Here are some important but sketchy points to bear in mind with Yanis Varoufakis's latest book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (London: The Bodley Head, 2023).
Firstly, in his theory of technofeudalism, Varoufakis is attempting to identify a new mode of production. It is one which is essentially different to the capitalist mode of production in terms of both its underlying social relations of production (class structure) and its core productive forces (technology) - capitalism is essentially based on a capitalist/wage-labourer social arrangement within an industrial setting (factories, etc.). It is also one which at the same time has something in common with feudalism (a landlord/tenant social arrangement) in terms of how the surplus product of society is extracted by one class from another class as in the form of 'rent'. Thus, his theoretical focus is primarily on how a new socioeconomic class ('cloud capitalists' or 'technofeudalists' as he calls them) extracts the surplus product of society from other socioeconomic classes (which are for him the classes of 'cloud serfs, cloud proles and cloud vassals') via their ownership and control of a new means of production - in this case, 'cloud capital' (i.e., digital data). In short, his theoretical focus is primarily on how the dominant socioeconomic class gets its wealth (and keeps on accumulating it). As a consequence, he develops a theoretical picture in which ''technofeudalists' (the non-productive class) extract a 'rent' (the surplus product of society) via their ownership and control of the 'cloud capital' (the means of production) from the 'cloud serfs, cloud proles and cloud vassals of the world' (the productive classes).
Secondly, he's also concerned with how such a new mode of production consequently affects us all in terms of our freedom and autonomy. As Varoufakis says: we're all in 'mind-chains'. Thus, what he attempts to reveal is how a new form of class oppression and exploitation has emerged over and above the previous one in capitalism.
Thirdly, it's clear from the first appendix to his book that, while Varoufakis claims that 'technofeudalism' has 'killed off capitalism', it is nevertheless predicated on the latter - which consequently means that it can't exist without the latter. The point is, for Varoufakis, 'cloud capital' acquires primacy over 'industrial capital' in his theory of technofeudalism. Still, as Varoufakis himself says, he nonetheless approaches his subject matter from a Marxist perspective!
Finally, it's important not to over-focus on (as some have done in their commentaries of his book) the technology aspects of Varoufakis's technofeudalism theory - as if that is its main focus. Nor, equally (as others have also done), construe his critique of technofeudalism as leaning towards some normative or moral statements about how to improve things under capitalism, especially for businesses with a 'humanist' bent. Thus, it's important not to under-emphasise or downplay his main concern about any mode of production which is based on a socioeconomic class structure that enables one class to live off another class via the ownership and control of the means of production. Consequently, one should not ignore his revolutionary call at the end of his book, which is an allusion to Marx's own at the end of his and Engels's Communist Manifesto, namely, 'We have nothing to lose but our... chains'. Varoufakis is not a mere social-tech reformer but a social revolutionary!
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Nb. In another blog post I shall deal more critically with some debatable aspects of Varoufakis's theory of technofeudalism and, in particular, his concept of cloud capital - which will bear down on some internal Marxist critiques of his work (such as, for example, that what he calls technofeudalism is just another way of defining the latest stage of capitalism and that 'cloud capital' itself, like other forms of 'capital' ['financial' and 'landlord capital'], is nothing more than a 'crop-sharer' in the distribution of the surplus value [the unpaid surplus labour of workers] that industrial capitalists extract out of wage-workers at the point of the production process (factories).
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