The internet as the "steam mill" of socialism

TL;DR: If the industrial revolution naturally lead to capitalism, will the internet necessarily lead to socialism? Information is no longer exclusively created and controlled by the bourgeoisie. We can now educate masses of proletarians like never before in history. The Israel-Palestine propaganda war is showing that bourgeoisie control of information is now failing. People are seeing the world for what it is and attaining class consciousness on a large scale. But the bourgeoisie will definitely push back against this.

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Marx once said, "The windmill will give you a society with the feudal lord; the steam mill a society with the industrial capitalist." In this quote, he summarizes his theory that the basic material conditions of a society act as the foundations upon which the broader economic systems of the society are built. Capitalism would not be possible without the industrial revolution and the technologies and scientific (as well as philosophical) advancements which naturally lead to the replacement of the divine right of kings with bourgeois property rights. Lately I've been thinking about how the internet, and specifically social media, may be the "steam mill" of Marxist socialism. Forgive me if my ideas here are not original. If someone else has already said these things, I would be thankful if you provide me with sources. I am also very open to critique, as I am no expert on these subjects.

The failures of past socialism are often due either to an overly revisionist approach or an overly authoritarian approach (but don't mistake my use of this word for a liberal or revisionist viewpoint). Revisionist approaches have created gradual change which temporarily satisfies the masses until further action is no longer popular. If a capitalist system can meet the essential needs of the majority of the proletariat, then abolition of bourgeois property and of the state are seen as unnecessary by a large swath of the working class. Reforms create a temporary state of reconciliation between the classes. In Marx's time, social democratic movements were succeeding in creating livable capitalist societies, but those societies began to devolve into poverty and fascism as the 20th century rolled around. Again, after WWII, conditions in the imperial core were improving (for the majority of its more privileged civilians), only to be destroyed again by the era of neoliberalism which has lead us to today. It is obvious that revisionism is only a band-aid on a wound that will inevitably reopen.

Lenin saw this issue and pushed an exclusively revolutionary method which was effective in overthrowing the bourgeoisie in single nations. But he deviated from Marx, in that Marx saw a revolution as happening when a large section of the proletariat attained class consciousness and banded together to revolutionize society to their own benefit. Lenin believed this mass education of the proletariat to be highly impractical, if not impossible. Indeed at the time, much of the peasantry and proletariat in feudal and capitalist nations were illiterate and lacked basic education necessary to understand the complex ideas of Marx and Engels. Even if they were able to understand, the transmission of information was difficult and slow. Reaching rural and distant populations was a huge barrier to a proper proletarian movement. So instead of attempting what seemed impossible, Lenin formulated the idea of a vanguard party to represent the proletariat, which as we have seen in many cases, often leads to corruption and conflicting interests between the party and the people. Vanguard leaders are prone to making decisions based on faulty information or too little information, leading to harmful effects on the working class. Tactics like nationalism and personality cults are commonly employed as easy, back-ally methods of garnering support in place of real proletarian solidarity, but these tactics often have negative side effects.

Here's where the internet comes in. The internet is a platform upon which masses of the proletariat can be educated and attain class consciousness. Most of the citizens of the modern imperial core are literate and educated. This is because literate workers with access to the internet are far more efficient and easy to manage. For the first time in history, we can see what is happening on the opposite side of the world instantly. For the first time in history, each individual has the power to create media that will be seen by millions of others with minimal interference from the bourgeoisie. In the past, almost all media was owned and tightly controlled by the bourgeoisie - newspapers, radio, television, all forms of media that the average non-capitalist could not influence in any meaningful way. It required immense amounts of capital for an individual to directly project a message to the whole nation, let alone multiple nations. We have already seen the bourgeoisie's power to control our collective thought failing in the Israel-Palestine propaganda war. Try as they might, the bourgeoisie can no longer convince all or even most of the proletariat that Israel are the good guys. The internet allows us to see and know exactly what is happening in Palestine and catch the bourgeois lies immediately. This war is causing a distinct split between establishment liberals and anti-establishment leftists in imperial nations. More and more people are gaining class consciousness and understanding history from a leftist perspective. More and more are distrustful and oppositional to their ruling governments and corporations. And all of this from an invention that is only 40 years old, and that only came into widespread use within the last 30 years, solidifying as a necessary element of modern capitalist society within this millennium.

If I am correct, I can see only one path forward for the ruling class: a war over the internet. Bourgeois interests will attempt to back track, suppressing the flow of internet information and the power of individuals to create content. How successful they will be remains to be seen. If they fail to suppress the people's voice, I believe the internet will lead to levels of class consciousness sufficient for an orthodox Marxist revolution - a revolution by masses of educated proletarians and a dictatorship of the proletariat by means other than a Leninist vanguard party. If they succeed in suppressing information, I believe that the bourgeoisie will then be publicly and visibly positioned as enemies of the working class. In this case, a proletarian revolution would not be as easy to organize, but would perhaps be incentivized by such a demonstration of the tyranny of the bourgeoisie.

After the revolution, the internet will be essential in gathering and sharing information and coordinating production to the benefit of the working class. Events like the Holodomor and the Great Chinese Famine, in which leaders made uneducated and ineffective choices, leading to death and suffering, can be mitigated by a deeper and more accessible understanding of where there is need and whether national production is sufficient to maintain the population.

As I said, I am no expert. But what do you think about this? Where am I right or wrong? Will the internet necessarily lead to the proletarian revolution that Marx saw as imminent?