Techno feudalism

[Estebonrober]

ok, now look I'm not one to spout conspiracy theories but this one is a doozy (I do not think this is a general GoP thing but definitely a techno-bro thing)... So what do you guys think of this bloody TED talk calling for movement now to prepare for our new feudal lords or CloudAI~!@$%!^~~god

 

[Kyriakos]

Afaik, the term was coined by Varoufakis, and is (in) the title of one of his books.
It largely refers to the shift from capitalism to owning high-value space on the web and renting it to capitalists (ala Amazon).

 

[Estebonrober]

Afaik, the term was coined by Varoufakis, and is (in) the title of one of his books.
It largely refers to the shift from capitalism to owning high-value space on the web and renting it to capitalists (ala Amazon).

Yea well the definition and usage have shift, debt slavery and near perfect AI driven surveillance seems to be the idea

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

She's very astute and I don't think this is conspiracy at all. They're setting up the beast system.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think it's a conspiracy. BUT I think it's going to lack popular support. I don't see it catching on like Faacism or Communism did 100 odd years ago.

 

[Moriarte]

Afaik, the term was coined by Varoufakis, and is (in) the title of one of his books.
It largely refers to the shift from capitalism to owning high-value space on the web and renting it to capitalists (ala Amazon).

To be more specific: It's more of a shift from rent-based capitalism growing from land to rent-based capitalism multiplying within cloud. We're not switching away from capitalism, also not regressing into feudalism. Means of production of value do evolve, but the logic of accumulation remains intact. What we're witnessing is a transformation in what gets commodified and how access is controlled. In classical capitalism, landowners extracted rent by controlling physical space. In cloud capitalism (or technofeudalism, if you buy into Varoufakis' framing), the "land" is digital infrastructure—platforms, networks, and ecosystems.

Now, instead of owning factories or farmland, the key is owning interfaces: the app store, the search engine, the logistics platform. These act as gatekeepers, charging tolls for access to audiences, data, or markets. Value is still created by workers and users, but extracted through algorithms and platform fees rather than direct wage labor or tenancy.

We're not regressing to medieval feudal lords, but we are entering a phase where power is more centralized, opaque, and less accountable—dominated by code, contracts, and corporate ecosystems rather than elected governance or even traditional market competition.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

So the feudal lord is Amazon, the vassals would be Amazon sellers and the lettuces would be us the users .

Since I refuse being a lettuce I have changed to Firefox, Blue sky, Duckduckgo, cancelled Amazon prime, and use Libreoffice. Now I feel much better, almost like a cauliflower.

Seriously, leaving important aspects of our lives and our economy to a few Silicon Valley oligarchs is dangerous. We could end up like China, but controlled by some unaccountable guy living in Bahamas instead of Xi Ping (China has the biggest cloud service in the world owned by the Alibaba guy, but ultimately controlled by Chinese government)

We're already seeing the possible results of that thanks to Trump. Switching to open-source or non-controlled applications is critical. Or at least to some cloud controlled by our own elected governments and under our juridic system, if there was any.

 

[Moriarte]

Since I refuse being a lettuce I have changed to Firefox, Blue sky, Duckduckgo, cancelled Amazon prime, and use Libreoffice. Now I feel much better, almost like a cauliflower.

Thanks, made me laugh in joy. In all seriousness the only way to escape the system is to escape the system - life is so much easier and serene without the need to constantly grab the phone. Discipline plays a far larger role here than stickers on search engines. Stick it to the capitalists, cut down your screen time!

Seriously, leaving important aspects of our lives and our economy to a few Silicon Valley oligarchs is dangerous. We could end up like China, but controlled by some unaccountable guy living in Bahamas instead of Xi Ping (China has the biggest cloud service in the world owned by the Alibaba guy, but ultimately controlled by Chinese government)

The Chinese nationals (I am not one of them) have argued to me in person that because national surveillance system belongs to People’s government and not to Alibaba, the owners/overseers of the surveillance network are not incentivised to monetise the subjects of their surveillance, but rather focused on provision of security. As a result, large megapolises of China are safe to walk at night. Shop owners sometimes leave their iphones and samsungs unattended, because the understanding of dire consequences of even petty crime is widely known.

This is the positive aspect of massive non-monetised surveillance, many in the west are unfamiliar that the Chinese, en masse, approve of it.

Hopefully, here in the west we will learn to adapt positive aspects of that idea and benefit from it. (The idea being to disallow surveillance by corporations)

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I thought this was going to be a new genre of music I hadn't heard of.

 

[Kyriakos]

To be more specific: It's more of a shift from rent-based capitalism growing from land to rent-based capitalism multiplying within cloud. We're not switching away from capitalism, also not regressing into feudalism. Means of production of value do evolve, but the logic of accumulation remains intact. What we're witnessing is a transformation in what gets commodified and how access is controlled. In classical capitalism, landowners extracted rent by controlling physical space. In cloud capitalism (or technofeudalism, if you buy into Varoufakis' framing), the "land" is digital infrastructure—platforms, networks, and ecosystems.

Now, instead of owning factories or farmland, the key is owning interfaces: the app store, the search engine, the logistics platform. These act as gatekeepers, charging tolls for access to audiences, data, or markets. Value is still created by workers and users, but extracted through algorithms and platform fees rather than direct wage labor or tenancy.

We're not regressing to medieval feudal lords, but we are entering a phase where power is more centralized, opaque, and less accountable—dominated by code, contracts, and corporate ecosystems rather than elected governance or even traditional market competition.

From some of his speeches the idea seems to be that it's not capitalism, as that is defined by owning a means of production (eg own factories), while now the capitalist is relegated to paying rent to something akin to a feudal lord. Amazon and similar sites can charge you whatever they wish, and at least according to Varoufakis they get somewhere around 40% of what you sell as their fee; so the actual capitalist cannot compete and is subservient
The technological aspect is, as you said, about the dominance of algorithms (along with everything being in the cloud). Of course those algorithms are trained by the consumer - so they end up knowing what to suggest to sell more.

 

[Moriarte]

From some of his speeches the idea seems to be that it's not capitalism, as that is defined by owning a means of production (eg own factories), while now the capitalist is relegated to paying rent to something akin to a feudal lord.

Well, his definition is too narrow. Capitalism isn’t just about owning physical capital like factories — it includes any system where private owners control the means of production (which now includes platforms, data, logistics networks, digital infrastructure).

Amazon is a capitalist firm — but it’s a new breed, where platform ownership replaces traditional factory ownership. So it’s more accurate (I think) to say capitalism has evolved, not disappeared.

I guess I don’t really get why we should suddenly be calling capitalism feudalism. These are not interchangeable stickers to play around with. Each of these words have rich history including the history of one word evolving, eventually, into the other.

Having said that, I do like and respect your Greek oldschool bike riding ex-finance minister, speaking his mind and pushing for open public discourse.

 

[Moriarte]

I thought this was going to be a new genre of music I hadn't heard of.

It is! There is an album called Techno Feudalism by Armageddon.

TECHNO FEUDALISM, by ARMAGEDDON

4 track album

armageddonsounds.bandcamp.com

 

[Akka]

The Chinese nationals (I am not one of them) have argued to me in person that because national surveillance system belongs to People’s government and not to Alibaba, the owners/overseers of the surveillance network are not incentivised to monetise the subjects of their surveillance, but rather focused on provision of security. As a result, large megapolises of China are safe to walk at night. Shop owners sometimes leave their iphones and samsungs unattended, because the understanding of dire consequences of even petty crime is widely known.

This is the positive aspect of massive non-monetised surveillance, many in the west are unfamiliar that the Chinese, en masse, approve of it.

Hopefully, here in the west we will learn to adapt positive aspects of that idea and benefit from it. (The idea being to disallow surveillance by corporations)

Japan manage to be far more secure than China without the whole Big Brother thing, so thanks but no thanks. Not going to support making ourselves puppets for a totalitarian regime that can pinpoint every move I do just because they pretend they can reduce crime.

Insert the usual security in exchange of liberty quote.

 

[Moriarte]

Japan manage to be far more secure than China without the whole Big Brother thing, so thanks but no thanks.

What Japan managed the West will never manage, because the West was brainwashed to hate collectivism, for centuries. Japan reached their point on the curve precisely through collectivism - a concept very tough to accept to many "free" westerners, so, I wouldn't count on following in Japan's big footsteps with small feet. They earned what they have through their labour within a very strict cultural frame. Right now the way for Westerners (and the Chinese) to deal with crime is surveillance. The question remains - who will perform the surveillance? Microsoft/Google/insert favourite, or an organisation which is specifically forbidden by societal consensus from monetising their subjects and mandated by that society to prevent crime: state police, departments of public security, or what have you.

Not going to support making ourselves puppets for a totalitarian regime that can pinpoint every move I do just because they pretend they can reduce crime.

That means you will succeed in making yourself a puppet of commercial supergiant, who will definitely provide you with as much security as you can carry. Unlike public mandate extended to government agency, Your opinion will be irrelevant to the firm. You will be placed into a situation, where you won't have choice, as it often happens with commercial monopolies.

 

[Kyriakos]

What Japan managed the West will never manage, because the West was brainwashed to hate collectivism, for centuries. Japan reached their point on the curve precisely through collectivism - a concept very tough to accept to many "free" westerners, so, I wouldn't count on following in Japan's big footsteps with small feet. They earned what they have through their labour within a very strict cultural frame. Right now the way for Westerners (and the Chinese) to deal with crime is surveillance. The question remains - who will perform the surveillance? Microsoft/Google/insert favourite, or an organisation which is specifically forbidden by societal consensus from monetising their subjects and mandated by that society to prevent crime: state police, departments of public security, or what have you.



That means you will succeed in making yourself a puppet of commercial supergiant, who will definitely provide you with as much security as you can carry. Unlike public mandate extended to government agency, Your opinion will be irrelevant to the firm. You will be placed into a situation, where you won't have choice, as it often happens with commercial monopolies.

Individuals having hundreds of billions of dollars is ok, but cameras are a deal-killer ^^

 

[Estebonrober]

I don't think it's a conspiracy. BUT I think it's going to lack popular support. I don't see it catching on like Faacism or Communism did 100 odd years ago.

Thye do not think they need popular support, its a pretty open repression regime elaborated on by right wing think tanks...think 24/7 surveillance machine with debt slavery and corporate monarchies.

 

[Zardnaar]

Thye do not think they need popular support, its a pretty open repression regime elaborated on by right wing think tanks...think 24/7 surveillance machine with debt slavery and corporate monarchies.

Aware. They need enough people to go along with it though.

USA may be to decentralized to try. Its of guys as well. Possible maybe but it's going to be harder than say Gernany 1933.

And Trump's incompetence. He might be Hoover 2.0 and gifts the left such as it is free wins for the next 20-50 years.

USA needs a new FDR. I don't see one.

 

[innonimatu]

Afaik, the term was coined by Varoufakis, and is (in) the title of one of his books.
It largely refers to the shift from capitalism to owning high-value space on the web and renting it to capitalists (ala Amazon).

It's one of those things (many) that Varoufakis misrepresents because he misunderstands them. Never quite managed to become the class traitor. He's only human, I'm not condeming here.

There's no technofascism. The capitalists he points out are just that, capitalists. Tentacles of the old vampires quid like many those before. Evil and damaging because of that, no need to do tech+fascism. The technofascists wannabes seem to be the UK government, at the forefront, with plenty of hopeful immitators. Fortunately these people are always limited by their own incompetence. Pretty capable of sinking their own countries though. Look at what they just did when it finally dawned upon them that people were talking about the UK ceasing to have a base steel industry: just order a failing business to carry on. NAtionalizing it and changing a lot of things in the UK to make it viable is way beying even the imagination of these people. All they know is pass laws and gove orders, as if reality itself sould obey. It doesn'yt. A failing business still fails if the environment conditions leading to that are not changed.

They probably would like to follow Hitler's playbook. They forget that Germany went into WW2 bankrupt, to duch an extent that they had to go to war for the loot, or collapse economically. The UK's military can't fight their way out of a paper bag do this new fascism is necessarily short-lived.

The "tech capitalists", mainly based in the US, are plain capitalists out of Braudel's description of the "high level" above the market. Without nation, without occupation, purely pursuing maximum profit and seeking to create monopoly rents through political capture as much as possible. Take Musk He doesn't specialize in any business, pursres profit and rents through political connections, and will do any fraud he manages to get away with "legally". There is nothing either "tech" or "fascist" about it.

 

[Moriarte]

There is nothing either "tech" or "fascist" about it.

I am not sure where exactly techno fascism emerged in this thread about techno feudalism, but hey, let's give these wheels a spin? Without defining the concept, rejecting it could be premature. What if "techno fascism" doesn't mean literal fascism, but a digital-authoritarian logic combining surveillance, platform monopolies, and soft coercion?

Fascism in Dimitrov's reading: "the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital".

So far it checks. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg -- all starting from humble beginnings as (modern equivalents of) industrialists use stock markets and direct funding to get unlimited financing, end up marrying bank capital to become the almighty Finance Capital.

Now we have to marry techno and fascism - not in the kitschy sense of jackboots and algorithms, but in structural terms. What’s the glue?

Let’s say “techno” doesn’t just refer to gadgets or software, but to:

- Infrastructural dominance (cloud platforms, AI pipelines, internet backbones)
- Total surveillance capacity (from commercial metadata to biometric profiling)
- Feedback loops of control (algorithms shaping not just consumption but behavior and belief)

Now fold that into Dimitrov’s reading of fascism: “the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialist elements of finance capital.”

We begin to see a convergence, not of aesthetics, but of function. Not brownshirts, but Terms of Service. Not torchlit parades, but shadowbans, buyouts, and personalized information bubbles so effective they render dissent invisible rather than criminal.

Take a closer look at the political ambitions of Musk or Thiel - not to build better products, but to reshape governance itself: privatising transport, funding ideological think tanks, buying social media platforms to steer discourse. That’s not capitalism above the market - that’s capitalism aspiring to replace the public sphere entirely.

In this sense, “techno fascism” doesn’t mean Apple Inc. goose-stepping down the boulevard. It means:

- Monopolised infrastructures that displace public alternatives.
- Techno-capitalists with imperial ambitions - over not just global markets, but meaning, mobility, and memory.
- State-like powers with no accountability, only UX.

This isn’t a new Third Reich. But it might be the First Platform Regime - built not on mass rallies, but on logistics, extraction, and algorithmic obedience.

So no, it's not “fascist” in the 1930s sense. But if we strip fascism of its uniforms and re-define it as the consolidation of coercive power in service of finance capital, then technofascism isn’t a stretch - it’s a system map.

 

[innonimatu]

And you are right to complain, because I went on a tangent about comparisons of Musk and others with the oligarch+state thing of the thrid reich, tech-fascism. But the thread was about a feudalism comparison, the fragmentation of power, weakening of the central state. Such a 1980s thing.

Thta can be skewered with far more ease: none of the "techno-feudal" corporations have even something as simple as the Pinkertons. The armed force they depend on to protect their privileges, ther property, is the state's. There is no return to feudalism ongoing.

What I do see happening is politcians in power trying to use tech to do something like fascism. What they reallyw ant is to remain in power even desite being reviled and obviosly incompetent. Again, The UK and Starmer are perfect poster-boysMore so than Trump and the US. The tech corporation bosses seeking to curry favour with the fools who have these programmes of clinging to power by repression are not feudal overlords. They are just capitalists doing what capitalists always did: use proximity to politics to get themlseves more rents, more wealth.They can't and won't threaten states. If states as they exist today disaggregate imo the anarchy will vbe violent but brief.