"Mass ideological factors always lag behind mass economic phenomena, and that therefore, at certain moments, the automatic thrust due to the economic factor is slowed down, obstructed or even momentarily broken by traditional ideological elements -- hence that there must be a conscious, planned struggle to ensure that the exigencies of the economic position of the masses, which may conflict with the traditional leadership's policies, are understood. An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies...." Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, "The Modern Prince"

In other words, when political phase transitions (structural transformations) become possible, there is no guarantee they will occur without human political activism. In a nutshell, Gramsci wrote that systems are maintained by a hegemony, or ideology, that tells us what kinds of ideas and practices are good/bad and right/wrong. So as long as the hegemonic forces can keep you thinking that copyright and patents and corporate theft and income inequality and software licensing are "the right way" to do things, then they are able to fight off their impending demise. Gramsci wrote this in prison in 1932, but it is identical to what people like Larry Lessig and the EFF are saying about the need for political action today. Yes, it may be that copyleft and openness and peer-to-peer and sharing and commons should win over copyright and corporatism and hierarchy and hoarding and privatization in the long run, but without political activism we may find that society never reaches the tipping point.