Socialist Appeal
The Marxist voice of Labour and youth
Today, in numerous areas, from automation to green energy to information technology, we are seeing a validation of Marx's assertion: that society's productive forces at a certain stage come into conflict with the way in which society is organised. These "economic singularities", as Adam Booth discusses, demonstrate clearly that the system has broken.
We are now in an era that many imagined would be a period of prosperity for all. And yet, far from living in the technological utopia once imagined, we are increasingly living in a dystopian nightmare of eye-watering inequality and poverty amidst plenty. Hugo Robles looks at the contradictions of automation and machinery under capitalism.
Today’s global economy is full of dangers, one of the most precarious being the Silicon Valley tech sector; in particular, the impending stampede of "unicorns". This term has come to describe the primary threat facing the tech sector, with the possibility of a cataclysmic repetition of the 1999 dot-com bubble.
Only a few short years ago it seemed that the tech market could do no wrong. Whatever problems the rest of world capitalism faced, the tech industries looked to be moving from success to success, with ever-larger profits each year. But, as Steve Jones (not Jobs) reports, the major technology firms - such as Apple - are now facing an increasingly uncertain future.
There were scenes of jubilation in Paris last Saturday evening, as delegates celebrated the results of negotiations at the United Nations climate change conference. But before the ink had even dried on the paper, doubts were already being raised – doubts that, in the final analysis, reflect the limitations and contradictions of the capitalist system.