Category: Monopoly capital

Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans? Critiquing the Techno-Feudalism Narrative

Arif NoviantoLeave a comment

In recent years, the rise of platform monopolies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft has sparked a growing discourse among scholars and public intellectuals, many of whom describe these developments through the lens of a supposed return to feudal structures. This narrative, often labeled as techno-feudalism or digital feudalism, suggests that contemporary digital capitalism is no longer driven primarily by labor exploitation, but by rent extraction and control over digital infrastructures (Varoufakis, 2021).

Prominent left-leaning thinkers such as Yanis Varoufakis, Mariana Mazzucato, McKenzie Wark, Jodi Dean, David Arditi, and Robert Kuttner have employed the techno-feudalism framework to highlight the increasing asymmetries of power and wealth in the digital age.

The term has gained significant traction, not least because of its rhetorical force and capacity to evoke historical imaginaries of servitude, hierarchy, and immobility (Morozov, 2022). Yet its growing popularity has also introduced analytical imprecision, with many adopting the label as a buzzword rather than engaging critically with its implications. At first glance, the metaphor appears appealing: today鈥檚 tech giants resemble lords presiding over digital fiefdoms, extracting value from users and workers who have little choice but to submit to the rules of the platform. However, this article argues that such analogies are conceptually flawed and politically misleading.

Drawing on the tradition of critical political economy, this paper challenges the techno-feudalism thesis by contending that the digital economy remains deeply embedded within capitalist logics, particularly in its monopolistic and financialized forms. What we are witnessing is not a reversion to feudal relations, but an intensification of capitalist accumulation strategies under new technological conditions. Platform monopolies do not derive power from land ownership or inherited status, but from their capacity to commodify data, enforce algorithmic control, and monetize access to essential infrastructures鈥攅specially through cloud computing and digital platforms. These dynamics do not mark a rupture from capitalism but rather its latest mutation, in which market domination is achieved through the mechanisms of monopoly, not feudal hierarchy.

By debunking the techno-feudalism myth, this article seeks to redirect the critique toward the enduring structures of capitalist domination that continue to define the digital economy. Understanding Big Tech as capitalist titans, rather than digital lords, offers a more precise analytical lens for grasping the mechanisms of exploitation, accumulation, and control that shape the contemporary political economy of platforms.

Read More »

Limits to Supply Chain Resilience: A Monopoly Capital Critique

benjaminselwynLeave a comment

As the COVID-19 pandemic expanded across the world in early 2020, it generated the 鈥渇irst global supply chain crisis.鈥� Global supply chains represent the integrative structure of contemporary global capitalism, and any disruption to them potentially threatens the functioning of the system itself.

In response to the crisis, the global supply chain community, encompassing academics and policymakers keen to promote their purported benefits, are proposing ways to increase supply chain 鈥渞esilience.鈥� The notion has been defined by the World Trade Organization and Asian Development Bank as 鈥渢he ability of these chains to anticipate and prepare for severe disruptions in a way that maximizes capacity to absorb shocks, adapt to new realities, and re-establish optimized operations in the shortest possible time.鈥� Enhanced global supply chain resilience is to be pursued through a range of policies to be implemented by lead firm managers and supported by states.

While global supply chains are promoted as generating positive gains鈥攆or firms and workers, North and South鈥攖here is mounting evidence to suggest that they represent organizational forms of capitalism designed to raise the rate of surplus value extraction from labor by capital and facilitate its geographic transfer from the Global South to the Global North. As demonstrated in a previous Monthly Review article (鈥�,鈥� November 2021), global supply chains have contributed to dynamics of concentration in leading firms, and a marked shift in national income from labor to capital across much of the world.

Capitalism, as Karl Marx observed, is rooted in the exploitation of labor by capital through the latter鈥檚 ability to extract surplus value from the former. It is characterized by dynamics of concentration and centralization of capital, where fewer and larger firms increasingly dominate each economic sector. These dynamics are intrinsically related to capitalism鈥檚 uneven geographical development and the reproduction of geopolitical tensions and rivalries. As Harry Magdoff once wrote:

Centrifugal and centripetal forces have always coexisted at the very core of the capitalist process.鈥� Periods of peace and harmony have alternated with periods of discord and violence. Generally the mechanism of this alternation involves both economic and military forms of struggle, with the strongest power emerging victorious and enforcing acquiescence on the losers. But uneven development soon takes over, and a period of renewed struggle for hegemony emerges.

In fact, a recent World Bank publication explicates how the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating capitalism鈥檚 inner monopolistic tendencies:

COVID-19 could cause a further rise in corporations鈥� market power because large corporations are in the best position to withstand the economic downturn and deploy new technologies.鈥� In the past three recessions, the share prices of US firms in the top quartile across 10 sectors rose by an average of 6 percent whereas the share prices of those in the bottom quartile fell by 44 percent. The same divergence has been evident since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

This article argues that the resilience agenda represents an ideological justification and fortification of these very same tendencies鈥攐f labor exploitation, of concentration and centralization of capital, and of an increasingly geopolitical dimension to capitalist competition.

Following this introduction, the first section of this article outlines the emerging notion of resilience as formulated within the global supply chain community. The next section discusses how the first response by firms and states to the COVID-19 crisis was to make workers bear the brunt of the crisis. The concluding section identifies the geopolitical dynamics of resilience, focusing on the White House鈥檚 2021 report,聽Building Resilient Supply Chains, Revitalizing American Manufacturing, and Fostering Broad-Based Growth.

Read More »

World Development under Monopoly Capitalism

benjaminselwyn1 Comment

Photo: do bicycles come from? Source: WDR2020, Figure 1.1, pp. 16.

One of the main effects (I will not say purposes) of orthodox traditional economics was鈥 plan for explaining to the privileged class that their position was morally right and was necessary for the welfare of society.

鈥擩oan Robinson1

The recent period of globalization鈥攆ollowing the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the reintegration of China into the world economy鈥攊s one where global value chains have become the dominant organizational form of capitalism. From low to high tech, basic consumer goods to heavy capital equipment, food to services, goods are now produced across many countries, integrated through global value chains. According to the International Labour Organization, between 1995 and 2013 the number of people employed in global value chains rose from 296 to 453 million, amounting to one in five jobs in the global economy.2 We are living in a global value chain world.3

The big question is whether this global value chain world is contributing to, or detracting from, real human development. Is it establishing a more equal, less exploitative, less poverty-ridden world? Which political economic frameworks are best placed to illuminate and explain the workings of this world?

Recent critical scholarship has applied monopoly capital concepts and categories to the analysis of global value chains. John Bellamy Foster and others have illuminated how global value chains represent the latest form of monopoly capital on a world scale.4 John Smith shows how surplus-value transfer and capture鈥攆rom workers in poorer countries to lead firms in northern countries鈥攊s portrayed by mainstream economists as 鈥渧alue added鈥� by those firms.5 Intan Suwandi analyzes how global value chains are enabled by, and also intensify, differential rates of worldwide labor exploitation.6

Mainstream advocates of global value chain-based development tend to ignore such critical analyses, and continue to preach the benefits of global value chain integration by drawing on examples and data that support their claims. However, it says much about the anti-developmental dynamics generated by global value chains when a World Bank report advocating global value chain-based development actually provides data that supports the analyses of the aforementioned critical authors.

Here, we interrogate the data used and the claims made in the World Bank鈥檚聽World Development Report 2020, titled聽Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains聽(WDR2020, or 鈥渢he report鈥�).7聽While the report portrays global value chains as contributing to poor countries鈥� development through job creation, poverty alleviation, and economic growth, we reveal how its data shows the opposite.8

Read More »

Understanding development in a Global Value Chain World: Comparative Advantage or Monopoly Capital Theory?

benjaminselwynLeave a comment

By Benjamin Selwyn and

The recent period of globalisation 鈥� following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the integration of China into the world economy 鈥� is in essence the period of global value chains (GVCs). From low to high-tech, basic consumer goods to heavy capital equipment, food to services, goods are now produced across many countries, integrated through GVCs.

The big question in development studies is whether this globalised reconfiguration of production is contributing to, or detracting from, real human development? Is it establishing a more equal, less exploitative, less poverty-ridden world? To understand these complex dynamics, scholars rely on economic theories. These theories must be relevant to the GVC-world and equipped to tackle these pertinent questions.

In 2020 the World Bank published its World Development Report (WDR2020, or 鈥榯he Report鈥�) to address these questions. It confidently proclaimed that 鈥楪VCs boost incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty鈥� (: 3). Given the World Bank鈥檚 promotion of neoliberal globalisation, this conclusion is unsurprising.

However, before accepting the Report鈥檚 claims at face value, we should reflect on the findings of Robert Wade (: 220). These annual World Bank reports serve as “both a research-based document and a political document鈥�. the Bank鈥檚 flagship message must reflect back the ideological preference of key constituencies and not offend them too much, but the message must also be backed by empirical evidence and made to look technical”.

When globalisation is booming it may be possible for the report鈥檚 liberal bias to appear to complement its data. However, the GVC world has generated such inequalities that the dissonance between the report鈥檚 liberal bias and its own data is stretched to breaking point.

Drawing on our , this blog post uses the Report鈥檚 own data to undermine its core claims. It shows that the GVC world enhances the dominance of transnational corporations (TNCs), concentrates wealth, represses the incomes of supplier firms in developing countries, and creates many bad jobs 鈥� with deleterious outcomes for workers.

Read More »