Both the state and capital have been crucial for the evolving political economy of the Internet. This article briefly sketches the history of U.S. state action to shape and manage the extraterritorial Internet and explicates the escalating challenge to U.S. dominance that stems today from other governments. The article then examines the role of capital, viewed not as money or investment but as the contradictory social relation that is built around wage labor. Drawing on insights offered by Rosa Luxemburg, communication processes and practices--including but not limited to the Internet--are situated in relation to the historical reconstitution of the global working class.