Theorizing the Crimes of Digital Capitalism

• In Event: The Crimes of Digital Capitalism

Abstract

Drawing on the approaches of white-collar crime and crimes of the powerful, and complemented by recent contributions from critical legal studies, this paper proposes rethinking the massive social harms perpetrated by Big Tech not as a deviation but as the result of a deliberate strategy inextricably linked to its business model. In doing so, this paper aims to explain why certain specific behaviors of the “digital powerful” are often not criminalized and have become essential to the operation of the digital capitalist system of exploitation. I label these behaviors as “the crimes of digital capitalism,” referring to a complex geology of social harms, including labor exploitation, environmental destruction, mass surveillance, algorithmic racism, and the dismantling of public services. Today, digital criminals have scaled up their operations, accelerating their techno-fascist agenda by seizing control of key aspects of many jurisdictions, including the U.S. government. There are two important points to be made. First, the paper acknowledges that the crimes of digital capitalism are intertwined with pre-existing colonial, racial, class, and gender oppression. Secondly, the framing of the “crimes of digital capitalism” is not intended to reaffirm punitive solutions but rather to develop the necessary tools to identify—and, hopefully, abolish—the conditions that enable them.

Author

• Aitor Jiménez, Basque Country University / International Institute for the Sociology of Law