Behavioural Domination, Surveillance and Machine
Intelligence
Surveillance Capitalism and Republican Freedom
By Alexander Williams
Student Number: 12278041
First Reader: Paul Raekstad
Second Reader: Gordon Arlen
Submission Date: 21
stJune 2019
Classification: Master’s Thesis Political Science (Specialisation Political
Theory)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I - Republican Freedom, Domination and Markets 10
CHAPTER II - Understanding Surveillance Capitalism 23
CHAPTER III - Surveillance Capitalism and Structural Domination 37
CHAPTER IV - Surveillance Capitalism and Impersonal Domination 53
CONCLUSION 76
Introduction
There was a scene that occurred countless times during the writing of this thesis. It was not a situation that was unique to my own circumstances, but one that has probably been experienced by anyone who has written a major piece of work in the last five years. It goes as follows. I am in the library, trying to collect my thoughts and compose the argument that you will go onto read. Across from me sits a fellow student, trying to do her own work. But this student isn’t actually doing her work, even though she presumably has come to the library to do so. Instead, she is scrolling lackadaisically through her phone. She has been doing this for twenty minutes or so. If I were to break the silence and ask her why she was on her phone, I suspect she would struggle to give a reason. Certainly from my own experience, I often absentmindedly reach for my phone whilst working, despite the fact I have no great desire to do so. The student’s own behaviour is fundamentally out of step with her own desire to work.
This entirely banal experience actually touches upon something much deeper, revealing questions of knowledge and ignorance, freedom and agency, and capitalism. A groundbreaking recent work has profound implications for the ways in which we understand the contemporary digital world of social media and other Internet giants such as Google and Amazon. Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism has shifted our paradigm and the way that we should understand our distracted student. She, like almost everyone else in the 21st century, is partaking in a new and mutated form of capitalism as she is on her phone. And like with previous forms of capitalism, there are fruitful debates to be had over what surveillance capitalism harbours for our freedom.
In a nutshell, that is what this thesis is about. Surveillance capitalism represents a radical departure to prior forms of capitalism and as such it deserves its own analysis of its effects upon our freedom. Much of the work that follows is motivated by this axiomatic belief – surveillance capitalism is unprecedented and therefore we cannot hope to comprehend its effects through traditional frameworks. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism therefore presents a challenge for political theorists. If we want to contribute to contemporary debates over the rapid and exceptional social changes that now define our societies, then we must transfer our
attention to the roles of technology in our lives and how our use of technology is embedded within larger systemic frameworks. Zuboff herself contends that ‘surveillance capitalism is a new actor in history’ and as such ‘it cannot be adequately grasped with our existing concepts.’1 But where there is a challenge there is also an opportunity, and Zuboff’s scholarship provides many avenues for exploration. Her monograph performs invaluable work in helping us to grapple with surveillance capitalism; this thesis merely aims to supplement her research by seizing one such opportunity - analysing the effects of surveillance capitalism upon our freedom.
Specifically, this thesis is concerned with the relationship between surveillance capitalism and our republican freedom. The republican conception of freedom, often defined as freedom as non-domination, has recently risen to prominence in Political Theory, in large part due to its flexibility of application. Synthesising concerns over the effects of technology in contemporary society, the rise of surveillance capitalism and our potential domination, I therefore seek to answer: ‘How does surveillance capitalism affect our freedom as non-domination?’ As we will go on to see, surveillance capitalism both maintains and modifies prior forms of domination produced by capitalism, whilst also simultaneously introducing new forces of domination. The future beckons - and it does not bode well for those of us who wish to lead non-dominated lives.
Technology mediates nearly all aspects of our contemporary societies. It is essential for business and communications. It is present at the most public social gatherings and in the recesses of our homes and in our most private moments. Our distracted student is so unremarkable because she fits in with her surroundings: she is one of many people in the library who rely on their phones and laptops every day for work, leisure and socialising. Zuboff warns us of the reliance on such technologies when they are animated by social relations that aim to profit off our time spent upon them. Whilst we may separate our time with this technology into its intended function (we work online in the morning, catch up with the timeline at lunch, socialise over text after work, and watch YouTube before bed), for surveillance capitalists the effect is the same. The more time we spend on this technology, the more data they garner.
1 S. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future At the
The more data they accumulate, the better they know us. The more they know us, the better they can control us.2
It goes against the grain to argue that the synthesis of information technology and capitalism makes us less free. Conventional wisdom holds that technology is a boon to our freedom, opening up possibilities that would otherwise be unavailable to us. Technological innovations offer us more choice, more connection, and more freedom as to how we choose to live our lives. Likewise, after a century that saw the failure of centrally planned economies, capitalism is often held to be the sole economic form that can guarantee our freedom. The neoliberal hegemony that has been established since the 1980s offers no indication that capitalism could possibly be a burden upon our freedom.3 Crudely, since surveillance capitalism originated in a synthesis of information technology and capitalism, it should, in a sense, make us freer.
Zuboff’s work represents one corrective to this argument and she warns us that surveillance capitalism represents as ‘significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth.’4 Understandably, much of her focus is upon the ways that surveillance capitalists can shape our behaviour and the issues that therefore arise surrounding our autonomy. This is indeed a significant threat to our freedom, and our distracted student embodies this loss of autonomy. But this thesis will take a different tack. Instead of focussing upon the end results of surveillance capitalism, it will analyse the domination that occurs within the economic processes that constitute the surveillance capitalist business model. For Zuboff’s emphasis upon the ways in which surveillance capitalists modify our behaviour comes at the expense of an analysis of the capitalist forms of domination that re-exert themselves in the digital economy.
My argument should therefore be understood as supplementary to Zuboff’s own work, and although much of this thesis will draw upon her research and conceptualisation of surveillance capitalism, it will also seek to expand upon Zuboff’s
2 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 8.
3 D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), Ch. 1.
scholarship by explicitly theorising the domination that occurs within the various stages of surveillance capitalism. In doing so, it will present a holistic account of what drives surveillance capitalism and how domination is involved at every level. Domination can be identified in the extraction of raw materials, in the production process and in surveillance capitalism’s markets. All of this is distinct from Zuboff’s warnings about surveillance capitalism’s effects upon our autonomy.
The Scope and Limitations of this Thesis
First, it should be noted that the argument I advance here does not engage with the totality of Zuboff’s work on surveillance capitalism. Rather, it is limited to an analysis of the economic processes that she outlines. Zuboff also has much to say about the novel form of power that results from surveillance capitalism, a power she terms ‘instrumentarian power’.5 However, this thesis is solely concerned with the forms of republican domination that are produced by surveillance capitalism, and therefore I do not engage with Zuboff’s theory of power.
Similarly, the rise of surveillance capitalism presents a challenge to our freedom as autonomy – the form of freedom sometimes called positive freedom.6 Given that many of the major surveillance capitalist platforms are intentionally designed to be addictive and that surveillance capitalism produces instrumentarian power that aims to create ‘heteronomous individuals’ with no autonomy, there are also evident concerns about the ways in which these forces could potentially alter human nature.7 Again, these concerns fall outside the scope of this thesis, since whilst I recognise their clear import, I only take as the object of my analysis the surveillance capitalist processes of extraction, means of production, and market transactions. It is within these processes that I identify the novel forms of domination intrinsic to surveillance capitalism.
Third, this thesis draws heavily upon The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for many of the empirical examples that I will go on to use. Zuboff’s research is exemplary in its breadth and depth and this thesis does not attempt to challenge any of
5 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 352.
6 I. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1959).
her empirical assertions. Rather, my aim is to add a layer of conceptual sophistication to Zuboff’s research, by situating her theory of the economic processes of surveillance capitalism in the framework of republican freedom and domination. As such, this thesis does not constitute an empirical contestation to Zuboff’s argument, although it does intend to further our conceptual understanding of surveillance capitalism.
Fourth, this thesis is largely a diagnosis of the domination that occurs under surveillance capitalism, but it offers little in the way of a potential remedy. Zuboff states that: ‘Every vaccine begins in careful knowledge of the enemy disease’ and she too offers her research in the spirit of diagnosis rather than remedy.8 Although I will touch upon the ways in which we could resist the impersonal domination by A.I in Chapter IV and of the importance of knowledge as a pre-condition for resistance to structural domination in Chapter III, these detours into potential solutions are not the main aim of the thesis. But given the troubling implications that these forms of domination have for our societies, I will comment on potential paths of resistance when appropriate.
Finally, a word on vocabulary. Zuboff herself notes that a new language is ‘required if we are to grasp the unprecedented’ nature of surveillance capitalism.9 She has done much of the work in naming the processes of surveillance capitalism and I often follow her lead. The result is that this thesis includes phrases that are atypical for discussions on republican freedom and capitalism’s effects on domination. In Chapter II I therefore outline Zuboff’s argument and define such phrases as and when they occur.
The Structure of this Thesis
This thesis has two halves. In my first two chapters, I set out the conceptual framework for my argument. My first chapter therefore outlines the construal of republican freedom I intend to use throughout the thesis, showing how it is distinct from the negative definition of freedom favoured by liberals and how it is suited to an analysis of the domineering tendencies of socio-economic structures such as surveillance capitalism. Yet the recent revival of the republican tradition in Political Theory also classically focuses on the domination of individual agents and there is a
8 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 14. 9 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 14.
fruitful debate in the literature concerning whether domination can be said to involve structural or impersonal forces such as those that animate markets and capitalism. My first chapter therefore concludes with a summary of the work of two scholars, Alex Gourevitch and Paul Raekstad, who respectively argue that capitalism produces structural and impersonal domination.
My second chapter builds on the foundations of the first and explains the nuances of Zuboff’s research. Since the literature on surveillance capitalism is still very nascent, I principally draw from Zuboff’s own work. First, I argue for the essential historicity of capitalism, as it is only by understanding capitalism as such that we can comprehend the specific changes that make surveillance capitalism an unprecedented economic form. This ties in to the axiom that underlies this thesis: that new economic forms necessitate new analysis of their effects – with this thesis emphasising its implications for our status as (non) dominated subjects. After arguing that we should understand surveillance capitalism as the most recent development in the history of capitalism, the remainder of the chapter summarizes the relevant aspects of Zuboff’s argument.
With the foundations for my analysis set, the thesis moves into its second half. In Chapter III I contend that the extraction operations of surveillance capitalism are predicated upon an altered form of Gourevitch’s structural domination. Drawing parallels between Gourevitch’s argument concerning the conditions faced by 19th century labour republicans and the conditions faced by Internet users today, I conclude that surveillance capitalism produces a modified form of structural domination that compels us to give up our data. Structural domination in surveillance capitalism is operationalised towards the goal of extracting raw materials, rather than its classical form that produced the compulsion to sell one’s labour. I then trace the secondary forms of domination that result from our online structural domination. The chapter concludes by addressing some potential objections to my argument.
In my fourth and final chapter I turn my attention to the forms of impersonal domination that occur under surveillance capitalism. Utilising Raekstad’s theory of impersonal domination that he draws from Karl Marx, I argue that the impersonal domination of competitive markets subjects surveillance capitalists to a form of domination in a similar fashion to the impersonal domination of conventional
capitalist markets. The novelty of this argument is that it allows us to add a layer of sophistication to Zuboff’s theory, namely in how we understand what she calls the ‘imperatives’ of surveillance capitalism. Thereafter, I move to identifying an entirely new form of impersonal domination that occurs under surveillance capitalism – the impersonal domination of A.I technologies that constitute the surveillance capitalist means of production. I suggest that the increasing use of A.I under surveillance capitalism harbours worrying implications for our status as non-dominated individuals unless we learn to contest their various forms of interference in our lives. Like the previous chapter, I conclude by addressing some probable objections to my framing of A.I as a novel form of impersonal domination.
Chapter I – Republican Freedom, Domination and Markets
This thesis is concerned with the relationship between the republican conception of freedom as non-domination and the novel form of capitalism that originated online and exerts an increasing influence in our societies. It is the aim of this thesis to show that surveillance capitalism is a negative development for our freedom as non-domination, since it maintains and modifies previous forms of capitalist domination whilst also introducing new kinds of domination. As such, the implicit normative claim of this thesis is that surveillance capitalism is worse for our freedom, in the republican sense, than its predecessors.
Before I can make this argument however, it will be necessary to do two things. Firstly, in this chapter I will outline the construal of republican freedom I intend to use throughout this thesis. This will anchor the discussion as we move forward and I will briefly deal with the nuances of the republican conception so as to better clarify my argument later on. Yet there is already a substantial scholarship upon the relationship between republican freedom and capitalism, with figures such as Alex Gourevitch and Paul Raekstad arguing that capitalism inherently compromises our republican freedom and therefore constitutes a form of domination.10 Given that I will later draw upon these works in my analysis of the domineering tendencies within surveillance capitalism, I will also summarize these arguments in this chapter. Secondly, it would also do to clarify what surveillance capitalism is, how it operates, and what implications can thus be drawn. This will be the basis of my second chapter. Once we have established an understanding of republican freedom and surveillance capitalism, we will be better placed to perceive how surveillance capitalism augers new forms of domination.
Republican Freedom
For now though, let us focus on what we mean by freedom.11 For much of the twentieth century, political theorists’ debates over freedom were framed by the
10 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and
Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism: Karl Marx on Domination, Freedom, and a Free Society’ (Unpublished Manuscript, 2019).
thought of Isaiah Berlin, who distinguished between a liberal, negative conception of freedom as non-interference and a positive conception of freedom that emphasised the values of autonomy and self-mastery.12 However, the turn of the century saw a revival
of a third distinct way in which to think about liberty: that of the Republican tradition of the early-modern period.13 Republicanism is now well established within Political Theory and has proved remarkably flexible in its application, with republican theory being applied to subjects as diverse as democracy, workplace organisation and Universal Basic Income.14
This revival of interest in republican theory has seen it being taken in a variety of directions, with scholars duly emphasising different aspects of the republican tradition. On the one hand, theorists such as Michael Sandel have prioritised the republican focus on civic virtue and participation.15 On the other hand, the work of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner and political philosopher Philip Pettit has uncovered a distinctly republican (or to use Skinner’s preferred term: neo-Roman) conception of liberty that challenges the prior liberal ideal of liberty as non-interference.16 For whilst republicans are concerned with interference as an obstacle to individual liberty, they also hold that freedom requires non-domination.17 That is, you cannot be free if an agent has the arbitrary power to interfere with you.18 Whilst these strands emphasise distinct aspects of republican thought, they both agree on the
12 I. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’.
13 For arguments concerning the distinctiveness of the republican conception see P.
Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 21-41.
14 For democracy see, P. Pettit, Republicanism, Ch. 6. For republicanism and
workplace democracy see: K. Breen, ‘Freedom, Republicanism and Workplace Democracy’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 18, 4 (2015), 470-85; I. González-Ricoy, ‘The Republican Case for Workplace Democracy’, Social Theory and Practice, 40, 2 (2014), 232-254. For UBI see, P. Pettit, ‘A Republican Right to Basic Income?’, Basic Income Studies, 2, 2 (2007), 1-8.
15 C. Laborde and J. Maynor, ‘The Republican Contribution’, in C. Laborde and J.
Maynor (eds.), Republicanism and Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 3; M. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
16 Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998); P. Pettit, Republicanism.
17 For a republican perspective on the evils of domination vs. interference, see P.
Pettit, ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a Difference with Quentin Skinner’, Political Theory, 30, 3 (2002), 339-56.
essential features of republican freedom and are occasionally combined in more holistic definitions.19
This thesis is primarily concerned with the republican conception of freedom and so for the remainder of this thesis, I will define freedom as the antonym of domination, whereby domination is: the capacity of an agent to arbitrarily interfere in certain choices of another.20 However, it would do to clarify how this construal of freedom differs from freedom as non-interference – especially as that difference is itself disputed.21 Fortunately, there are two paradigmatic examples that can help to delineate the differences between freedom as domination and freedom as non-interference.
The Benign Master
The republican ideal of liberty has its roots in the Roman legal tradition and it specifically concerns itself with the relationship between freedom and servitude - as exemplified by the relation of a master to their slave. Slaves were unfree because they were in potestate domini (‘within the power’ of another); a fact that did not relate to whether such power was ever exercised.22 The ideal of freedom as non-domination can therefore serve us well if we take the example of the slave who serves the benign master. This master, being benign as he is, chooses to never interfere with the slave’s personal choices even though he retains the arbitrary capacity to do so. Yet the negative conception of freedom as non-interference would seemingly suggest that the slave, to the extent he is not interfered with by the master, is free. By contrast, understanding freedom as non-domination portrays the slave’s status in a new light. Even though he is not being interfered with, he is still subject to his master’s arbitrary capacity to interfere – he is subject to a dominating relationship and is therefore not free. It is thus clear that the republican construal of freedom as non-domination can
19 S. White, ‘A Republican Critique of Capitalism’, Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy, 14, 5 (2011), 562-4; R. Dagger, ‘Neo-Republicanism and the Civic Economy’, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, 5, 2 (2006), 153-6.
20 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 52.
21 R. E. Goodin, ‘Folie Rèpublicaine’, Annual Review of Political Science, 6 (2003),
60-1; Q. Skinner, Liberty, 79-86.
provide a distinct and more intuitive ideal of freedom than freedom as non-interference.
The Law
The example of the benign master shows that it is possible to be dominated but not suffer any interference. In a similar fashion, it is also possible to be subject to interference without being dominated.23 One can be subject to interference that is not arbitrary (and thus not dominating) when the interference ‘is controlled by the interests and opinions of those affected, being required to serve those interests in a way that conforms with those opinions.’24 The illustrative example here is the different attitudes that proponents of the negative ideal of freedom and republicans take towards the law. Under the liberal conception of freedom, laws constitute a form of interference that undermines our liberty. The law is therefore only justifiable to the extent that it prevents more interference than it represents.25 However, whilst republicans recognise that the law is necessarily interfering, they do not believe that it must follow that the law represents a loss of liberty.26 This is because the law can be seen as an example of non-arbitrary interference: interference that is forced to track the common interests of citizens. Of course, there must be suitable democratic mechanisms and constitutional checks to ensure that the law remains accountable to these common interests, but as long as it does so the law need not infringe upon liberty. Indeed, republicans not only argue that a non-arbitrary legal framework does not compromise freedom, but also that it is vital in ensuring citizens’ freedom. For republicans, it is only under a system of laws that are forced to track your interests that you can be said to be free, in the sense that the ruling authorities are thus prevented from arbitrarily interfering with you.27 Hence the old republican expression that liberty begins with the law, sometimes phrased as liberty being constituted by an ‘empire of laws and not of men’.28 Freedom as non-domination is therefore clearly distinct from freedom as non-interference. For republicans, it is possible to suffer
23 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 63-6. 24 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 35. 25 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 35-6. 26 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 36.
27 Q. Skinner, Liberty, 74-7; P. Pettit, Republicanism, 35-41. 28 Q. Skinner, Liberty, 75.
interference but not a loss of liberty and it is possible not to suffer interference but still be subject to a domineering and unfree relationship.
It should thus be clear how the republican account of freedom differs from the negative conception in certain aspects. Since it is not the aim of this thesis to defend the republican conception of freedom, but to analyse the effects of surveillance capitalism upon our freedom, it will not offer any further defence of the republican ideal.29
I have defined freedom as the antonym of domination, whereby domination is the capacity of an agent to arbitrarily interfere in certain choices of another. Now that the distinction between republican and negative liberty has been made, let us deconstruct this definition for the sake of clarity.
Domination is predicated upon the arbitrary capacity for interference, not the actualisation of any such interference. Republicans think of this capacity as a form of unfreedom because it forces the dominated agent to self-censor and constrain themselves in the face of the dominating agent’s capacity to interfere, and since they are therefore dependent upon the whims of the dominating agent.30 In such a fashion, a relationship of domination already constrains the actions of the dominated agent prior to any potential arbitrary interference. Interference occurs when the dominating agent intentionally acts to decrease the options available to the dominated agent.31 Interference is arbitrary when it does not have to track the interests or preferences of the agent it is directed against.32 Finally, such an arbitrary capacity for interference need not apply to the entirety of a dominated agent’s life. It is possible to be dominated in some spheres of life (such as in the workplace) but not in others, hence the caveat that the arbitrary capacity for interference need only occur in ‘certain choices’ of another and can still be classified as domination.33
29 For criticism of the republican conception, see: R. E. Goodin, ‘Folie Rèpublicaine’;
M. H. Kramer, ‘Liberty and Domination’ and I. Carter, ‘How are Power and Unfreedom Related’ both in C. Laborde and J. Maynor (eds.), Republicanism and Political Theory.
30 Q. Skinner, Liberty, 84-6. 31 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 53. 32 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 55. 33 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 58.
Republican Freedom and Economic Domination
Now that we have sketched out what is meant by freedom as non-domination, we can turn our attention to what such a construal of liberty can tell us about our social structures - specifically what republican freedom can reveal about our economic systems. It is true that the early republican tradition tended to eschew such analyses, instead maintaining a strictly political focus upon the relationship between ‘the freedom of subjects and the powers of the state.’34 Yet contrary to claims that republicanism has little to offer in the way of contemporary socio-economic analysis, one of the benefits of republican liberty today is that, in the words of Cécile Laborde and John Maynor, ‘domination, contrary to interference, is a structural institutional and collective social fact, that applies to systems, not only individual actions’.35 As such, the republican conception of domination is ideally suited to being instrumentalised for an examination of our freedom within contemporary socio-economic systems.
Broadly, there are two approaches republicans take towards the economy. The first is to investigate what an ideal economy constructed according to republican values would look like.36 The second is to critique actually existing economic structures from a republican perspective. Concerning the latter approach, it should be noted that there is no republican consensus on the merits and issues with capitalism and markets. Republican ideals of liberty have been used to both defend markets and to condemn them, although certain concerns, such as the potential for material inequality to lead to domination, tend to be shared by most authors.37 Evidently, this
34 Q. Skinner, Liberty, 17.
35 R. E. Goodin, ‘Folie Rèpublicaine’, 62; C. Laborde and J. Maynor, The Republican
Contribution’, in C. Laborde and J. Maynor (eds.), Republicanism and Political Theory.
36 R. Dagger, ‘Neo-Republicanism and the Civic Economy’.
37 For a republican defence of markets, see: S. Irving, ‘Hayek’s neo-Roman
liberalism’, European Journal of Political Theory, (Forthcoming); P. Pettit, ‘Freedom in the Market’, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 5, 2 (2006); R. S. Taylor, Exit Left: Markets and Mobility in Republican Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). For a republican critique of capitalist markets, see: S. White, ‘A Republican Critique of Capitalism’; W. C. Roberts, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), Ch. 3. On concerns over inequality, see: P. Pettit, ‘Freedom in the Market’, 138-42; R. Dagger, ‘Neo-Republicanism and the Civic Economy’, 156-9.
thesis is contributing to the latter debate rather than the former. However, even within the more critical republican examinations of capitalism there is some work that is marked out by a more holistic critique. Alex Gourevitch and Paul Raekstad both take the view that capitalism, for different reasons, is inherently dominating. As this thesis will later draw upon their work when assessing the ways in which we are dominated by surveillance capitalism, it will do to briefly outline both theories.
Gourevitch and Structural Domination
It is often when societies experience particular changes for the first time that they formulate the most astute insights into these changes. For once structural change becomes normalised and embedded into the social consciousness, it becomes far harder to take a step back and think critically. It is surely no coincidence that it is to thinkers such as Adam Smith or Karl Marx who wrote in the midst of a rapidly changing and increasingly capitalist society that we still turn to when assessing capitalism. In a similar fashion, Alex Gourevitch’s research into the intellectual traditions of the 19th century American labour republicans has yielded some vital insights into the relationship between capitalism and freedom as non-domination.
Gourevitch constructs a theory of structural domination that arises from the inegalitarian distribution of property and capital within capitalist societies. Such a distribution of social wealth creates a class of people who possess little or no property and a capitalist class that tends to monopolise property and capital. This structural inequality creates the conditions for the domination of those workers who lack any property of their own. Owing to their lack of wealth and excluded from the means of production, workers were thus compelled to sell their labour to capitalists. Tied to this argument was an analysis of the unique characteristics of labour as a commodity: since, unlike other commodities, labour could not be withheld from the market (for doing so would result in one’s pauperisation), workers had no reasonable alternative to engaging in wage labour. This compulsion, arising from the structural features of the economy and the character of labour as a commodity, is presented by Gourevitch as the first ‘instance’ of domination identified by the labour republicans.38
Admittedly, structural domination as formulated by Gourevitch has an ambiguous relationship with the definition of domination discussed above. If domination is ‘the capacity of an agent to arbitrarily interfere in certain choices of another’ then it is unclear who the agent is and where the interference occurs in structural domination. With regards to the issue of agency, Gourevitch is explicit that the economic structure itself is not agential, instead stating that: ‘Structural is the appropriate word because it was a form of domination arising from the background structure of property ownership and because the compulsion they felt did not force them to work for a specific individual.’39 Despite this, the latter two instances of domination, described below, do assign a particular dominating agent to each worker. As to the question as to where interference occurs in structural domination, Gourevitch does not make this clear, although there is undoubtedly a clear degree of compulsion involved in forcing workers to sell their labour.40 It is however outside the scope of this thesis to deal with this conceptual dilemma. Yet as with the issue of agency, interference becomes more explicit and concrete in the second and third instances of domination.
The second instance of domination is a consequence of the structural domination that compels workers to sell their labour to capitalists. The labour republicans also argued that domination occurs in the composition of the labour contract. This is where specific dominating agents appear; it is where domination becomes ‘concrete and personal’.41 Capitalist employers, owing to their financial security, were at an advantage when it came to the setting the terms of labour. In contrast, workers were poor, dependent upon capitalists and subject to structural domination. There was accordingly an inequality between the two parties in setting the terms of wage-labour that manifested itself in another form of domination. Workers were thus dominated in the making of the labour contract, as ‘structural domination translated into personal domination’ with employers enjoying ‘an
39 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 109.
40 It may be that the first instance of structural domination described by Gourevitch is
in fact an example of forcible coercion as defined by G. A. Cohen, ‘Are Disadvantaged Workers Who Take Hazardous Jobs Forced To Take Hazardous Jobs’, in History, Labour and Freedom: Themes From Marx (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) that leads to a further two instances of domination down the line. However, this is a debate that falls outside the scope of my thesis.
arbitrary superiority in the ability to extract concessions from workers.’42 In doing so, employers are arbitrarily interfering with workers by setting terms that are advantageous to themselves and thus necessarily injurious to workers.
I will deal with the final instance of domination only briefly, since it is structural domination and the consequent domination in the setting of terms that are most relevant to our later discussion of domination within surveillance capitalism. The final instance of domination occurs within the workplace; when workers have sold their labour to a specific capitalist and are subjected to their arbitrary will of their employer and any other superiors.43 This is domination at its most personal and is most closely related to the traditional understanding of domination as the relationship between a master and a slave. That labour as a commodity is inextricably linked to an individual person, and that the sale of any commodity involves a transferral of ownership, means that workers are subjected to the will of their employer in a sense not dissimilar to that of a slave who was subjected to the will of a master.44 Taken together, these three instances of domination constitute a holistic critique of capitalism and wage-labour. As such, the labour republicans were able to argue that wage-labour was dominating and conceptually equivalent to a form of slavery.45
Raekstad and Impersonal Domination
Proponents of markets see them as a bastion of liberty and as the institution that is best placed to secure individuals’ freedom in economic life.46 But as economic historian Ellen Meiksins Wood has noted, this belief lies in sharp contrast with the vocabulary often used to describe markets. To declare a belief in ‘market forces’ is uncontroversial, but surely speaking of force in such a manner also implies a degree of compulsion in economic affairs.47 It is a degree of compulsion that is at odds with the idea that markets strengthen our freedom. It is this insight that Raekstad builds
42 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 109-111. 43 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 111-16. 44 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 113. 45 A. Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 106-9.
upon, although he uses the preferred Marxist term of ‘capitalist social relations’ instead of ‘market forces’.
Like Gourevitch, Raekstad provides a holistic theory of capitalist domination, though he draws from Marx rather than the American labour republicans.48 His scope is also slightly different, as his argument deals solely with the capitalist social relations that derive from competitive markets whilst Gourevitch focuses upon the distribution of property and the character of labour as a commodity.49 Raekstad presents a theory of impersonal domination that expounds upon Marx’s writings, arguing that one of Marx’s central concerns was to develop the republican conception of domination and apply it to capitalism.50 According to Raekstad, Marx argued that capitalist social relations, specifically those inherent to competitive markets, dominate those subject to them. This applies not only to workers, but also to capitalists: everyone who partakes in markets is subject to this form of domination. This is therefore a theory of impersonal domination, for the dominating power is socially generated and lacks ‘any identifiable individual controls’ but cannot be ascribed to any specific agent or a coherent collective that could act as an agent.51
Raekstad notes that any theory of impersonal domination is vulnerable to the republican objection that impersonal domination does not involve any specific dominating agent.52 Or to put it another way, it is unclear how impersonal domination involves ‘the capacity of an agent to arbitrarily interfere in certain choices of another’. With their focus on agency, republicans can discount ‘diffuse and uncoordinated social phenomena like the demands of market competition’ as forms of domination.53 Raekstad therefore argues that the underlying reasons as to why republicans are concerned with domination need not invoke specific agents. Instead, he contends that republicans are concerned with domination ‘because it involves
47 E. Meiskins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso,
2002), 6-7.
48 I am grateful to Paul for allowing me to use his unpublished work in my thesis. 49 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’.
50 Raekstad’s paper is also a response to and critique of a competing theory of
impersonal domination. See W. C. Roberts, Marx’s Inferno, Ch. 3.
51 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’, 4. 52 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’, 10-11.
53 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’, 11; P. Pettit, ‘Freedom in the
people being subjected to socially generated powers of interference which those subject to them cannot control.’54 In this formulation, ‘socially generated’ fulfils the role of an agent, but provides a more expansive ideal of domination. Socially generated power can include instances of personal domination but also broadens the scope of domination to include things such as competitive markets, whilst also excluding phenomena such as natural disasters which interfere with us in ways we cannot control but are not socially generated. With this expanded definition of what should be understood as domination, Raekstad maintains that Marx was correct to argue that capitalist social relations constitute a form of impersonal domination.55
Competitive markets are a prime example of this expanded definition of domination. They produce socially generated powers that have considerable potential to interfere with those subject to them. Additionally, those subject to them have no means by which they can control this power. Or to use Pettit’s earlier definition of domination, capitalist social relations have the arbitrary capacity to interfere with us in certain choices.56 Under capitalism, all market activity works to produce and maintain these social relations, which should be perceived not as something controlled by market participants, but rather as a power that is exercised over them.57 Thus when capitalists outsource jobs abroad to a location with cheaper labour or when they invest in automation and accordingly cuts loose some of their manual workforce, they are being subjected to the impersonal domination of capitalist social relations. Market forces are socially generated powers which interfere them and which they cannot control. They force capitalists to innovate, to minimize production costs, and ultimately to maximise their profits.
Finally, it is worth emphasising that Raekstad’s theory of impersonal domination goes beyond Gourevitch’s structural domination in one important sense. For Gourevitch, the structural features of the economy force workers into entering a
54 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’, 13. 55 P. Raekstad, ‘From Republicanism to Socialism’, 13.
56 P. Pettit, Republicanism, 52. It is worth noting that Pettit has slightly modified his
definition of domination over time. For his updated formulation, see P. Pettit, On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); P. Pettit, Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (London: W.W Norton & Company, 2014).
dominating relationship with an individual capitalist. The unequal distribution of property and wealth sustains a form of domination that applies only to those who are on the wrong side of such a distribution. By contrast, Raekstad’s theory of impersonal domination applies to the capitalist as much as the worker. All market actors, regardless of wealth, power or influence, are subject to impersonal domination. The implications of this will be seen when I turn to deal with the surveillance capitalism and impersonal domination in Chapter IV.
Conclusion
This chapter is intended to provide the conceptual basis upon which the remainder of this thesis will be built. It has outlined the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination, a construal that is particularly suited to an analysis of how socio-economic systems such as capitalism affect our freedom. I have therefore defined freedom as the antonym of domination, with domination being defined as ‘the capacity of an agent to arbitrarily interfere in certain choices of another’. Building upon this, I have summarized the arguments of two scholars who I will draw heavily upon in the final two chapters – Alex Gourevitch and Paul Raekstad. Taken together, their theories of how we are dominated within capitalism provide a holistic overview of how capitalism impacts upon our republican freedom. Gourevitch’s theory of structural domination shows how the structural distribution of property in an economy compels workers to engage in wage-labour. This is a particularly fecund form of domination, since it creates the conditions for further instances of personal domination in the making of the labour contract and in the workplace. By contrast, Raekstad’s theory of impersonal domination shows how capitalist social relations, specifically those generated by competitive markets, dominate both workers and capitalists. Admittedly, neither theory fits neatly with my definition of domination, primarily owing to the fact that they focus on structures and impersonal market forces respectively and thus do not identify a specific dominating agent. However, I believe this is less of an issue than it may appear. Structural domination, whilst not naming a specific agent and not clearly stating what interference is occurring, results in a significant compulsion for workers to act in certain ways and leads, down the line, to more clearly defined forms of personal domination. Likewise, impersonal domination does not specify any particular domineering agent, but Raekstad addresses this issue sufficiently in his paper through an expanded concept of domination.
Now we have dealt with republican freedom and the theories of domination that will be applied throughout the thesis, it is time to turn to the object of our analysis – surveillance capitalism. One of the primary aims of this thesis is to investigate how developments within capitalism correspond to changes in our freedom. Surveillance capitalism is the newest development within the history of capitalism, but what does this mean for our freedom? It is my argument that surveillance capitalism maintains and modifies various forms of domination, whilst also introducing new ones. Before that argument can be made however, we must first explain what surveillance capitalism is. That is the subject of the next chapter.
Chapter II – Understanding Surveillance Capitalism
What is surveillance capitalism and why does it deserve to be analysed anew in the scholarship on the relationship between capitalism and republican freedom? It is this question that this chapter seeks to address. Surveillance capitalism is a novel economic form that transforms the traditional capitalist methods of resource extraction and production of commodities. Its novelty means that it deserves its own analysis of its effects upon our republican freedom: a novel economic form dominates us in novel ways. This chapter will therefore summarize Zuboff’s theory of surveillance capitalism so as to emphasise its unprecedented logics. Like the previous chapter, this discussion will anchor our later examination of the domineering tendencies of surveillance.
This chapter proceeds in two parts. First, before we can fully comprehend surveillance capitalism, it is necessary to focus our attention on capitalism as a concept: why are we justified in talking about different forms of capitalism in the first place? This is our starting point, for it is necessary to understand where surveillance capitalism fits into the wider story of capitalism and why it deserves to be privileged with its own analysis. As such, the first section of this chapter will argue for the essential historicity of capitalism and briefly trace its development so far. To argue for the historicity of capitalism has significant implications for the relationship between political theories of capitalism and history. As Meiksins Wood notes: ‘How we understand the history of capitalism has a great effect on how we understand the thing itself.’58 If we are to take seriously the historicity of capitalism, our theories must account for this fact. Theory must keep pace with the tides of history, and when a groundbreaking development in our understanding of contemporary capitalism comes along, theory must evolve to deal with it. By locating Zuboff’s work within the wider history of capitalism, it becomes clear surveillance capitalism heralds important shifts to the previous fundamentals of capitalism, and as such new forms of analysis are required.
With this point established, the chapter will move onto summarizing Zuboff’s theory of surveillance capitalism and the developments that it represents to prior
forms of capitalism. My summary here will only deal with the broad outlines of her theory; the scope of this thesis does not include a challenge to her theory, either in its empirical content or conceptual framework – although it will complement her scholarship by explicitly theorising the sorts of domination that occur under surveillance capitalism in the following chapters.
The Historicity of Capitalism
Why is it important to comprehend the historicity of capitalism? It is partially to help us appreciate the novelty of Zuboff’s argument. We cannot understand surveillance capitalism without first understanding how it represents a departure from what came before. Surveillance capitalism represents a fundamental shift in the functioning of the core logics of capitalism, but this is a fact that cannot be appreciated without first understanding how capitalism has previously developed, yet also maintained certain continuities, over time.
This section proceeds in three stages. First I will draw on historical scholarship to show that capitalism developed in a specific time and place and should therefore be understood as fundamentally historical. Then I will provide a brief overview to show how capitalism has developed over the centuries. Third, I will argue that capitalism maintains certain essential continuities despite its historical development. Once the historicity of capitalism has been asserted, we can move onto a summary of surveillance capitalism and its operations.
Before we delve into the historicity of capitalism, it should be noted that what follows does not represent an attempt to synthesise current historiographical debates over the origins of capitalism and its subsequent development.59 Instead, I will principally draw upon the scholarship of Ellen Meiksins Wood, not out of a belief that her work represents the only viable explanation of the rise of capitalism, but because her research foregrounds the opposing perspective that capitalism is ahistorical and a natural development of human tendencies – a view that she rigorously counters in her
59 For some of these debates see, J. Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of
Capitalism (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010); K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).
argument. For the purposes of this section her work provides a sufficient basis to argue for capitalism’s essential historicity.
First, it should be noted that capitalism is a very recent development in the broader history of humanity. Its origins lie in a specific time and a specific place.60 To note the specificity of capitalism is to reject the narrative that it simply represents a continuation and intensification of our natural tendencies to ‘truck, barter and exchange’ – a narrative Meiksins Wood terms the ‘commercialisation model.61 This model holds that capitalist imperatives have always existed, even if only in embryonic form, and capitalism is simply the fulfilment of natural human inclinations upon the removal of various technological, cultural and political obstacles.62 Under this model, capitalism is less ‘a qualitative break from earlier forms’ but ‘a massive quantitative increase: an expansion of markets and the growing commercialisation of economic life.’63 Yet this account denies the historicity of capitalism. It portrays it as essentially ahistorical and, insofar as it situates capitalism as the result of natural human urges, tells us little about the roots of its logic and imperatives. If we want to understand why we are dominated by capitalism and why the ways in which we are dominated change over time, then another explanation is required.
The Origins and Development of Capitalism
Meiksins Wood argues that capitalism originated due to the specific circumstances that were to be found in sixteenth century England. This was a time and a place that became the Petri dish for the growth of capitalist imperatives that would later develop into the globally dominant form of economic activity. Of the factors that led to the development of capitalism in England, the first was that it was fairly centralised - with London acting as an important hub for the national market.64 Second, the English aristocracy owned a large proportion of the land and these landlords also lacked the ‘extra-economic’ (i.e. – the political, legal or merely coercive) means to appropriate surplus labour from farmers that was available to the
60 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 95. 61 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 11.
62 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 11-15; J. Appleby, Relentless Revolution,
91.
63 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 12. 64 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 98-9.
continental aristocracy.65 Third, a significant proportion of this land was worked by tenant farmers, rather than by peasants with some customary claim of usage on the land.66 This combination of circumstances meant that English landlords ‘depended
less on their ability to squeeze more rents out of their tenants by direct, coercive means than on their tenants’ success in competitive production.’67 In order to increase their rents therefore, agrarian landlords had to incentivize their tenants to increase their labour-productivity, and these tenants were themselves increasingly subject to rents that were fixed by market forces rather than by custom.68 As such, access to the land was increasingly decided by ‘who could produce competitively and pay good rents by increasing their own productivity.’69 The increasingly powerful pull of market forces ‘accelerated the polarization of English rural society into larger landowners and a ... propertyless multitude’, resulting in the establishment of the ‘famous triad of landlord, capitalist tenant and wage labourer.’70 When this was combined with a growing ethic of ‘improvement’ (‘the enhancement of the land’s productivity for profit’) and new conceptions of property that removed customary rights to the use of land in favour of more efficient private property (chiefly exemplified in the process of enclosure from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century), the essential ingredients for capitalism were established.71
Capitalism therefore arose out of the specific historical circumstances that were present in sixteenth century England. From these early agrarian origins, capitalism would again be transformed by the innovations of the industrial revolution and the corresponding rise of productive capacity.72 Thereafter, the advent of Fordist mass production further revolutionised the productive capacities of capitalism and heralded the beginning of a mass consumer society.73 In the aftermath of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the laissez-faire attitude to capitalism fell out of favour, with increased state intervention and establishment of welfare states the
65 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 99. 66 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 99-100. 67 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 100. 68 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 100. 69 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 101. 70 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 103. 71 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 105-9. 72 J. Appleby, Relentless Revolution, 200-9.
new norm.74 This ‘reformed capitalism’ aimed to restrain the most damaging consequences of unrestrained market forces, but the economic troubles of the 1970s heralded another shift to neoliberal policies that embraced the market and aimed to apply its logic to as many areas of social life as possible.75
As this very brief historical outline shows, capitalism is clearly not a static socio-economic form. Over time it has reshaped itself in response to various economic, technological, social and political forces. Capitalism’s dynamism and ability to re-establish itself in different forms whilst maintaining certain continuities is an essential part of its nature. As we shall see, surveillance capitalism once again sees capitalism shifting its shape in response to the specific conditions of the twenty-first century.
The Continuities of Capitalism
If capitalism’s development is evident, then what are the continuities that can be traced across the various changes - those that lead us to give an industrial economic form and one based on surveillance the same epithet? The first such continuity is a reliance on markets. Meiksins Wood argues that, whilst markets existed in pre-capitalist societies, it is a specific feature of capitalism that all economic actors are dependent upon the market: this holds for workers who must sell their labour, but also for capitalists who must purchase labour and then sell their goods on the market.76 Consequently, wage-labour is another chief characteristic of capitalism throughout its historical development. The third continuity is the imperative to accumulate capital and maximise profits that derives from the reliance on competitive markets – this will be an important point in my final chapter when we come to analyse the imperatives of surveillance capitalism.77 Finally, another continuous feature of capitalism is the private property relations that form the basis of class division in society: all capitalist societies regardless of their development tend to
74 E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-91
(London: Abacus, 1995), 271-2.
75 D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. 76 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 2-3. 77 E. Meiksins Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 97.
exhibit this division.78 Once again, this is as true for surveillance capitalism as it is for prior forms of capitalism.
Now that capitalism’s historicity has been established, it is possible to see both how it has developed over time and how it has retained certain continuities regardless of historical circumstance. Whilst both the changes and continuities within capitalism are important for our purposes, the reasons for their significance differ. With regard to the developments within the history of capitalism, it is less the substance of these changes than the fact of change itself that is important. That capitalism can and has reformed itself over the centuries is one the primary axioms upon which the remainder of this argument will be built. Surveillance capitalism is merely the latest in a long history of such developments, and understanding it as such will anchor our discussion as we move forward. With regard to the continuities, it is the substance of these continuities that is the crucial foundation upon which Zuboff’s argument develops. Zuboff claims that surveillance capitalism does not so much as overturn these continuities as subordinate them to ‘a new logic of accumulation that also introduces its own distinctive laws of motion.’79 This claim will be scrutinized in Chapter IV, but for now it is enough to note that surveillance capitalism is the latest development in a long history of capitalism.
From this vantage point, we will now explore the intricacies of Zuboff’s argument. Doing so will achieve two things. First, it will form the foundation upon which my later analysis of surveillance capitalism and domination can be built. Second, it will allow us to locate the specific mutations that have disrupted the continuities within prior forms of capitalism. It is only by noting these changes and understanding their significance that we can comprehend how our freedom is challenged in novel ways under this unprecedented market form.
What is Surveillance Capitalism?
Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as: ‘A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw materials for hidden commercial practices of
78 N. Fraser and R. Jaeggi, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 15.
extraction, prediction and sales.’80 She maintains that surveillance capitalism does not abandon previous capitalist continuities, but that they now operate in a different context and function alongside surveillance capitalism’s own novel imperatives. The old capitalist laws of profit-maximisation, competitive production and growth still apply, but they do so within an unprecedented market form that redefines the roles of consumers, commodities and the extraction of raw materials.81
Capitalism cannot produce commodities without raw materials. Traditionally, these raw materials have been sourced from the natural world. Wood, coal, crops: the rise of capitalism redefined these products of the natural world as the raw materials for the production of commodities. Surveillance capitalism’s most important innovation is to reconceptualise what can be defined as a raw material that can be produced into a commodity. Under surveillance capitalism, it is we who become the raw materials.82 Zuboff traces the origins of surveillance capitalism back to the foundational days of Google - the prototype of the surveillance capitalist business model. Before it became the highly profitable surveillance capitalist behemoth that it is today, Google struggled to turn a profit. This all changed upon the discovery of what Zuboff calls ‘behavioural surplus’ – the essential raw material for surveillance capitalism. Indeed, this discovery of an entirely untapped zero-cost asset ‘marks a critical turning point not only in Google’s biography but also in the history of capitalism.’83
Behavioural surplus is what we colloquially refer to as data. It is behavioural because it includes our ‘searches, e-mails, texts, photos, songs, messages, videos, locations, communication patterns, attitudes, preferences, interests, faces, emotions, illnesses, social networks’ but is not limited to these things.84 It is a surplus because it is data above and beyond what is necessary for companies such as Google to run their core customer services.85 Indeed, Zuboff stresses throughout that surveillance capitalists are beholden to an ‘extraction imperative’, whereby they are compelled to
80 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, ‘The Definition’. 81 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 66-7.
82 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 94. 83 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 91. 84 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 128. 85 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 75.
extract ever-increasing amounts of behavioural surplus. This extraction imperative is produced by surveillance capitalist’s innovations to the means of production and leads them to increasingly ambitious methods to collect new raw materials in the form of behavioural surplus. Hence also why this is surveillance capitalism – companies such as Google need to constantly surveil us in order to extract the maximal amount of behavioural surplus, which is their raw material for commodity production.
Surveillance capitalism’s utilisation of behavioural surplus is not innocent. It represents the first and most significant mutation from former capitalist practices. Behavioural surplus is constituted by our own actions: it is a record of our lives that is recorded into data as behaviour.86 This follows a long history of capitalism whereby non-market elements of society are commodified and brought into the world of capitalist markets.87 Specifically, this extraction of behavioural surplus can be seen as a form of accumulation by dispossession, a framework that Zuboff borrows from social theorist David Harvey. Accumulation by dispossession is the release of ‘a set of assets … at very low (and in some instances zero) cost. Over-accumulated capital can seize hold of such assets and immediately turn them to profitable use.’88 Historical examples of accumulation by dispossession include the slave trade (slaves were dispossessed of their labour) and the enclosure movement in England that saw the conversion of common property into exclusive private property.89 In our times, it is our behavioural surplus that is dispossessed and turned towards profitable use by surveillance capitalists. Google’s innovation was to realise that they could quantify the totality of our experiences through data, dispossess us of this behavioural data we produce, and then use it for their own ends. This dispossession is unilateral – we have no say in whether our lives are mined for profit. Indeed, this will be a crucial issue when we examine the structural domination produced by surveillance capitalism in Chapter III. Zuboff therefore claims that surveillance capitalism is built upon a revolution. It was not a revolution in production, such as the invention of mass
86 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 100. 87 S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 98.
88 D. Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 153,
quoted in S. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 99.
