2024-07-08 13:52:37
Yanis Varoufakis became world famous in 2015 when he took over as Greek Finance Minister in the (then) leftist government of Alexis TsiprasThe experiment did not work out, but it was not his fault. Over the years he expelled that frustration, becoming one of the most lucid and successful activists and essayists in the world, with a progressive discourse critical of neoliberalism.
With several bestsellers under his belt, Varoufakis has just published Technofeudalism: The Stealthy Successor of Capitalism (published by the Ariel label, part of Planeta). This is a work that combines rigor and didactic capacity to reflect the new socio-economic paradigm. The Greek author states that his brand new essay “is not about artificial intelligence chatbots that are going to take our jobs (…). No, this book is about what has already been done to capitalism, and therefore to us, by devices with screens, connected to the cloud and that we all use, our boring laptop and smartphone, added to the way in which central banks and governments have acted since 2008.”
Varoufakis argues that “cloud capital” has demolished the two pillars of capitalism: markets and profits. And that while the old owners of real power have become “vassals of a new kind of feudal lord,” the rest of the world’s inhabitants “have returned to our former status as serfs and contribute to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labor.”
The author uses examples from Greek mythology and modern popular culture, draws analogies with his father’s teachings, and takes a clever look at the world of cryptocurrencies and video games to draw an enlightening analysis of today’s reality. “Capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies,” is the hypothesis of the author of Economy without a tie and co-founder of the Progressive International with Bernie Sanders. A conclusion that he reinforces with an irony: “what has killed capitalism is… capital itself.”