Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, let's talk about what comes *after* capitalism, you know? Like, if you think about it, capitalism, it really built up science, right? Made it, like, a productive force. But, kinda ironically, the way things are now, capitalism is almost making itself, well, unnecessary. It's weird, isn't it?
I mean, for ages, the idea was that if you were rich, it's 'cause you owned stuff, right? You owned capital, and *that* gave you control of businesses. That whole link, from your own personal wealth to owning capital, to, you know, being in charge? That was, like, the bedrock of understanding business, and how wealth gets distributed. But, things have shifted. There's still a link, sure, but now it's more like, if you control a business, *then* you get rich. And owning capital? Well, that's kind of, like, irrelevant to who's actually calling the shots.
Think about it. Back in the day, you had, like, these huge ironworks, textile mills, right? Symbols of the Industrial Revolution. Then it was steel mills, assembly lines, you know, meatpacking plants. But *those* places aren’t really where it's at anymore. Now it's all Apple and Google, J.P. Morgan, Verizon, Pfizer, PwC. And the people who work there? They aren't, you know, dirt-poor, like, those workers from back in the day, or, like, the "lumpenproletariat," whatever *that* is. They're going to offices, not factories. It’s almost come full circle, like, before the Industrial Revolution, people worked from home a lot. And now, in this day and age, loads of people *want* to work from home again.
And what are they making? Smartphones, internet search, bank accounts, like, connectivity, pills, accounting services. Stuff that, like, fits in your pocket, or, even, in your head. The materials themselves barely cost anything. What you're actually paying for is, like, the brainpower, the collective intelligence inside these companies, which gets poured into the product design. Not the raw materials. The actual transformation of raw materials into a finished product doesn't even matter that much. So, because the value of the product is less and less about materials, the same is true about the *means* of production. Businesses in the twenty-first century don’t even need that much capital. And they often don't even *own* the capital they use. And, get this, the people who *do* provide the capital? They don't actually control anything. Modern firms, they just, like, *buy* capital services, like they buy water, electricity, transport. They buy the services of workers, accountants, executives, suppliers, the whole shebang.
So, back when it was all about factories, production came from combining physical capital and physical labor. And how the income was divided up? Well, that was the result of, like, a class struggle, between the people who owned the capital, and the people who provided the labor. And for a long time, through much of the twentieth century, that was still pretty accurate. But now? Labor, often many *different* kinds of labor all working together, is, like, the key thing. What you get out of it is the result of the combined skills of the software engineer, the designer, the accountant, the marketer, the rainmaker, and the dealmaker.
The factory used to be the front line of class warfare, right? With trade unions demanding better pay and conditions. But when Marx was writing, like, a huge chunk of the workforce was in manufacturing. Now, it's, like, a tiny fraction. And trade unions? They're mostly a thing in the public sector. Some countries are different, sure, but in general, you know...
So, think about those famous strikes from the past. The workers wanted better pay, better conditions from the bosses. But those were long ago. More recently, well, the employers were the government itself! To see *those* as, like, a simple battle between capital and labor? It's, like, a massive oversimplification. The people dismissed were, well, victims of political games.
Up until more recently, political parties were defined by whether they were on the side of capital or labor, right? But because capitalists were fewer in number, they had to team up with conservative groups to win elections – religious people, the military, traditionalists, libertarians, all these people who feared, like, collectivism, or, like, social upheaval. But as the whole capital-versus-labor thing became less relevant, and communism kinda fell apart, the whole *point* of these political parties, well, it fractured. And across the world, that kinda opened the door for populism, identity politics, and those culture wars that are all over the place now.
Modern businesses? They’re defined by their capabilities, what they *can* do, not just how they produce stuff. Success comes from the diverse skills of the people who work there. So, *they* are the means of production. So, like, is this still capitalism? Or did socialism, like, finally arrive? It's, like, a good question to ask in an essay, but it isn't actually helpful in understanding real-world business. Those terms, they just don't explain things that well anymore, not when you're trying to understand business or economic systems.
You know, you just can’t build a theory of business without understanding organizational theory, psychology, anthropology, and, like, all sorts of other social sciences. Focusing too much on, like, formal models and contracts? It just distracts you from the bigger picture.
The ideas of people all working together, accepting that things are uncertain, being open to different views, creating strong relationships, all that stuff has been around for a while. But it's not always been applied to how businesses are set up. The idea is that the best relationships aren’t just about making deals, they're also social, they're part of a bigger community. That old, transactional view? It was, well, wrong and kinda unpleasant. So, here's hoping that a better understanding of how businesses and their stakeholders thrive, it’ll, like, not just lead to understanding business *better*, but to running it *better*.