Abstract:
Technological feudalism is the ultimate manifestation of the hierarchical, feudal and dependent nature of the capitalist economic order in society. However, it does not mean that capitalism has perished as some Western left-wing scholars believe, and that capital has been replaced by information vectors or other material forms. From the information capture activities and rent enslavement carried out by digital lords, it can be seen that the capitalist rulers as digital lords are still continuing the traditional capitalist ruling strategy, that is, creating a universal consent social production relationship through the ownership of material resources. Digital lords have created closed digital domains by virtue of the ownership of material resources such as digital infrastructure. Within this domain lacking in fluidity, digital lords internalize the dependent digital structure in the daily lives of digital serfs. Digital rent is an ideology that provides digital lords with unequal power for economic command and biopolitical discipline over digital serfs. Ideological criticism of technological feudalism can help us better understand the dynamic changes in the ruling strategies of capitalism in the digital age and grasp the digital exploitation patterns in the social and economic process.