Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

First, state guaranteed sales translating into state guaranteed profits. Second, freedom from competition, since prices were fixed by government. Third, huge government-funded scientific research (e.g. the Manhattan Project, jet propulsion) that provided Big Business with wonderful new innovations and a pool of highly skilled scientific personnel to recruit from during and after the war. And fourth, a patriotic aura to help rinse off the stench of corporate greed that clung to them after the crash of 1929 and make them over as heroic enterprises that helped America win the war. The War Economy experiment was an unqualified success. Production quadrupled in less than five years. Inflation was kept on a leash, unlike what had happened during the previous world war. Unemployment disappeared, and was kept at bay even after the soldiers, sailors and airmen returned from the front.