The Gig Economy & Neo-Feudalism

Platforms as the New Customary Lords

The gig economy is not innovation; it is a high-tech return to a form of customary rule, where platform corporations act as the new feudal lords. Mamdani’s concept of decentralized despotism finds a perfect analogue in the algorithmic management of workers. These apps create a “native” labor force with no rights, no benefits, and no legal protections, governed by the arbitrary and unaccountable custom of the platform’s terms of service. The rider or driver is not a citizen of the labor market but a subject of the algorithm. A Marxist analysis sees this as the ultimate flexibilization and hyper-exploitation of labor. A feminist perspective highlights the isolation and vulnerability of gig workers. The solution is not to beg for slightly better terms from these digital lords, but to build worker-owned platform cooperatives and fight for the reclassification of gig workers as employees with full rights, dismantling this new feudal structure.