Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

During this same decade, Amazon perfected its own formula for selling physical goods via a global supply chain through its own cloud fief – amazon.com – whose dynamics we have already examined. Thanks to Amazon’s algorithmically driven ecommerce formula, cloud rent was no longer confined to the digital world. Funded by central bank money, bolstered by private equity, these cloudalists extended their cloud fiefs across the globe, extracting gargantuan cloud rents from vassal capitalists and cloud serfs alike. In a paradoxical twist, the number of capitalists relying on good old-fashioned profit grew even while their profit margins and power declined. Likewise, these vassal capitalists have continued to enjoy the power to command labour from the majority who are reliant on wages, and they continue to own at least some of their means of production: their computers, their cars and vans, perhaps an office, warehouse or factory. Indeed, not all vassal capitalists are small-scale artisans, some are large capitalist manufacturers. But large or small, powerful or otherwise, all vassal capitalists are by definition dependent to a greater or lesser extent on selling their wares via an ecommerce site, whether Amazon or eBay or Alibaba, with a sizeable portion of their net earnings being skimmed off by the cloudalists they depend on.