Bye-bye Capitalism, welcome techno-feudalism by Natasha Corman

According to Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and former finance minister of the Tsipras government, capitalism would have been killed by the capital and replaced by… techno-feudalism.

Techno-feudalism

He defends this idea by analysing the structures of capitalism in light of the radical transformations brought about by digital technology. Indeed, he

believes that capitalism (as an economic system) has died and doesn’t govern our society anymore, even though capital still monopolizes our way of living. This weird contradiction, capital ending up triumphant to the point of destroying capitalism itself, can be explained by techno-feudalism, a new system dominated by big platforms such as Amazon or Google. Capital is no longer used just as a means of production, but as a means of transforming our behaviour and social relationships.

The digitization of the world leads us right into a regression. Monopolies are coming back, and we’re becoming dependent on technology, especially on the big platforms that everybody uses, because nobody wants to miss out. Economics and politics are so intertwined that the changes underway are transforming the quality of social processes and giving feudalism a new relevance. 

In the emerging economic order, capital is abandoning production to focus on predation.

Varoufakis’s concept of techno-feudalism aims to warn us about the dangers of giving full economic power to a few digital giants. He thus calls for a rethinking and even a reshaping of our relationship with capital and technology. 

Technology as a form of alienation

The crucial role of algorithms is capturing our data and habits in order to influence us in powerful, even though subtle, ways. The big platforms control us (the consumers) by creating a new form of capital, “the cloud capital,” which deeply restructures our global economy. They compete for cyberspace in order to gain control over data sources. Individuals are tied to the digital land. In the emerging economic order, capital is abandoning production to focus on predation. 

Yanis Varoufakis is convinced that each new technology is both liberating by bringing new opportunities, as well as alienating, becoming a form of enslavement. The latest digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, lock us, the consumers, into a new form of servitude. We become “techno-serfs” or “techno-proles”, drawing these names from a new digital proletariat. We produce value on social media and more globally for digital giants by posting content, filling their databases, but without receiving any real reward in exchange for it.

Indeed, modern capitalist industrial society seems satisfying to us because pleasures are increased in quantity and are easier to access. Everyone's desires are satisfied immediately. Thus, we integrate perfectly into the system, and no one has any motivation to change it. At first glance, it sounds positive, but the 20th-century thinker Marcuse explains that society offers us a lot for the sole purpose of feeding its own system. For instance, pornography is very accessible, but it is entirely linked to the world of consumption. 

Fitting into the system

Everyone must adopt consumerist reflexes. We are offered many things, but in order to really receive them, we must conform to the offer and the system. Thus, this system shapes our human minds to become consumers. 

We are free, but only within this box of consumption. Freedom then becomes an instrument of domination because it serves the producer. If it ties us to the system, we don't want to change the system. The individual becomes a cog in the machine, a pure functional element of society, but functioning doesn’t mean living, and even less creating. 

We become attached to the system as it is, slowly fitting perfectly into it, no one having the motivation to change it. It isn’t the same as in a real tyranny, in which we would feel so wronged that we would fight against it. We believe that we actually get something good out of it. It is a form of internal repression that vices through the psyche, rather than an external form of it, easier to grasp. 

We are free, but only within this box of consumption.

Conclusion and further thoughts

Technology reinforces the idea that we’re good in our own little bubble, and gives us the tools to be satisfied, but stops us from forming an open and fraternal community, which blocks our development. The more we consume, the more the system works. The more we get access to everything and anything

easily, the more we become easily satisfied and lazy to create and think on our

own.

Given this state of affairs, Yanis Varoufakis is sceptical about the possibility of civilizing or regulating this new system. He calls for the socialization of digital infrastructure, echoing the Marxist idea of redistributing the means of production. For example, platforms such as Airbnb should be collectively owned by cities or communities; otherwise, the social fabric will disintegrate.