The Masterless Slave
A Figure of Illusion, Compliance, and Invisible Dominion
While much of life in digitality needs to be seen and analyzed as a part of a power relationship between users and tech corporations, the exact outlines of this form of dominion remain ambiguous at best, especially when viewed from a perspective of liberal democratic societies. Many people regard their personal use of digital applications as an expression of their free autonomous will, but overlook the ways they are steered, guided and exploited by these systems and their underlying business models (or political agendas in authoritarian contexts). For addressing such paradoxical forms of dominion we may rediscover the Denkfigur of the “masterless slave”.
Already a sketchy topic in classic philosophical texts, this figure of thought has been most prominently reintroduced for modern contexts by the sociologist Max Weber, at the turn of the 20th century, in his work “Economy and Society”. The concept of the “masterless slave” deals with questions of liberty, serfdom and, one may argue, the inability to be free. “Masterless slaves”, though free persons, act within the invisible constraints of rules imposed on them: unwritten rules, binding contracts with ‘the powers that be’, the feeling of having to comply with certain norms, doing what ‘everybody else is doing’.
As a net result, such persons are never fully free to act autonomously. However, they think they are independent in the activities they are pursuing or decisions they are making, and do not perceive the forces they are under. “Masterless slaves” are voluntarily fulfilling chores they would otherwise most likely despise or refuse, and lack the insightful awareness of being in such a state. A good example of this indirect form of dominion is the everyday use of social networking sites. Nobody is under any direct dictate to post news or share personal information, nor to jeopardize their privacy in the process, and yet many people express the feeling that there is a constant pressure to do exactly that. From a critical viewpoint, masterless slavery therefore is an inroad for exploitation.