Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

The crash of 1929 and the Great Depression took the shine off profit-driven markets. But throughout each of capitalism’s subsequent metamorphoses – during the New Deal, the War Economy, the era of Bretton Woods and particularly with the rise of the technostructure and the Minotaur – profit remained its driving force. Coupled with debt, profit was the power that turned the cogs and wheels of every form of capitalism the planet had seen. Until, following the events of 2008, the Global North’s central banks fell into the trap of pumping unending quantities of poisoned monies into the financial markets. Then, for the first time since capitalism had stirred two and a half centuries earlier, profit ceased to be the fuel that fired the global economy’s engine, driving investment and innovation. That role, of fuelling the economy, was taken over by central bank money.