Are We Moving from Capitalism to Postcapitalism?
My new book explores the possibilities
Here is some fun news: My new book What Is Postcapitalism? Imagining the World After Capitalism and Socialism has just been released on Amazon. The book is mostly about the digitalization of the economy and how that will affect our shared future. It is a book of possibilities, even as we see today that some economic forces and corporate leaders are attempting to capture all the benefits for themselves. At this time, therefore, it feels even more important to remind ourselves of the possibilities of what a postcapitalist and postsocialist world could look like.
To give you an idea of my viewpoint, I selected this small excerpt from the book, which introduces the chapter describing the five key transformations that will be happening detail. Before I give you that excerpt, however, one point should be clarified. Throughout the history of capitalism, our dominant metaphor for how we think of life is the machine. From Descartes’ mechanistic universe to systems theory in social relations, everything is a machine. Inputs, outputs, processes that change things—all of it is a machine. I contend that in addition to the five transformations identified below, human society is in the process of altering its core metaphor. We are thinking of things less and less as a machine, and increasingly, we look at the world through the lens of network. This represents a change in consciousness. If you pay attention to how people talk these days, you will hear them repeatedly invoke the network to help describe phenomena. They used to use the machine. It is becoming a new lens through which we understand the world.
No one knows exactly how this will change the future, but I am sure that it will change the future. This excerpt, and my book in general, is an exploration of the possibilities—the biggest of which is the demise of core principles of capitalism. These principles were fundamental during the centuries when capitalism replaced feudalism. Now, they are fundamental in that they will be replaced by new principles that derive their energy from this network-based perception of reality. Anyway, here is the excerpt.
Five Transformations: The Postcapitalist Opportunity
Systems like capitalism have two key components—their principles, and the structures that activate society and embed those principles into everyday life. For example, hierarchy is a key capitalist principle, and it is embedded into the structure of the corporate form in the definition of a corporation, the legal codes, offices, judicial precedent, operating manuals, compensation systems, and much more. Regulations and laws on the periphery will always fail to manifest significant change when the responsibilities of offices within the structure are charged with minimizing the effects of those changes on the operation of a corporation. When a regulation passes successfully, the hierarchy remains and the structure does not change. That’s why the system simply marches on.
Today, however, change is going beyond laws and regulations. The inevitable collapse of the capitalist system will not just change our relationship to capitalist principles, it will actually replace these principles altogether.
Where capitalism is based on enclosure and private property, the postcapitalist world will be based on a digital commons and non-ownership.
Where capitalism is built on hierarchy, the postcapitalist world will be built on egalitarian networks.
Where capitalism is built on coercive participation (especially participation in the market), the postcapitalist world will be built on voluntary collaboration in which both market participation and work are optional.
Where capitalism is built on extraction, the postcapitalist world will be built on conversion.
Where capitalism is built on scarcity, the postcapitalist world will be digitally abundant because it provides infinite supply at no cost.
These new principles—digital commons, egalitarian networks, voluntary participation, conversion, and digital abundance—are the organizing principles for the new postcapitalist world. As we will see, these principles are intrinsic to how the emerging digital world operates. That intrinsic nature gives them an opportunity to succeed where proposed alternatives, such as eco-sustainable principles, have thus far failed. The difference is not in the quality of the idea, but rather in its attachment to the emerging economic reality. Digitalization originates in the system itself, and in so doing, it draws from that system to turn itself into the DNA of a new system. It erodes capitalist principles and offers its own principles as a replacement.
For advocates, the challenge is to encourage these principles as they emerge. There is a competition brewing for the new dominant ideas—capitalism will certainly try to sustain itself, various dystopic scenarios could emerge to compete, and postcapitalist ideas will need guidance to emerge. This time, however, the postcapitalist principles will have an advantage: They are reinforced and in alignment with the metaphors of digitalization better than any other set of ideas. Postcapitalist principles will compete to define the structure of the new society, but they will also need guidance and reinforcement. Never before has systemic change been such a possibility, and never before has there been a competition for principles and values like that which we are about to embark upon.
The political times we are in are different from when I wrote much of this book. They changed radically on January 20, 2025, as we all know. It is remarkable to behold the gathering of tech oligarchs around the new president. While there are transactional reasons for this—all of them get government contracts and do not want to be shut out—we can also see what amounts to an anticapitalist collusion among these leaders. This is what oligarchs do when digitalization threatens their wealth through collapsing markets—they come together to assert control. Such anticapitalism is one form of that the new postcapitalist world could take. More positive possibilities are laid out in this book, but there is no doubt that if we do not understand those possibilities and act upon them, we will cede the possibilities of a new society to the oligarchs. All it really takes is knowledge and the attention to care for it.
The book is available here: What Is Postcapitalism? Imagining the World After Capitalism and Socialism.
Anthony Signorelli
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Congratulations on your newly released book! I can’t wait to read it!