The techfare state: debt, discipline, and accelerated neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

In this exploratory article, we aim to open a research agenda for renewed attention to the relationship between the capitalist state and the technology ecosystem. Over the last decade, private technology companies have increasingly become enmeshed with the activities of the state in arenas such as policing, healthcare, and welfare administration. At a time when so many facets of state activity are being infiltrated by technology firms and their products, we ask how we should theorise the relationship between the capitalist state and technology capital? This paper develops one approach to answer this question by aligning the priorities of tech capital with those of the neoliberal state namely, through the disciplining and managing of the relative surplus population. In this arena, we argue, a form of techfare has begun to take shape: a technology-assisted extension and intensification of the disciplinary logics that work to lock the relative surplus population into exploitative market relations and punitive institutions in advanced capitalist countries like the United States. We explore techfare and the disciplining of labour through two avenues: the business of consumer finance vis-à-vis debt and credit instruments, and various forms of tech-enabled strategies of law-enforcement.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• state regulation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Susanne Soederberg and Marcus Taylor for their initial feedback on this draft at the height of the pandemic. Special thanks to Ilias Alami and the team at Developing Economics for allowing us to publish our initial thoughts on this topic in their blog. We also thank Andrea Pollio for generous feedback and guidance on how to proceed with revisions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).