Have We Entered Late Stage Capitalism?
- EricTheVogi
- Jul 1
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 15
Explore how neoclassical economics and social media both mask the social realities of capitalism, enabling exploitation and persistent power dynamics through abstraction and sensationalized content.
Late capitalism is a term used to describe the many criticisms of capitalism in various contexts whether politically or socially, and not necessarily referencing the inevitable demise of a long-entrenched economic system. Capitalism itself may not yet be at its end, but the majority understand that the freedoms and efficiencies of a market system come at the cost of sacrificing immense power and wealth to a miniature upper class that maintains dominance through exploiting the rest of the population. The globalized nature of economies today carried out by the digital revolution and previously hidden by neoclassical economics through framing the field of economics as a just a science, has allowed for the term to re-enter social spheres and become an increasingly weaker tool for critiquing the neoliberal capitalist system on a social level through its popularity on social media. We likely live in an era of late capitalism but it is not yet at its demise, and despite the digital revolution's benefits in popularizing the term through the use of viral, trendy content and algorithms, it’s use on social media has abstracted its meaning similar to neoclassical economics’ tactics to mask the social aspects of economies.
The term late capitalism has become relevant on social media among social spheres to describe commonly shared issues with the modern economy, such as why younger generations have low wages at entry level jobs, or cannot afford a home, to even blaming their pricey eight dollar morning coffee on late capitalism (Lowery, 0:20). The popularity of the term on social media is reducing its material political significance by sensationalizing it to fit mainstream culture and by applying it to any conversation or experience that people can relate to about resenting the current capitalist system. Today, the most common examples we see are with the polarizing headlines and videos directed at criticizing President Donald Trump’s actions in the USA. Another example would be your waiter getting mad at you for not tipping. The waiter lives in the same system under the same conditions as you do and is demanding you give them additional money for service you both already know the agreed price for when you ordered from the menu. It’s a fascinating dilemma that perfectly describes the obfuscation of the meaning of late capitalism and how to approach the issue.
At face value, popularizing the term online is seemingly beneficial to bringing debates of exploitation and power to more people, but when it is tied to an unlimited amount of meanings the ambiguity grows. Late capitalism suddenly becomes tied to any critique of modern life in western society and abstracts further away from the required information and subsequent actions needed to challenge existing power and wealth relationships under the current system.
The circulation of the concept of late capitalism on social media is adopting a broad definition with multiple meanings in separate contexts that users can discuss within their social spheres, risking referencing articles containing misleading, sensationalized headlines and misinformation. We could blame the news outlets and their sources but to Vogi Group, the two apparent culprits of its devaluation in critical discourse are algorithms feeding certain people specific information and social media not censoring false or misleading sensationalized information.
The doctrine of counter speech holds that the best way to eliminate fake news online is to just allow any and every idea to flow freely because users will have the tools necessary to challenge those ideas with true ideas. This view is held by all major social media platforms because it does not require intense censorship and government intervention — as they claim counterspeech is superior to censorship (Napoli, 84). However, since the success of social media platforms is largely dependent on users interacting with their platform, social media have influenced “news ecosystems in ways that make it less likely that true, high quality news can contest or displace fake news” (Napoli, 103-104). For example, sensationalized misinformation will spark far more interest from a larger number of users who will interact and share on that platform regardless of its validity. This is because 75% of American citizens will believe fake news stories despite acknowledging that the source and its information are false (Waszack, 2018, 116). In addition, Napoli (2019) discusses the spiral of partisanship to refer to how the users most likely to fall into filter bubbles of related content are the very people most active towards the cause, and ultimately become far more likely to share fake news stories they believe in (Napoli, 98). Most importantly, merely exposing oneself to fabricated information online alone can influence and alter people's beliefs, not just dictate their online activity (Waszack, 116). These factors alone highlight a major problem with social media where false ideas can spread and lead to a misinformed public, but also that users can easily fall into filter bubbles by way of algorithms categorizing us based on the abundance of information we interact with online and on social media.
The use of algorithms to categorize people in this manner is comparable to neoclassical economics analyzing the market with mathematical equations and ignoring fundamental social interaction (Stanford, 55). If people get trapped in filter bubbles due to categorization by algorithms, then they are reduced to a science and can be analyzed as such. Similar to how economics was born as a social science, but then was removed from the social spheres to mask its interconnectedness in place of understanding economies as a purely a science. Social media is performing a similar role by bringing the term late capitalism and its critique of our system to the forefront of relevant media and obfuscating its meaning.
Neoclassical economics strove to undermine all the geographic, cultural, and inherently social aspects of economies by diminishing their significance through mathematical equations and the study of it as a science (Stanford, 55). However, economics is inherently social because these relationships are required to negotiate worth and communicate value. Additionally, interactions of relationships between people are crucial to the functioning of the economy, which is why the digital revolution and rise of social media has been so influential to economics as a whole.
The real concern is that while economics involves elements of prediction and analyzing data that may incorporate the use of mathematic equations, it ultimately boils down to the problem that framing economics as a science and using particular terms to complicate and form a vocabulary that separates it from common knowledge was atactic employed to distract people from how it functioned to ensure the highest class could mask their exploitation and power. Late capitalism has not yet equated to the beginning of the downfall of our current economic system. But it has and will likely continue to function with social media the same way neoclassical economics did to blur and perpetuate the growing disparity regarding the consolidation of wealth and power within the top class in society.
Although, even after people successfully took down the neoclassical defenses of capitalism, the very idea of market freedom that focused on the individual and ensured people would have equal labor power intensified the growing disparity between the one percent and everyone else. Capitalism then entailed a miniature class with immense power and wealth, which unnaturally formed a seemingly inescapable system where successful people would not distribute wealth to other classes and those classes would not be able to move to the upper class.
Adam Smith pointed out that this capitalist system would mean that workers would not know the means of production (Stanford, 53). While social media purports to allow users the ability to create and share their unique cultural expressions of their own beliefs and critiques, users will likely never be able to broadcast their works through mainstream productions nor own the means of the original productions for which they are critiquing or culturally commenting. Since the internet and social media have little restrictions and censorship of content compared to mainstream gatekeeping, any of these users can share their works, as many times as they want resulting in an abundance of information left in an open playing field where truthful information is thrown out there to get dominated by sensationalized misinformation and ad revenues (Napoli, 84). Therefore, it becomes increasingly difficult for the middle and lower classes to influence actual power relations as they are sent into filter bubbles and recommended news stories and information that ultimately work to distract from altering the growing discrepancy in the distribution of power and wealth.
The fundamental elements of capitalism are that most people have to work for others in return for a wage or salary, and a small proportion of society owns the majority of wealth and uses that wealth in an effort to generate more wealth (Stanford, 34). A byproduct of this system resulted in the middle and lower classes essentially living without a surplus, basing their very behaviours and everyday decisions, such as buying a morning coffee, on the knowledge that they can only afford certain things from pay cheque to pay cheque. As the cost of living has steadily increased over time, more people in the working class struggle to cover their cost of living without much of a surplus compared to the highest class who have only been growing theirs (Hanauer, 2:22). Stanford mentions that this idea of a surplus is what largely initially contributed to the creation of class divisions, and can be seen perpetuating under this current system as the disparity between distribution of wealth has remained or grown (Stanford, 40). The bottom line is that people are simply not paid what they are worth and the working class are actually paid based on the amount of power they have to negotiate their value (Hanauer, 6:38). Employers are only becoming more powerful which outlines a huge imbalance that exists between the amount of capital owned versus how much labour you do or value you possess to the labour force. A CEO that makes 100 times more than his employee in annual income simply does not produce 100 times more value.
As a result, the middle and lower classes have constant anxiety caused by fears of spontaneous emergencies or accidents that can instantly suck a large sum of their income, not to mention the added pressure from layoffs and outsourcing caused by AI and automation — originating out of the ideas of taylorism. So not only are the working class being exploited, but they are also becoming less relevant and less powerful as AI automation comes into play. Many people feel trapped, anxious and exploited which contributes to increasingly extensive class divisions, growing doubts about capitalism and the popularizing of ways to describe late capitalism on social media. These feelings are shared within social spheres and the best way for people to discuss these doubts and criticisms today in hopes of having their doubts heard is through social media. Attempts at regulating information on social media have been relatively futile, considering most social media companies, such as Facebook, persist that truthful information always succeeds in an even playing field against misinformation. In addition, users and especially ones that are passionate about a cause have a tendency to be categorized by algorithms based on personal information and online activity, and sent into filter bubbles. Lastly, social media is essentially too available and may provide users the feeling that they are contributing to raising awareness by educating themselves on sensational effects and what they think would convince people to easily believe them and confirm their own views. All of these factors together contribute to maintaining and blurring existing power relations in society that are required to understand in order to influence the current system.
Lastly, it’s important to note that around the time of publication bitcoin and gold are both holding near all time highs.
References
Hanauer, Nick. “The dirty secret of capitalism -- and a new way forward”. Youtube. Uploaded by TED. October 18, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs
Stanford, Jim. “Capitalism,” “Economic History,” and “The Politics of Economics.” In Economics for Everyone, 2008, pp. 33-61.
Lowery, Annie. “What Does "Late Capitalism" Really Mean?”. Youtube. Uploaded by The Atlantic. August 3, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7zZPqar34w&t=27s
Napoli, Philip. “The First Amendment, Fake News, and Filter Bubbles.” Social Media and the Public Interest, Columbia University Press, 2019, pp. 80–106, doi:10.7312/napo18454-005.
Waszak, Przemyslaw M., et al. “The Spread of Medical Fake News in Social Media – The Pilot Quantitative Study.” Health Policy and Technology, vol. 7, no. 2, Elsevier Ltd, 2018, pp. 115–118, doi:10.1016/j.hlpt.2018.03.002.
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