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How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism

The Making of the Digital Economy

Author Cédric Durand
Translated by David Broder
Hardcover
$29.95 US
Verso Books | Verso
5.8"W x 8.56"H x 0.8"D   | 11 oz | 18 per carton
On sale Sep 03, 2024 | 240 Pages | 978-1-80429-438-3
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The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism

The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn’t deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever.

In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination.

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.
Cédric Durand is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Geneva and a member of the Centre d'économie Paris Nord. He is the author of Fictitious Capital: How Finance Appropriates Our Future. He is a regular contributor to the online journal Contretemps and to Sidecar, the blog of the New Left Review.
Cédric Durand View titles by Cédric Durand
Preface to the English-Language Edition

Introduction

1. The Poverty of the Californian Ideology
2. On Digital Domination
3. The Rentier Class of the Intangible World
4. The ‘Techno-Feudal’ Hypothesis

Conclusion: Fortunes and Misfortunes of Socialisation

Appendix I
Appendix II
Acknowledgements
Index
"Cédric Durand's book adds to the excitement. He treats Big Tech as monopoly capitalists whose digital platforms (e.g. Facebook, Amazon) function like utilities (e.g. electricity providers, water and sewage corpoations, railway networks or phone companies), except that Big Tech use the cloud to harvest our data so as to boost their monopoly power over us."
—Yanis Varoufakis

"The technofeudalist model involves establishing a monopoly position and using sophisticated data extraction to secure it... Durand invokes the world of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 dystopian sci-fi film Alphaville, in which a dictatorial sentient computer rules society down to the most personal decisions."
—Malcolm Harris, New York Magazine

"Durand has provided a very insightful view of finance-driven capitalism over the last three decades. Why was it able to prosper alongside sagging investment and plummeting productivity gains? The answer, argues Durand, lies in the tight connection between the shareholder value principle and the globalization of the real economy."
—Michel Aglietta

"A must-read on the ongoing debate on techno-feudalism. A great book!"
—Thomas Piketty

"The publication of this book by the French economist Cédric Durand represents the most sustained attempt so far at a serious consideration of the economic logics involved."
—Evgeny Morozov, New Left Review

"If you want to understand how platform capitalism is turning into a predatory form of techno-feudalism and how the digital economy is radically transforming politics, society, and our everyday lives, read this book. An essential and fascinating analysis of the ideology and political economy of the digital age."
—Matthias Schmelzer, co-author of The Future Is Degrowth

"A sparkling, provocative and must-read analysis of contemporary capitalism. To understand how economic power relations unfold amid technology and how this has altered capital accumulation, Durand simultaneously captures general trends and the underlying mechanisms and dynamics at play. While many agree on today's growing concentration and resulting inequalities, this book offers a unique explanation of the sources of economic (and political) power. In the wake of the AI fever, reading it becomes even more indispensable."
—Cecilia Rikap, author of Capitalism, Power and Innovation

"What does Big Tech want? Cédric Durand helps us see that an industry built on size tends towards the capture and monetization of all existing social relationships. This is a handbook for we Lilliputians trying to bind Gulliver"
—Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism

"Cédric Durand is always insightful and his latest book is a must read to make sense of our age of overlapping crises and chaos. He sketches technofeudalism as a dystopia - not of a future to come but of the present we live in. The Silicon Valley Consensus has promised for everyone to become a start-up entrepreneur but instead gave rise to monopolies that command unprecedented power, structuring economies, societies and lived experiences around the globe."
—Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy

About

The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism

The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn’t deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever.

In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination.

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.

Creators

Cédric Durand is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Geneva and a member of the Centre d'économie Paris Nord. He is the author of Fictitious Capital: How Finance Appropriates Our Future. He is a regular contributor to the online journal Contretemps and to Sidecar, the blog of the New Left Review.
Cédric Durand View titles by Cédric Durand

Table of Contents

Preface to the English-Language Edition

Introduction

1. The Poverty of the Californian Ideology
2. On Digital Domination
3. The Rentier Class of the Intangible World
4. The ‘Techno-Feudal’ Hypothesis

Conclusion: Fortunes and Misfortunes of Socialisation

Appendix I
Appendix II
Acknowledgements
Index

Praise

"Cédric Durand's book adds to the excitement. He treats Big Tech as monopoly capitalists whose digital platforms (e.g. Facebook, Amazon) function like utilities (e.g. electricity providers, water and sewage corpoations, railway networks or phone companies), except that Big Tech use the cloud to harvest our data so as to boost their monopoly power over us."
—Yanis Varoufakis

"The technofeudalist model involves establishing a monopoly position and using sophisticated data extraction to secure it... Durand invokes the world of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 dystopian sci-fi film Alphaville, in which a dictatorial sentient computer rules society down to the most personal decisions."
—Malcolm Harris, New York Magazine

"Durand has provided a very insightful view of finance-driven capitalism over the last three decades. Why was it able to prosper alongside sagging investment and plummeting productivity gains? The answer, argues Durand, lies in the tight connection between the shareholder value principle and the globalization of the real economy."
—Michel Aglietta

"A must-read on the ongoing debate on techno-feudalism. A great book!"
—Thomas Piketty

"The publication of this book by the French economist Cédric Durand represents the most sustained attempt so far at a serious consideration of the economic logics involved."
—Evgeny Morozov, New Left Review

"If you want to understand how platform capitalism is turning into a predatory form of techno-feudalism and how the digital economy is radically transforming politics, society, and our everyday lives, read this book. An essential and fascinating analysis of the ideology and political economy of the digital age."
—Matthias Schmelzer, co-author of The Future Is Degrowth

"A sparkling, provocative and must-read analysis of contemporary capitalism. To understand how economic power relations unfold amid technology and how this has altered capital accumulation, Durand simultaneously captures general trends and the underlying mechanisms and dynamics at play. While many agree on today's growing concentration and resulting inequalities, this book offers a unique explanation of the sources of economic (and political) power. In the wake of the AI fever, reading it becomes even more indispensable."
—Cecilia Rikap, author of Capitalism, Power and Innovation

"What does Big Tech want? Cédric Durand helps us see that an industry built on size tends towards the capture and monetization of all existing social relationships. This is a handbook for we Lilliputians trying to bind Gulliver"
—Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism

"Cédric Durand is always insightful and his latest book is a must read to make sense of our age of overlapping crises and chaos. He sketches technofeudalism as a dystopia - not of a future to come but of the present we live in. The Silicon Valley Consensus has promised for everyone to become a start-up entrepreneur but instead gave rise to monopolies that command unprecedented power, structuring economies, societies and lived experiences around the globe."
—Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy

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