Surveillance Capitalism, Polanyi, and Marx: A Critical Essay

Introduction: Surveillance Capitalism and Its Theoretical Stakes

In today's digital age, self-optimization is seemingly reflected in the increased collection of data about individual behavior patterns. Making predictions about future movements for the purpose of generating profit is accomplished through what scholars call surveillance capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff has thoroughly examined this concept in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. This essay provides an argumentative analysis of two selected chapters from that book, read through the lens of Polanyi's claims about fictitious commodities and Marx's commodity-exchange theory. The argument is structured so that points of convergence and divergence between the chapters' discussion and these classical theoretical frameworks can be clearly identified. In each chapter, the author attempts to explain the central concepts and their broader implications.

In the two chosen chapters — Chapters 1 and 2 — Zuboff's central claim is that surveillance capitalism has been covertly monitoring our lives and successfully modifying consumer buying behaviors. Chapter 1 focuses primarily on how surveillance capitalists scrutinize online users' likes and dislikes through each click, enabling them to offer products that cater to consumer needs in better or even unexpected ways. Chapter 2 elaborates on this claim using prominent examples from major technology companies.

Key Themes in Zuboff's First Two Chapters

Several major themes run through both chapters. The first, which Zuboff examines in detail, is that the surveillance of human behavior for profit-making poses serious threats to privacy and to the control individuals have over their own personal knowledge. The leading argument she presents concerns the automation of data and, ultimately, of human choices. Various online platforms, she notes, have continuously gathered information about what humans like, what they click on, what they buy, what time of day a purchase is made, and what reviews companies receive afterward. This flow of information has in turn automated aspects of human behavior and enabled behavioral modification (Zuboff, 2019, p. 14). The resulting knowledge has been shaped into a form of power that companies, brands, and even governments deploy for their own benefit — often without users' awareness.

A second theme is that digital connectivity has made it significantly easier for surveillance capitalists to feed on consumer data (Zuboff, 2019, p. 15). Google was among the first to pursue this approach, monitoring users' keyword searches. Companies such as General Motors, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have since followed the same path. Even the rise of smart home devices — which ask users to accept privacy policies and terms of use upon connection — represents a form of privacy invasion, linking users to unnamed personnel and various third parties. Although the research and development activities enabled by this data collection are used in future product marketing, the parasitic and covert nature of the surveillance involved resembles that of a natural predator.

Zuboff also argues that consumers themselves permit and pay for this corporate dominance by agreeing to terms that enable surveillance (Zuboff, 2019, p. 15). She describes this as the "Faustian effect," in which individuals treat internet access as an indispensable necessity and regard privacy breaches as inevitable. While digital technology ostensibly aims to improve living standards, doing so at the cost of human privacy is, the author suggests, deeply problematic. Knowledge has effectively been converted into a commodity by industry leaders, and consumers have largely acquiesced to what is a primarily illegitimate bargain.

The theme of the "unprecedented" also emerges prominently. Zuboff argues that although the accumulation of knowledge and information by surveillance capitalists appears smooth and reliable, unexpected incidents could shatter this illusion at any moment (Zuboff, 2019, p. 17). The risks and uncertainties inherent in surveillance capitalism are difficult to identify and predict in advance, and the drive for economic advantage has produced monopolistic tendencies. New applications and their updates appear in the market daily, and keeping pace with them poses ongoing challenges for these capitalists. It is plausible that surveillance capitalists may eventually be unable to manage malfunctions in handling the enormous quantities of personal data they collect. As a result, the logic of their own system may turn against them, requiring a fundamental rethinking of their methods, power structures, and ethical frameworks.

Zuboff also traces the historical origins of surveillance capitalism to understand how it began. A central theme is the provision of individualized products tailored to different tastes, achieved by predicting and shaping consumer behavior. She uses Apple as a pivotal example: on August 9, 2011, Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes, revolutionizing the digital music industry and inverting the traditional consumer music experience (Zuboff, 2019, p. 26). These innovations generated massive profits while simultaneously legitimizing Apple's practice of researching what consumers wanted — what music they listened to, which songs they downloaded — as a form of individualized consumption that met a latent demand for "convenience."

Alongside Apple, Zuboff discusses Henry Ford's model of mass production — producing high volumes of a standardized product at low unit cost (Zuboff, 2019, p. 28). Apple exemplified a hybrid of these approaches: the iPod was a standardized, mass-produced device, yet it was personalized through each user's unique downloaded content. No two iPods were alike in their music libraries, mirroring their owners' individual tastes. Apple thus profited from mass production efficiencies while simultaneously influencing and monetizing individualized consumer behavior.

Zuboff also contends that the second half of the twentieth century ushered in a "second modernity" characterized by individualism across industries including healthcare, education, and democratic governance (Zuboff, 2019, p. 31). Consumers became more discerning, civil society strengthened, and personal identity and social norms became central to purchasing decisions. This contrasted with the "first modernity," in which consumers were offered predictable, standardized rewards that were ultimately short-lived.

The discussion then shifts to the unequal distribution of income between social segments, which contributed to the British riots that erupted on August 9, 2011 (Zuboff, 2019, p. 35). British study respondents described struggling to access education and employment within a nominally free market, while the living standards of low- and middle-income households continued to decline, producing food insecurity. Governmental economic intervention established a mixed economy in the aftermath of classical capitalism and neoliberalism — and within this context, digital companies intensified their focus on information capitalism as a means of rapidly generating revenue.

Like Apple, Google came under scrutiny when a Gmail user noticed an advertisement directly related to her private correspondence (Zuboff, 2019, p. 38). Information capitalism had taken a darker turn: companies continued to assure users their privacy was protected, even as that assurance was demonstrably hollow. Facebook's launch similarly enabled open sharing of personal information on a massive scale. These events eventually triggered demands for a "right to be forgotten" and contributed to the passage of "Online Eraser" legislation. Drawing on scholarly theory, Zuboff elaborates these themes through comparisons of historical and contemporary digital practices, arguing that every like and click tracked in the name of surveillance capitalism constitutes a violation of privacy. Although "terms of agreement" and "contracts of adhesion" are nominally constructed to protect consumer secrecy (Zuboff, 2019, p. 38), identifiable patterns suggest that governments, large corporations, and other third-party surveillance capitalists are systematically circumventing these protections.

Knowledge as a Fourth Fictitious Commodity: Polanyi's Framework

The same diverging concept can be examined through Polanyi's claim about "fictitious commodities" — land, labor, and money. It is arguable that with the advent of modern information-gathering practices conducted under the guise of research and development, "knowledge" should also be considered a fictitious commodity and an essential factor of production. Land, for example, cannot be directly used in production until it is cultivated using machinery, appropriate seed-sowing techniques, and renewable-energy approaches suited to contemporary sustainability needs — all of which require technological knowledge. On a broader social level, knowledge functions as a parameter of economic competitiveness for both governments and industry players. Companies' profit-oriented thinking has driven them to accumulate and exploit knowledge for economic purposes.

Like Polanyi's original three fictitious commodities, knowledge cannot be straightforwardly applied as a commodity in its raw state. It must be refined and restructured before it can be shaped into something of value. Polanyi regarded land, labor, and money as fictitious because land is simply the natural environment, labor is human activity, and money is a measure of value — none were originally produced for sale. Knowledge, similarly, is produced through human experience and social interaction rather than for the market. Yet it has become a genuine fictitious commodity, widely exploited by surveillance capitalists for profit-making purposes, representing a meaningful fourth addition to Polanyi's original framework.

Zuboff's claims support this reading: knowledge derived from user data is being mobilized as a factor of production, enabling capitalists to develop and offer new products to the very consumers whose personal information was used to create them. The argument in Chapter 1 is therefore divergent from Polanyi in a productive sense — it extends his three identified fictitious commodities by proposing a fourth that has become a powerful driver of technological development. The maximization of economic opportunity enabled by this fourth commodity is further reinforced through governmental policy-making and funding that large surveillance capitalists exploit to their advantage.

Conclusion and Discussion Questions

It seems difficult to abandon all social connectivity platforms if we do not want to be monitored by surveillance capitalists; however, businesses like Google and Apple could not make profits if their products were not designed to improve users' lives. There are safeguards that consumers can invoke to keep their data private up to a point. Surveillance capitalists need to rethink how they deploy personal information in ways that ensure long-term viability and maintain public trust alongside profitability.

Two discussion questions arise from this analysis:

1. Is YouTube funded by governmental authorities or major stakeholder companies specifically to direct users toward right-wing political video content? What benefit would such stakeholders derive from this arrangement?

2. If such funding relationships exist, why has that funding not been used to provide credible, accurate content suggestions to online users — for example, directing people searching for information about a virus toward verified medical resources explaining available vaccines and their effects?

References

Fisher, M., & Taub, A. (2019, August 11). How YouTube radicalized Brazil. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html

Marx, K. (1867). Capital. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2010, July 31).

Polanyi, K. (2001). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our times. Beacon Press.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Public Affairs.