By: Ricardo Abud
The contemporary debate on the digital economy pits two key interpretive frameworks against each other: Marxism, which analyzes history through the class struggle and ownership of the means of production, and technofeudalism, which argues that industrial capitalism has mutated into a system of digital rent extraction exercised by corporations that control algorithmic infrastructures.
In classical capitalism, private ownership of factories and machinery allowed capitalists to appropriate surplus value, a relationship that Marxism sought to transform through the socialization of the means of production. However, technofeudalism argues that today power resides not exclusively in production, but in the ownership of digital platforms like Google, Amazon, or Meta.
These companies do not operate in traditional competitive markets, but rather act as feudal lords who collect tribute for access to their ecosystems. While the industrial capitalist produced goods, the digital lord extracts value from control of infrastructure and human behavior, making dependency the primary source of wealth.
This transformation profoundly alters the dynamics of the class struggle. The traditional distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie becomes more complex, as platform workers lack labor protections even though they nominally own their work tools, depending entirely on algorithms that determine their income.
Simultaneously, social media users constantly generate value through their attention and data. From a Marxist perspective, this can be interpreted as a form of unpaid labor that feeds corporations' behavioral prediction machinery. The class struggle persists, but the stage has shifted: the factory has been replaced by the platform, and wages are supplemented or replaced by the mass extraction of data and access rent. Tech corporations have achieved an unprecedented monopoly thanks to network effects, dominating not only markets but also the very infrastructure of communication and the public sphere.
Artificial intelligence accelerates this process by automating cognitive tasks, allowing the benefits of productivity to be concentrated exclusively in the hands of those who possess the technology.
This reflects an extreme substitution of living labor for dead labor, deepening the social divide. Faced with this scenario, the future oscillates between three possible paths: the consolidation of a techno-feudal order where corporations absorb state functions and weaken democracy; democratic regulation that seeks to break up these monopolies and restore rights to citizens; or a post-capitalist transformation that promotes the socialization of platforms as common goods.
Rather than a completely new system, we are witnessing a mutating phase of capitalism characterized by financialization and algorithmic control. Marxist categories retain their analytical validity as long as they are updated to understand that the means of production are now platforms and data.
Power in the digital age has not transcended class struggle, but rather transferred it to code and the modulation of human behavior. The great unknown of the present is whether democratic institutions will be able to reclaim control over these private infrastructures or whether society will find itself immersed in a new form of digital servitude. The name given to this system is, ultimately, a political question that will define the possibilities for change and emancipation in the coming decades.
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