For the longest time it seems, cyberpunk has been interpreted by a large amount of people (today, I would say a majority of people) as a reaction to the derives of unchecked capitalism.

I’ve even seen several comments going so far as to describe cyberpunk as inherently anti-capitalist, or even inherently communistic in nature. Now, this view of cyberpunk as a critique of capitalism is wrong.

In its essence, cyberpunk says nothing of capitalism. It says a lot about technology, culture, spirituality and religions, freedom even, what it means to be human, but it adds nothing to what we could possibly already know or think of capitalism.

The core of cyberpunk revolves around technology and its omnipresence in our lives, the rampant slavery of mankind to its own creation, to which everything - ourselves and our cultures included - have to adapt in order to survive.

Capitalism is certainly the means through which such technology came to life and continues to thrive, there is no doubt on that, but it is merely just that - the means, not the subject.

The current wave of cyberpunk media, which is called the third wave and which includes pieces such as the cyberpunk 2077 game, does indeed delve into capitalism as one of its core themes.

And it makes sense to treat this subject in any artwork given our current socio-economical context. Capitalism is not a banned subject from cyberpunk, far from it, but it is not necessary for something to be cyberpunk to also include capitalism in its themes.

Of course, there are mega-corporations, enough advertisements to make people throw up pixels or mumble catchphrases in their sleep, but all of that remains a consequence of the technology that allows it.

Capitalism has always existed, and it has always existed in the same form at any given time in human history. The only thing that changes in a cyberpunk setting is what’s being sold to you, and how it’s being sold. This is the point.

Surrounded, transformed by technology, everything becomes an organ of this eternal movement within, part of a chaotic city with its clutter of beings who unconsciously dig deeper and deeper into the sweet mindless self indulgence we so dearly pray for.

I do not want anything but neons, street food, drugs and screens, an ocean of pixels shining in my eyes, and to access a world where my sense of self can decompose entirely, so that I appear as I wish to others. Capitalism is not the destination, and it is not the subject. It’s merely the path through which we get there. This is cyberpunk.