4: Back to the Future

In placing an ‘aristerometro’ to history itself, neofeudalist authors are inattentive to the collective subject. At the heart of the attempted enclosure lies the question of its conspicuous absence. It is not only that the power of the uberlords is underlined, but also that, unlike in dialectics, the neo/techno/name-it lord is not attached to its bondman counterpart. There is a feeling that there is no real collective subject to be designated, let alone to cause profound change. We, that amorphous subject not really connoted, let alone included in the debate, seem, not to matter; even worse, we are constructed as unorganised serfs. ‘We’ are a hazy mass and not parties, large enough unions or the proletariat. In other words, at the core of neofeudalist thought lies a fundamental contradiction: while it proclaims a rupture from historical modes of domination (feudalism, capitalism), it replicates their ideological manoeuvres – most notably, the dissolution of the collective subject. The applied ‘aristerometro’ does not merely measure power but actively obscures its dialectical relations. Unlike classical Marxism, which insists on the constitutive antagonism between lords and bondsmen, it presents power as unilateral, detached from its subordinate counterpart. The ‘uberlord’ (whether framed as technocratic elite, G.A.F.A.M. or algorithmic governance) operates without a necessary opposition – the proletariat, the organised masses or even a class-for-itself. We are seen as not particularly powerful to deal with the future, to deal with the revolution and G.A.F.A.M. – or the exact opposite: to deal with instability, to assert force, to reassure the economy, rationality and science.