If you hear the word “Wikipedia”, what springs to mind? For most of us, the answer is probably “useful information”. After all, in the decade since Wikipedia appeared, it has become such a mainstay of modern life that it is hard to imagine how anyone ever did their homework or research without it.
But for Paul Mason, a prominent British economics journalist, the online encyclopedia is not just a handy intellectual resource; it also symbolises a world on the verge of a revolution. For Mason believes that after two centuries in which capitalism has dominated the western world, this economic system has become desperately dysfunctional: inequality is growing, climate change is accelerating and nations are beset with bad demographics, debt burdens and angry voters.
But unlike many critics of capitalism, Mason — economics editor at Channel 4 News and a Guardian columnist — is not beset with despair; he thinks that if we could only harness some of the revolutionary ideas that Wikipedia embodies, we could overturn the capitalist system in a way that is as dramatic as anything proposed by Karl Marx, and perhaps more effective, too. Indeed, to him Wikipedia epitomises a potentially brave new postcapitalist world. “Capitalism is a complex, adaptive system which has reached the limits of its capacity to adapt,” he thunders. “Once capitalism can no longer adapt to technological change, postcapitalism becomes necessary.”