Notes on the “feudal” hypothesis for analysing our contemporary moment of datalogic capitalism.

Thanks to @IliasAlami for bringing @cedric_durand Techno-féodalisme: Critique de l'économie numérique to my attention, which I read today. 1/

It’s an excellent study and one I overwhelmingly endorse, with the exception of its analogy to feudalism. This is metaphor has some currency at the moment, so it’s helpful to sketch out why, imo, it’s not a helpful term. 2/

I want to argue that the feudal hypothesis is problematic because it is incoherent, often choosing contradictory historical claims to support what is a rhetorical more than analytical distinction. 3/

Moreover, it isn't easily compatible with Marx's primary distinction of feudalism personal and known domination against capital's impersonal and unlocatable force.

Isn't the effect of algorithmic governmentally, as @arouvroy shows the amplification of unintelligibility? 4/

The feudal hypthesis makes the same error as Benjamin’s Era of Mechanical Reproduction essay. That essay contrasts the aura of medieval or artisan era production against the 20C Fordist one of mass-produced assemblages. 5/

The problem is that Benjamin ignores centuries of earlier capitalist activity to make his point, one based on a historical catechresis. In other words, Benjamin wants to make a point about capitalist history but can do so by only voiding (intervening) capitalist history. 6/

Hence, the feudal hypothesis often stumbles on how to differentiate late 19C monopoly capital and discount its from the preferred slogan of feudalism. 7/

The language of feudalism seems to be used because arguments want to portray datalogic capitalism as somehow not-capitalist and capitalist. 8/

They do so because they often can’t handle that capitalism always operates through a (competitive) market drive and a monopolistic anti-market one, and that this tension is a factor in creating capitalism’s internal transformations. 9/

On the other hand, the 19C "is" used because the current over-riding metaphor for digital capital is to the extractive industries (especially of oil)" ie data mining is like mining. 10/

One wonders about the gender presuppositions of herein. What if we don’t think of the datalogic as extractive, but as agricultural? What if data is closer to the cotton commodity chain, linking the slave plantations to West European factories to non-Western consumer markets? 11/

One problem here, of course is that the definitions of feudalism are often drawn from Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood, rather than Immanuel Wallerstein and world-systems knowledge movement. 12/

Wallerstein saw the European "feudal system of medieval Europe as… a disintegrated world-empire, held together very thinly by the Roman Catholic Church."

A form based on European semiperipherality and lack of access to coerced labor pools (slavery). 13/

On one hand, the digital conemporary shares aspects of feudalism, namely monopolistic advantages in trade and surplus appropriation through tribute and trade.
So far, the analogy so good. 14/

On the other hand, the digital doesn’t match the feudal conditions of trade limited to preciosities for the elites, rather than staples for the masses. The digital promises the reverse - preciosities and staples for the masses. 15/

European feudalism also prospered from a weak State function. The contemporary moment does not. As Durand argues, the digital, in fact, depends on massive amounts of State funding (Dept. of Defense subsidies to Silicon Valley). 16/

Furthermore, many of the conditions that led to the end of feudalism are present today: ecological crisis, increasing security costs, potential liquidity crisis, and, more than anything, popular revolt and rebellion. 17/

Durand argues that serfs couldn't escape their feudal demesne because of high "exit costs" (and suggests we, likewise, can't escape the digital). 18/

Serfs might not have been able to afford the “exit costs” to leave the oversight of their feudal suzerain.

So they stayed, but they did revolt, touching off the vicious cycle of increased security costs, less food produced, liquidity crisis. Conditions that we today share. 19/

For example, one aspect of the current moment’s dynamism is the speed with which fixed capital costs can become rapidly devalorized. The “Internet 2.0” arose because so much of the cable infrastructure from the pre-2000 Internet was sold cheaply by now bankrupt companies. 20/

How much of the current companies will quickly vanish? Even Bezos says that he doesn't expect Amazon to survive in this shape for long. 21/

Many of the conditions that led to the end of feudalism are as present as the ones the created feudalism: ecological crisis, increasing security costs, potential liquidity crisis, and, more than anything, popular revolt and rebellion. 22/

The contradiction suggests, I think, that there's a basic internal contradiction with the terms of the feudal hypothesis. Aspects of it are correct, others are not.

We need still to think through this problem. Durand's work is a skilled alpha, but not a conclusive omega. end/