What about a Nomadic Feudalism?
There is growing discussion that digital platforms like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft are creating a new feudalism. The overall argument is that these technology companies are growing exponentially in wealth, influence and power and as a result creating an economic system of oligarchs on top who own the digital space while the rest of us are becoming merely vassals in this new digital landscape. The journalist and writer Anand Giridharadas has called this a New Feudalism which he develops in his 2018 book Winners Take All.
In a 2020 article called “Towards a digital feudalism?” the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, hailed as one of the most important living philosophers in Germany, states it this way:
We live in digital feudalism. Digital feudal lords like Facebook bring us a piece of land saying: it's free, plough it now. And we plough it like crazy! In the end, these gentlemen come to get the harvest. This is how communication is fully exploited and monitored. It is an extremely efficient system. No protests arise because we live in a system that exploits freedom itself.
More recently the economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has convincingly argued that we are living in a post-Capitalism era which he calls “technofeudalism”. Technofeudalism is post-Capitalist, he argues, because the introduction of these platform is actually transforming the rules and boundaries of the marketplace. Once you log into a platform like Amazon or Facebook, you actually leave the classical market and enter a new marketplace which is the platform itself where one entity or person actually owns the whole digital space and thus controls all the products, advertisements, in fact the whole layout of the space itself and collects all user data of its visitors in the process. “This is not a market, it is a digital fiefdom” Varoufakis states.
Although these theories overlap, there is an important distinction between Han’s “digital feudalism” and Varoufakis’ “technofeudalism.” For Han the concept of digital feudalism interprets the digital space as piece of feudal land. The feudal lords, the technology platforms, own all the land and vassals can only work on it by voluntarily handing over all their private data which the technology platforms exploit for profit. In Varoufakis’ technofeudalism, the digital space is actually the market, not the land. The move to understand this neo-feudalism as market theory is why Varoufakis argues we’ve actually moved out of capitalism itself since markets have been replaced by platforms.
What is different about this new type of feudalism is that the methods of control and surveillance are completely voluntary. In his book Psycho-politics Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, Han picks up from the work of Foucault on disciplinary power of the 17th century, which used architecture and the “panoptican” to surveil physical bodies, to show how a new, more subtle way of surveillance has evolved that is able to control people’s minds and behaviors through voluntary postings on social media apps. “Today, we are entering the age of digital psychopolitics. It means passing from passive surveillance to active steering.”1 More recently, the Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff has called this form of voluntary giving up ones data that is then collected, sold to advertisers and used to direct people’s attention, surveillance capitalism.
Han and Zuboff both see this technocracy falling under a form of capitalism while Varoufakis, who describes himself as Marxist thinker, argues we’ve actually moved out of capitalism and into a new form of feudalism governed by these technologies. So where does that leave us now? And amidst all this doom and gloom are there any possibilities?
Well, surprisingly, I found of glimmer of hope in the unfinished writings of another Marxist writer, Mark Fisher. Before he passed, Fisher was writing a book he intended to call “Acid Communism”. All that we have is the unfinished Introduction which lays out the basic approach. Fisher looks back to the 60’s generation and the many possibilities and creative revolutions it started that were later forgotten and replaced by the drive for material comforts that arose with the rebirth of neoliberalism in the 70’s. The work starts with a quote from Herbert Marcuse which rings as true today as it did then (my emphasis added):
People dwell in apartment concentrations — and have private automobiles with which they can no longer escape into a different world. They have huge refrigerators stuffed with frozen foods. They have dozens of newspapers and magazines which espouse the same ideals. They have innumerable choices, innumerable gadgets which are all of the same sort and keep them occupied and divert their attention from the real issue — which is the awareness that they could both work less and determine their own needs and satisfactions.
— Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civlisation 2
What struck me with this quote was that the ideal of the movement was not a proletarian revolution or universal equality but simply working less. Further on Fisher come to define what he means by “Acid Communism” which is worth quoting in full:
The concept of acid communism is a provocation and a promise. It is a joke of sorts, but one with very serious purpose. It points to something that, at one point, seemed inevitable, but which now appears impossible: the convergence of class consciousness, socialist-feminist consciousness-raising and psychedelic consciousness, the fusion of new social movements with a communist project, an unprecedented aestheticisation of everyday life.
This “aestheticisation of everyday life” was an exciting possibility but sounded very unMarxist to me which is kind of the point Fisher is making with his theory. To make the point of his turn he even quotes Lenin saying: “I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.” It seems like Fisher, who embodied the 80’s punk scene which was intrinsically anti-60’s, had a turn later in his life and wanted to go back to the 60’s to once again empower art with the possibility of making people free and expanding minds as a way to reinvigorate the left. Unfortunately the book was never written but this sketch points to a new way of approaching the problem. To be successful we may need to reinterpret older economic models and find a new way forward with the same artistic impulse.
If we agree with Varoufakis that we’re not moving back to Communism, that Capitalism destroyed itself and we’re instead moving to a post-Capitalist feudalism, where does that leave us? Stuck in technofeudal platforms? Although this may be the case, its important to distinguish this from classical feudalism where vassals were stuck on one piece of land and therefore did not have many options. Today instead, there are alternative platforms and the splintering of technological hegemony seems to be happening as different platforms are being created to respond to users interested in certain ideologies, finding like-minded communities, or people who are mindful of their data being collected and are looking for other options. With this in mind, it may be helpful to turn to Deleuze’s concept of the nomad and the interconnected relationship between smooth and striated space to approach this new feudal topography.
Deleuze’s concept of the nomad derived from the organization and thinking of ancient Mongolia, a political concept he used to contrast with “State” thinking but also applied as a theoretical concept to understand types of mathematics, science and art. He fully develops his theory in his book/plateau called Nomadology: The War Machine.2
For Deleuze, the nomad occupies a smooth space which is similar to a tapestry, a heterogenous and patch-like open space which he compares to Reimannian space in non-Euclidean geometry. Striated space, on the other hand, is homogeneous and would be found in the borders of the State, characterized by establishing grids and networks for means of communication and travel. The State is always looking to striate a smooth space by applying its laws over the nomadic smooth space and thereby turning it into a homogenous space governed by rules and boundaries.
As platforms splinter there may be a dwelling place for nomads who can navigate multiple platforms. If all platforms collapse into one, say a giant Amazon that is also your social media and messaging app, then I think we have problems. But if a diversification or multiplicity of platforms are unleashed there could be some hope in the creative, evolving energies of the younger generations to push the limit and find new possibilities which elude control by ever-changing migrations to different fields.
What these kaleidoscopic platforms offer is the ability to “aestheticise everyday life.” The ability to present one’s thoughts and expressions to a wider audience in a multitude of different mediums is remarkable. Of course, both Byun Chul-Han and Varoufakis present the dangers of this “self-expression” on these platforms as a type of self-exploitation where every one has to be an “entrepenuer”. “As a mutant form of capitalism, neoliberalism transforms workers into entrepeneurs.”3 There is no doubt that social postings can be harmful, especially to the youth, by causing negative feelings of one’s body image, decreasing attention spans, and an overall increase in depression and anxiety. But by understanding the shadow side of these platforms, there may be a way to channel these mediums for more “healthy” uses.
While I only recently started using social media4 and feel like a novice learning to ski while millennials and Gen Zers blow past me with posts that have amazing production quality, my experience has been generally positive of the youthful will to create and share artistically. What is most remarkable to me is the popularity of dancing videos. As if these short form videos, that can be so destructive to attention, has also inadvertently released the body from being chained to the screen. A form of liberation from watching these videos and new challenges to create new types of dancing and movements expressed in 30 seconds.
One important idea of Delueze’s concept of nomadism is that it’s not utopian. There is no drive to eradicate the State and have pan-nomadic culture. Rather the two are intermingled and oscillate back and forth. The key is keeping the nomadic alive and relevant. Surprisingly, we find the concept alive today in this post-Covid era with the movement of Digital Nomads who are part of the new gig economy that allows people the flexibility to work anywhere and hop through different jobs.
There are 2 factors that I think will be important to keep a nomadic feudal space open. The first are the free thinking “Influencers” who will look for ways to express their ideas without restrictions and bring their fans along. The second are the Jesters who can appear in both standard and heterodox platforms. They are the keys to correcting the dominant system, not the ministers of truth, because they break the totalitarianism through laughter. Is there any wonder why comedians are the most cancelled profession on the internet? What an affront to the existing philosophic profession although one could argue that Socrates was really just one of the first trolls in western literature. (More on this in a later post).
Well, one may ask, so what? How will 30 second videos and self indulgent postings contribute to a freer more equitable economy, allow the youth to gain meaningful employment, and protect us from digital overlords? To this I have no answer but can only turn to Nietzsche for some possible insights…
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Byung-Chul Han, Pyscho-politics Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (2017) New York: Verso, p. 11.
I explored this concept in the context of shamanism in my first book, The Nomad’s Labyrinth.
Ibid., p. 5. Han further states, “The neoliberal subject is running aground on the imperative of self-optimization, that is, on the compulsion always to achieve more and more.” Ibid. p. 32.
In my book 2018 Digital Dreamings I provide anecdotes about my approach to technology. I was resistant to the internet when it landed on my campus my freshman year of college, I also resisted email and a cell phone for as long as possible until their use became unavoidable if I wanted to start pay off my student loan debts and start to make a living. Facebook? Forget about it, I never got an account. However, during the pandemic I did do something radical… I signed up for Instagram, mainly to start uploading some of my paintings at the recommendation of my brother-in-law.