TECHNOFEUDALISM
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, argues that what we are seeing is a shift from capitalism to technofeudalism. He argues that tech giants like Apple, Meta and Amazon act as modern-day feudal lords. Users of digital platforms (such as companies or farmers) essentially become ‘cloud serfs’, and ‘rent’ (fees, data etc) is extracted from them for being on a platform.
In feudalism (land) rent drives the system. In capitalism, profits drive the system. Varoufakis says that markets are being replaced by algorithmic ‘digital fiefdoms’.
Although digital platforms require some form of capitalist production, as companies like Amazon need manufacturers to produce goods for their platforms, the new system represents a significant shift in power dynamics, favouring those who own and control the platforms.
Whether this system is technofeudalism, hypercapitalism or something else is open to debate. But we should at least be able to agree on one thing: the changes we are seeing are having profound impacts on economies and populations that are increasingly surveilled as they are compelled to shift their lives online.
The very corporations that are responsible for the problems of the prevailing food system merely offer more of the same, this time packaged in a genetically engineered, ecomodernist, fake-green wrapping (see the online article From net zero to glyphosate: agritech’s greenwashed corporate power grab).
Elected officials are facilitating this by putting the needs of monopolistic global interests ahead of ordinary people’s personal freedoms and workers’ rights, as well as the needs of independent local producers, enterprises and markets.
For instance, the Indian government has in recent times signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with Amazon, Bayer, Microsoft and Syngenta to rollout data-driven, precision agriculture. A ‘one world agriculture’ under their control based on genetically engineered seeds, laboratory created products that resemble food and farming without farmers, with the entire agrifood chain, from field (or lab) to retail in their hands.
This is part of a broader strategy to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture, ensure India’s food dependence on foreign corporations and eradicate any semblance of food democracy (or national sovereignty).
Ordinary people (whether, for example, farmers in India or those being beaten down through austerity policies) find themselves on the receiving end of a class war being waged against them by a mega-rich elite.
Indeed, in 1941, Herbert Marcuse stated that technology could be used as an instrument for control and domination. Precisely the agenda of the likes of Bayer, the Gates Foundation, BlackRock and the World Bank, which are trying to eradicate genuine diversity and impose a one-size-fits-all model of thinking and behaviour.
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