Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 04:56:21 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/is-capitalism-dead-yanis-varoufakis-thinks-it-is-and-he-knows-who-killed-it-213992>

"Review: Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis (Bodley
Head)


Yanis Varoufakis grew up during the Greek dictatorship of 1967-1974. He later
became an economics professor and was briefly Greek finance minister in 2015.

His late father, a chemical engineer in a steel plant, instilled in his son a
critical appreciation of how technology drives social change. He also instilled
him with a belief that capitalism and genuine freedom were antithetical – a
leftist politics that made his father a political prisoner for several years
during the “junta”, as they called it.

In 1993, when he first got the internet, Varoufakis’s father posed a “killer
question” to his son: “now computers speak to each other, will this network
make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its
Achilles heel?”

Varoufakis has been mulling it over ever since.

Though, sadly, it is now too late to explain to his father in person,
Varoufakis’s new book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism answers the
question in the form of an extended reflection addressed to his father.

“Achilles heel” was on the right track. In his striking response, Varoufakis
argues that we no longer live in a capitalist society; capitalism has morphed
into a “technologically advanced form of feudalism”."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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