Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Yanis Varoufakis
The #1 bestselling economist shows how capitalism has been replaced by a more exploitative system, technofeudalism, in which the owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords. * A GUARDIAN BEST FORTHCOMING BOOK OF 2023 * THE TIMES BIGGEST BOOKS OF AUTUMN 2023 *‘What an amazing piece of work this is. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. more
224 pages, Hardcover
First published Vintage Publishing
4.06
Rating
762
Ratings
123
Reviews
Yanis Varoufakis
55 books 1768 followers
Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek-Australian economist and politician. A former academic, he has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since he founded it in 2018. A former member of Syriza, he served as Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.Community reviews
2023’s masterpiece maps out the unexpected demise of “Capitalism”… Preamble: --Let us not get stuck on surface labels (which social media seems to amplify into binary "agree"/"disagree" divisiveness) and forget to dive into the substance (where there is much to synthesize). --After all, how can a single term (even “capitalism”) encapsulate the contradictory mess of the real world (without many asterisks noting contradictions). …Instead, I treat these concepts as lenses to view the world. Think of the difference between a microscope’s lens and a telescope’s lens. Each starts with certain assumptions (and limitations) which allows each to focus more clearly on certain observations. more
"Every now and then. , he would speculate on how capitalism might, one day, end – and what would replace it. His wish was that it would not die with a bang, because bangs had a tendency to cull good people in awful numbers; that instead socialist islands might spring up spontaneously in our vast capitalist archipelago and that they would expand gradually, eventually forming whole continents on which technologically advanced commons would prevail. "A lot of useful material, but the techno-feudalist thesis is overstated IMO. It exaggerates the break between capitalism and its alleged techno-feudal successor, precisely because it exaggerates the sharpness of the transition between feudalism and capitalism. more
Edit in process* Varoufakis makes a pretty good case for his view that competition has, in his views, ceased to be very important in the modern economy. But, he seems to massively underwrite agency, and just sideswipes away the fact that modern “cloudalist” technologies have actually competed to get where they are (essentially monopolies). No data brokers aren’t in control of our minds, and yes people choose to use technologies like TikTok and Facebook - because they do indeed have a use value to them. Also, Varoufakis situates the rise of technofeudalism in the post-2008 world, with low interest rates and quantitative easing. But interest rates have been way up over the last 2 years, and modern democracies will challenge cloudalist monopolies when their dominance gets in the way of growth - which they seems to be doing. more
We are in an unprecedented era of post-capitalism feudalismThis is a stunning economic and geopolitical narrative about the current world order. It’s so convincing and well thought that I need to remind myself it is still a narrative and only a simulacrum of reality and not to get too carried away. I’m going to outline what Vourfakis’ thesis is in this book and it takes a bit to build to what techno feudalism is. Bear with and please read on because I think this is an extremely timely and important book right now. The main crux of this book is that the balance of power has tipped from profit makers controlling the world back to the rent-seekers which has fundamentally mutated (or destroyed. more
Varoufakis addresses Technofeudalism : What Killed Capitalism to his father as a response to the questions his father asked when faced with the internet in 1993: 'Now that computers spreak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow. Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel. ' Despite Varoufakis' wit and warmth, his conclusions are undoubtedly a total downer. He contends that capitalism is indeed being transformed and crowded out by the economic effects of the internet, but it's being replaced by something worse. To date the fullest description of this new economic form has been surveillance capitalism, coined by Shoshana Zuboff. more
I usually don’t have strong opinions and try to read books on their own terms. This one is pure and utter waste of time. I dropped it halfway through. The only clever thing about this book is its title. The rest is a rumination by a layman on how big tech is really horrible. more
So, not a study on raves in feudal times. But very good at contextualizing recent economic developments. Great insight into how post-2008 central bank policy and free flowing money for big tech increased rent’s structural importance. The role of our behavioral data (cloud capital, he calls it) in this is quite intersting as well. To me, dissolution of markets and algorithm’s grasp over our choices are perphaps not as dramatic as he puts it, but what do I know. more
As controversial as Varoufakis is, I have always considered his books interesting inputs to the public debate about global capitalism or as an interesting lens through which to look at it. This book does a similar thing - it looks at the impact of both the platform model of big tech firms as well as the ultra-low interest rates era on the functioning of capitalism. In a way, the analysis is not novel at all - every business school teaches the case studies of Amazon marketplace, App Store etc. - but what makes it interesting is the more normative analysis connecting the functioning of these platforms with the feudalist economic models (what he describes as the ‘cloud capital’, that is based not on profit, but rent). There is again a lot of personal backstory, this time with his father, who was an engineer and a leftist in Greece - the book is styled as an answer to his father’s question ‘Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow. more
Varoufakis’s concept of technofeaudalism was far more nuanced – and apt – than I expected. Technofeudalism isn't about the power and the wealth of Big Tech as much as the nature of that power and wealth, which far from being example of capitalist success is a meaningfully a feudal one. This feudal element lays firstly in the centrality of unpaid work being required to make their products valuable the second and more interesting is that their wealth is based less on profit making but rent seeking. These companies don’t make money through using their capital to provide goods and services but instead through limiting access to the digital infrastructure they create which in turn has very dark implications not only for innovation but the economy as a whole. I can’t really do the book justice in this short review but it did help me finally understand why so much awful software proliferates despite how easy it would be to fix it. more
One part history lesson, one part polemic, and, as always, a bit of showmanship, with a threadbare socioeconomic fantasy in the end that makes me wonder if Yanis should spend some time in the rationalist community fora. Now that he's done with puny parliamentary politics (as they're done with him), he might emerge as the moonshot dreamer the big tech era needs. more
The ideas explored are in line with a lot of his previous work and bring into frame the idea of cloud capital and its impacts on capitalism. The return of the renter class and its impacts on the lubricant of capitalism (profits) is really interesting and has helped bring together a lot of thoughts and ideas shared by anyone versed in contemporary macroeconomics. All the ideas are explored in an intuitive fashion, and the book is written extremely well. The appendix and notes are essential if your economic history isn't up to scratch and /or if you need context. The book explores the expanding world of e-commerce and the concentration of market places being limited to the big boys, i. more
This is a book I'll need to go back to again intermittently over the next few years in order to see how useful its framework will be for understanding the future developments in the global landscape of power. In short summary, the book tries to draw a distinct line in the sand, arguing that the dominant economic system over the past 2 hundred years, capitalism, is on the decline and is being replaced by a renewed form of feudalism: "technofeudalism". It would do the book a huge disservice to condense the arguments made in a single paragraph, but I can at least say that I found a lot of Varoufakis' analyses worth considering. Underlying everything is the observation that the ways in which Big Tech platforms make money are uniquely different from how other traditional businesses work. Instead of selling a specific product in which profits are made from the surplus value of exploited labor, Big Tech companies make the bulk of its money from forms of rent. more
I guess I will never be tired of reading a Varoufakis book. This one comes as my favorite so far, even better than Another Now. Comprehensive, logical, realistic it shows the world as it is, while reiterating how it could be( the theory already exposed in Another Now which is not sufficiently discussed). The world moved on from Capitalism when power was no longer held by those holding capital but by a new race of feudalists the technofeudalists. They extract rents from the capitalist vassals who need them to access markets and are supported by all of us, cloud serfs creating value for them for free, without even realizing. more
An interesting comment on the structural shift of profit models between traditional capitalism focused on production/finance to internet 'cloudilism'(kill me) focused on monopoly and rents. Like all these kind of books, the implication is overstated ('What killed capitalism'), but some comments on the implications of a greater share of the economy being locked into rents and pseudo-usufructory labour by users is interesting, as his discussion on the current tech-war between the US and China. One gets the feeling that Varoufakis' personal experience and involvement in the 2008 financial crisis has led to a parochial focus on the event as the genesis of almost every even after it, which clouds the analysis somewhat. There is really nothing wrong with the book, but at the same time i don't think you will get much out of it that you couldn't by watching his lectures and speeches on the subject on youtube, ironically. It is more concept than analysis. more
A very interesting straight economic look at Surveillance Capitalism — I wish he stuck to the point more clearly as it’s best when it’s focused and clear. The second person point of view doesn’t work, at all. I rarely say that. Needed a strong edit to cut a lot. The diagrams at the back were really interesting and helped with conceptualising. more
It doesn’t matter this book is flawed. What really matters is how we face and how we understand this terrible new world before us and that’s what this book provide us. more
Professor V. makes a compelling case for why 'cloud capitalists' (bezos, zuck, and notably NOT Elon) are in fact not capitalists at all, but a new 'technofeudalist' class unconcerned with profit. Instead, they expand their digital fiefdoms (Amazon, etc. ) to totalise every aspect of social life, ensuring that to even participate in what remains of 'capitalism', one needs their permission first. This includes the capitalists of old - no producer can sell their wares without a cloudalist's permission (and paying the requisite dividends). more
an easy read, maybe a bit TOO easy at times, I didn’t really feel like I learned a lot. still, the economic and geopolitical knowledge of varoufakis is at full display here and sometimes I really appreciated the simplicity especially when delving into things concerning finance, debts, derivatives, stocks, etc. which have always been pretty opaque for me at least. still, I ended up feeling a bit let down - decidedly NOT the revolutionary book it’s advertised as. more
This book could probably be even shorter and more focused in its delivery, but it presents a very productive frame for looking at the modern world, further accelerated by the AI era. It also does something few books of this kind do — proposes a clear alternative, although it probably requires much more detail and analysis to serve as an actual political program. That said, Technofeudalism is a concept worth familiarizing yourself with, no matter how correct it is in your opinion. more
A solid, albeit muddled, summary of how capital has mutated under big tech. Chapter 7 provides a great roadmap for how to democratise the workforce. However, the reach of the first few chapters detracts from the main thesis. more
The ideas and all to be seen if you agree or not. But in a sense of literature book is terrible. more
Shit hot. Not sure that PASS system would be suitable for heavy industry even in a worker owned model. more
Honestly quite underwhelming. The final chapter, which sketched a practical alternative to neoliberal cloud capitalism, was the best section. . more
Leuk en provocatief geschreven. Soms wat vergezochte claims over het grote geheel, met oplossing die er vooral uitspringen door de eenvoud. Echter zijn eenvoudige oplossing altijd makkelijker te beargumenteren t. o. v. more
Great book and analysis. I need to re-read some of the geopolitical stuff to fully understand the e picture painted around economic relations between US EU and China. I thought the perspective was fresh and original. That said I thought the proposed solution scenario he provided at the end missed the mark and glossed over how capital would be redistributed to allow this situation to exist. . more
(Review in progress, 80%)In summary: it doesn’t read beautifully, which is disappointing, but it does read simply, which is refreshing. The central idea, technofeudalism, is interesting, and puts words to a trend that is worth meditating on at the very least. For those working in tech / economics, the ideas presented, whether read here or somewhere else, seem essential for understanding the time we live in. The ideas though, are thought provoking. The reemergence of feudalism isn’t necesssarily novel, but this is an approachable way to contend with the possible realities. more
This entertaining book is problematic due to its obfuscation of other people's ideas. Varoufakis thinking is fundamentally dishonest and unfair especially towards female thinkers. The bibliography tells you everything. It has no real references and tricks you into believing Varoufakis is a highly original thinker (he is not). The only original thing about the book is its title. more
Single issue books always run of of idea before they run out of pages. No exception here. The basic concept that we have returned to a feudal world where the local Lord who 'owns' the land and (we) the prolateriat do the work and pay a rent has returned. Only now it is Amazon (Goodreads) or Google who own the land (internet) and we pay our rent everytime we interact with it or at least recieve the advertising targeted at us. I cannot argue with that. more