A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneration: The New Social Contract in the Digital Age: Neoliberalism, Technocracy, and Class Struggle By LIZA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Illusion of the New Social Contract ---- The new social contract is 
an idea that has gained momentum in recent years, promoted by 
organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), the UN, and the 
IMF. The premise is clear: the world has changed, and the economic and 
labor structures that once offered stability have become obsolete. 
Digitalization, the precarization of work, and the climate crisis have 
dismantled the old social pact, demanding new rules that guarantee 
security and opportunity in a context of uncertainty and accelerated 
transformation.

The WEF argues that businesses must take a more active role in building 
an inclusive economy, while the IMF proposes the need for a model that 
combines flexibility with stability, allowing markets to adapt without 
completely sacrificing social protection. In academia, authors such as 
Otero Iglesias and Paula Oliver Llorente have analyzed how this 
transformation should be applied in European contexts, seeking to 
balance competitiveness and social cohesion.

However, behind this progressive narrative lies a more uncomfortable 
reality: the new social contract is nothing more than an adjustment 
within the neoliberal framework, designed to preserve power structures 
under a guise of modernization and equity. It is a strategy to manage 
social discontent without truly challenging the foundations of 
capitalism in crisis. This is where we must analyze it from a 
revolutionary perspective: not as progress, but as a mechanism of 
containment that, far from emancipating the working classes, reinforces 
their subservience to the logic of the market and technocracy.

Technocracy, the Far Right, and the Alienation of the Working Class

One of the most revealing aspects of the current technocratic drift is 
its close relationship with the rise of the far right and the 
consolidation of corporate power in the political sphere. A clear 
example was the recent presidential inauguration of Donald Trump in 
2025, where key figures from the technocratic elite were present, 
consolidating the union between business interests and state power. The 
rise of billionaires like Elon Musk into political decision-making 
circles reinforces this dynamic: Musk, far from being just a visionary 
entrepreneur, has openly supported far-right parties such as Alternative 
for Germany (AfD), Reform UK, the Rassemblement National (RN) in France, 
and Vox in Spain. His influence is not accidental, but part of a broader 
framework where large fortunes finance reactionary projects with the aim 
of consolidating a governance model where politics responds exclusively 
to the interests of capital.

The roots of this trend are not new. Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua N. 
Haldeman , was a prominent member of Technocracy Incorporated , a 
movement in the 1930s and 1940s that advocated replacing representative 
democracy with a system of central planning run by experts and 
technocrats. This vision essentially stripped the population of any 
capacity for self-determination, delegating all decision-making to an 
enlightened elite. Today, this idea is resurfacing in a new guise: the 
fusion of corporate power and the state, promoted by figures like Musk, 
Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel, who seek to restructure world politics 
under an authoritarian model where technology acts as the new tool of 
control and social exclusion.

In this context, The Thiel Network , Peter Thiel's influence network, 
has played a key role in the spread of ultra-liberal and authoritarian 
ideas within Silicon Valley and beyond. Through his investments in data 
companies like Palantir and his funding of far-right figures, Thiel has 
promoted a governance model based on mass surveillance and the outright 
privatization of public services. His worldview, in which large 
corporations should replace states in the provision of basic goods and 
services, aligns with the resurgence of a digital technocracy that 
increasingly marginalizes the popular will.

Another worrying phenomenon is the rise of Argentine President Javier 
Milei , who has embraced ultra-liberal and anti-state rhetoric, 
promoting the idea that the market should be the sole regulator of 
social and economic life. His government, characterized by a 
radicalization of neoliberalism, has dismantled essential public 
services, eliminated labor regulations, and deepened social inequality 
under the guise of "economic freedom." However, his discourse, far from 
representing a true alternative, reinforces the narrative that the only 
way out of the crisis is the total surrender of power to the markets, 
delegitimizing any possibility of a collective politics of resistance 
and transformation.

Adding to this phenomenon is the cultural battle raging online, 
especially in spaces like the Red Pill movement , the Alt-Right , and 
reactionary forums that capitalize on the discontent of young people and 
men to distance them from the class struggle and political mobilization. 
These communities promote an extreme nihilism that reinforces the idea 
that the system is immutable, encouraging individualism and resignation 
instead of collective organization. Within this framework, a false 
dichotomy is established between Homo sapiens , a social and political 
being, and Homo economicus , an atomized individual whose sole function 
is to survive within the market without aspiring to structural change.

This ideological construction is key to understanding how neoliberalism 
has managed to empty the class struggle of its meaning, replacing it 
with a logic of individual competition and fictitious meritocracy. If 
the system is immutable and change impossible, then the only option is 
to adapt or be marginalized. In this context, politics is reduced to a 
question of consumption and status, and any attempt at transformation is 
dismissed as naive or dangerous.

This panorama raises an urgent question: how can we counter this 
alienation and recover a sense of collective struggle? The answer lies 
not only in rejecting these narratives, but in building real 
alternatives that allow workers and new generations to recognize 
themselves as subjects of change. This leads us directly to the next 
point: the redefinition of class struggle in the 21st century and the 
need to rebuild a revolutionary class consciousness capable of 
confronting the collapse of capitalism and the consolidation of a 
technocratic and authoritarian model.

The Influence of Technocracy in Politics

Technocracy, characterized by decision-making based on experts and 
technical data, has gained ground in public policymaking. While 
expertise is valuable, its dominance can marginalize democratic 
participation and favor agendas that prioritize corporate interests over 
collective well-being. This trend is manifested in the growing influence 
of technocrats in international organizations and national governments, 
where decisions are often made without broad citizen consultation.

The Fragmentation of Labor and the Crisis of Class Consciousness

The advancing digitalization of labor, the liberalization of key 
sectors, the uberization of services, and the expansion of the freelance 
model have profoundly transformed the structure of labor under 
contemporary capitalism. These dynamics have dismantled the traditional 
notion of the working class, eroding its organizational capacity and 
weakening collective class consciousness. As Lucien van der Walt 
analyzes in Black Flame , the class struggle in revolutionary anarchism 
has never been static, but has had to adapt to economic transformations, 
something that digital capitalism has been able to fully exploit to 
dissolve working-class solidarity in favor of neoliberal individualism.

Work is no longer configured around factories or collective production 
centers, but around platforms that individualize exploitation. Amazon 
Mechanical Turk , Uber , Fiverr , and other platform economies have 
turned workers into forced entrepreneurs, without stability or labor 
rights. As Zoé Baker points out, this transformation has not only made 
employment precarious but has also stripped workers of a collective 
identity, fragmenting resistance. Added to this is the increasing ease 
with which certain workers access high wages without owning the means of 
production, reinforcing alienation and promoting meritocratic ideology. 
This false social mobility serves to discourage revolutionary 
organizing, fueling the idea that individual success is achievable 
without a structural transformation of the system.

The disappearance of traditional workplaces has changed people's 
relationship with the economy and politics. In an environment where job 
security is the exception and individual competition the norm, trust in 
the state and the market has collapsed. This feeling of vulnerability 
has been exploited by neoliberalism and the far right, which channel 
discontent into reactionary and authoritarian responses. As Erich Mühsam 
pointed out in his writings on the Bavarian uprising, the fragmentation 
of the working class is a deliberate strategy of capital to prevent its 
organization and collective struggle. For Mühsam, revolutionary 
self-organization was the only viable path to breaking with the 
alienation imposed by capitalism.

At the urban level, the platformization of everyday life has turned 
every aspect of existence into a commodity regulated by algorithms. The 
growing dependence on apps to access essential services reinforces 
social fragmentation and corporate control, alienating workers and 
stripping them of a sense of shared struggle. As Gabriel Kuhn warns, 
capitalist domination is reproduced not only in factories or state 
legislation, but also in culture, daily habits, and technological 
dependence-elements that have become key to the modernization of 
neoliberal capitalism.

From Fragmentation to Revolutionary Organization

To counter this tendency, it is necessary to transform spaces of 
alienation into pre-revolutionary spaces that accumulate the social 
force necessary for a break with the bourgeois and capitalist order. As 
Bakunin explained, revolutionary organization must emerge at the very 
heart of the system, undermining its stability from within. It is not 
enough to create islands of autonomy; it is necessary to transform them 
into structures that destabilize the system and generate real 
possibilities for insurrection.

One of the most urgent battlegrounds is the digital space. Resistance 
cannot be limited to external criticism of digital platforms; it is 
crucial to deploy digital sabotage tactics, such as manipulating 
algorithms to undermine their efficiency, generating internal costs for 
companies that exploit workers, and the mass dissemination of 
information that exposes their mechanisms of exploitation. Direct action 
in cyberspace, combined with organizing in the real world, is essential 
to delegitimize and collapse the infrastructure of digital capitalism.

From within these platforms, workers can implement subversive 
strategies that go beyond simple protest. Clandestine resistance 
networks can form within tech companies to leak information, slow down 
production processes, and undermine the system's efficiency from within. 
As Anton Pannekoek argued, workers' control should not be limited to 
self-management in factories, but should extend to all sectors where 
exploitation is hidden under the promise of flexibility and autonomy.

Adapting the Class Struggle to Contemporary Reality

The fragmentation of labor and the dissolution of class identity have 
forced a rethinking of revolutionary strategy. If class struggle was 
previously expressed in factories and unions, today it faces an 
atomization that has dissolved the notion of a working-class community 
and incentivized competition within the working class. This dispersion 
has led to the replacement of class antagonism with a logic of 
individualized survival, where exploitation hides behind the discourse 
of flexibility and entrepreneurship. As Zoé Baker warns, digital 
capitalism has been able to appropriate the language of autonomy to 
deactivate the possibility of collective organization.

To overcome this barrier, it is essential to build new forms of 
organization that integrate the reality of the dispersed and precarious 
working class around a common revolutionary project. Labor self-defense 
cannot be limited to demanding rights within the system, but must aim to 
build networks of mutual support that enable self-sufficiency and 
collective resistance. This means developing decentralized structures of 
solidarity that facilitate subsistence without depending on the 
conditions imposed by capital. The idea of traditional unions must 
transform into federations of platform workers, cooperative networks of 
freelancers , and alternative economy organizations that, through a 
horizontal approach, weaken capital's control over everyday life.

Digital sabotage, more than a tool of resistance, must become an 
offensive weapon against capitalist accumulation. The manipulation of 
algorithms to undermine the profitability of large platforms, the 
destabilization of systems that facilitate exploitation, and the leaking 
of key information to expose the logic of exploitation can act as 
attrition tactics that push capital into an internal crisis. As Gabriel 
Kuhn points out, the struggle cannot be limited to reacting to 
exploitation, but must go on the offensive, destabilizing the mechanisms 
of control and accumulation.

Furthermore, the cultural struggle is fundamental to rebuilding class 
consciousness. While neoliberalism has promoted hyper-individualization, 
it is necessary to counteract it with the production of discourses and 
spaces that revalue cooperation and collective action. This entails 
challenging society's common sense through the creation of radical 
content on digital platforms, the construction of alternative media 
outlets, and the development of narratives that dismantle the ideology 
of individual success. Nathan Jun points out that culture is not only a 
reflection of the economic structure, but a battlefield where the 
subjective conditions for revolution can be generated.

Ultimately, the central challenge is to coordinate all these strategies 
within a coherent revolutionary action. Adapting the class struggle to 
contemporary reality should not be an exercise in reformism, but rather 
a process of accumulating forces that leads to the destruction of 
capitalism. To achieve this, it is necessary to integrate digital 
struggle with direct action in the real world, combining sabotage, 
self-management, and grassroots organizing in a strategy that, far from 
seeking concessions within the system, directly aims at its collapse.

This strategic adaptation leads us to the next point: Strategies to 
Overcome Limitations and Counteract Capitalist Influences , where 
concrete tactics for articulating an effective revolutionary struggle in 
the context of digital capitalism and the fragmentation of labor will be 
deepened.

Strategies to Overcome Limitations and Counteract Capitalist Influences

To confront the fragmentation of the working class and the new forms of 
exploitation in digital capitalism, it is essential to develop a 
revolutionary strategy that not only erodes the power of the state and 
capitalism, but also surpasses and renders them irrelevant. The struggle 
must go beyond passive resistance or the simple self-management of 
autonomous spaces, translating tactics into actions that pave the way 
for a profound structural transformation of society.

However, this strategy cannot be reduced solely to the digital economy. 
Each sector has a distinct composition and context, requiring tactics 
adapted to its specific reality. Some sectors, such as industry and 
construction, depend more on physical infrastructure and material 
production, while others, such as services and technology, have been 
highly digitalized. The key is to find ways to radicalize demands in 
each space of struggle, utilizing a combination of direct action, 
organizing, and political pressure to transform partial demands into 
platforms for revolutionary transformation.

Below are a number of key tactics within this broader strategy:

Organization and Federation of Workers in the Digital Economy and Key 
Sectors
Traditional unionism may be insufficient to address job insecurity in 
the digital economy and other strategic sectors. It is necessary to 
organize decentralized workers' federations that operate openly, 
whenever circumstances permit, facilitating the coordination of digital 
strikes, structural sabotage, and blockades of business infrastructure. 
The creation of self-managed technology cooperatives is also essential 
to reduce dependence on capital in highly digitalized sectors.

Analysis of Key Sectors in the Spanish Economy for the Revolutionary 
Class Struggle
To effectively direct the class struggle toward a profound structural 
transformation of society, it is crucial to identify the most 
influential economic sectors in the Spanish economy. According to recent 
data, the sectors with the greatest impact on Spain's Gross Domestic 
Product (GDP) are:

Services: They represent approximately 74.6% of GDP, with key subsectors 
such as tourism, which alone contributes 12.3% to GDP. The importance of 
the services sector suggests that actions directed toward workers in 
hospitality, commerce, and transportation can have a significant impact. 
Organizations in this sector should focus on radicalizing workers' 
demands. The most important subsectors are:
Commerce: Includes wholesale and retail activities, playing a crucial 
role in the distribution of goods and services throughout the country.
Transport and warehousing: This sub-sector covers land, sea and air 
transport, as well as warehousing and logistics activities, facilitating 
the efficient movement of goods and people.
Hospitality and tourism: This includes accommodation, catering, and 
leisure and entertainment activities, and is essential to the Spanish 
economy due to the constant influx of tourists.
Industry: Contributes 17.4% to GDP. The technology, pharmaceutical, and 
transportation industries stand out, having shown resilience and growth. 
Working-class organization in these sectors can directly impact the 
production and distribution of essential goods, combining strikes with 
internal pressure tactics to force structural changes.
Construction: Contributes 5.4% to GDP. Given its importance in 
infrastructure development, mobilization in this sector can influence 
key projects and the economy as a whole. Here, taking ownership and 
self-managing community projects can become a viable strategy.
Agriculture: Although it represents 2.6% of GDP, it is fundamental to 
food sovereignty. Actions in this sector can highlight the capitalist 
system's dependence on natural resources and basic production. 
Strategies such as land occupation and agrarian self-management can 
serve as platforms for struggle.
Digital Sabotage and Disruption of Key Infrastructures

Sabotage is a powerful tool in the class struggle. In the digital 
context, this involves tactics accessible to any worker, from those in 
key sectors to small, risk-free individual actions:

Collective action within critical infrastructure: Telecommunications 
workers can slow down the resolution of problems in strategic data 
networks; employees of large technology corporations can leak key 
information about their labor policies or monopolistic practices.

Interference in digital platforms: E-commerce workers can manipulate 
reviews or ratings to undermine the public image of exploitative 
companies. Campaigns of fake product or service requests can also be 
organized to overload management systems.

Coordinated boycott of digital tools: Workers can refuse to use certain 
software or applications essential to data accumulation and corporate 
control. This can be complemented by the development and promotion of 
open-source and self-managed alternatives.

Disruption of corporate logistics: Employees in distribution and 
transportation centers can slow down order processing, causing financial 
losses without exposing themselves to direct retaliation.

These tactics don't require a clandestine infrastructure or advanced 
technical knowledge, but rather effective organization and the ability 
to act strategically within digital companies and platforms.

2. Reappropriation of Resources and Construction of Alternative Economies

Combating capitalism requires building parallel structures that can 
replace it. Digital expropriation , understood as the redistribution of 
resources through the release of proprietary software and the creation 
of autonomous exchange platforms, is a concrete way to weaken the market 
and strengthen self-management. At the same time, the consolidation of 
solidarity economy networks , such as time banks and cooperative 
production systems, makes it possible to reduce dependence on wage labor.

3. Propaganda and Cultural Counterpower

The ideological control of capital is reinforced through media 
propaganda and cultural hegemony. To counter this, it is necessary to 
generate alternative media outlets , from digital publications to 
decentralized information networks that disseminate a revolutionary 
vision of class struggle. Infiltrating cultural spaces and subverting 
the capitalist narrative within digital platforms themselves are tactics 
that must be combined with the production of radical content that 
challenges established common sense.

4. Direct Action and Economic Blockades

In addition to digital sabotage, direct action in the physical world 
remains indispensable. Blockades of key infrastructure , disruptions to 
supply to large corporations, and occupations of productive spaces can 
paralyze capitalist accumulation and generate economic crises that 
precipitate the need for self-managed alternatives. These tactics must 
be coordinated with mutual support networks to ensure resistance to 
state repression.

5. Collective Self-Defense and Resistance to Repression

The state and capital will likely respond with violence to any attempt 
at destabilization. Therefore, it is essential to develop collective 
self-defense strategies, ranging from digital security protocols to 
physical protection structures in organizational spaces. Cybersecurity 
training and the ability to anonymize revolutionary communication are 
essential to ensure the continuity of the struggle without leaks or mass 
surveillance.

A New Articulation of the Class Struggle

The "New Social Contract" is nothing more than a strategy to manage the 
crisis of capitalism without transforming it. Beneath the rhetoric of 
digital inclusion and modernization lies a growing precarization and 
fragmentation of the working class, reinforcing individual competition 
and demobilizing collective action.

Technocracy has shifted politics toward the domain of corporations and 
experts, which the far right has exploited to divert discontent into 
identity-based conflicts. The digitalization and uberization of work 
have weakened traditional forms of organization, eroding class 
consciousness. However, this fragmentation can become an opportunity to 
rebuild the revolutionary struggle.

To overcome capitalism, it is necessary to combine organization, 
sabotage, and self-management. The organization of workers in key 
sectors, the radicalization of their demands, and the recovery of 
resources must be integrated into a strategy that aims not only at 
resistance, but also at the creation of an anarcho-communist society. 
The key question remains: how do we move from resistance to revolution? 
The answer lies in the ability to articulate the struggle on multiple 
fronts, with direct action and the construction of real alternatives.

Don Diego de la Vega, member of Liza , Anarchist Platform of Madrid

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https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/10/08/el-nuevo-contrato-social-en-la-era-digital/
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