action to shape emerging possibilities toward greater freedom, sustainability, and human flourishing.

About Author

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Paul Mason

Note: Paul^^MasonPaul Mason is an English journalist and broadcaster. He is economics editor of the BBC's Newsnight television programme and the author of several books.

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