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Capitalisms economic singularities

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that capitalism has reached a series of "economic singularities" — points at which the productive forces have developed to such an extent that the laws of motion of the capitalist system break down. Drawing on Calum Chace's concept of an "economic singularity" and grounding it in Marx's materialist conception of history, Booth claims that automation, renewable energy, and information technology each demonstrate the same fundamental contradiction: the potential for superabundance and near-zero labour time is being blocked by a system based on private ownership and production for profit. The central thesis is that the capitalist mode of production has become a fetter on the further development of the productive forces, and that this is not a future possibility but an observable present reality — visible in collapsing price signals, vanishing profits, and the desperate resort to monopoly and state subsidy to keep the system functioning.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, drawing directly on Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and the law of value as elaborated in Capital. The key theoretical move is to apply Marx's distinction between the productive forces and the relations of production to three contemporary technological developments, showing how each drives the socially necessary labour time embodied in commodities toward zero — and thus undermines the value-form itself. The article deploys the labour theory of value not as an abstract postulate but as a concrete analytical tool: if value is determined by socially necessary labour time, then automation that eliminates labour also eliminates the source of profit, surplus value, and the basis for capitalist investment. This is a rigorous application of Marx's value theory to the current conjuncture, one that avoids the trap of treating technological change as neutral or progressive in itself. The article also engages critically with bourgeois economics, accepting the marginalist framework's own logic (zero marginal cost → zero price) only to show that it leads to conclusions its proponents cannot accept: that the market mechanism fails when it succeeds.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in 2017, nearly a decade after the 2008 global financial crisis, and it situates its argument within the context of "secular stagnation" — the prolonged period of low growth, low investment, and low productivity that followed the crash. Booth points to three concrete developments:

  • Automation and AI: The growing mainstream concern about "technological unemployment" and the impossibility of retraining workers out of obsolescence, as reflected in Chace's book and the broader debate around universal basic income.
  • Renewable energy: The Economist's admission that the more renewable energy is deployed, the more electricity prices collapse, making it impossible for profit-seeking energy companies to invest — a "dirty secret" that reveals the contradiction between green technology and capitalist market logic.
  • Information technology: Paul Mason's analysis of how digital goods with zero marginal cost destroy the price mechanism, forcing information industries into monopoly as the only viable business model.

The article connects these economic contradictions to the political polarisation and radicalisation of the period — the rise of anti-establishment movements, the search for alternatives to austerity, and the crumbling of the post-2008 political order. It is a conjunctural analysis that insists the crisis is not cyclical but structural: the system has broken, and the only resolution is revolutionary.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is part of a broader body of work by Adam Booth and the RCI on the crisis of capitalism and the necessity of socialist revolution. It explicitly references other IDOM articles on automation and the universal basic income, as well as a review of Mason's PostCapitalism. The argument continues in several directions:

  • The law of value and its breakdown: The article gestures toward the law of value but does not fully develop the theoretical implications of its collapse. This is taken up in other IDOM pieces on Marx's value theory and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
  • The political conclusions: The article ends with the claim that "we need a revolution" but does not elaborate on the form this revolution must take — the necessity of a workers' state, the expropriation of the capitalist class, and the democratic planning of production. These questions are addressed in the RCI's broader political programme and in Against the Stream episodes on the transition to socialism.
  • The critique of reformism: The article mentions universal basic income as a palliative that does not challenge capitalism, but it does not develop a systematic critique of reformist solutions. This is a thread that runs through the RCI's theoretical output, particularly in debates with left reformists and advocates of "post-capitalism" within the labour movement.

Connections

  • Paul Mason, PostCapitalism: The article draws heavily on Mason's analysis of information technology and zero marginal cost, but it is worth reading alongside the RCI's critique of Mason's political conclusions — particularly his reformist and technocratic illusions about a smooth transition beyond capitalism.
  • Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: A bourgeois treatment of the same problem, useful for understanding how even mainstream commentators recognise the contradiction.
  • Marx, Capital, Volume I: The chapters on machinery and large-scale industry are the theoretical foundation for the argument about automation and the displacement of living labour.
  • Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface: The canonical statement of historical materialism that frames the entire analysis.
  • The Economist articles on renewable energy: The article engages directly with these, and reading them alongside Booth's analysis reveals how bourgeois economics admits the crisis while refusing its conclusions.
  • Other IDOM articles on the law of value, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the crisis of capitalism: These provide the deeper theoretical framework that the article assumes but does not fully expound.

Key Quotes

  1. "As technology advances, automation and productivity increases, and we approach the potential for superabundance. At the same time, however, the laws of the capitalist market break down."

  2. "The contradiction is as follows. By definition, the marginal cost of renewable energy is zero: once a wind turbine or solar panel is in place, the electricity it produces by virtue of the wind and the sun is effectively free."

  3. "The only way for the capitalists in information-based industries (such as music and media) to survive and make profits, then, is not to play by the rules of the free market, but to subvert them entirely — to rely not on competition, but on its opposite: monopoly."

  4. "Today, the main contradiction in modern capitalism is between the possibility of free, abundant socially produced goods, and a system of monopolies, banks and governments struggling to maintain control of over power and information."

  5. "As Marx stated, 'from forms of development of the productive forces [capitalist] relations [have turned] into their fetters'. The motor forces of capitalism — competition and production for profit — were once a tremendous driver of progress and innovation. Now they have become an enormous barrier to the development of science and technology."

  6. "We would agree, with one caveat: it is not simply an out-of-date system of electricity pricing that is holding back the green energy technologies' potential, but an out-of-date economic system, full stop."