technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, by Yanis Varoufakis

What has happened to capitalism in the age of the internet?

Yanis Varoufakis is an interesting mix of lived experience and academic theory. He was the Greek Minister for Finance when Greek government debt needed renegotiating with creditors during the country's 2015 fiscal crisis. Since then he has written several books on economics, the latest being Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. It is written as a letter to his father, who was active in left-wing politics. The book centres around a question his father had asked him during the early days of the internet: will this new technology kill capitalism?

The answer to that question is complicated, as you'd imagine. In essence, Varoufakis says that the internet has created a group of mega rent seekers. For example, Google Play and the Apple Store use third party creators to create products to put on their platforms. Google and Apple merely hoover up the rents from these poor workers – proles, as Varoufakis calls them – for allowing them to use their digital shop front. Worse still is the situation for the “serfs”, everyday users like you and me who give our data free to the big tech companies to monetise. In short, we've all made a Faustian pact with the internet. We've garnered all these digital free goodies, but we've had to sell our souls in the process.

Technofeudalism is the story of concentrated power on steroids. The big tech companies offer the notion of “choice” - but there is none, really. It's either use their products or go without life's basic necessities such as banking, shopping, government and health services etc. Many authors have now tackled this subject, most notably Jaron Lanier and Shoshana Zuboff. Varoufakis offers an idiosyncratic history of capitalism, using Greek myths to get his point across. The result is a highly original yet contentious treatise on the state of the world's finances (much time is devoted to American debt and Chinese surpluses), written from an almost radical left-wing point of view. Many will find much to argue and wrestle with here, but also a range of thought provoking ideas to consider, coming from an original and unorthodox thinker.

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, by Yanis Varoufakis. Published by Jonathan Cape. $36.99.

Review by Chris Saliba

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