‘Capitalism Is Dead. Now We Have Something Much Worse: Yanis Varoufakis On Extremism, Starmer, And The Tyranny Of Big Tech

What could be more exciting than going to Greece to meet with Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic left-wing flag-bearer who tried to blame the man known as the IMF, the European Union and the entire global financial system? My mental images before the tour are of two episodes of Zorba the Greek and one episode of a Jill Dando-era BBC holiday show: blue skies, blue seas, maybe a broken plate in a cheery pub. What I don't expect is a wall of flames rolling down the hill on the airport highway and plumes of black smoke billowing down the road.

Because even a modern villa perched on a hill on the island of Aegina, a short ferry ride from the port of Piraeus and the summer retreat of fashionable Athenians, is not a refuge from the modern world. This is the house where Varoufakis and his wife, the landscape architect Dane Stratou, have lived year-round since the outbreak, but in 2015 In August 2023, they will no longer live at the end of a summer filled with heat and extreme weather around the world. Feeling a little apocalyptic. An orange ball that the sun tries to shine through the fog, the heavy rain is almost invisible from the sky. A month later, northern Greece receives two years' worth of rain in one day, causing biblical floods and flash floods on an unprecedented scale.

It may not be a coincidence that the end of the world is a little closer here than in some places, because Varoufakis has written a new book, Technofeudalism : What Killed Capitalism . Nor does the book conclude that capitalism has been replaced by something worse. It is not the glorious socialist revolution that the heroic Marx predicted. It is not a new mutation of capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff explains in her stunning 2019 bestseller , The Age of Spy Capitalism . We are now enslaved, says Varoufakis, in the home of our new global masters, Lord Zuckerberg of Fashland and the rotten CT X Sir Musk.

As I hailed a cab on the way home, Varoufakis hailed me in a red Mini. "I usually ride a motorcycle," he says, describing his "pure journey" to the Greek parliament in one hour, by land and sea. "It's also worth noting that the motorcycle and leather jacket don't diminish his image as a left-wing bad boy challenging the grays of global capitalism. To put Varoufakis in context, Jeremy If Corbyn (another good friend) had been elected to office and John McDonnell had been played by George Clooney in this script, he would have been the Greek equivalent of John McDonnell (a good friend).

Because in the year In 2015, at the height of Greece's debt crisis, Varoufakis rose from academic obscurity to finance minister. He has declared - loudly and repeatedly - that the punitive measures the banks want to impose on Greece will lead to disastrous austerity. A majority of Greeks voted for him and his strategy of refusing to accept IMF and EU provisions in the short term has fueled tensions. Until they met the man who appointed him, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. It's either the only course of action to keep the country from going bankrupt, or an insidious betrayal, depending on who you choose to believe.

Jeff Bezos says he doesn't produce capital. Collect the rent. This is feudalism, not capitalism.

The Financial Times called Varoufakis "the most annoying person in the room" during the debate, so it's no surprise that techno-feudalism is a contentious and controversial area. And while there's nothing special about hating technology in 2023 (hating Elon Musk is the only logical response to the situation we find ourselves in), Technofeudalism feels like an important new book.

It is a general hypothesis based on historical accounts of how capitalism arose and describes what happens in terms of epochal changes that occur once every thousand years. In some ways, it's a relief when a politician - any politician - talks about it. Because according to Varoufakis, it's not just about new technology. This world is struggling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power.

"Imagine the following scene from a science fiction storybook," he wrote. “You find yourself in a city full of people running their own businesses, selling gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything seems good. Until he began to notice something strange. It turns out that all the shops and in fact all the buildings are owned by a man named Jeff. Plus, everything is controlled by their own algorithm, so everyone walks down different streets and looks at different stores...an algorithm that dances to Jeff's beat.

It may seem like a market, but Varoufakis says it's not. Jeff (Bezos, owner of Amazon) does not produce capital, he says. Collect the rent. This is feudalism, not capitalism. And we? We are servants. Cloud slaves have such a lack of class awareness that we don't even notice that the tweets and posts we make add value to these companies.

We are in the spacious and open living room where the owner appears from time to time, offering us water, coffee and snacks and chasing after a large loving and enthusiastic Labrador. "He's madly in love with Janice," he says. Stratou and Varoufakis are a wonderful couple, like their beautiful home, a fresh, bright space with poured concrete and large glass windows that perfectly square the blue pool.

"I don't have a problem with luxury," he once said, which is just as well because the whole scene infuriated the Daily Mail , especially since Aegina is the Greek equivalent of Martha. - Connected Art Network. And the political elite. Tsipras, a former prime minister and enemy of Varoufakis, lived nearby. “I was on the other hill. "There is an important symbolic gap between us," he says.

And while Stratu is an accomplished artist, she's also primed for some internet fame. At the height of Varoufakis' popularity, a newspaper report claimed that she was the inspiration for Pulp's popular Common Folks. "He came from Greece, thirsting for knowledge," says the first line; "He gave a statue to St. Martin, the second. He even did Strata at the same time as Jarvis Coker, although he said, 'No comment!' Even though I definitely bring it up, it says, “It's the first thing you see when you Google my name.” “Who knows where artists get their inspiration from?” Although Varoufakis seems to like my question very much.

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Technofeudalism is a letter to Varoufakis' recently deceased father, Georgios. A Greek Egyptian communist, he emigrated to Greece in the 1940s, amid the country's civil war, and was sentenced to five years of "political re-education" for refusing to denounce communism. He became the president of the largest Greek steel company. In the book, what Varoufakis admires most about him is his ability to see the "dual nature" of things.

Technofeudalism is also a semi-sequel to his previous book, Talking to My Son About the Economy , which he addressed to his then 11-year-old daughter, Ksenia, in which he tried to answer the question of why there is so much inequality. Even when he wrote it, he said, he felt an apocalyptic doubt about the future of capitalism.

"Even before the publication in 2017, I don't feel comfortable," he says in the first chapter of Tecnofeudalimo . "Between finishing the manuscript and getting my hands on the printed book, I felt like we were in the 1840s and I was about to publish a book about feudalism. Or, at worst, like waiting for the publication of a book about Soviet central planning in late 1989.

On the bookshelf in the living room, I see a book called Zooked by entrepreneur Roger McNamee, the former Facebook investor who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Sheryl Sandberg. "It's an amazing book," says Varoufakis. I tell him that McNamee generally agrees with his new ideas. I wrote several people to ask Varoufakis, including McNamee, what he wanted, and I explained the gist of the book: Two key events have changed the global economy: 1) privatization of the Internet by big tech companies in the United States and China. . companies; and 2) in response to the great financial crisis of 2008, when Western governments and central banks released a flood of money.

I read McNamee's response: “I agree with the main point. The United States has zeroed interest rates from 2009 to 2022. Advertising business models that achieve global change, even if they are completely unrealistic and/or against the public good (eg the gig economy, driverless cars, cryptocurrencies). , Metaverse, AI). This has occurred in a time where technology has taken control and there is a widely accepted culture in business where managers should maximize shareholder value if everything (e.g. democracy, public health, public safety)...is business as usual. 5% over the past 14 years, I strongly doubt that the sharing economy, autonomous vehicles, cryptocurrencies, metaverse or artificial intelligence will get 10% more funding.

I find it amazing that a Marxist and a venture capitalist reach the same economic conclusion. But more and more people - outside of politics - are trying to understand these new power structures. As Shoshana Zuboff told me, she "clearly rejects labels like technofeudalism because technology is not an independent variable and we are not feudal servants," but he also says that this argument has some parallels with one of his recent writings: "In Big Tech, we are like capitalism in its core aspects." We are experiencing a total power that cannot be understood, but as a "completely new control. About a few. For many."

I ask him what advice he would give to Keir Starmer and he says, "I have to try to be honest." "You know what? Brexit was a disaster," I have to say.

Unlike Varoufakis, when I write to another charismatic and influential economist, Mariana Mazzuccato, who has the support of government and financial institutions, her response suggests that some of Varoufakis' ideas are not new. In the year In 2018, she self-published on the related concept of "algorithmic rent" (tech companies grabbing attention and reselling it instead of creating long-term value).

But perhaps the traditional distinction between left and right doesn't make sense. The right, says Varoufakis, "sees capitalism as a natural system, a bit like an atmosphere." Leftists see themselves as the people who created the universe to prioritize socialism over capitalism. I'm telling you, you know what it is, you missed it. I missed you. Someone killed capitalism. We have worse things to do.

The former Internet has given way to a privatized digital landscape, where gatekeepers "collect the rent... those we call capitalists are now just a class of vassals." If there's anything she's producing right now, it's this. Because you are done, you can no longer be the ruler of the world.

I think aloud that Varoufakis' global approach to authoritarianism - and the radical politics he created in his family - still stems from the fact that it is Greek history. At the age of six, the secret police broke into his home and arrested his father. Do you remember that? - I asked. “My God, yes, all this is not forgotten. We didn't know where he was for two weeks." And when Varoufakis became interested in politics (this Greece was still ruled by a military junta), and when he was taken by the police as a teenager, his parents were sure he was going to Britain.

Not only is he a passionate European and internationalist, he also writes in English as an Anglophile and studied at the University of Essex and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He is credited with persuading Jeremy Corbyn to support the referendum and campaigning across the country. And when I asked him what advice he would give to Keir Starmer, he said, “You have to try to do what you can't: be true. I have to say: "You know what? Brexit was a disaster. I want Britain back into the EU. I'm not saying I'll do it anytime soon. But I'll work on it. In. Until then, I'm going to Brexit to work on ABC and D. (He said last week that he wanted to renegotiate with the EU to strengthen it.)

"He's taking austerity measures now. He has no plans to privatize the NHS from within. You know, that's the only thing I miss about Thatcher. She was a committed politician, wasn't she?

I would say that Varoufakis' closest political counterparts in the UK are probably Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. " What?" He says.

"You are all anti-politics," I say.

His views on the conflict in Ukraine are not unlike those of Nigel Farage.

"The reality of your attitude is unfortunate," he says. Because I am against the system. But it is true, these people take it upon themselves to fight the institution in accordance with the interests of the institution. "I don't see the difference between Orbán, the Polish government, Trump, Farage, Johnson, Mussolini."

This was part of his appeal to the EU during the Greek debt crisis. "To Wolfgang Schäuble [former German finance minister]: 'We are both democrats.' We believe in light. Give us austerity and we will turn to fascism, I said. And I'm afraid. In this year's election in Greece, the big winners were: "The Spartans are a mutation of the Golden Dawn (party)." Banned Greek Neo-Nazi] The Greek solution is just to hear the names, right? And King or Victoria.

This is a particularly sensitive matter. Because the successes of these parties were achieved at the expense of Varoufakis. After serving as finance minister, he formed his own party which won nine seats in the 2019 elections. This year he lost all of them. "We don't really know what happened. We found 21 percent among young people. The source admitted to failure. Since then, he's been holed up in Aegina considering his next move. Even with ash still raining from the sky, the place isn't bad.

It's a stimulating discussion, including a half hour about Russia and Ukraine where I disagree with everything he says. His views on the conflict are similar to those of Nigel Farage, who gives the same right-wing and left-wing "horseshoe" discourse about a deal with Putin and how Crimea is not Ukraine. But I could listen to him talk about techno-feudalism all day.

Enter his daughter Ksenia. "They're still coming? I've slept three times since you arrived. An Australian student from Aegina studied online and spent the middle of the night. His relationship with his first wife, the Australian scholar Margarita Poulos, and his decision to return to Australia with Xenia, Varoufakis wrote, were among the darkest moments of his life. The meeting with saved him from "almost oblivion."

In Technofeudalism , Varoufakis tells the story of the Minotaur. This is an oft-repeated myth. According to his recipe, the Minotaur is the world's monetary system. In the legend, the beast was finally killed by the prince of Athena. This prince of Athens failed to overthrow capitalism. But as he and Strath lead me to the taxi in the unnaturally orange sunset, it appears to me that the animal is about to die.

2008 and 2020: The Coalition That Changed Capitalism Forever [Yannis Varoufakis]