Technofeudalism: Digital surveillance as new capitalist policing mechanism

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* 

Capitalism as a global system continues to evolve, continuously reshaping itself, accommodating with the new environment, aligning itself with different forms of regressive, right wing, reactionary, religious and authoritarian powers to reinforce its rent-seeking nature in the form of "technofeudalism” where technology mediates the traditionally insidious structures, agencies, and processes of capitalist accumulation.  

The outcomes of contemporary feudal techno-capitalism, in the form of alienation, exploitation, hunger, homelessness, and inequality, are not very different from those of old capitalism. The technological shift within capitalism represents continuity and intensification of capitalist exploitation. 

However, the brutality of contemporary capitalism is far more sophisticated than its primitive colonial version. The overt forms of violence, coercion and colonial brutality have transformed in new capitalism where technology controls, domesticates and demeans labour less than a commodity. 

The digital surveillance is a new policing mechanism of new capitalism where power continues to be in the hands of few technologically dominant platform companies. It has neither transformed its exploitative systems nor facilitated any form of progressive idealism into its processes. 

The technology led feudal capitalism in the disguise of digital revolution has not transformed the material conditions for social, economic and cultural progress and deepening of democracy.  The underlying dynamics of capitalism remains strikingly similar to its brutal lineages.

The old debates on ‘combined and uneven development,’ the exploitative relationship between ‘center and periphery,’ the growing gap between the ‘Global South and the Global North,’ the persistent ‘regional disparities,’ ‘racial and patriarchal capitalism,’ widening social and economic gaps, inequalities, and regional underdevelopment are resurfacing as if these issues are new. 

In reality, these issues are the net outcomes of old capitalism and have been expanded and intensified beyond borders by new forms of global capitalism driven by technology.

The policies of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation were introduced as projects for global prosperity and were promised as tools for economic growth and poverty eradication. However, these policies were projects of global capitalism that further concentrated wealth in the hands of a few in the Global North, while impoverishing people across the globe. 

These policies marginalised the working masses by dismantling welfare state. These policies have also helped to establish market led democracy where profit prevails over people. The market democracies have enabled exploitative practices and normalised them as natural.

The progressive elements of technological and digital revolutions are controlled and manipulated by the platform capitalists to control availability, accessibility and use of technological knowledge by the masses for the growth of digital consciousness. Capitalism leverages technology for its own benefit while restricting the working people’s access to technological education, knowledge, skills and consciousness.

The technology led feudal capitalism in the disguise of digital revolution has not transformed the material conditions of society

Capitalism survives, secures, consolidates, expands and perpetuates itself by employing reactionary mechanisms such as everyday structural violence, regional conflicts, interstate wars, and the support of authoritarian and anti-democratic regimes. These elements are not mere byproducts but integral tools that ensure the capitalist system's existence. Without these mechanisms of control and suppression, capitalism as a system risks collapse. 

These tools serve to subdue the working masses, ensuring the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a very few, while offering miseries for many. The inherent inequalities and systemic exploitation within capitalism are sustained through these very methods, making the concentration of wealth and the dissemination of misery an inevitable outcome for the many even within digital revolution.

The ideas surrounding 'the human face of capitalism,' 'progressive capitalism,' and 'the Great Reset' are offered as alternatives. However, these deceptive and misleading concepts cannot solve the issues of inequality and exploitation. 

Capitalism, both as a system and a process, is not designed for human prosperity, happiness, or environmental sustainability. It is designed to accumulate profit by exploiting human beings and nature. The strategies of rebranding, reform, and restructuring can never address the inherently structural problems of capitalism. 

The ideals of true freedom, including both material and non-material equality, lasting and collective happiness, genuine peace for human beings and animals, and widespread prosperity with solidarity between people, animal and nature, are impossible to achieve within the capitalist system. The working masses must seek these ideals outside of capitalism. 

Therefore, anti-capitalist struggles are central to upholding the interests of working people and nature in the search for viable alternatives.