Techno-feudalism or platform capitalism? Conceptualising the digital society

Abstract

A number of popular commentaries in recent years have contended that the emergence of an advanced, platform-oriented digital economy marks the end of capitalism as such. This paper evaluates these claims from theorists such as Mckenzie Wark and Yannis Varoufakis. Ultimately the paper suggests that a more useful and plausible alternative to them is to be found in the Regulation School assertion that ‘platform capitalism’ constitutes a new ‘regime of accumulation’: a successor to ‘Fordism’ and ‘post-Fordism’. The paper explains the historical origins of this approach, arguing for its continued usefulness and its compatibility with important recent developments in institutional, technological and media sociology. It explains the compatibility of an approach characterising ‘platform capitalism’ as a new regime of accumulation with a range of other perspectives on both ‘platformization’ and contemporary capitalism, and discusses both recent changes to popular music culture and broad trends in populist politics in recent decades as exemplifying cultural, social and political features of platform capitalism.