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TECHNO-CAPITALIST-FEUDALISM Paperback – September 7, 2020

by Michel Luc Bellemare (Author)

4.3 23 ratings

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With blunt unvarnished realism, we are fundamentally and inescapably immersed in granular trench-warfare against totalitarian-capitalism, i.e., techno-capitalist-feudalism, in and across a litany of micro-fronts. These granular power-struggles are constant, disorderly, and continuously changing their stripes and/or constructs. In consequence, we must fight, fight conceptually and fight materially, fight any way we can, since we are fighting for our lives, regardless of the ballot box. In short, we are caught in a long drawn-out war of attrition, trench-warfare against the logic of capitalism, ad infinitum.

Firstly, part one of the text concerns the general framework of techno-capitalist-feudalism. It shows the manner by which the techno-capitalist-feudal-edifice has arisen into a totalitarian system through the interplay of force in and between power-relations, ideologies, and high-tech machinery. In fact, we as global citizens live in and upon the superstructure, while our relations and/or ideologies comprise the underlying infrastructure of the system, wherein the master logic of capitalism reigns supreme. In addition, part one also encompasses a critique of the Marxist view of history, i.e., the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, and introduces an alternative view of history, i.e., the anarcho-relativist view of history, or more specifically, anarcho-historical-relativism.

Secondly, part two of the text concerns the post-industrial, post-modern theory of value and surplus value. It demonstrates the manner by which value, price, and wage are arbitrarily determined, reproduced, and normalized in the dark age of techno-capitalist-feudalism, through force and influence rather than through socially necessary labor-time. Consequently, values, prices, and wages are arbitrary constructs devoid of foundation, other than the arbitrariness of force and influence undergirding these essential economic figures.

Thirdly, part three of the text concerns the compounding law/logic of systemic-incompetence and structural-defect. It demonstrates the manner by which incompetence and structural-defects multiply, ramify, and intensify throughout the capitalist-system as the capitalist-system increasingly streamlines itself, and demands ever-greater ideological congruency from the workforce/population as the principal condition of employment and/or promotion. Consequently, as the capitalist-system becomes evermore ideologically homogenized, it simultaneously impedes its own development and survival. The result is an ever-worsening set of cataclysms, until a final revolutionary denouement or crescendo is detonated.

Fourthly, part four of the text concerns the universal anarchist revolution. Whereby, it is not the productive forces which lead society into the future, but newly-risen relations and needs, which drag the productive forces into the future, kicking and screaming. And if the old productive forces do not accommodate themselves according to the new relations and needs, anarchist revolutions ensue, whereupon the productive forces either evolve or perish. Finally, part four introduces, the decentralized planning economy.

All in all, capitalism is totalitarian. It inundates everyday life like 1930's fascism. Subsequently, the dark age of techno-capitalist-feudalism is the terminal stage of the capitalist-system. Unable to develop any further, without bringing the whole capitalist-edifice crashing down upon itself, techno-capitalist-feudalism strives now for economic stasis in perpetuity. Wherein, the system contents itself with solely refining its domination, enslavement, and endless brainwashing with ever-increasing precision and guile. In sum, the capitalist aristocracy must remain in power atop of the wealth-pyramid forever. Therefore, if this text has a purpose, it is as an invaluable analytical power-tool, namely, an essential tool for any serious anti-capitalist toolbox.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blacksatin Publications Ltd. (September 7, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 769 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0978115171
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0978115173
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.45 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.93 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #339 in Microeconomics (Books)
- #1,234 in Theory of Economics
- #1,995 in Economic Conditions (Books)

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4.3 23 ratings

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Dense/Philosophical/Revolutionary

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2021

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In this 628 page work Dr. Bellemare grapples with philosophical/economic ideas from authors such as Nietzsche, Foucault, Lyotard, Marx, Malatesta, Debord, Deleuze & Guattari, Adorno & Horkheimer, Fisher, Baran & Sweezy, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Stirner. Techno-Capitalist-Feudalism(TCF) is a philosophical work that engages with the technocratic neo-feudalist era. TCF discuses the infrastructure/superstructure of capitalism, the relativism of history, the post industrial post modern theory of value, the logic of capitalism, private property, power relations, etc. TCF is a densely packed book and a truly revolutionary text that every leftist should read.

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Hannah Goldstein

Reads like a first-generation chatbot was asked to describe anarchism in as many words as possible

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2023

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TLDR/SUMMARY
I wanted to like this book. Really gave it a go but had to give up when I got to p.50 having gained nothing. Any truths or other values to eventually be found in this text must be more readily accessible elsewhere. (If all my other issues are addressed later in the text, the question then is why are the worthwhile bits buried so deep in it?) If you’re new to anarchism and want to learn, don’t start here. Go read Kropotkin’s appeal to the young. Then read anything else from him, or from Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, or any of the other classical thinkers. Colin Ward’s Anarchy in Action is great if you want something more recent. Or just browse The Anarchist Library website.

FULL COMMENT
I bought the book for the name, as I think establishing a clear link between capitalism and feudalism would be a worthwhile project. Perhaps by the end this link is made clear, but by p.50 it hasn’t been. (It was repeatedly asserted, that is, but never supported.) Unless you happen to have already had the privilege of accessing lots of other anarchist literature, trying to read this will likely be counterproductive. This book would make a poor resource for anyone trying to self-educate about anarchism, and anyone who had it as their first exposure would likely conclude anarchists are too confused to formulate any coherent ideology. If I were paranoid, I’d say it seems like it was written specifically to alienate readers to discourage them from seeking more information about anarchism. I expect the reality is less hidden malice and more straightforward ineptitude. (And I’m not a capitalist! I hope the author receives the same material and psychosocial supports I wish for everyone. I know under capitalism neither are available unless you can buy them, and bad reviews might decrease sales. But for that system to change, the opposition must grow, and this book is sadly not going to help with that.)

I’m just not sure who this book is for. I don’t think it’ll convince anyone of anything they don’t already believe. It doesn’t support itself with reference to facts. The author can say “it’s just obvious, look around you,” but again, that won’t get to anybody who doesn’t already agree. The book is full of references to philosophers and theorists from the social sciences, but doesn’t seem grounded in any kind of empiricism whatsoever. (I guess my demand for evidentiary support for claims is probably just my internalized capitalist-logic, huh? Such a bougie ask, shame on me.) To effectively argue contemporary capitalism looks a lot like feudalism, it’d be necessary at minimum to have a comparison of conditions. There would need to be thorough - or at least partial, jfc - analyses of feudalism and capitalism. This isn’t in the book. There’s not even a clear presentation of stimulative definitions of terms (i.e. “by ‘feudalism’ I mean the socioeconomic system in which xyz…”).

As for the supporting material that IS used, I can’t say with certainty the book exclusively cites theoretical texts because there isn’t a bibliography, and I’ve sunk enough time on it without searching every page. However, it’s at the very least dominated by such material, rather than citing any historians, nor even referencing mundane events in the world. This is true up to where I stopped on p.50, plus throughout the perhaps two dozen other pages I flipped through haphazardly while searching in vain for where the book might’ve become more grounded. It’s great to be informed by theory. Depending on what arguments are being made, it’s not even necessarily bad to focus exclusively on theory. This is common enough for purely philosophical texts, but for this subject matter (which is supposedly history and economics) it makes no sense. There’s reference to economic theory but no discussion of real economic conditions, nor analyses of the history, politics, and laws of capitalism and feudalism, even in passing reference.

Again, as to “who is this for”… right at the beginning (on p.5), the author claims “this revolutionary text is a high-tech floodlight, super-magnified and lit on behalf of the real peasant-workers.” (I’m going to refrain from commenting further about the ego inflation apparent here, but come on.) One would think a book for the proletariat or “real peasant-workers” would exhibit certain features like brevity, given the vast majority of workers have, ya know, things to do (since their lack of control over the distribution of the surplus value produced by their labor results in a rather scant amount of leisure time). Instead of being succinct, the book is repetitive to the point of exhaustion. This sometimes ALMOST appears helpful (i.e. when one of the 10+ tries to say the same thing ends up decipherable). However, an overall lack of clarity in thought is best managed with a thorough editing process, not by throwing out every possible formulation of every thought you have and hoping something sticks.

In a book meant for the proletariat, one might also expect some kind of stylistic relatability rather than, say, a comical overabundance of footnotes apparently exceeding the length of the text, and the haphazard use of so many hyphens one might think the author believes “great ideas” are readily produced by physically synthesizing as many signifiers in a row as possible. (I think people who love reading continental philosophy - myself included - do so IN SPITE OF the weird linguistic mashups, not because of it.) This issue isn’t just some bourgeois stylistic prudishness, it’s about accessibility. If you think the norms of writing are rigidly authoritarian, you’re welcome to play around with them. But if your “revolutionary” changes hinder the reader instead of enhancing their experience, why bother? (It’s not impossible to do that effectively. One example that comes to mind is Plascensia’s The People of Paper.)

As to the theoretical points this book attempts to make: the author does something incomprehensible to me (though I’ve seen it elsewhere in Marxist and left anarchist texts), which is to refer to capitalist realism, where capitalism is this hegemonic force that imprisons workers so effectively they can’t even conceive of an alternative…but then in the next paragraph calls capitalism a house of cards bound to blow over at the slightest shift. In 2.f the author claims all apparent decisions made under capitalism are predetermined by the capitalist class. This extreme is obviously untrue, or at the very least the author doesn’t believe it themself. (Right? Otherwise why would they be allowed to write what they claim is such a subversive text?) Capitalism isn’t literally hell, it’s just a problematic economic system.

While depression and anxiety can be exacerbated by capitalist conditions, neither are necessary results of capitalism for all people. The economic mode just doesn’t give workers a proportionate share of the total wealth created by social production processes. (It also tends to fail to account for non-economic values, an ideological aspect so widely internalized many leftists seem to want to just have more commodities rather than an actual social shift in consciousness where people might start valuing things like the survival of the planet and ethical treatment of all people over ever-increasing productivity that’s simply funneled into boosting the wealth of the capitalists.) The claim on the other extreme - that capitalism is a house of cards - is reminiscent of the parts of Marx when he seems to think himself clairvoyant. Is a revolution really immanent and inevitable? Is capitalism really on the brink of collapse? You sold me this book on Amazon. I find it easy to imagine capitalism continuing on unabated until the planet becomes uninhabitable. That could also technically count as the end of capitalism (given no humans means no economy) and the rise of anarchism (given no humans means no government) but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing anyone’s hoping for.

Of course, the author can dismiss my critiques easily. Immediately (again on p.5), the author utilizes the binary thinking more traditional for a Marxist than an anarchist, saying anyone not prepared to stage a violent revolution is an enemy and will have to be killed. This is someone who hasn’t taken the arguments of anarcho-pacifism seriously. It isn’t just the ethical position that it’s generally wrong to do murder—although that’s also, hopefully, obvious to most people. One can argue that violence isn’t tactically pragmatic for anarchist goals, because the average person’s response to an increase in violence (or to an increase in its visibility, including mainstream journalists’ over-reporting of violent crime) is still to demand more policing. This is why political violence is such a useful tactic for authoritarians. When there’s blood in the streets, people flock to those promising them safety, even if the people making the promise are the same ones who spilled the blood in the first place. Anarchists may think of the state as, at bottom, an organization that legally sanctions violence, but unless or until they’re convinced of this alternative vision, non-anarchists will likely continue to be blinded to state violence and beg for state protection from all other violence. And again, I don’t think this book can provide people that new lens—which sucks, because it’s needed.

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