mermella [none/use name]

Rent still exists within capitalism. The dominance of rent doesn’t automatically overturn the mode of production. You can have rentier capitalism without feudalism.

From strict Marxist criteria, feudalism is defined by: • serfs bound to land • extraction of surplus labor through extra-economic coercion • personal legal dependency ties

Platform users are not legally bound, nor biologically tied to the land, but they are structurally dependent on platforms for access to markets, communication, and social reproduction.

Thus the debate: Is dependency “as if feudal” enough to change the mode of production, or is this metaphorical inflation?

Even if sovereignty is fragmented, all these platforms remain capitalist firms, operating under capitalist competition, dependent on global capital flows, and hiring wage laborers. So the base looks more like monopoly capitalism than feudalism.

However, Durand’s supporters argue that: • platforms have become para-state entities, • capable of enforcing rules through algorithmic governance, • exercising non-democratic authority over economic life.

That is reminiscent of feudal personal authority, but technologically scaled.

Some Marxists argue that “technofeudalism” mystifies: • the role of global finance, • the extraction of surplus value from labor, • the capitalist structure enabling platforms.

Others argue the term clarifies: • the intensification of dependency, • the privatization of governance, • the enclosure of the digital commons.

Durand’s contribution is thus politically charged: “technofeudalism” is not a neutral descriptor but a theoretical weapon to highlight domination, enclosure, and monopoly power.

The French economist Cédric Durand. In German-language discussions, for instance, Durand’s 2020 book titled “Technoféodalisme” is sometimes said to have first operationalized the idea

This argument is disingenuous, he’s basically saying it was ok when Thomas Edison did it because that created things, but cloud doesn’t create things so instead it’s a social order? Tell me you don’t understand IT infrastructure as the backbone of the world without telling me you also don’t think internet should be a utility owned by the government