By JOSÉ MICAELSON LACERDA MORAIS*

Commentary on Shoshana Zuboff's book.

Contemporary metrics of capital accumulation

Contemporary capitalism has undergone significant transformations in its capital accumulation metrics over the past few decades, especially from the last third of the 20th century to the first decades of the 20th century. In this context, two forms of composition/pace of expanded accumulation stand out for their historical relevance and for introducing unprecedented developments in the development of the capitalist system. Thus, it is conventional to characterize the first period as capitalism with financial dominance (or financialized capitalism), while the second as surveillance capitalism.

Financialized capitalism became more evident from the 1970s onwards, when the crisis of the Fordist-Keynesian model paved the way for the growing centrality of financial markets. François Chesnais (1996) points out that this process intensified with the advancement of financial intermediation and the consolidation of fictitious capital as the structuring axis of the global economy. In turn, Duménil and Lévy (2004) point out that financialization developed strongly in the 1980s and 1990s, driven by neoliberal policies, financial deregulation and globalization.

David Harvey (2005) also addresses this transformation by relating it to neoliberalism and the incessant search for capital appreciation, which he studies through the concept of spatial adjustment (strategies that capital employs to overcome its crises of overaccumulation by shifting or reorganizing economic and geographic space in order to allow new opportunities for appreciation – such as the global reconfiguration of financial markets).

Thus, financialization goes beyond financial markets and comes to represent “[…] a pattern of accumulation in which profits are obtained primarily through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production. Here, financial refers to activities related to the provision (or transfer) of liquid capital in the expectation of future interest, dividends or capital gains” (Krippner, 2005, p. 174-175).

Thus, the main companies of capitalism began to prioritize strategies such as share buybacks and asset securitization, reconfiguring productive investments and increasing short-term financial returns, consequently altering the set of global economic relations by subordinating various activities to financial logic. This logic is not limited to the banking sector, but permeates different spheres of the economy, from asset securitization to the transformation of essential goods (such as housing and pensions) into investment instruments.

Following this same line of reasoning, Duménil and Lévy (2011) argue that financialization is not limited to a mere transition from productive capital to speculation, but represents a structural change that redefines the relations between capitalists, workers and financial institutions, establishing new dynamics under its own logic. The authors highlight that the neoliberal era “[…] led to the construction of a vast and cumbersome global financial structure, notably in the United States, but also in the rest of the world […]” (Duménil & Lévy, 2011, p. 6). This process allowed financial capital to strategically reposition itself in the most advantageous sectors and regions on a global scale.

An incisive critique of the impact of financialization on contemporary society, highlighting how the logic and values ​​of the financial sector have deeply infiltrated social, individual and state life, can be found in Lapavitsas (2009). For the author, financialization goes beyond the functioning of markets, transforming ethical and moral norms and even people's mentalities. An example of this is the concept of risk, which, previously restricted to the financial universe, has been appropriated as a rhetorical tool to justify speculative practices and legitimize market volatility.

On the global stage, Lapavitsas argues that finance continues to set the terms of the game and, as a consequence, subordinate the State and democracy itself to the interests of financial capital. This criticism converges with the analysis of David Harvey (2005), who points to neoliberalism as a driver of the privatization and commodification of fundamental aspects of life, driving recurring cycles of financial crises and economic instability.

In short, the essence of financialization, as explained by François Chesnais (1996), lies in its ability to transform any asset – productive or not – into a vehicle for generating financial value. This process occurs through mechanisms such as securitization, in which future revenue streams are converted into tradable assets on financial markets. In this way, activities that were previously peripheral to the logic of finance become subordinated to financial capital, expanding its dominance over the global economy. The most emblematic example of this phenomenon to date has been recorded in the real estate market.

Initially focused on construction and housing, this sector became central to financialization with the proliferation of securitized mortgages and real estate investment funds. This movement culminated in the 2008 financial crisis, the magnitude of which was comparable to the Great Depression of the XNUMXth century, when financial assets built on expectations of appreciation collapsed, triggering a systemic crisis of global scope.

However, it is important to make it clear that the financialization of capitalism should not be seen as a distinct phase that emerged only at the end of the 19th century and was consolidated at the end of the 20th century, but rather as an inherent development of the logic of capital itself. What occurred during this period was the intensification of this process, driven by new technologies that allowed real-time financial operations and the creation of increasingly complex and speculative instruments. Marx had already identified this trend when he demonstrated how, as capitalism developed, capital progressively became autonomous from the production process, especially with the rise of interest-bearing capital.

This phenomenon shows that capital no longer needs to be directly linked to material production in order to appreciate; on the contrary, it can reproduce itself autonomously, through speculation and financial dynamics. He observed that with the expansion of the credit system, a class of purely monetary capitalists is formed, whose involvement with the production process is indirect or non-existent. This phenomenon reflects a fundamental shift in the dynamics of capital accumulation, where money begins to appreciate in a manner apparently independent of the production process, intensifying the financialization of the economy.

And, more importantly, it develops the “antagonism between the social character of private wealth” in “a new form”, as Marx himself explains in chapter 27 of book III of “Capital”, in which he analyzes “The role of credit in capitalist production”.

Another interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that Marx already emphasized that capital tends to make the figure of the individual capitalist superfluous: “the capitalist disappears as a superfluous character”. This happens because the system itself is organized in such a way that capitalist property can be managed by shareholders and financial institutions, without the need for an owner directly involved in production.

He describes this process as follows: “[…] joint-stock companies – which develop with the credit system – tend to increasingly separate this administrative work, as a function, from the possession of capital, whether owned or borrowed, in the same way that, with the development of bourgeois society, judicial and administrative functions are separated from land ownership, of which they were attributes in the feudal era. While, on the one hand, the active capitalist confronts the simple owner of capital, the money capitalist, and, through the development of credit, this same money capital assumes a social character, being concentrated in banks and lent by the latter, and not by its direct owners, and while, on the other hand, the simple director of a company, who does not own the capital under any title, neither as a loan nor in any other form, performs all the real functions that correspond to the active capitalist as such, the only one who remains in the production process is the employee; the capitalist disappears as a superfluous character” (Marx, 2017, p. 437).

This suggests that, in the movement of capital itself, there is a fusion between financial and productive capital, as both are now managed by financial mechanisms (banks, capital markets, corporate mergers), rather than depending on the individual actions of classical capitalists. In this way, Marx anticipates a central characteristic of contemporary capitalism, in which financialization and speculation play a dominant role, without this representing a separate “phase”, but rather a natural development of the logic of accumulation.

In 2018, Shoshana Zuboff, an American sociologist, psychologist and economist known for her analyses of technology, the digital economy and the impact of large technology corporations on society, published the book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Struggle for a Human Future on the New Frontier of Power”. Published in Brazil in 2020, it introduces the concept of “surveillance capitalism” to describe the new configuration of capitalism in the XNUMXst century – the central theme of this review.

Since the 2000s, the rise of large digital platforms has inaugurated this new paradigm of accumulation, which breaks with traditional models by establishing an economy based on the extraction, processing, and commercialization of behavioral data to predict and influence future actions. It is important to emphasize that surveillance capitalism is not technology, nor is it an “accident of fanatical technologists,” as the aforementioned author rightly emphasizes: first and foremost, it “[…] is a logic that permeates technology and directs it toward action […] it is a form of market that is unimaginable outside the digital environment, but it is not the same thing as “digital” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 26). Ultimately, it is a type of “[…] nefarious capitalism that has learned to cunningly exploit its historical conditions to ensure and defend its success” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 29).

Before analyzing his work directly, however, it is essential to situate, albeit briefly, the transition and overlap between these different forms of capital accumulation, highlighting how their metrics differ and, at the same time, complement each other. Although it shares with financialized capitalism the incessant search for capital accumulation, its dynamics are distinct in several aspects. First, the origin of value differs between the two models.

While financialized capitalism is based on speculation and asset appreciation, surveillance capitalism extracts value from the massive collection of personal data, that is, it is sustained by the appropriation of human experience itself. Digital platforms thus transform everyday interactions into commodities, shifting the logic of accumulation to the field of subjectivity. Second, technologies play different roles: in financialized capitalism, they serve to optimize transactions and market strategies; in surveillance capitalism, they are the very basis of accumulation, enabling the continuous capture and analysis of human experience.

The social and political impacts also differ. Financialized capitalism generates economic instability through cyclical crises and increased inequalities, while surveillance capitalism undermines privacy and individual autonomy, consolidating mechanisms of social control. Furthermore, regulation also follows different paths: since the 2008 crisis, the financial sector has been the target of regulations, while surveillance capitalism operates in a largely unregulated environment, with resistance to data protection measures and digital rights.

Ultimately, unlike industrial and financialized capitalism, surveillance capitalism claims “[…] the material of human nature for the making of a new commodity. Now it is human nature that is scraped, torn out, and taken for the market project of a new century. It is offensive to suppose that this damage can be reduced to the obvious fact that users receive no payment for the raw material they provide” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 121).

Given this historical evolution, one might question whether contemporary capitalism is not configured as a hybrid model, in which financialization and digital control converge to create new forms of domination and exploitation. This fusion transforms not only economic dynamics, but also power structures, intensifying asymmetries and consolidating mechanisms of social and political control.

The simultaneous advance of financial logic and digital surveillance suggests that we are not simply facing a succession of accumulation regimes, but a deep intertwining of the two, in which value extraction occurs both through financial markets and through the intensive use of behavioral data. This emerging model redefines the foundations of the global economy and poses unprecedented challenges to democracy, regulation, and individual rights. It could therefore be better termed a digital-financial-surveillance capitalism.

The rise of surveillance capitalism, behavioral surplus, and digital totalitarianism

The rise of a new economic model based on the massive collection and use of personal data emerged under the promise that the digital age would provide a space for belonging and individual autonomy. However, as Zuboff (2020) explains, this promise was gradually replaced by a system centered on the extraction and commercialization of behavioral data, alienating individuals from control over their own information.

What seemed to be a new digital home has turned out to be a territory of exile, in which users have been reduced to sources of raw material for a new paradigm of capital accumulation. This exile reflects not only the loss of sovereignty over the digital experience, but also the consolidation of an economic logic that transforms personal data into a strategic resource, exploited asymmetrically by large technology corporations. The truth is that “[…] digital reality is taking over and redefining everything that is familiar, even before we have had a chance to consider and decide on the situation […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 14).

Zuboff’s contribution to the field of social and economic studies became even more notable with the publication of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” Her work integrates aspects of sociology, political economy, philosophy, and psychology, offering a comprehensive and multidimensional perspective. However, perhaps the main theoretical contribution of the book is not the characterization of “surveillance capitalism” itself, but the formulation of the concept of behavioral surplus: the foundation of this new metric of capital accumulation. While the concept of surveillance capitalism describes a new stage of capitalist accumulation based on data extraction, it is the notion of behavioral surplus that reveals the mechanism by which this system operates and expands.

Zuboff (2020) defines behavioral surplus as the portion of user-generated data (“our voices, personalities, and emotions”) that exceeds what is necessary to improve digital services and that, instead of being discarded or protected, is appropriated by platforms to be processed, transformed into predictions about future behavior, and subsequently commercialized. As she highlights: “[…] behavioral surplus was institutionalized as the cornerstone of a new type of commerce that depended on surveillance online on a scale. Employees of the Google referred to the company’s new behavioral prediction science as the ‘physics of clicks’” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 109).

This concept is central because it exposes how data extraction is not a simple byproduct of the digital economy, but rather its primary engine of accumulation. Unlike the industrial economy, in which raw materials were extracted from nature and transformed into consumer goods, in surveillance capitalism, the raw material is human experience itself, collected without consent and refined through algorithms to generate highly profitable predictions: “[…] Here the grand pattern is one of subordination and hierarchy, in which older reciprocities between the company and users are subordinated to the derivative project of having our behavioral surplus captured for the gain of others. We are no longer the subjects of value realization. Nor are we, as some insist, the ‘product’ of Google’s sales. Instead, we are the objects from which the raw materials are extracted and expropriated for Google’s prediction factories. Predictions about our behavior are Google’s products, and they are sold to the company’s true customers, but not to us. We are the means to others’ ends” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 99).

The operationalization of behavioral surplus, that is, the transformation of experience into data, is carried out through rendering operations (renditions): “[…] concrete operational practices through which dispossession is accomplished, with human experience being claimed as raw material for datafication and everything that follows, from manufacturing to sales […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 283). This mechanism goes beyond simple data collection and establishes a new economic logic based on the modeling and manipulation of human experience for the purposes of capital accumulation. It ultimately represents “[…] the concrete operationalization of the ‘original sin of simple theft’ that has defined the market project from the beginning. Google has rendered the Earth, its streets and dwellings, overriding our consent and defying our protests. Facebook has rendered the social network and its limitless details for the sake of the company’s behavioral future markets […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 291).

The last frontier of this operationalization is the rendering of the body, one of the most extreme developments of surveillance capitalism, consolidating a model of accumulation based not only on the capture of behavior, but on the appropriation of the very materiality of the human being, by transforming its own physiology into an economic asset.

Thus, the importance of the concept of behavioral surplus overrides the term surveillance capitalism itself because it allows us to understand the new relations of exploitation that define this model. Surveillance capitalism could be mistakenly interpreted as an extension of digital capitalism or an advanced phase of informational capitalism, but the notion of behavioral surplus clarifies that the innovation of this system lies in the conversion of human subjectivity into a commodity.

Another fundamental aspect of this concept is its autonomy in relation to the user, as highlighted in the previous quote. Unlike traditional models, in which consumers knowingly provide data in exchange for services, it is extracted without transparency and often without the user's knowledge. For example, “[…] Google's behavioral surplus stores now encompass everything that is part of the online environment: searches, emails, texts, photos, songs, messages, videos, locations, communication patterns, attitudes, preferences, interests, faces, emotions, illnesses, social networks, purchases, and so on […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 162).

This extraction occurs through various strategies, such as passive data collection through digital games, persistent surveillance through connected devices, and the use of artificial intelligence to predict behaviors before individuals themselves are even fully aware of their intentions. This logic breaks with the traditional idea of ​​exchange in capitalism and establishes an asymmetric model in which digital platforms become not only intermediaries, but sovereign entities in the production and control of information.

An emblematic example of this logic is the game Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic, a company with strong ties to Google. At first glance, the game seems like just a cultural phenomenon based on augmented reality technology, in which players explore the real world to capture virtual creatures. However, as Zuboff (2020) demonstrates, the real goal of the Niantic was not just about providing a fun experience, but about creating a sophisticated behavioral modification engine for commercial purposes.

In the traditional digital advertising model, companies pay to display ads and hope consumers respond to them. In the Pokémon GO, the relationship is reversed: players are subtly led to certain physical locations – such as shops, cafes and restaurants – through the game mechanics, without realizing that their movement is being directed by commercial interests and not just by the natural of the game. As the aforementioned author highlights, “[…] Niantic’s unparalleled achievement was to transform the gamification in a way of guaranteeing results for their true customers: the companies that participate in markets of future behaviors created and sheltered by the game” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 381).

This monetization model is based on an operant conditioning mechanism, in which players are rewarded for following certain behavior patterns – such as visiting sponsored locations – without knowing that they are participating in a behavioral modulation experiment.

Thus, the Pokémon GO exemplifies how surveillance capitalism transcends mere data collection to become an active system of behavioral control, in which the boundaries between the digital and the physical are dissolved. This represents a new level of appropriation of behavioral surplus, as the logic of extraction is no longer limited to space online, but expands to the reconfiguration of urban mobility and the experience of public space itself. In this way, it confirms Zuboff's (2020) central thesis: economic value is not only in the analysis of what individuals have done in the past, but in the ability to predict and shape their future actions and redefine through this means the relationship between market, technology and social control.

The concept of behavioral surplus also has profound implications for politics and society. If, broadly speaking, in industrial capitalism the central conflict was between capital and labor, and in financialized capitalism between speculation and production, in surveillance capitalism the dispute occurs in the field of control over human behavior and the predictability of social life.

This model not only transforms individuals into exploitable resources, but also expands mechanisms of behavioral modulation and intervention, leading societies into an era of digital totalitarianism: a new type of domination, which can be understood as a system in which power is not imposed through explicit coercion, but through invisible manipulation and the transformation of human experience into merchandise.

It is based on three main pillars: (i) the mass collection of data and the creation of behavioral profiles, (ii) the algorithmic manipulation and modulation of behavior, and (iii) the normalization of surveillance and the absence of regulatory transparency. From this perspective, “[…] surveillance capitalism and the instrumental power it has rapidly accumulated exceed the historical norms of capitalist ambitions, claiming a dominion over human, social, and political territories that goes far beyond the conventional institutional terrain of private enterprise or the market […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 33).

The ability of digital platforms to influence electoral preferences and shape public discourses became evident in the scandal of Cambridge Analytica. The case revealed how personal data of millions of users of Facebook were collected without explicit consent and used for “[…] personality-based ‘microbehavioral targeting’ to support the “Leavenworth” [Leave], when it comes to voting for Brexit, in 2016, and Donald Trump in the American presidential election […]” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 335).

The scheme involved extracting behavioral information from users through a quizzes psychological, which initially seemed harmless. However, the structure of the Facebook allowed the app to not only collect data from direct participants, but also access information from their friends on the platform. Cambridge Analytica used this data to create detailed psychographic profiles of voters, enabling highly effective microtargeting campaigns tailored to influence emotions, beliefs, and political decisions.

The capture of digital spaces by these platforms reinforces an opaque governance model, where private companies exert influence over fundamental political processes. As Zuboff (2020) warns, this dynamic inaugurates a new era of digital totalitarianism, in which behavioral data flows are used to consolidate power and restrict individual autonomy. If, in the past, politics was mediated mainly by parties, ideologies and public debates, it is now subject to invisible dynamics of behavioral modulation promoted by algorithms and big data.

This model of informational control generates a structural imbalance of power, in which citizens lose autonomy and sovereignty over their own data, while corporations and governments begin to exercise predictive power over society. The normalization of surveillance increases the passive acceptance of data extraction, making individuals increasingly vulnerable to algorithmic manipulation. This asymmetry of knowledge, characteristic of surveillance capitalism, subordinates contemporary democracies to a new logic of governance, where power is no longer centralized in the State, but in private platforms that operate without effective regulation.

Therefore, digital totalitarianism represents a mutation of power in the information age, consolidating a model of domination based on systematic surveillance, predictive manipulation, and the exploitation of human subjectivity. By transforming behavioral data into a commodity and structuring a new architecture of social control, surveillance capitalism not only redefines market dynamics but also poses unprecedented challenges to democracy, privacy, and fundamental rights. In other words, “[…] until now, it is the asymmetric power of surveillance capital, free from laws, that decides who decides” (Zuboff, 2020, p. 394).

In this context, China represents a paradigmatic example of how surveillance capitalism can intertwine with the unique Chinese political regime to create an unprecedented system of social control. In that country, the state plays a central role in digital surveillance, integrating data collection and processing mechanisms into a political structure geared towards social control.

Zuboff (2020) highlights the Social Credit System, a government initiative that collects and processes data on citizens' behavior, assigning them scores that determine everything from access to loans to the possibility of traveling or obtaining certain jobs. This system, driven by advanced artificial intelligence technologies and big data, represents the maximum expression of informational power, where surveillance not only anticipates behaviors, but actively shapes them, rewarding desired behaviors and punishing deviations with restrictions and sanctions.

In short, more than the term surveillance capitalism, it is the concept of behavioral surplus that offers the key to understanding the essence of this new economic system. It reveals not only how data is collected, but why it is appropriated and what the consequences of this appropriation are for the structure of contemporary capitalism. Without this notion, the critique of surveillance capitalism could be limited to a discussion about privacy, when in fact what is at stake is a structural transformation of the relationship between capital, subjectivity and power.

Capital and the Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Continuing Exploitation in Digital-Financial-Surveillance Capitalism

The transformations of capitalism throughout the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries demonstrate its capacity for adaptation and expansion over new economic and technological frontiers. Karl Marx, in his magnum opus The capital, published in 1867, analyzed industrial capitalism, its logic of accumulation, and its inherent contradictions. He argues that capitalism is based on the exploitation of social labor for the extraction of surplus value, that is, the surplus value generated by workers beyond what they receive as wages. This surplus is appropriated by capitalists and converted into profit in the sphere of circulation.

In surveillance capitalism, Zuboff (2020) introduces the concept of behavioral surplus, as previously discussed. Thus, like surplus value, this surplus is transformed into profit through the prediction and modification of behaviors. The analogy between surplus value and behavioral surplus reveals a continuity in capitalist logic: in both cases, exploitation occurs without fair compensation for those who generate the value. However, while surplus value results from the exploitation of labor, behavioral surplus is extracted from the daily lives of individuals, often imperceptibly.

Another fundamental theme in Marx's work is alienation, which is essential to understanding the logic of capitalism and its historical developments. For him, in the capitalist system, workers become strangers to their own work, as they lose control over what they produce and over their own productive activity. This alienation is not restricted to work alone, but also affects the individual's relationship with themselves and with society.

In surveillance capitalism, this logic expands into the digital domain, alienating individuals not only from productive work, but also from their own experiences, preferences, and behaviors. According to Zuboff (2020), large technology corporations instrumentalize the human experience, transforming digital interactions into commodities that feed predictive and control models.

This new form of alienation manifests itself in a profound and comprehensive way: invisible algorithms shape preferences, guide consumer decisions, influence social relations and even determine political choices without individuals having full awareness or autonomy over these processes. The result is a new regime of expropriation, in which human subjectivity itself is transformed into raw material for a market of behavioral predictions.

At the end of volume I of The capital, Marx discusses primitive accumulation as a process by which capital expands by expropriating resources and transforming them into commodities. Surveillance capitalism can be interpreted as a new phase of this process, in which human experience is expropriated and transformed into data to be commercialized. The colonization of digital space by technology corporations represents a new cycle of violent accumulation, where social relations are reconfigured to generate economic value.

Zuboff (2020) argues that this new form of accumulation is not based solely on the exploitation of labor, but on the total appropriation/expropriation of human experience. Thus, as in the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism, where common lands were enclosed and transformed into private property, the digital sphere becomes a privatized space dominated by large companies.

For Marx, the proletariat represented the central historical agent responsible for overcoming capitalism. According to him, the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system resided in the exploitation of the working class, which, despite being the producer of wealth, was expropriated of the value generated by its own labor. Proletarian emancipation, in this sense, would depend on the ability of workers to recognize their position in the structure of exploitation and, from there, organize themselves politically to “expropriate the expropriators” and establish “[…] an association of free men, who work with collective means of production and who consciously expend their individual labor forces as a single social labor force […]” (Marx, 2023, p. 153).

In surveillance capitalism, the dynamics of exploitation become more diffuse and opaque. As Zuboff (2020) argues, surplus appropriation no longer occurs solely through the extraction of surplus value in the traditional production process, but rather through the capture and commercialization of individuals’ behavioral data, often without their knowledge or consent. Thus, resistance to this new form of exploitation cannot follow the same pattern as traditional class struggle.

That said, the comparative reading of The capital, by Karl Marx, and The era of surveillance capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff, allows us to identify a structural continuity in the capitalist logic of exploitation and accumulation, even as it adapts to new technological contexts. In the 2020th century, Marx revealed how surplus value is extracted from wage labor, allowing the incessant accumulation of capital. In the XNUMXst century, Zuboff (XNUMX) presents a new vector of this dynamic: behavioral surplus, an unprecedented form of economic appropriation that transforms human experience into raw material for predicting and modulating behavior.

Thus, it can be argued that behavioral surplus represents a new form of surplus value, extracted no longer from productive labor time but from the everyday lives of individuals, captured, processed, and sold without compensation or explicit consent. This logic intensifies alienation, as individuals not only lose control over their data and privacy, but also over their own subjectivity, which is then shaped by digital platforms for commercial and political purposes.

Resistance to surveillance capitalism requires a deep understanding of its mechanisms and strategies. Without this understanding, any attempt at regulation will be insufficient to contain its systemic effects. More than implementing piecemeal regulatory measures, it is necessary to question the very structure of this model of accumulation and open space for alternatives that restore autonomy and control to individuals over their digital presence.

Only through this process will it be possible not only to mitigate the impacts of surveillance capitalism, but also to create the conditions for overcoming it as an economic paradigm and form of social organization. From this perspective, overcoming this model represents perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity in terms of its continued existence and social reproduction: the need to rethink the foundations of the global economic system. The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and tracking technologies suggests that the extraction of behavioral surplus may become even more sophisticated and deeply rooted in everyday life, expanding the scope of corporate control over information and human subjectivity.

Therefore, if there is no response proportional to the magnitude of this transformation – whether through effective regulation, the construction of technological alternatives or the restructuring of economic models –, the risk is that surveillance capitalism will consolidate itself as the hegemonic form of social organization, establishing a model of power based on the capture and absolute control of information and behavior.

Therefore, The era of surveillance capitalism establishes itself as an essential reference for understanding the contemporary digital economy. The book not only exposes the risks of the increasing privatization of information and human subjectivity, but also warns of the threats that this new regime poses to democracy, individual autonomy and fundamental rights. Thus, as The capital was crucial to understanding and criticizing industrial exploitation in the 2020th century, Zuboff's work (XNUMX) plays a similar role in the XNUMXst century, by revealing the new forms of domination that emerge in the digital age.

An addendum

Zuboff's (2020) work proposes an innovative analysis of the dynamics of the digital economy, introducing concepts such as behavioral surplus to describe the appropriation of personal data by large technology corporations. However, a fundamental criticism that can be made of his approach lies in the lack of a more in-depth analysis of labor exploitation in the context of the digital economy and how this exploitation relates to behavioral surplus.

She does not directly address the issue of the exploitation of social labor as a central element of surveillance capitalism. For Marx, the core of capitalism lies in the extraction of surplus value, that is, the appropriation of the surplus labor of the proletariat by the owners of the means of production. In contrast, Zuboff (2020) emphasizes the expropriation of human experience for the purposes of predicting and controlling behavior, without directly linking this process to the exploitation of labor.

However, this new form of accumulation does not eliminate labor exploitation, but rather transforms and complicates it. Large digital platforms depend on a vast productive infrastructure, which includes everything from technology workers to precarious tasks such as content moderation and the extraction of minerals for the manufacture of devices. The invisibility of this material base can lead to a partial understanding of contemporary capitalism.

Thus, while Marx identified the proletariat as a potentially revolutionary class capable of overcoming the contradictions of capitalism, Zuboff (2020) does not identify an equivalent historical subject in the fight against surveillance capitalism. Her proposal for resistance is based on state regulation, public opinion pressure, and digital activism, without necessarily considering a structural class conflict.

Thus, the absence of a theory of work in The era of surveillance capitalism can be seen as a theoretical limitation, as it ignores the continuity of the exploitation of labor within the new forms of capitalist accumulation. Surveillance capitalism does not replace the extraction of surplus value, but complements it, deepening the capture of value both in the productive sphere and in the sphere of everyday life.

This perspective suggests that the fight against digital capitalism cannot be restricted to regulating data collection alone, but must include a broader critique of the forms of labor exploitation that sustain this economic model.

*José Micaelson Lacerda Morais He is a professor in the Department of Economics at the Regional University of Cariri (URCA). He is the author of, among other books, The New Testament in the light of the 21st century: to think about a materialist theology (Club de Autores) [https://amzn.to/4i86Cs8]

Reference

Shoshana Zuboff. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Struggle for a Human Future on the New Frontier of Power. New York, New York Times, 2021, 800 pages.https://amzn.to/43Rn9fA]

REFERENCES

CHESNAIS, F. The globalization of capital. São Paulo: Shaman, 1996.

DUMÉNIL, G., & LÉVY, D. The crisis of neoliberalism in the history of capitalism, [sl], [sn], 2011. Available at: https://www.cepremap.fr/membres/dlevy/dle2011n.pdf

DUMENIL, G., & LÉVY, D. Resurgent capital: roots of the neoliberal revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004.

HARVEY, D. the new imperialism. Sao Paulo: Loyola Editions, 2005.

KRIPPNER, GR The financialization of the American economy. Socio-Economic Review, 3(2), 173-208, 2005. Available at: https://www.depfe.unam.mx/actividades/10/financiarizacion/i-7-KrippnerGreta.pdf

LAPAVITSAS, C. Financialized Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation. Historical Materialism (17), 2009. Available at: file:///C:/Users/micae/Downloads/Financialised_Capitalism_Crisis_and_Fina.pdf

MARX, K. Capital: critique of political economy. Book III: The Global Process of Capitalist Production. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2017.

MARX, K. Capital: critique of political economy. Book I: the capital production process. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2023.

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE