In what sense were "early forms of industrial capitalism" characterized by "elites producing for elites". Perhaps you mean "elites directed production towards the desires and needs of elites", but that's a very different claim than "elites producing for elites" ...

The entire point of capitalism (at least until the very recent past) was to harness the production capacity of labor to create profit. Since elites generally do not engage in labor, there is no sense in which capitalism has ever involved "elites producing for elites".

Of course, expanded automation may tweak this a bit, since elites may no longer rely on human labor to facilitate production. That would change things ... substantially, which was really the original point.

If we arrived at a scenario in which elites used highly automated production to simply produce for themselves, what does that economy look like compared to today? Is it wealthier or poorer overall? Is it self-sustaining?