Karl Marx thought that capitalism would be overthrown by the working class, and replaced with a socialist society. But some academics are asking: what if Marx got it wrong? What if capitalism has already died — but rather than socialism, it has been replaced by something resembling feudalism. This raises the question: how do Marxists understand the high-tech, high-inequality world we live in today?
Capitalism has changed greatly in its few hundred years of existence. Today the wealthiest individuals are not industrialists like Henry Ford but tech billionaires like Elon Musk. Companies like Amazon and Unilever dominate huge swathes of the economy. AI and social media are transforming much of our lives.
The working class itself has also changed. In the developed countries, manufacturing has been replaced by service sector jobs like health, care and education, as well as companies like Uber and Deliveroo. Manufacturing has largely moved out of Western “advanced” capitalist countries and into Asia and Latin America. Even in countries like China, manufacturing employs a smaller percentage of the population than in previous decades. But does this represent a new system or rather another configuration of capitalism and imperialism?
The neo-feudalists
While the proponents of “neo-feudalism” come in many different forms, including even from the right, the idea’s most prominent advocates in recent years have been left-leaning academics.
Yanis Varoufakis, in his book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, sees the control of large corporations over swathes of the economy as a new kind of fiefdom, replacing the capitalist market. Jodi Dean, author of the recent book Capital’s Grave, describes how the global financial institutions leverage debt against the poorest in society, and the state is used to protect and even specifically promote private corporations for competitiveness against other national states. Meanwhile the super rich are able to leverage their wealth to get around national laws, as political and economic power operate in tandem with one another.
These authors rightly criticize the unprecedented wealth and power accumulated in the hands of a vanishingly small number of private individuals. They expose the way technology is used to further spy on, oppress and exploit the majority in society. And they speak to the power of tech companies in particular, who control vast amounts of data, taken from us every time we use the technology upon which our society increasingly depends. All of these are genuine features of life which many workers will relate to. But capitalism itself is perfectly capable of all of these evils.
The highest stage of capitalism
For many proponents of neo-feudalism, massive corporations operate more like feudal lords than anything resembling capitalism. They bypass the “free hand” of the capitalist market with their own internal leveraging and monopoly over supply chains and platforms, and this is aided through modern technology like algorithms. But we do not need the language of feudalism to see the parasitic role of these corporations.
In his work Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin describes the transformation of capitalism into its monopolistic, financialized, modern form. He traces the development of the banks into massive bodies, drawing together corporations across different sectors of the economy, coordinating the flow of massive amounts of wealth through their domination of the supply chain. The domination of a handful of monopolies isn’t the end of capitalism — yet — it is inherent to this system at its highest stage.
But Lenin also points out that imperialism represents a capitalist system in decay. This has been highlighted in recent decades by the massive expansion of debt which has been used to prop up profits against declining profitability.
In its never-ending quest for greater profits, capitalism has to increasingly rely on debt, the state, and expansion beyond national borders. Under imperialism, finance capital becomes a tool for the subjugation of the less developed countries by the capitalists of the more developed, imperialist countries. The state becomes a tool for this subjugation, operating in the interests of huge corporations, and in constant conflict and competition with other imperialist powers.
While in Lenin’s time, semiconductors, cloud technology and Large-Language Models did not exist, today these are key battlegrounds in the conflict between US and Chinese imperialism. This is the modern face of imperialism — not feudalism reborn.
Is Marx outdated?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx described how the capitalists “cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” Academics throughout history have many times proclaimed Marx’s analysis of capitalism as out of date with the arrival of new technology and new forms of work. Without question, Marx himself could never have imagined the sorts of technology that we take for granted these days, and the relations of society that accompany them. But the question we must always ask is whether these “new” theories seeking to supplant Marx are able to explain society more clearly, and whether they offer a clearer guide to action for change.
The new technology Varoufakis looks at is Alexa — Amazon’s “virtual assistant” technology. Through technology like this, corporations are able to harvest massive amounts of data about people’s lives, their habits, tastes and so on — which can then be fed back to advertisers to sculpt the products advertised to them in order to skillfully manipulate what people buy. Capitalism, he points out, is not just the existence of capitalists but their “power to command” — their position as a ruling class. Now though, supposedly, this power is wielded by technology itself, with its enormous ability to influence our consumption choices. With Alexa, he says, “we stand no chance: its power to command is systemic, overwhelming, galactic.” This is a massive overestimation, in reality. Capitalism’s “power to command” is maintained, in the last analysis, by force. Marxists understand these organs of force (“bodies of armed men”, as Engels described them) as forming the basis of the capitalist state. What power to command does Alexa wield? Does the algorithm have a state of its own, with its own ‘bodies of armed men’?
While the capitalists have developed sophisticated means of manipulation to influence our tastes, our habits and even the ideas people are exposed to, it is simply not the case that Alexa wields the tools to enforce its rule on the majority. Even the idea that it has its own “command” to enforce breaks down under scrutiny — the command is still that of the capitalists. In this case Amazon’s interests merely being transmitted by Alexa’s technology.
Varoufakis sees ‘techno-feudalism’ as fundamentally different to capitalist commodity production: “a commodity is a thing or service produced to be sold for profit. Search results are not produced to be sold.” But search results are not what drives this system. Alexa’s mass data-harvesting is not the end goal, but rather a means to advertise capitalist commodities to be sold for a profit.
For Marxists, the starting point of how we understand society is “the production of material life itself.” The food we eat, the houses we live in, the essential things that make our lives run, encompasses much more than digital platforms. Behind the webshops and social media sites lie vast chains of warehouses, supply networks and energy infrastructure — all of which are run along capitalist lines. As we will see, this is not a semantic point, but one with massive practical implications.
Rent
Much of the discussion about “neo-feudalism” revolves around the role of rent. Varoufakis’ book claims that “profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor: rent. Specifically, it is a form of rent that must be paid for access to those platforms and to the cloud more broadly.” Despite their differences, Jodi Dean makes a similar point of describing how, under neo-feudalism, “capital isn’t reinvested in production; it’s eaten up and redistributed as rents.” We can see this reflected in the role of companies Uber or Amazon’s web store, which merely host a “platform,” while playing no role in the production or the services provided through their platforms. They play a role as “rentiers.”
Again, we can return to Lenin to see the role of rent today. In Imperialism, he describes “the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons,” who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness.”. The massive growth of such methods in the 21st century highlights the scale of the decay of capitalism as it looks toward ever more parasitic means to maintain profits.
In an article for the LA Review Of Books, Dean says that “unlike the capitalist whose profit rests on the surplus value generated by waged workers through the production of commodities, the lord extracts value through monopoly, coercion, and rent.” But this gets it backward. It says that rent, monopoly and coercion are what makes a feudal lord, rather than the lord’s position as part of a whole arrangement of society. Similarly, Varoufakis points toward the way oil companies charge ground rent on land used for drilling. But rent itself does not equal feudal relations — rent under capitalism serves capitalist ends. Ownership of land does not serve a feudal class, but instead fuels the ability for capitalists to make a profit off the exploitation of that land — be that for building, the extraction of natural resources or other uses. Capitalist rentiers are not fiefdoms — Amazon, BP etc are still driven by profit.
Today’s capitalists may superficially resemble a decadent, aristocratic elite. They do nothing to take society forward. Their wealth, and the development of new, highly-advanced technology, is not invested into improving infrastructure, public services or living standards. Instead, it is hoarded, invested in “safer,” more profitable avenues like stock market speculation, or used to further oppress and exploit us. But there is nothing inherently feudal about these modern monopolists.
The modern working class
Dean makes the case that traditional work in productive labour has been replaced by providing services — more akin to the servants of feudal times than the working class Marx described. But jumping to codify a new system can leave us unprepared to understand new developments. Rather than the withering away of old forms of work, capitalist governments like the Trump regime are pushing, though largely in vain, to reindustrialize.
She also points toward the role of unpaid internships to say that even where we do work, it is not wage labour. While unpaid internships are undoubtedly hyper-exploitative, and should be abolished, workers are forced into these positions in order to get into waged work, not to supersede it.
Varoufakis lays out a more elaborate new class structure where “cloudalists” rule over “cloud proles” and a new class of “cloud serfs,” live as digital consumers. This confuses the picture more than it clarifies anything. “Cloud proles” still work for wages like regular workers. Technology is used to increase the rate of exploitation and police our work, but this has always been part of capitalism.
What actually was feudalism?
To understand the difference between the serfs and peasants of feudalism, and the working class (the proletariat) of capitalism — or any comparison with feudalism — it is useful to understand what feudalism actually was.
For Marxists, the term describes a stage in human history. While its appearance varied depending on location, the basis of feudal society was land ownership. This land was worked by a peasantry, who largely produced their own means of subsistence. They worked — either by rent or small-scale ownership — small plots of land, growing their own food and giving a tribute to the lord who controlled the land.
Crucially, this was based on individualized, small-scale production by the peasantry, rather than large-scale industry. The revolutions which brought down feudalism and introduced capitalism abolished these small plots of land through enclosures and displacement, as the peasants were forced into towns and cities. Rather than their own small-scale means of subsistence, these people had nothing to sell but their ability to work. This work was put to use collectively in large factories, on docks, in the shops and other places. They became workers rather than peasants. This was matched with a newly-centralized nation state, and the creation of a worldwide market. All of these features live on in society today.
Does the comparison to feudalism help us to explain society today? Rather than serfs, the majority of people in the world today continue to have no choice but to work for a wage to make ends meet — whether they work in services, manufacturing or elsewhere. Crucially for Marxists, our role as workers in production means we have massive power when we take collective action.
What does this mean for the struggle today?
Astoundingly, Varoufakis says “Today, cloudalists do not fear powerful unions because cloud proles are too weak to form them and cloud serfs do not even consider themselves producers.” Instead, he advocates a “A cloud rebellion” involving “not just the traditional proletariat and the cloud proles” (whose action he describes as “feeble”), “but also the cloud serfs and, indeed, at least some of the vassal capitalists.” He sees action by Amazon warehouse workers, ultimately, as secondary to consumer boycotts of Amazon.
But it is not boycotts that Jeff Bezos has poured millions into derailing — it is the attempts of workers to unionize. The recent action of dockworkers in Europe to collectively block the export of arms to Israel accomplished far more than would have been possible if they had individually boycotted Israeli goods. By focusing on consumers rather than producers, he points not toward new methods of struggle, but the same old dead ends.
Jodi Dean sees action of service workers as crucial — and not incorrectly so. She says “universal basic services” could be a key part of a socialist society based on need not profit. These workers are indeed a crucial section of society, and battles in healthcare and education have been a key driving force of the rearming of the working class internationally. But a smaller amount of human labour going into industrial production doesn’t mean it is no longer important. In fact, it shows how crucial the role of workers in key choke points of our supply chains are.
Last year’s longshore strikes in the US caused losses of $4.5 billion to $7.5 billion per week for the US economy. The strikes of rail and mail workers in Britain’s 2022 strike wave had a massive impact across the whole economy. Action in these sectors can be an enormous tool in the hands of the working class. Minimizing their power is only counter-productive.
The fact that technology could produce humanity’s key needs and services with relatively little human labour shows the potential that exists for a society where humanity is freed up to pursue the curiosity, creativity and innovation that defines humans. Under capitalism, technology is used to further the rate of exploitation for the bosses, while massive data centres destroy the planet for the sake of little more than advertising.
But capitalism won’t ever be silently killed by the creeping of a new system within it. No ruling class has disappeared from the scene of history without a struggle. The working class must use its power to overthrow this system once and for all. Rather than trying to force society to fit the mould of new buzzwords and sell new books, workers need a clear understanding of what capitalism is, and what tools we have to fight back, if we are to do so successfully.
