Marx’s vision of the lumpen proleteriat casting off their alienating shackles to become masters of their own destiny could be about to become a reality – just as soon as they sign up as Uber and Airbnb vendors.

That was the argument put forward by SAP's Eric Verniaut, senior vice president for industries EMEA, at Huawei’s European Innovation Day in Paris – a place that knows more than a little about revolting workers.

Verniaut detailed the effects of digitization, something SAP is rather keen on, and argued we are currently at an inflection point as the forces of disintermediation and disaggregation reshape traditional value chains.

This has come about through a combination of Moore’s law and Metcalfe’s law, which together explain the period of rapid change we are living through.

He then introduced two further thinkers whose views could shed light on what is happening around us. The first was Joseph Schumpeter and his theory of creative disruption, where technological change makes some businesses obsolete while creating the opportunity for new players and technologies. This has long been a favourite at “big idea” sessions we’ve been too over the last 20 years or so, often voiced by people you might loosely describe as being in the banking classes.

This is all standard fare when discussing innovation. However, Verniaut then really shook things up by citing Marx, saying that the digital world could eradicate the alienation that has been the lot of the workers under traditional capitalism in Karl’s worldview. And what will this workers’ utopia look like? Like AirBnb and Uber, it seems.

He cited research that suggested 40 per cent of US workers expect to be freelancers by 2020. He then went on to sketch out a somewhat California-esque vision where a worker would do some light Ubering or Amazon delivering in the morning before studying or teaching on an education platform in the afternoon, and maybe picking up a little extra cash by renting out their spare room in the evening via Airbnb.

This model was already a reality in some respects, he continued, and “is currently shaking profoundly the fundamentals of capitalism.”

Eventually this will allow tomorrow’s workers to realise Marx’s vision, and become masters of their own destiny.

Now, this writer can’t recall Karl Marx popping up at a tech conference over the last 20 years. None of the Marx brothers, in fact. Not once.

Of course, many readers, particularly those yet to reach their mid-30s, would argue that that this Marx dude's idea of freedom via the sharing economy is another man’s nickel and dime-ing of America, and indeed the rest of the world, in favour of an elite with access to capital. Or at least to the data centres that underpin the infrastructure and superstructure of the digital economy.

So we felt compelled to ask Verniaut whether the removal of those traditional "shackles" was also in danger of leaving people adrift in the absence of any new social contract covering, for example, what the responsibilities of Uber, and their ilk, were to their workers, sorry, contractors, and society at large.

Verniaut was optimistic, though, suggesting that the digital generation’s mindset was changing in sync with this brave new world. “New business models are changing the way people are thinking… in the new generation the mind is changing.

He said youngsters may no longer have the desire to own a car, or to work for the same organisation for eight hours a day for the whole of their lives. In doing so they were redefining the economy and gaining freedom to “satisfy their own needs."

To which, of course, our younger reader will argue, “well, duh, we can’t afford a car, and can’t afford a spare room to rent out on AirBnB either”.

As for SAP’s role in fomenting global revolution, Verniaut said the company obviously provided the underlying technology for digital platforms, and, perhaps more importantly helped companies on a consulting level, both on the execution on the technology rollout and to identify the “nugget” on which they can build their new value model.

We can only hope there is plenty of value to go round, as there are life events that might cause even the most pro-sharing economy youngster to start pondering whether they need to actually buy a car. Usually around the time that the spare room stops being a revenue earner and gets turned into a nursery.

In the meantime, up the workers. ®