Why Karl Marx Was Right About Capitalism
In the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto, one of the most clumsy, dubious, influential and significant documents ever written, there is an important quote:
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Marx’s observation, in spite of all of the failings of his following predictions and complaints, reflects something deeply true about the expansion of capitalism. Our own culture in the last century stands as witness, a process of the commodification of everything we once called art or culture into a monoculture dominated by an increasingly smaller number of market dominating pop stars who produce content that is completely without value, sold purely on the basis of lowest common denominator appeal to celebrity, sex, or listless stimulation.
Every aspect of our online culture too is ultimately reduced to the forces of commodification. Social media itself is less a public square and more a mass marketplace in which people sell themselves and…
