Capital is a social relation conferring extractive power, not just machinery

Evidence

A social relation that affords capital’s owners extractive power over non-owners – besides its physical presence and function, capital provides its owners with the social power necessary to extract surplus value (see 1.4 below) from workers who do not own capital. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 792

Categorization

• DEFINE: Capital’s second nature as a social relation of extraction, not mere physical apparatus.
• XREF: Connects to Marx’s distinction between capital-as-things and capital-as-social-relation in Capital, and to the Peel anecdote in this book’s Chapter 3. — connects to: The Internet of Things extends capital extraction into post-purchase consumption — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 49; Marx’s general intellect can empower capital’s appropriation of social life, not only liberate workers. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 794; Data acquires extractability only through socially constructed relations, not as a natural given — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 133 (+14 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 792

Broader Connections

• Real subsumption makes social relations emerge from capital itself #expands (0.85) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 104
• Cloud capital is capital’s mutation into feudal wealth extraction, not capital’s death #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 906
• The mode of surplus extraction reveals the hidden foundation of the entire social edifice #corroborates (0.80)
• Capital precedes and shapes resistance rather than resistance driving capital #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 923