Karl on Social Media

If Karl Marx Had Social Media in the Contemporary World

[karlmsoc]

Automation, AI and the New Means of Production

You are told that technology will set you free.

Machines will work so you don’t have to. Artificial intelligence will increase efficiency, reduce effort, and create a better future.

But I would ask for whom?

Look at the history of the factory. When Ford Motor Company introduced the assembly line, it transformed production. Efficiency soared, output multiplied. Fewer skilled workers were needed, tasks were simplified, and control shifted firmly toward those who owned the factory.

Now look at the factory today.

Industrial robots assemble cars with precision and speed. Companies like Tesla and Toyota rely heavily on automation. The process continues, more machines, fewer workers, higher output.

Productivity rises.

But where does the benefit go?

Not to the worker whose role disappears, or whose bargaining power declines. It flows upward, to those who own the machines, the systems, the technology.

Because understand this clearly: owning technology today is owning the means of production.

And so, as traditional jobs shrink, a new form of labor emerges.

The gig economy.

Workers displaced from stable employment are told they are now “independent.” They drive, deliver, code, design, all on demand. No contracts. No security. No guarantees. The risk is transferred downward, while control remains above, often exercised through algorithms rather than managers.

This is not liberation.

It is adaptation.

The factory did not disappear. It expanded beyond its walls. It now exists in your car, your phone, your home. Work is no longer a place you go, but a condition you live within.

And here lies the contradiction.

Machines have the potential to reduce labor, to free human beings from repetitive work. But under capitalism, they do not free the worker.

They replace them.

Or worse, they redefine them into something more precarious, more controlled, more disposable.

So I will say this outrightly.

Technology does not determine the future.

Ownership does.

And as long as the machines are owned by the few, the many will continue to bear the cost of their progress.

[karlmsoc]

Housing Speculation and the Price of Shelter

Housing was once understood as a necessity.

Now it is treated as an asset.

Not a place to live, but a place to invest. Not a right, but an opportunity for profit. This is the foundation of the housing crisis, where real estate speculation transforms shelter into a commodity whose value rises not with need, but with demand and profitability.

And what creates that demand?

Check out localities near institutions like BRAC University. Housing is a guaranteed market with the influx of thousands of students. Landlords don’t see residents, they see income streams. Demand became predictable, not because housing improved, but because rents went up.

The same applies to hospitals, corporate offices, commercial centers.

A hospital gets built and the area is suddenly “valuable.” “Workers, families of patients, staff all need to be close by. Prices go up. A business hub is created and the rent climbs with profit. Every new development, marketed as progress, creepy jacks up the price of just being there.

This is not by chance.

It is speculation.

Property is bought and priced not for its use, but for its potential return. The landlord profits not by producing, but by controlling access to something essential.

And so the consequences unfold.

Students struggle to afford rooms. Workers are pushed further from their workplaces. Long-time residents are displaced. The city reshapes itself around capital, not community.

This is the contradiction at the heart of it.

The more necessary something is, the more effectively it can be exploited for profit.

So I will say this frankly.

When housing becomes an investment, it ceases to serve those who need it most.

And in that system, shelter is no longer a right.

It is a transaction.

[karlmsoc]

Consumer Culture and Overconsumption

You are told to express yourself.

To create an identity. To stand out.

But look closely at how this “self” is being constructed.

A phone is a status symbol. Apple's latest device is no longer about function; it’s about recognition. Not in what it does, but in what it signals.

This is the same logic everywhere.

Louis Vuitton bag, Rolex watch, Gucci clothes. They are not just things. They are symbols, painstakingly crafted to demonstrate wealth, taste and status.

And so arises a new need.

Not to use, but to display.

The newest model. The limited edition. The exclusive drop. You are made to feel incomplete without them, as if identity itself requires constant upgrading. What you desire is no longer determined by necessity, but manufactured by the system.

This is not consumption.

This is conditioning.

Capitalism does not only produce goods. It produces desires. It convinces you that fulfillment lies in ownership, that meaning can be purchased, that worth can be worn.

But here lies the contradiction.

The very workers who produce these goods often cannot afford them. The hands that assemble the devices, stitch the garments, craft the products, remain excluded from the world they create.

This is what I once called alienation.

The worker is separated from the product of their labor, from the value they generate, and ultimately, from themselves. They create objects that define status, yet are denied access to that status.

So understand this clearly.

You are not simply buying things.

You are participating in a system that turns identity into a commodity, desire into a cycle, and human labor into something both essential and invisible.

And the more you try to express yourself through what you own, the more the system defines who you are.

[karlmsoc]

Climate, Capital and Convenient Blame

You are told the planet is in crisis.

And it is.

But listen closely to how the blame is assigned.

You are told to recycle more, waste less, be responsible. Meanwhile, the system that produces waste on an industrial scale continues almost unchanged.

That is not accountability. That is deflection.

Take fast fashion as an example. Companies such as Sweden’s H&M do not produce mainly in their own country. Production gets moved to countries with cheaper labor and weaker environmental protections. All the pollution, waste and the human cost is relocated.

The concept of sustainability is still in the “developed” world. The damage is exported.

You see the same contradiction in something as basic as food.

Consumers and retailers in the U.S. and elsewhere discard large quantities of food. Food that is perfectly good to eat, discarded because of overproduction, strict aesthetic standards and a culture of excess.

Now look at this versus a third world country.

Here, food is not wasted out of abundance, but lost through struggle. Poor storage, lack of refrigeration, weak transportation systems and fragile supply chains mean food spoils before it can even reach people. Farmers go broke. Communities face shortages. Waste is not a choice, but a consequence of underdevelopment.

Yet who is to blame?

The narrative often points toward these countries as inefficient or irresponsible, while ignoring that the largest scale of waste comes from overproduction and overconsumption elsewhere.

Again, this is not accidental.

Capitalism produces excess where profit is highest, and scarcity where cost must be minimized. It wastes in one place and withholds in another.

And then comes “green capitalism.”

Sustainable collections. Eco labels. Corporate pledges.

But the structure remains unchanged. Produce more, sell more and waste more. Only now, market it as ethical.

So I will say this plainly.

The so-called first world preserves its image by exporting both exploitation and environmental damage, while blaming those who bear the consequences.

The global proletariat does not only produce the wealth of the system.

It also absorbs its waste.

[karlmsoc]

Social Media and Control

They told you it was free.

A place to connect, to speak, to be seen.

But I would ask, if it is free, what is being sold?

The Reuters reports show a significant discovery about the situation. For example, platforms like Facebook have, in the past, given certain companies access to user data, even information about user's friends. It’s not just what you share, but who you’re connected to that becomes part of the commodity.

And the story doesn’t end there.

Data linked to LinkedIn users has been harvested and is being sold on the internet. Information taken, passed around and sold without the control of the creators.

This is not an accident, you see.

This is the system working as it is supposed to.

What you call “social media” is not a communication channel. It is a machine for extracting. Your behavior, your network, your identity, all turned into data. And that data, in turn, becomes revenue.

This is the most extreme form of surveillance capitalism.

And you are not just the user. You are the raw material.

And yet there is an inconsistency.

These platforms can amplify voices, spread dissent and link workers across the globe. They bring with them the potential for resistance.

But they are also designed to hold it in.

The algorithm is not a truth server. It has a voice. And engagement earns money. Outrage, criticism, rebellion are recorded, quantified and monetized.

So it’s not a question of whether social media can create change.

The question is whether change can truly emerge from a system that profits from everything you do, even your resistance.

Because the ruling class no longer fears these platforms.

It owns them.

PRIVACY

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/facebook-gave-data-on-users-friends-to-certain-companies-documents-idUSKBN1O420W/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/linkedin-says-some-user-data-extracted-posted-sale-2021-04-09/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/social-media-users-lack-control-over-data-used-by-ai-us-ftc-says-2024-09-19/

[karlmsoc]

Digital Labour and Platform Capitalism

You believe you are simply passing time.

Scrolling, liking, sharing and posting fragments of your life into the endless stream.

But I would ask you to look again.

Every click, every pause, every interaction produces value. Not for you, but for the platform. Your attention is measured, packaged, surveilled and sold. Your behavior becomes data. Your data becomes profit.

And you are not paid.

This is labor that does not appear as labor. It feels voluntary, even enjoyable. That is precisely its genius. The worker does not feel like a worker, yet continues to produce.

Then there are the influencers.

They sell lifestyles, identities, aspirations. But what they truly sustain is the system itself. They transform life into content, and content into commodity. Even personality becomes something to be marketed.

What you are witnessing is not a new world beyond capitalism.

It is capitalism perfected.

Nothing is left outside the market. Not your time, not your relationships, not even your sense of self.

So let me put it simply.

You scroll. You like. You create data.

And in doing so, you work.

[karlmsoc]

Corporate Employees

They sit in glass towers now, not factory floors.

Dressed in formality, speaking in metrics and meetings, they are told they have made it. That this is success. That this is freedom.

But look closer.

The deadlines stretch longer than the working day. The emails follow them home. The pressure to perform never truly ends. And at any moment, a layoff notice can arrive, reducing years of labor to a line in a cost-cutting report.

You may call them professionals, executives, white-collar workers.

I would still call them workers.

They sell their time, their energy, their minds. They produce value they do not control, for institutions they do not own. And in return, they receive a salary that can disappear the moment they are no longer profitable.

This is not a different system. It is the same relation, dressed differently.

The factory did not vanish. It became an office. The machinery became software. The overseer became management, and now, increasingly, the algorithm.

So let us be clear.

The modern proletariat does not only wear uniforms. It wears suits.

Different offices, same struggle.

[karlmsoc]

The Gig Economy

You are free now, they say.

Free to choose your hours. Free to work from anywhere. Free to be your own boss.

But I would ask who really owns your time?

The gig economy is sold as liberation, but underneath that illusion is a familiar structure. Food delivery riders risk their lives in traffic, racing against time, while the platforms they work for reap huge profits. Flexibility for whom? Profit to whom?

What you call “remote jobs” and “cheap labor” is just the worldwide extension of the same old relation. Capital does not need to bring workers to the factory any longer. It brings the factory to the worker wherever he may be, at the lowest possible cost.

And then there's the algorithm.

You get assigned work . Your work is measured . Your income is measured . You can be fired for no reason . This is not liberty. This is control without visibility. The factory hasn’t disappeared, it’s gone digital.

The modern worker logs in but not clock in, the condition is the same. No perks. There was no security. No promise of a tomorrow.

So I will say it outright.

Gig workers are not business owners. They are the new proletariat, controlled not by a foreman, but by code.

[karlmsoc]

Bangladesh’s Garment Workers

Cheap clothes are never really cheap. Someone always pays the real price. In the global garment industry, it is usually the worker.

Look at Bangladesh’s RMG sector. It powers the wardrobes of the world, yet the people who stitch those clothes are too often paid too little, protected too little and valued too little. Capital moves across borders with ease, but the worker remains tied to the factory floor.

And then there is Rana Plaza.

That was not just an accident. It was a warning. A brutal reminder that when profit becomes the highest law, human life is treated as a cost to be managed. The collapse exposed what capitalism tries so hard to hide: behind every “affordable” shirt is labor, pressure, exhaustion, and sometimes death.

If I were writing today, I would say this: fast fashion is not fast style. It is fast exploitation. The system dresses up suffering as convenience, then asks the world not to look too closely.

[karlmsoc]

Mohr/Moor

It’s interesting how much of the debate around socialism today still circles the same questions that divided earlier Marxists.

If I were to imagine Marx scrolling through this discourse now, I don’t think he would simply dismiss everything that came after him as “wrong,” nor would he fully endorse what was done in his name.

He would probably start by pointing out that what later became known as “Marxism Leninism” was already controversial in its own time. Figures like Kautsky and Luxemburg weren’t fringe voices, they were part of the core debate about how socialism should emerge. And that debate hasn’t really gone away, it has just changed platforms.

Marx consistently argued that socialism would arise out of advanced capitalist societies, not be imposed prematurely in largely agrarian ones. So seeing revolutions occur in places that didn’t match those conditions, he might question whether history was being accelerated artificially rather than unfolding through material conditions.

At the same time, he wouldn’t ignore the context. Any attempt to break from capitalism has historically faced intense resistance, both internally and externally. So the outcomes of those revolutions can’t be separated from the pressures surrounding them.

What might interest him even more today is how capitalism adapted.

Instead of collapsing under its own contradictions, it evolved. Welfare systems, labor rights, and parliamentary reforms reduced immediate suffering in some parts of the world. But rather than resolving exploitation, this often redistributed it. The harshest conditions didn’t disappear, they were shifted elsewhere, into less visible parts of the global system.

From a Marxist perspective, that raises an uncomfortable question. Did reform stabilize capitalism instead of weakening it?

And here is where things get even more contemporary.

Social media would probably fascinate Marx, not as a neutral space for debate, but as part of the economic system itself. Platforms profit from attention, conflict and engagement. Even critiques of capitalism become content, circulated, liked and monetized.

So the debate that once took place in party meetings and pamphlets now plays out through posts, threads, and algorithms. But the structure hasn’t changed as much as it seems. Visibility is shaped, narratives are amplified or buried and even dissent operates within a system that extracts value from it.

Marx might not ask, “Which side is correct?” as much as, “What conditions make each position possible?”

Because whether it is revolutionary urgency or gradual reform, both are responses to the same underlying system, one that has proven far more adaptable than many early theorists expected.

And maybe that is the real takeaway.

Not that history proved Marx right or wrong in a simple way, but that the system he analyzed is still here, evolving, absorbing criticism and continuing to organize society in ways that keep this debate very much alive.

[karlmsoc]

Marx, Socialism and the Reality of Capitalism Today

I don’t think Marx would be particularly impressed with the countries that claimed to implement socialism. Most of them didn’t really live up to what he actually envisioned.

But at the same time, it’s not that simple.

Those states were constantly dealing with pressure, interference and hostility from powerful capitalist countries. It’s hard to build an alternative system when the dominant global order is actively working against you.

And meanwhile, capitalism didn’t just “win” on its own.

It survives by making small concessions, just enough benefits to keep workers in developed countries from pushing back too hard. Not enough to change the system, just enough to stabilize it.

At the same time, exploitation hasn’t disappeared, it’s just been relocated.

Workers in less developed countries are still treated in ways that feel straight out of the 19th century. The system didn’t become fair. It just became better at hiding where the unfairness happens.

[karlmsoc]

If Karl Marx had social media in the contemporary world.