Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The reason I am a socialist and believe capitalism needs to be replaced with a system that has a different set of values is that in its essence capitalism turns everything into a commodity from which someone can profit. As he or she accumulates that profit, he or she gains more and more power over society. When the first critiques of the pernicious logic of commodification and profit at the heart of how capitalism operates were developed by people like Marx, they talked about the commodification of raw materials, goods and services and the profits accumulated by the owners of these resources, factories, small businesses, landholdings and so on. Even 200 years ago Marx understood the logic was relentless, that the process of commodification would reach into every single aspect of human existence and the natural world and that slowly but surely everything would be commodified and made subject to the cash nexus. In fairness to Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, perhaps slightly surprisingly, he alluded to this and was absolutely right. That is where we have got to with the digital or information technology revolution. I do not think even Marx could have understood just how far-reaching the process would be in commodifying every aspect of our existence, down to genetics, with the genetic profiling of individuals, categories of people and so on. The digital revolution has facilitated the process of commodification to an absolutely extraordinary degree.

The beneficiaries of the technological process, the owners of the information or the technology that amasses and controls that information on us accumulate levels of wealth parallel to their accumulation of enormous stores of information on us as human beings and individuals and now dominate the economy and the globe like colossi. It could not have been envisaged 200 years ago when capitalist development got under way that a few companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple would absolutely dominate these sectors and control a vast amount of information on us, as we see in the issue being discussed in the courts related to Mr. Denis O’Brien, the richest individual in the country. His extraordinary control of the media, another source of information on our society, beggars belief and deserves another debate on its own merits because one wealthy individual who seems to be fêted constantly by Taoisigh and prominent political figures can control the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World, The Herald, half of the Daily Star, The Kerryman, the Drogheda Independent, the Wicklow People, the Wexford People, the Waterford People, 98FM in Dublin, Newstalk, Today FM, Spin, Spin South West and the list goes on. Now there is an allegation that Mr. Denis O'Brien was using his control over Independent News & Media, an enormous corporation, to access the data of the journalists working for it.

See this speech in context