Economy and Society In the Age of Digital Capitalism

The rise of AI can be understood in the context of techno-feudalism and the emergence of digital capitalism. Techno-feudalism accentuates the personal dependence on digital tools, the prevalence of technological rent, and the absolute rule representing a further deepening of platform monopolies characteristic of feudal systems. Contemporary capitalism is increasingly developing monopolistic trends of digital capitalism. This panel will dissect how AI, as the highest form of fixed capital, deepens the commodification of general intellect to further strengthens platform monopolies. How does the concept of infrastructural dependence explain why platform-mediated flexibility so often yields new forms of domination? The novelty of platform capitalism does not lie in data displacing labor as the source of value, but in the private ownership of digital gateways through which work, market access, and visibility are generally organized. Can Marx's analysis of labor-power, subsumption, fetishism, and social reproduction help us to understand platforms as institutions that convert formal autonomy into substantive dependence? Recent trends related to platform regulation and labor protection reveal both the promise and the limits of regulatory repair. Can there emere socialist digital governance that requires decommodification, collective labor power, common infrastructures, democratic data governance, and forms of planning oriented to social need.