Marx - Snapshot of Influence & Evolution

Since we're talking Marx, here's a 40,000 foot view -

The techniques of control are mostly based on the ability to create realities (hyperrealites) that are disconnected from nature, for nature cannot be controlled (perhaps manipulated, but this technical capability is only very recent). Marx's system allowed the creation of a new controllable reality, which, by design, created a small ownership class and large classes of profane who could be exploited.

Marx was primarily responsible for organizing society around production - consumption - exchange, where these are the principle elements of of the public's reality. But what is critical here, is that a reality based upon this framework has "handles" that can be controlled.

Once Marx's ecology was adopted, an immense effort was underway to shuttle Americans into that ecology, by bringing them out of their independent livelihoods and into the cities and factories and dependent on others, creating tightly bound interdependencies.

However, Marx's system broke down due to the limits of nature's reality - people stopped consuming when their needs were met. This natural barrier had to be removed and a new reality created. Enter Edward Bernays, who was psychologically able to link consumption with human emotions (branding), de-linking consumption from need, creating an unlimited demand for consumption, and therefore creating unlimited production and unlimited exchange.

Marx's system could now be expanded without barriers, and the designers and operators of the system could grow their power and relative wealth without bounds. As this hyperreal system expanded, the public's shared perception of reality became further immersed in Marx's hyperreal system, making it more real [to the participants] and less likely to be usurped by nature's reality [which cannot be controlled as easily]. Consequently, our view of reality is almost exclusively through the frame of consumption, where consumable "objects" are the only "objects" valued by the participants in the system, and value is exclusively determined by relying on the prevailing method of exchange.

The next step was to de-link "objects" from tangible goods, so that unlimited consumption could be met by unlimited virtual production. Welcome to the Internet.