Key words: Innovation

Innovation is often touted as a universal benefit of neoliberal capitalism. Capitalist ideologues claim that when taxes are low and businesses unregulated, enterprising individuals will create new, cutting-edge technologies that raise the standard of living. Therefore, disproportionate wealth and the private ownership of businesses will be a net positive for everyone, even the working class.

But when we examine what modern capitalism actually innovates, the results are far from what was promised. Under capitalism, innovation is focused on increasing profit, not improving society. Sometimes the profit motive produces beneficial products, but any social improvement they carry is a secondary effect, not a primary goal. This is why many of capitalism’s innovations often amount to new ways to cut labour costs and circumvent regulations. While these innovations increase profit, they often injure society.

For example, Airbnb and Uber ‘innovated’ by branding as technology companies to bypass existing regulatory frameworks. They did not introduce new technologies (cars, hotels and websites have been around for a while) but merely configured them in a new way to extract value. In its early days, Uber enticed drivers and riders with high wages and low prices. Then, once competing taxi companies were put out of business (or were willing to partner), it cut driver commissions to increase profit.

While Airbnb’s press material positions itself as an ‘innovative’ company with ‘cutting-edge technology’ and ‘bespoke’ customisation, its actual developments are lacklustre. New icons inside the app headlined its summer 2024 product launch, a trivial addition compared to the increased rents and home prices short-term renting has driven around the world, leaving many residents unable to afford to live in their native cities. There was little technological innovation from either Airbnb or Uber in terms of improving the public’s quality of life. But from the standpoint of investors whose only concern is the bottom line, they have been wildly successful ‘innovations’.

In the 21st century, the obsession with capitalist innovation has been driven by and manifested in a self-appointed group of celebrity CEOs, who are almost exclusively white men from the tech sector. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and a cadre of other billionaires mix showmanship and self-aggrandisement to accrue a cult-like following centred on their allegedly world-changing intellects. No one represents this phenomenon better than Elon Musk, who markets himself as the prototypical genius businessman driving humanity forward with planet-saving innovations. But, as with his fellow elites, this persona is a charade. In reality, Musk is an expert at innovating ways to protect his profits, a large portion of which comes from government contracts, but not much else. In 2013, Musk proposed Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system that was lauded as the future of mass transit. Years later, he told a biographer the Hyperloop was a ruse designed to kill California’s planned high-speed rail network, which would have hurt his car company, Tesla.

The best way for capitalists to increase profits is not to build world-improving technologies but to turn the innovative scope inwards in search of cost-cutting opportunities. With a little ‘innovation’, employees become benefit-less independent contractors and cashiers are replaced with self-checkout machines. Instead of hoping capital’s ruthless pursuit of profit will bank-shot our way into technological progress, we should disregard empty platitudes about ‘capitalist innovation’ designed to preserve an unjust socio-economic order and adopt a system that prioritises true technological innovation that centres our needs over profit extraction.

This article first appeared in Issue #245 Beyond the Ballots. Subscribe today to support independent socialist media and get your copy hot off the press!