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Evgeny Morozov

Apr 14 • 9 tweets • 2 min read

Since my New Left Review critique of "techno-feudalism" is paywalled, here's a quick thread summarizing the key arguments of this very long 38-page essay 1/9

I argue that the debate over neo-/ techno-"feudalism" is an oddity for the left. It only appears reasonable because of the unresolved tensions over (economic) exploitation vs. (extra-economic) appropriation in Marxist theory. Those tensions surfaced in the Brenner Debate. 2/9

Through close readings of Habermas, Supiot, Sighard Neckel, and several others, I survey some of the precursors to "neo-feudalism" in the notion of "re-feudalization," which I find more analytically useful than neo-/techno-feudalism. 3/9

I critically engage with Harvey's "accumulation by dispossession," which I see as an unconvincing attempt to find a middle ground between exploitation and appropriation. In the end, Harvey's concept got co-opted by those preaching the onset of neo-/ and techno-feudalism. 4/9

I (once again) engage with Zuboff - reading her alongside the Italian autonomists - to reveal her own strange "workerism" of sorts, which I call "user-ism". As a result, the dynamics of capital/capitalism that don't involve "humans" (users) become invisible. 5/9

My main engagement in the essay is with Cedric Durand's recent book on techno-feudalism. Comparing it to his previous book on fictitious capital, I remain unconvinced by his efforts to grasp Big Tech by marrying Marx and Veblen. 6/9

I conclude by reflecting on the recent "neo-feudal" turn by Robert Brenner, discussing various analytical problems in Political Marxism that made "neo-feudalism" thinkable. I briefly introduce Capital as Power school as offering an interesting Veblen-esque alternative. 7/9

One of the main problems with techno-feudalism is its inability to account for the state in constituting Big Tech. Such accounts make geopolitics, national security concerns, and various forms of state-driven developmentalism invisible. 8/9

There's so much else in the essay - it's 38 dense pages - so do engage with it when you can! You can read the paywalled version here 9/9 newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/a…

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Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 24

You know what was fully decentralized, with workers owning the means of subsistence and everyone's place in the political and economic order completely overdetermined by their social standing? Feudalism. Look it up. 1/5

Web3 utopia of "decentralization = emancipation" rests on a flawed assumption about power. MANY sources of decentralized privately-owned infrastructural power ***are not necessarily more emancipatory*** than ONE source of privately-owned centralized power. 2/5

In fact, when the whole logic of the economy revolves around the needs of capital, it's those very needs that exercise the gravitational pull that turns these numerous seemingly emancipatory decentralized platforms into invisible enforces of the hyper-capitalist project. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 19

Thread on Web3.
In 1991 Albert O. Hirschman published a great book, The Rhetoric of Reaction, which outlined three common critical narratives in response to social change & social transformation. With Hirschman, we can identify three types of critiques of crypto/Web3... 1/6

1. Perversity: The solution will make the problem worse (e.g. financialization)
2. Futility: The solution won't work (e.g. DAOs won't replace firms)
3. Jeopardy: The solution will undo some other accomplishment (e.g. designed/tokenized incentives will undermine solidarity) 2/6

We can add a fourth critique. Solutionism: The solution is chosen for its ideological/financial appeal and doesn't reflect the complexity/nature of the problem. The problem itself gets redefined to suit the solution; complexity is lost; other problem framings are forgotten. 3/6

Read 6 tweets

Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 19

Today, I got an interesting first-hand experience with how the crypto land/cabal deal with its critics. 1/5

@FilFoundation

On Jan 10, I got a DM from Danny O'Brien, whom I've never met but interacted with online. Danny, having spent many years at EFF, now works for @FilFoundation - a Web3/crypto project. Danny asked to clarify some things we were debating on Twitter; I sent him a long message. 2/5

I do worry that leftists defending crypto end up left-washing the industry. I said as much to Danny, pointing out that if I ***weren't charitable*** I may have interpreted the activity of accounts like the pseudonymous "Blockchain Socialist" as one such form of left-washing. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 18

I'm no publicity genius but it's obvious that, in announcing it ahead of time, people pushing Web3 have screwed it up already. 1/4

Big Tech of the older generation didn't bet anything on the "Web 2.0" label. They did their thing without any big ideological framework; saying "tech is good" was enough. "Web 2.0" was something that O'Reilly stuck on them, to sell conferences and books. 2/4

Pre-announcing Web3 creates a track record of easily attachable utopian promises. It also deprives one of any control over messaging. Who wants to make their reputation hostage to cryptobros pillaging El Salvador or Puerto Pico or just disappearing with pocketed money? 3/4

Read 4 tweets

Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 8

Another thread on Web3 and its lack of imagination. So: I do pride myself on being one of the first to publicly and loudly insist on the centrality of data to the Web 2.0 model of accumulation (e.g. see the Al Jazeera documentary we've done in 2015) aljazeera.com/program/rebel-… 1/13

The goal of that early critique was to show that Web 2.0 firms shouldn't usurp our institutional imagination: another, more progressive political & infrastructural arrangements around data were possible. Public policy to realize them was missing - something we had to change! 2/13

@decodeproject

We wanted to get public institutions to embrace new forms of collective data ownership, build a new digital municipalism, outline a digital welfare state, etc. Look at @decodeproject and the City of Barcelona as examples - this was all thanks to @francesca_bria's work. 3/13

Read 13 tweets

Evgeny Morozov

@evgenymorozov

Jan 4

Two things on the "public goods" discourse of Web 3. First, if we accept that "public goods" can be provided by private actors, then Web 2.0 is/was all about public goods (search, email, soc networking are free, whatever data they suck in). 1/2

Second, the ease with which Web3 crowd accepts that "public goods" are to be privately funded is surely the consequence of them growing up in "there is no alternative"/"capitalist realist" age; they can't really conceive of non-market/non-private models of service provision. 2/2

Third, the idea that the financialized Web3 expands the number of options for those producing "public goods" - e.g. culture or privacy - is false. It expands the number of *market-friendly* options; in evading the state and public institutions, it actually reduces their variety.

Read 6 tweets

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