By: Ricardo Abud
Introduction
Marxism and its historical context
Marxism emerged in 19th-century Europe as an intellectual and political response to the radical transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) developed a system of thought that articulated philosophy, economics, and politics into a coherent theory of history and society.
Its philosophical foundations rest on three pillars. The first is the materialized Hegelian dialectic: Marx took from Hegel the logic of historical movement through contradictions, but inverted its idealism. For Marx, it is not ideas that drive history, but the material conditions of production. The second is historical materialism: the thesis that each historical epoch is defined by its mode of production, the combination of productive forces and relations of production, and that changes in this material base determine transformations in the legal, political, and cultural superstructure. The third is the labor theory of value: the value of commodities comes from the socially necessary human labor to produce them, and surplus value, the difference between the value produced by the worker and the wage received, is the source of capitalist profit and the basis of exploitation.
Politically, Marxism leads to the theory of class struggle as the driving force of history, the critique of the State as an instrument of class domination, and the prospect of a revolutionary transformation that leads, through socialism, to a communist society without classes, without a State, and without private ownership of the means of production.
Technofeudalism and its theorists
The concept of technofeudalism is more recent and less systematic, but it is rapidly gaining ground in contemporary critical thought. Its main proponents include the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, who, in his book *Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism* (2023), argues that capitalism as a system based on markets and the production of surplus value has been displaced by a new order where digital rents, not industrial profits, constitute the dominant logic. Also noteworthy is Shoshana Zuboff, whose book *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism* (2019) describes how technology corporations extract data on human behavior as raw material, process it using artificial intelligence, and transform it into predictions and behavioral modification tools sold in behavioral futures markets. Cédric Durand, in *Technoféodalisme* (2020), develops a structural critique of platform power as a new form of rent extraction. And Nick Srnicek, in Platform Capitalism (2017), analyzes how digital platforms have created a business model radically different from industrial capitalism.
The central thesis of technofeudalism is this: large technology corporations—Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft—do not compete in open markets nor do they accumulate capital through the production and sale of goods in the classical sense. Instead, they own digital infrastructures—platforms, algorithms, data, operating systems, and cloud computing—upon which other economic actors must operate, paying a fee for access. This relationship of dependency more closely resembles the feudal structure of lords and vassals than the free capitalist market.
1. The concept of ownership and economic control
Private property in classical capitalism
For classical capitalism, as analyzed by Smith, Ricardo, and Marx himself, private ownership of the means of production—factories, machinery, land, and financial capital—is the organizing principle of the economic system. Those who own the means of production can hire labor, appropriate the surplus produced, and accumulate capital. Competition among private owners in relatively open markets is the mechanism that, according to its proponents, efficiently allocates resources and generates growth.
Marx saw in this system a historically specific form of domination: capital is not a thing but a social relation. Private property is not a natural right but a historical construct that allows the appropriation of the labor of others.
The collective ownership of Marxism
In response, Marxism proposes the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and its replacement with forms of collective or social ownership. This is not about eliminating personal property—the house where one lives, everyday objects—but about socializing the instruments used to produce social wealth. In the Marxist view, this would eliminate the source of exploitation and allow production to be organized according to human needs rather than private profit.
Control of data, platforms, and digital ecosystems
In the digital economy of the 21st century, the question of who controls the means of production becomes more complex and, in some ways, more disturbing than in industrial capitalism.
Digital means of production are radically different in nature. They are not simply machines that can be nationalized or collectivized. They are algorithms, data architectures, user networks with massive scale effects, cloud computing infrastructures, and artificial intelligence systems trained on the aggregated data of billions of people. Amazon Web Services is not just a company; it is the infrastructure on which a significant fraction of global digital commerce and services operate. Google does not just sell advertising; it controls access to information for most of the connected world. Apple does not just manufacture devices; it is the gatekeeper of an ecosystem where applications and services must operate under its terms.
Varoufakis introduces here the crucial distinction between capital and rent: in classical capitalism, the capitalist invests capital in production, assumes market risks, and earns profits. In technofeudalism, the digital lord earns rent simply by owning the infrastructure upon which others must operate. Amazon charges sellers who use its platform a commission of between 15% and 45%. Apple and Google retain 30% of the revenue from apps distributed in their stores. Meta charges advertisers for access to its users' attention. This rent does not come from producing value but from controlling access to an economic space.
The Marxist question, "Who controls the means of production?", remains relevant, but it must be reformulated: in the digital age, the most strategic means of production are platforms, data, and algorithmic infrastructures, and they are concentrated in a handful of corporations with a degree of monopoly unprecedented in history.
2. The class struggle in the 21st century
Marx's industrial working class
Marx accurately described the 19th-century industrial proletariat: workers who, deprived of any means of production of their own, must sell their labor power to capitalists in order to survive. Their structural position within the production process, concentrated in factories and collectively organized by the very logic of industrial production, conferred upon them, from a Marxist perspective, both the capacity and the historical necessity to transform the system.
The transformation of work in the digital economy
Work in the 21st century has become fragmented and precarious, making class analysis more difficult, though not impossible. New forms of labor are emerging that fit neatly into neither the industrial proletariat nor the traditional petty bourgeoisie.
The platform worker—Uber driver, delivery person, TaskRabbit worker—is legally an "independent contractor" but functionally an employee without the protections of a salaried worker: no guaranteed social security, no union representation, no paid vacation, managed by algorithms that set prices, assign tasks, and can deactivate their account without explanation. In updated Marxist terminology, they are a proletarian who doesn't even have the illusion of owning their means of production—the car, the bicycle—but is structurally dependent on the platform.
Content creators working on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok occupy a more ambiguous position. They produce value—content that generates attention and data—but are not employed by the platform. They receive a share of advertising revenue, but monetization rules, distribution algorithms, and content policies are determined unilaterally by the corporation. When platforms modify their algorithms or policies, a creator's income can collapse overnight. Their "independence" is nominal; their structural dependence is real.
Is the class struggle still valid?
The most honest answer is: yes, but reformulated. Marxist class categories cannot be mechanically applied to the digital economy, but the underlying principle—that the position of actors in relation to the means of production determines their interests, their power, and their possibilities—remains analytically fruitful.
What has changed is the nature of the means of production and the way dependency is organized. It is no longer just the factory; it is the platform. It is no longer just wages; it is access rent and algorithmically mediated income. It is no longer just the surplus value of physical labor; it is the extraction of value from attention, data, and behavior.
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, in *Inventing the Future* (2015), argue that the left needs to update its class categories without abandoning the structural analysis of economic power. The question of who appropriates the social surplus, and through what mechanisms, remains politically central.
3. The new feudal lords
The feudal analogy: its scope and limitations
The comparison between large technology corporations and medieval feudal lords is suggestive but requires precision to avoid becoming an empty metaphor.
In classical European feudalism, lords owned the land, the fundamental means of production in the agrarian era, and peasants were obligated to cultivate it in exchange for protection and access, surrendering a portion of the produce to the lord as feudal rent. The relationship was not one of free market but of structural dependence and extra-economic coercion. The peasant could not simply "leave" for another land; he was bound to the lord by a chain of economic, legal, and symbolic obligations.
The analogy with the present is this: digital platforms are the "land" of the 21st century, the space where a growing part of economic, social, and political life unfolds, and those who want to operate in that space must accept the terms of the digital lord. A restaurant that depends on Uber Eats for its clientele, a small business that sells on Amazon, a newspaper that needs Google traffic: all are "vassals" who pay tribute and operate under rules they don't determine.
The power of the five major corporations
Google/Alphabet controls approximately 92% of the global search market, essentially determining what information the online world finds. Its advertising system, AdWords and AdSense, is the primary monetization mechanism on the internet. Its Android operating system dominates the smartphone market. Its power over the flow of information is unprecedented.
Amazon began as an online bookstore and has become the infrastructure of global e-commerce. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cloud infrastructure to a vast portion of the internet, including direct competitors. Its logistics system is a de facto monopoly in many markets. Its ability to destroy competitors by entering their markets with structural data advantages and cross-subsidies has been extensively documented.
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, three of the world's leading social media platforms, and controls the communication infrastructure of billions of people. Its power over information, attention, and social relationships is immense and barely regulated.
Apple controls the iOS operating system and the App Store, which is the sole distribution channel for software on its devices. Its closed ecosystem—hardware, software, and services—creates a dependency that economists call "lock-in." Its power to block applications, impose fees, and determine what software can run on its devices is absolute within its ecosystem.
Microsoft controls the dominant operating system on personal and corporate computers, and through Azure, it is one of the leading providers of cloud infrastructure. Its acquisition of GitHub, the world's leading code repository, and LinkedIn gives it control over critical infrastructures for work and software production.
What makes these corporations qualitatively different from the 20th-century industrial monopolies—Standard Oil, AT&T, IBM—is the nature of network effects and data accumulation. The more users a platform has, the more valuable it becomes, making it virtually impossible for competitors to enter the market. And the more data it accumulates, the more sophisticated its algorithms become, creating a self-reinforcing competitive advantage.
Their influence on governments is exerted through massive lobbying, implicit or explicit threats of relocation, hiring of former officials, funding of think tanks and, in more direct cases, the provision of critical infrastructure to the State that creates dependencies that are difficult to reverse.
4. Marx versus the economics of data
The economic value of the data
This is perhaps the most speculative but also the most intellectually stimulating section: what would Marx have said about the data?
Marx's labor theory of value holds that value originates from human labor. Data, in its most basic form, is produced by user activity: their searches, clicks, purchases, conversations, and physical movements. In this sense, it could be argued that users are unpaid workers who produce the most valuable raw material in the digital economy.
Shoshana Zuboff articulates this precisely: technology corporations extract "behavioral surplus"—data about user activities that goes beyond what is necessary to provide the service—and process it to produce "predictive products" sold in behavioral markets. The user is not the customer; they are the raw material.
Following Marxist logic, we could construct a theory of digital surplus value: the user invests time, attention, and data; the corporation processes them through algorithms (dead labor crystallized in code) and turns them into products of prediction and targeted advertising; the difference between the value produced by the user and what they receive in return, free services, is a form of surplus value appropriated by the corporation.
Varoufakis goes further: he argues that this relationship is not even capitalist in the Marxist sense, because it does not involve the production of goods for competitive markets, but rather the extraction of rent on a platform that the user cannot easily abandon. It is feudal rent, not capitalist surplus value.
Data as a commodity
Is personal data a commodity in the Marxist sense? For Marx, a commodity has use value and exchange value, and is produced for exchange. Data clearly has use value; it allows us to predict behavior, personalize services, optimize advertising, and is the subject of massive commercial exchange. But there are important differences: data is not depleted by use, it can be copied at no marginal cost, and its production is involuntary in many cases.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that data is a new form of raw material that requires an updating of Marxist categories, not their abandonment.
5. Artificial intelligence, automation and work
The impact on employment
Automation is not new: it was a central concern for the Luddites in the 19th century and for economists like Keynes in the 20th. But artificial intelligence represents a qualitative shift: for the first time, automation threatens not only repetitive physical labor but also complex cognitive tasks.
Studies by the Oxford Martin School (Frey and Osborne, 2013) estimated that 47% of jobs in the United States were "at risk" of automation in the following decades. Subsequent estimates have moderated these figures, but the emerging consensus is that AI will not eliminate human work entirely, but rather radically transform its structure: it will eliminate entire categories of mid-level tasks, create new demands in activities that are difficult to automate (caregiving, creativity, complex management, unstructured physical labor), and redistribute available work in ways that are not distributionally neutral.
The concentration of technological wealth
Here, Marxist and techno-feudal theses converge with empirical data. Automation and AI concentrate their benefits in the hands of those who own the technology—tech corporations and their shareholders—while distributing their costs among displaced workers. Reports from Oxfam and the World Inequality Lab consistently document that the wealth gap has widened in the most digitized economies, and that most of the technological productivity gains of recent decades have gone to capital, not labor.
Marx would have recognized this immediately: it is the historical tendency of capitalism to substitute living (paid) labor for dead (machinery) labor, reducing labor costs and increasing the organic composition of capital.
Does AI strengthen Marxist or techno-feudal theses?
Both, with nuances. It strengthens Marxist perspectives insofar as it confirms the trend toward the concentration of capital and the subordination of labor. It strengthens techno-feudal perspectives insofar as the benefits of AI are not distributed through the competitive market but are concentrated in the hands of platform and infrastructure owners with insurmountable economies of scale.
6. Democracy, power and surveillance
Surveillance capitalism
Zuboff coined the term "surveillance capitalism" to describe a new economic order where human experience is the free raw material for hidden practices of extraction, production, and sale. This system, he argues, operates outside the awareness and consent of its subjects.
Digital surveillance operates in multiple dimensions: commercial, to personalize advertising and services; political, to identify and manage dissent, as documented by cases of authoritarian regimes that use Western technology; and social, through social credit systems such as the one developed in China.
Algorithmic control
What makes algorithmic control qualitatively new compared to historical forms of social control is its invisibility and its claim to objectivity. When a Facebook algorithm determines what information a user sees, there is no visible sensor: there is a technical process presented as neutral. When a hiring algorithm filters job applications, it produces systemic biases without anyone having to "decide" to discriminate.
Michel Foucault would have recognized in this a form of biopower and governmentality: control is not exercised primarily through prohibition and sanction but through the structuring of the environment, the management of possibilities, the modulation of desires and behaviors.
Private censorship and political influence
The fact that the infrastructure of the digital public sphere is privately owned creates a democratic paradox: decisions about what discourse is permitted, what information circulates, and which voices are amplified are made by private corporations without democratic accountability. The expulsion of political figures from Twitter (now X), the suppression of certain content on Facebook, and the algorithmic demotion of independent media outlets are all decisions with enormous political impact made outside of any democratic process.
This represents a new form of social domination that neither Marx nor classical liberal theorists fully anticipated: control not of the means of material production but of the means of symbolic and communicative production.
7. Advanced capitalism or technofeudalism?
Those who argue that capitalism continues
Most orthodox economists, from the neoclassical mainstream to some Marxists, argue that capitalism remains the dominant system. Large technology corporations are still businesses with shareholders seeking to maximize profits in (albeit oligopolistic) markets. Wage labor, capital accumulation, and the pursuit of profit remain the organizing principles. The novelty lies in degree, not in nature.
Those who argue that capitalism has evolved
An intermediate position, held by authors such as Wolfgang Streeck and David Harvey, is that capitalism has undergone significant transformations toward more financialized, monopolistic, and extractive forms, without ceasing to be capitalism. Srnicek's "platform capitalism" falls into this category: platforms are a new form of capital, not a post-capitalist system.
Those who maintain that something new has emerged
Varoufakis represents the most radical position: capitalism, understood as a system where profit comes from the production and sale of goods in competitive markets, has been displaced by a system where rent-seeking on digital infrastructure is the dominant mechanism. This is qualitatively different: there is no market to discipline Amazon or Google, no competition that can erode their position, and their power comes not from producing better but from controlling access.
Assessment
The strongest evidence suggests that we are witnessing a significant transformation of capitalism that shares features with the technofeudal description, but does not constitute an entirely new system. It would be more accurate to speak of a phase of capitalism characterized by platform monopolies, digital rent extraction, and an unprecedented concentration of economic and communicative power. Whether this deserves a new name—technofeudalism, platform capitalism, cognitive capitalism—is partly a semantic question, but also partly a political one: the name we use shapes the possibilities we imagine.
8. Critiques of Marxism and Technofeudalism
Criticisms of Marxism
The most serious ones are both historical and theoretical.
An analysis of the regimes that adopted Marxism as their official ideology during the 20th century reveals a common pattern: the centralization of political power in a single party, the restriction of civil liberties, and the implementation of centrally planned systems instead of market mechanisms. While there is intellectual debate about whether these systems represented a faithful application or a distortion of the original theory, various analysts agree that structural elements of the project, such as the concept of a vanguard party and the suppression of private property, facilitated the emergence of authoritarian regimes, serious economic inefficiencies, and, in extreme cases, humanitarian crises—without going into detail about the reasons, whether caused from abroad or by structural flaws in the system.
In the theoretical realm, the pillars of Marxist thought have been subjected to intense scrutiny. The labor theory of value, for example, has been challenged by the neoclassical and Austrian schools, which argue that value is a subjective phenomenon determined by marginal utility and the preferences of economic agents, rather than an objective magnitude linked to labor. Similarly, the Marxist theory of crises has been criticized for its limited predictive power, while historical materialism has been singled out for a determinism that often underestimates the influence of human agency, culture, and contingency on social development.
Given the limitations of the classical model, thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and André Gorz proposed a post-Marxist reformulation. This approach moves away from economic determinism and abandons the idea of the industrial proletariat as the sole driving force of history, opting instead for a pluralistic vision that recognizes the diversity of political demands and social actors.
Currently, the debate has shifted to the concept of technofeudalism. This contemporary critique argues that digital capitalism has mutated into a structure where a few technology platforms concentrate disproportionate power. By controlling the key infrastructures of the digital economy, these companies cease to operate under the rules of market competition and instead extract rents through mechanisms reminiscent of feudal serfdom, profoundly altering traditional dynamics of accumulation and power.
The technofeudal theory also faces serious objections.
First, the feudal analogy can be misleading. Feudalism was a system of extra-economic coercion: the lord could use violence to keep the peasants in check. Digital platforms operate, for now, through seduction and voluntary dependence. A user can technically leave Amazon or Google, even if the cost is significant.
Secondly, platforms do compete with each other and do innovate, which sets them apart from static, feudal monopolies. TikTok challenged Meta's dominance in social media. Shopify challenges Amazon's monopoly in e-commerce. Competition exists, even if it's imperfect.
Third, some liberal and social-democratic economists argue that the problem is not systemic but regulatory: better antitrust laws, greater data protection, and more platform regulation are needed, but regulated capitalism can handle these challenges. The European Union and its Digital Markets Act exemplify this approach.
9. Future scenarios
Scenario 1: Technofeudal Consolidation
In this scenario, current trends continue and intensify. The five major technology corporations are consolidating their control over global digital infrastructure. AI developed on their platforms is automating growing sectors of work, concentrating the benefits in the hands of technology capital owners. Nation-states, fiscally weakened and dependent on private infrastructure, are losing real regulatory power. Democracy is becoming an increasingly hollow form, with fundamental decisions being made in private boardrooms.
The social consequences would include extreme polarization between a small technocratic elite that owns digital capital and a mass of precarious workers or those dependent on social transfers. Social cohesion would erode, and authoritarian populisms, which offer simplistic identities in the face of the complexity of dispossession, would gain ground. The result could be a stable but profoundly undemocratic neofeudalism.
Scenario 2: Democratic regulation of technological power
In this scenario, democracies, particularly the European Union, but also the United States and international coalitions, manage to implement an effective regulatory framework for digital platforms. This would include antitrust decentralization of large technology corporations, data portability and mandatory interoperability between platforms, recognition of the labor rights of platform workers, strict regulation of AI with transparency and non-discrimination obligations, and an international tax regime that efficiently captures digital income.
This scenario does not eliminate capitalism, but it significantly reforms it. It is the preferred scenario for social democrats and progressive liberals. Its realism depends on the political will to confront the lobbying power of technology corporations and to build international coalitions that can overcome regulatory arbitrage.
Scenario 3: Post-capitalist transformation
In this scenario, the combination of ecological crisis, mass automation, and extreme wealth concentration generates systemic pressures that cannot be managed within the capitalist framework. Alternatives are emerging that combine elements of Marxist thought, political ecology, and techno-progressive thinking.
This could include the socialization of digital infrastructures, platforms managed as common goods or by the State, the implementation of a universal basic income financed by digital income, the radical reduction of paid working time, and new forms of economic democracy and governance of technologies.
Open-source movements, platform cooperatives, and decentralized internet projects foreshadow some of these possibilities. The free software ecosystem demonstrates that it is possible to organize the production of cognitive goods without traditional capitalist logic. But scaling these experiences to a systemic level requires profound political transformations whose conditions of possibility are unclear.
Conclusion
Is technofeudalism an evolution of capitalism or a new system?
The available evidence suggests that it is both, to varying degrees depending on the angle of analysis. It is an evolution of capitalism insofar as it remains based on private property, capital accumulation, and the exploitation of labor. But it contains qualitatively new elements—the centrality of rent over profit, the unprecedented platform monopoly, the control of communicative and cognitive infrastructure—which justify speaking of a new phase or mutation of the system. Simply calling it "capitalism" may obscure these novelties; calling it "feudalism" may obscure the continuities. Perhaps the most honest category is "monopoly platform capitalism in transition toward forms of domination not yet consolidated."
Are Marxist categories still relevant for interpreting the digital economy?
Yes, with necessary updates. The questions of who controls the means of production, how social surplus is extracted, how the dominant ideology legitimizes the existing order, and how class power is organized: all these questions retain their analytical edge in the digital economy. What requires updating is the concrete content of these categories: the means of production are now also platforms and data; surplus is also extracted as rent and as attention; the dominant ideology speaks not only of the free market but also of digital individual empowerment.
Who really holds the power in the age of data?
Power in the digital age is multifaceted and complexly distributed. The owners of large technology platforms wield extraordinary economic and informational power. States, particularly the United States and China, retain coercive and regulatory power that can discipline even the most powerful corporations, though they often choose not to. And there are forms of diffuse power—social movements, public opinion, technological sabotage—that sometimes manage to bring about significant change.
What is clear is that ordinary citizens have less power over the conditions of their lives than in the best moments of the 20th-century welfare state, and that formal democratic institutions have lost real control over the economic and technological forces that shape social life.
Which economic model seems most likely for the future of humanity?
The most likely scenario over the next 20-30 years is a partially regulated platform capitalism, with significant regional differences: a more interventionist model in Europe, more authoritarian forms in China and Russia, and a relatively deregulated platform capitalism in the United States. Post-capitalist transformation is possible but requires systemic crises and political will that are not clearly visible.
Final reflection
There is a paradox at the heart of digital civilization: the very technologies that could liberate humanity from alienating labor, that could distribute knowledge equally, that could enable unprecedented forms of coordination and democracy, have been appropriated by a small number of corporations and used to deepen inequality, intensify surveillance, and concentrate power.
This paradox is not accidental; it is structural. The way a technology develops and is distributed depends on the power relations under which it emerges. The internet was designed as a decentralized network and became the infrastructure of centralized monopolies. AI was developed with public funding and collective scientific knowledge, and its benefits accrue to private corporations.
Marx was fundamentally right: the question of who technology serves cannot be separated from the question of who controls the means of production. Varoufakis is right to point out that the forms of that control have changed in ways that require new conceptual categories. And both, from different perspectives, point to the same need: to collectively and democratically rethink how the most powerful productive forces humanity has ever created can be put at the service of humanity as a whole, and not at the service of a new, digital, global ruling class—one more difficult to challenge than any of its historical predecessors.
Freedom in the 21st century cannot be merely the formal freedom to vote every four years or to choose between five delivery apps. It must include the freedom not to be monitored without consent, not to be manipulated algorithmically, to participate in decisions about the technologies that shape collective life, and to appropriate the fruits of the productivity that human labor and collective intelligence have made possible. This more substantial freedom—the one Marx called the overcoming of alienation and radical democrats call collective autonomy—remains the unreached horizon of modernity. Whether or not it is attainable depends, as always, not only on the structural forces of history, but also on the will, organization, and lucidity of those who inhabit it.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIONARY THAN BEING POOR.
0 Comentarios