Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

Humanity is now being taken over by something that I can only describe as a technologically advanced form of feudalism. A technofeudalism that is certainly not what we had hoped would supersede capitalism.

To be competitive, Apple’s unwaged third-party developers, mainly partnerships or small capitalist firms, had no choice but to operate via the Apple Store. The price? A 30 per cent ground rent, paid to Apple on all their revenues. Thus a vassal capitalist class grew from the fertile soil of the first cloud fief: the Apple Store.

In plainer terms, our energy systems have been surrendered to oligarchs with a vested interest to entangle energy in the web of financialisation.

After 1991, two things globalised: financial capital, which could jump continents at the push of a button, and production lines, or chains, which made it possible for American iPhones, engineered by Indian developers in San Francisco, and built by a Taiwanese company in Zhengzhou, to be sold in Philadelphia.