Abstract
Aitor Jiménez’s The Crimes of Digital Capitalism is a timely reminder that techno-futurism is not only a fallacy, but also a cover-up for the extensive damage caused by powerful technology corporations. In his book, Jiménez argues passionately and convincingly that such damage overwhelmingly impacts already vulnerable communities, who lack the legal and social capital to hold powerful corporations to account. His critical approach, using a solid foundation of research and in-depth case studies, highlights these situations and voices – from exploited gig economy workers to members of indigenous communities being displaced by increasing resource extraction.
Though the research is grounded in the methodologies of criminology, sociology and critical legal studies, the research and impacts are useful to a range of disciplines, including media studies. Throughout the book, Jiménez demonstrates how digital capitalism is essentially a newer, faster and cheaper version of industrial capitalism. What makes digital capitalism so much more damaging is that it’s becoming more ubiquitous and entrenched, even in systems that were once beyond the realm of the free market.
The chapters in the book cover a series of case studies focused on different sectors and industries, each one building on the central argument that society’s increasing dependence on digital capitalism is undermining the rights and well-being of workers, citizens and humans in general.
In Chapter 1, the book demonstrates this using two recent AI-based scandals – the social benefits scandal in the Netherlands and the ‘Robodebt’ scandal in Australia. Though these scandals were viewed as technical aberrations by negligent administrations, Jiménez demonstrates that the automated decision-making systems worked precisely as intended – by oppressing the rights of racialized and socio-economically disadvantaged communities. He links such modern and technologically-enhanced forms of state racism back to the prison industrial complex, the surveillance state and nationalism. Though at times this chapter reads like a grocery list of existing research, the argument that such scandals are considered acceptable collateral damage in the shift towards a more digital society is convincingly made.
Education represents another sector that was once considered the realm of the public sector and is now increasingly becoming dependent on the systems and technologies of digital capitalism. Chapter 2 covers how educational leadership, from primary through tertiary schools, have kowtowed to tech corporations by giving them unfettered access to student and staff data in exchange for ‘free’ equipment and software. Jiménez draws a throughline between industrialization, the neoliberal shift to privatization in education and this modern digital takeover of a public good.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence in the book is presented in Jiménez’s auto-ethnographic exploration of his experience as a gig economy educator. The fragmentation of educational labour he describes – being paid piecemeal for each marked assessment or online lecture delivered – demonstrates how digital platforms guarantee an asymmetry of information between the capitalist software owner and the isolated gig economy workers. This form of industrial managerialism serves to entrench reliance on education technology platforms at the same time as it undermines job security in academia.
The book shifts from focusing on the private sector to analyse crimes of the state in relation to surveillance and violence against foreign and domestic racialized communities in Chapter 3. With a particular focus on the US and Israeli militaries – and the tech corporations that enable their state violence – Jiménez explores the range of technology that is used to determine who is considered a threat, how to find them and, chillingly, how much collateral damage will result from their elimination.
Jiménez’s legal prowess is on display here, as he introduces various laws and guidelines aimed at regulating warfare. He demonstrates that such guidelines are ineffective, often due to being out of touch with the reality of modern cyberwarfare and, ultimately, up to interpretation by the offending states themselves.
This chapter is perhaps the most eye-opening because, unlike the chapters on gig economy workers and education, it’s likely beyond the awareness of most readers. Jiménez shows how cyberwarfare technologies and digital borders overwhelmingly target migrants, refugees and other racialized individuals and how state surveillance supports state violence in a war of information control. However, the chapter makes clear that the everyday data used to feed and train these systems has implications for everyone.
Chapter 4 delves into perhaps the most ubiquitous and well-known facet of corrupt digital capitalism: the exploitation of ‘gig economy’ service workers. Grounded in Marxist critiques of capitalism, Jiménez dismantles the argument that such workers are ‘independent contractors’ who own their own means of production. Instead, the chapter explores the asymmetry of information built into tech platforms that allows corporations to surveil, control and discipline workers. Their position of power, of course, is not coupled with the responsibilities required by traditional waged labour employers, such as sick leave, insurance or health care. This exacerbates the inequality experienced by the vulnerable individuals, such as migrants, that make up the majority of gig economy workers.
This serves as a timely reminder, in our age of continually-advancing AI, that workers are considered burdensome to capitalists, who would rather do away with them entirely in favour of wholly controllable technology. Yet Jiménez optimistically ends the chapter by focusing on the unions, cooperatives and laws that are fighting back against this exploitation.
Chapter 5, focused on the extractive mining industries that our digital world depends on, is essential reading for anyone who owns a smartphone. Jiménez argues that ‘the critical infrastructures of the “powerful” depend on the permanent plundering of the oppressed’ (158), and describes the ecocide and oppression involved at each stage of the production and distribution of everyday technologies. Such processes not only desecrate the natural environment, but also perpetuate injustices against some of the most impoverished and marginalized communities through the dispossession of Indigenous land. He problematizes the idea of everyday infrastructure as ‘neutral’, and connects this innocuous discourse to historical imperialist and colonialist justifications for land-grabbing and resource extraction.
What sets apart Jiménez’s argument is his condemnation of the hypocrisy of Global North nations and supranational organizations pushing for a digital ‘green revolution’ that is dependent on a handful of capitalist mining corporations, unquestioned beliefs about infinite growth and blatant ecocide.
Chapter 6 continues Jiménez’s focus on resource extraction by interrogating the role of the criminal justice system, and even criminology as a discipline, in justifying and reaffirming imperialism, colonialism and ecocide. At the same time as he explains how there are no criminal-legal instruments aimed at protecting the planet, he does point to alternative approaches – namely, the acknowledgement of the rights of nature, independent of human intervention, that is common knowledge among Indigenous peoples worldwide. Jiménez points out that this idea is often seen as being radical, although such rights are unquestionably granted to corporations.
Counterintuitively for a book grounded in criminology, Jiménez demonstrates throughout that punitive measures against offending corporations (if they happen) are wholly ineffective. If anything, penalties such as fines only aim to mollify critics and reinforce the repressive power of the state.
Each of these chapters could be a book in their own right, but it’s compelling to see, in a single volume, the widespread damage caused by our current digital capitalist society.
This book is an essential read at this moment as society continues to become more dependent on an increasingly smaller number of tech corporations, and as private and public entities look to generative AI for a cheaper and faster workforce. As Jiménez argues, entities that only have responsibilities to shareholders are incompatible with democratic, rights-based institutions.