The Guardian view on capitalism without capital | Editorial

An idea whose time has come: Over the holiday season the Guardian is examining themes that have emerged to give shape to 2018. Today we look at intangible economiesNo country is governed by a Capitalist party, although there is no shortage of capitalism on the planet. There have been Socialist parties for socialism, Liberal parties for liberalism and Communist parties for communism. Yet acolytes of the most powerful model of all are reluctant to brand themselves with its name. One reason is that the word “capitalism” was popularised by its critics. The most common usage is pejorative, denoting a system characterised by exploitation of workers by bosses. Another reason is that there are too many kinds of capitalism in practice for any single party to claim ownership of the idea. In the west the pendulum swung between more liberal and dirigiste modes, while the underlying structure stayed remarkably stable. But that doesn’t make it permanent. Already a digital revolution has transformed the way business is done. What if it is changing the nature of capitalism itself?The rise of a handful of vast corporate powerhouses whose business models have no instructive precedent from the analogue-era forces a reappraisal of the way capitalist economies work. The top seven highest valued companies in the world are all in the technology sector. Titans such as Alphabet (which owns Google) and Facebook specialise in products that do not exist in three-dimensional space. Apple and Amazon sell real-world objects as well as concepts, but their fortunes and market dominance have been built on nebulous concepts – models, brands and algorithms. Continue reading…
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