I think by the point capital has established itself outside of humanity, no longer requiring flesh to think or act and perversely is able to alter humanity to its whim (by enforcing cybernetics on all strata of society), then we're at the closing of hope for a better world. Everything within the Blackwall is just a soap bubble, the actual march of history is what happens outside the corporate net because that's all that's left to make a change in the world. Capital's control is so complete that the working class has no hope to coordinate or make itself visible to itself, just a sea of lumpen. Marx said we either get socialism or the common ruin of the contending classes - cyberpunk is the latter.

In the setting, the world lost ecologically as well. It doesn't come up as much but the ecosphere has completely collapsed. It's very much a dead world that has just come shy of realizing it.