Cloud capital reproduces itself without waged labour, unlike all prior capital.
Evidence
But is any of this really new? Is cloud capital radically different from other kinds of capital, such as hammers, steam engines or the television networks that Don Draper deployed to manipulate our matrix of desires? It is certainly no less physical than these other kinds of capital, for the cloud metaphor is just that: a metaphor. In reality, it is comprised of vast data warehouses, containing endless rows of servers, connected by a globe-spanning web of sensors and cables. Might cloud capital stand out because of its power to command? That can’t be it either. The story of Mr Peel’s misfortunes in Western Australia established that, since capitalism’s early days, all capital goods have commanding power – some a little more, others a little less. … No, although cloud capital can command us in unprecedented ways, the key to grasping cloud capital’s special nature, as we shall see, is the way it reproduces itself – and its power to command – a process that is very different to the one that reproduces hammers, steam engines and television networks. … Here is a glimpse of what makes cloud capital so fundamentally new, different and scary: capital has hitherto been reproduced within some labour market – within the factory, the office, the warehouse. … Aided by machines, it was waged workers who produced the stuff that was sold to generate profits, which in turn financed their wages and the production of more machines – that’s how capital accumulated and reproduced. Cloud capital, in contrast, can reproduce itself in ways that involve no waged labour. How? By commanding almost the whole of humanity to chip in to its reproduction – for free! — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 316
Categorization
- DEFINE: Core distinction driving the whole book: cloud capital is defined by reproduction without waged labour, which is what makes it non-capitalist and quasi-feudal.
- XREF: Connects to Marx’s reproduction-of-capital schema and the Mr Peel anecdote from Capital vol 1, plus the reader’s existing platform-capitalism course materials. — connects to: Cloud capital made humanity work for free or a pittance — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 444; Users rather than paid employees produce cloud capital outside markets — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 334; Cloud capital’s key innovation is self-reproduction through unpaid user labor — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 319 (+4 more)
- ADDENDUM: The reproduction-without-waged-labour mechanism is the exact load-bearing point for the reader’s anti-platform-capitalism counter-thesis.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 316
Broader Connections
- Cloud capital’s key innovation is self-reproduction through unpaid user labor
#expands(0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 319 - Users rather than paid employees produce cloud capital outside markets
#expands(0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 334 - Cloud capital made humanity work for free or a pittance
#expands(0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 444 - Cloud capital is physical networked machinery plus unwaged user labor
#corroborates(0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 850 - Cloud capital uniquely combines attention-holding, free labour and privatised transaction spaces
#qualifies(0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 381 - Capitalists profit from unpaid reproductive and domestic labor without bearing its costs.
#qualifies(0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 106 - Capital expands by not paying workers for part of their labor
#qualifies(0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 104