“This is not a book about what technology will do to us. It is not about AI chatbots that will take over our jobs, autonomous robots that will threaten our lives or Mark Zuckerberg’s ill-conceived metaverse…” author Yanis Varoufakis asserts in the preface of his book Technofeudalism, What killed Capitalism.
It is about “what has already been done to capitalism, and therefore to us, by the screen-based, cloud-linked devices we all use […] in conjunction with the way central banks and governments have been acting since 2008.
“In his latest book, released last week in Australia by Penguin Random House, the former finance minister of Greece delves into the significant shifts that have occurred in the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008, where Capitalism has been replaced silently by a new and more exploitive system, technofeudalism, as he names it.
He explains that digital platforms and algorithms have altered the distribution of wealth and power, leading to a new form of feudalism where a small group controls immense wealth and resources.
Written in the form of a heartfelt letter addressed to his late father, George Varoufakis, who passed away two years ago, the author recalls their conversations and how they instilled in him a curiosity and a lifelong interest in economics and world politics.
His father, who had a passion for archaeology, ancient technology and particularly metals, would demonstrate to his son, from a very young age, how these metals played a significant role in the development of our ancient culture and how the revolutions they brought about were perceived by Homer and ancient historians, with an insight relevant, to this day.
The consequential changes in society that the discovery of these metals brought about in ancient times are not much different from what is happening today with the emergence of the Internet, the tremendous algorithmic network, and the rise of the ‘cloud capital’, the author suggests.
Besides, the inspiration for this book was the question his father asked him in 1993 when he connected him to the Internet.”This is a game changer he said and asked me the killer question that ultimately inspired this book. Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make Capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles’ heel?”
Varoufakis attempts to answer this question by going back to the end of World War II to pinpoint the events that brought about extraordinary changes in the global economy, leading to the establishment of Capitalism and a new world order during the previous century.
From the reign of the US dollar to the global economic impact of the Vietnam War, Varoufakis attempts to show historically how we got here.Among other things, the author offers insights into the green energy revolution, Elon Musk’s decision to invest billions in acquiring Twitter, risking everything he had achieved, and how the war in Ukraine and the subsequent political choices inadvertently disrupted the equilibrium of economic power, resulting in a fresh Cold War dynamic between the USA and China, giving rise to new divisions and alliances on the global stage.
In the face of Technofeudalism, Varoufakis concludes his timely exploration with the proposition of an alternative path, imagining another world that is possible, with democratised companies, democratised money, a universal basic income, and a thoughtful division of land between social and commercial zones to end homelessness and to ensure a more equitable and sustainable future.