Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

Technofeudalism is synonymous with the universalisation of exploitation (see 10.1) and with the shrinking of the value base (in proportion to the rise of cloud rent’s share of all incomes – see Figure 3). This dynamic accentuates the system’s propensity to deeper and more frequent crises. As a result, the central banks that funded the initial accumulation of cloud capital (see Chapter 4) will be forced perpetually to print more and more monies to replace the role that profits and wages used to play under capitalism. But this only helps cloud capital accumulate further (since cloudalists will always have a greater capacity than every other class to appropriate the printed central bank money). In short, technofeudalism is condemned to exhibit a dynamic doom-loop more volatile and explosive than even that of capitalism.