In Marx the capitalist is ultimately distinguished not so much by ownership of wealth as by control of the conditions of labor. The owner has not merely an economic interest in what goes on within his factory, but also a technical interest. By reorganizing the work process, he can increase production and profits. Control of the work process, in turn, leads to new ideas for machinery and the mechanization of industry follows in short order. This leads over time to the invention of a specific type of machinery which deskills workers and requires management. Management acts technically on persons, extending the hierarchy of technical subject and object into human relations in pursuit of efficiency. Eventually professional managers represent and in some sense replace owners in control of the new industrial organizations. Marx calls this the impersonal domination inherent in capitalism in contradistinction to the personal domination of earlier social formations. It is a domination embodied in the design of tools and the organization of production. In a final stage, which Marx did not anticipate, techniques of management and organization and types of technology first applied to the private sector are exported to the public sector where they influence fields such as government administration, medicine, and education. The whole life environment of society comes under the rule of technique. In this form the essence of the capitalist system can be transferred to socialist regimes built on the model of the Soviet Union.

Capitalism has survived its various crises and now organizes the entire globe in a fantastic web of connections with contradictory consequences. Manufacturing flows out of the advanced countries to the low wage periphery as diseases flow in. The Internet opens fantastic new opportunities for human communication, and is inundated with commercialism. Human rights proves a challenge to regressive customs in some countries while providing alibis for new imperialist ventures in others. Environmental awareness has never been greater, yet nothing much is done to address looming disasters such as global warming. Nuclear proliferation is finally fought with energy in a world in which more and more countries have good reasons for acquiring nuclear weapons.