Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

Before we delve into capitalism’s final metamorphosis, into what I call technofeudalism, it is perhaps apt to dedicate a few final words to the Global Minotaur – the metaphorical beast standing in for the US-centred global recycling system which, between the late 1970s and 2008, delivered all the props of our present drama: Big Finance, Big Tech, neoliberalism, industrial-scale inequality, not to mention democracies so atrophied that films like Don’t Look Up are necessary to explain humanity’s paralysis in the face of climate catastrophe. So, here comes the briefest of eulogies: the Cretan Minotaur was slain by an Athenian prince, Theseus. Its death ended prehistory and ushered in the classical era of tragedy, history, philosophy. Our era’s Minotaur died less heroically: a victim of cowardly Wall Street bankers whose hubris was rewarded with massive state bailouts that did nothing to resuscitate the Minotaur. For while the American deficit returned with a vengeance a year after the crash of 2008 and the subsequent bankers’ bailouts, it never restored the beast’s capacity to recycle the world’s profits. True, the rest of the world continued to send most of its profits to Wall Street. But the recycling mechanism was broken: only a small fraction of the monies rushing to Wall Street returned in the form of tangible investments into factories, technologies, agriculture. Most of the world’s money rushed to Wall Street to stay in Wall Street. There, it sloshed around doing nothi...