The type of capitalism Varoufakis is describing as dead is also something of a fiction, just like the promises of autonomy outside of work that have never been a reality. This is the core weakness of his thesis: capitalism isn't what it tells you it is, it isn't its best foot forward or a 1950s anti-communist propaganda piece about individual freedoms, ingenuity, and markets generally, it's an economic system dominated by a system of wage-labor where owners of capital make a "deal" with workers to give them money in exchange for their time and bodies. The core economic relation has not changed, exploitation via wage laboring remains, and opposition to it is routinely crushed.
The changes Varoufakis describes may be unique in modern times in terms of financialization and trying to understand how platforms interact with or contradict markets, but both rough categories have long existed as outcomes of capitalism.
The platforms Varoufakis describes, as well as the extraction of value, without compensation, from so-called "free time", as well as the theft of childhood/young adulthood, he calls fiefdoms, feudalism, and slavery. Far more brutal forms were widespread under American and British capitalism in the form of company towns, actual chattel slavery, forced labor (debtor, racial) through imprisonment, child labor, and many other structural violences that were ended by labor movements and the export of (some of) these systems to the Global South. These didn't just coexist alongside capitalism, they are what capitalism does by default when not reigned in by an opposing force, whether it's unions or otherwise organized labor or governments. Drive wages as low as possible, to zero if it can get away with it for a time. Capture all economic activities through monopolization and rent-seeking. Use rent-seeking and financial tricks made legal by the bourgeoisie to maintain incredible masses of wealth to throw around at each other and at wage laborers (not by paying them, of course). Have no limitations on who is forced to work, who is forced into precarity to ensure better leverage in labor supply.
None of this is different from capitalism as practiced for hundreds of years, fundamentally. It is useful to analyze the material impacts of technological platforms, how they fit into productive relations, but they are not a major shift from either wage laboring + capital nor even from numerous historical precedents. If anything they're to be expected, as new technologies and industries are unregulated by default and, in the absence of labor movements, simply repeat the brutal, unfettered extraction of yore. Though I should stress that these are only nominally historical things for the Global North, who have exported much of this to the Global South where child labor, slavery, company towns, forced prison labor due to property all still thrive. Varoufakis grew up in the context of a SocDem Europe propped up by imperialism and a lie about what capitalism is and how it functions and I believe he's confusing the lies with the analysis done by Marx.
He definitely seems to ignore the fact that the system can’t function without the enslavement of the global south and that capitalism has never existed as promised. Facebook is not actually decoupled from the material world and still requires all kinds of workers to show up and keep things running.
It’s also true that different modes of production can exist together at the same time. The ancient Roman economy was a mix of landlords, slaveowners, independent farmers, heavily regulated businesses, and state enterprises. Although there are literally hundreds of theories as to why Rome collapsed, the one I favor is: barbarian invasions required the state to raise huge amounts of taxes which drove the common people to seek refuge with landlords who could protect them. (Imagine being that desperate!) The landlords became so powerful in the west that they were able to destroy the state entirely. Feudalism at first coexisted with all of those modes of production but ultimately triumphed over them for centuries. It’s not difficult to imagine landlordism or feudalism coming back to do the same in the modern world, but with Facebook taking the place of Attila the Hun.
You've highlighted a very important point to understanding political economy, imo, which is that while there tends to be a dominant system, it also tends to coexist with other modes. The non-dominant modes are forced to adapt to the dominant one, but it's not all just 100% a certain brand of capitalism of feudalism or slavery or socialism. Chattel slavery coexisted with "proper" capitalism and was deeply intertwined with it despite not being based on the wage laborers system. It integrated neatly into the emerging status quo and capitalists repeatedly justified participating in it and promoting its continuation.
I don't think Facebook actually has much material power to become a dominant mode of production of anything except propaganda / psyops. Amazon and Wal-Mart, though, could easily exert a stranglehold over the entire country's supply of both treats and necessary supplies and both already have massively exploited and mistreated labor pools due to their domination of their markets; labor often has nowhere to go, is forced to sell itself for starvation wages and the only place to buy shit in town is Wal-Mart, with Amazon supplying specialty treats. Amazon places fulfillment centers in awkward locations with little infrastructure - their workers either need to commute long distances or depend on very few options for buying the necessities.
Imagine an Amazon-Wal-Mart merger. One store controlling all supply for the vast majority of goods and having little need to compete in the labor market. They'd rapidly crush other "big box" stores. Company towns version 2.0 is a very real possibility, it will all depend on how much resistance can be organized these tendencies.
It seems like he's describing the death of liberalism in the imperial core rather than the death of capitalism. It's more like a techo-Gilded-Age than technofeudalism.
He does have a point about profit no longer being required though. Was that ever true before? Could any company lose money in perpetuity and expect to be supported by the government?
Food production has enjoyed guarantees that amount to being unable to seriously fail, but I agree that the financial aspect of perpetually propping up a large series of megacorporatuons with MMT is fairly new for the imperial core. But I would hesitate to conclude that it's a new era with regards to capitalism vs. something else. More like a life raft that is headed for serious ruin, as the mechanisms they're using are the tools that are deployed for periodic downturns, so they'll run out of them when the crisis start piling up and shit will far more likely get progressively weirder and then implode rather than adopt a new techno-whatever status quo that's different from capitalism.
The type of capitalism Varoufakis is describing as dead is also something of a fiction, just like the promises of autonomy outside of work that have never been a reality. This is the core weakness of his thesis: capitalism isn't what it tells you it is, it isn't its best foot forward or a 1950s anti-communist propaganda piece about individual freedoms, ingenuity, and markets generally, it's an economic system dominated by a system of wage-labor where owners of capital make a "deal" with workers to give them money in exchange for their time and bodies. The core economic relation has not changed, exploitation via wage laboring remains, and opposition to it is routinely crushed.
The changes Varoufakis describes may be unique in modern times in terms of financialization and trying to understand how platforms interact with or contradict markets, but both rough categories have long existed as outcomes of capitalism.
The platforms Varoufakis describes, as well as the extraction of value, without compensation, from so-called "free time", as well as the theft of childhood/young adulthood, he calls fiefdoms, feudalism, and slavery. Far more brutal forms were widespread under American and British capitalism in the form of company towns, actual chattel slavery, forced labor (debtor, racial) through imprisonment, child labor, and many other structural violences that were ended by labor movements and the export of (some of) these systems to the Global South. These didn't just coexist alongside capitalism, they are what capitalism does by default when not reigned in by an opposing force, whether it's unions or otherwise organized labor or governments. Drive wages as low as possible, to zero if it can get away with it for a time. Capture all economic activities through monopolization and rent-seeking. Use rent-seeking and financial tricks made legal by the bourgeoisie to maintain incredible masses of wealth to throw around at each other and at wage laborers (not by paying them, of course). Have no limitations on who is forced to work, who is forced into precarity to ensure better leverage in labor supply.
None of this is different from capitalism as practiced for hundreds of years, fundamentally. It is useful to analyze the material impacts of technological platforms, how they fit into productive relations, but they are not a major shift from either wage laboring + capital nor even from numerous historical precedents. If anything they're to be expected, as new technologies and industries are unregulated by default and, in the absence of labor movements, simply repeat the brutal, unfettered extraction of yore. Though I should stress that these are only nominally historical things for the Global North, who have exported much of this to the Global South where child labor, slavery, company towns, forced prison labor due to property all still thrive. Varoufakis grew up in the context of a SocDem Europe propped up by imperialism and a lie about what capitalism is and how it functions and I believe he's confusing the lies with the analysis done by Marx.
He definitely seems to ignore the fact that the system can’t function without the enslavement of the global south and that capitalism has never existed as promised. Facebook is not actually decoupled from the material world and still requires all kinds of workers to show up and keep things running.
It’s also true that different modes of production can exist together at the same time. The ancient Roman economy was a mix of landlords, slaveowners, independent farmers, heavily regulated businesses, and state enterprises. Although there are literally hundreds of theories as to why Rome collapsed, the one I favor is: barbarian invasions required the state to raise huge amounts of taxes which drove the common people to seek refuge with landlords who could protect them. (Imagine being that desperate!) The landlords became so powerful in the west that they were able to destroy the state entirely. Feudalism at first coexisted with all of those modes of production but ultimately triumphed over them for centuries. It’s not difficult to imagine landlordism or feudalism coming back to do the same in the modern world, but with Facebook taking the place of Attila the Hun.
You've highlighted a very important point to understanding political economy, imo, which is that while there tends to be a dominant system, it also tends to coexist with other modes. The non-dominant modes are forced to adapt to the dominant one, but it's not all just 100% a certain brand of capitalism of feudalism or slavery or socialism. Chattel slavery coexisted with "proper" capitalism and was deeply intertwined with it despite not being based on the wage laborers system. It integrated neatly into the emerging status quo and capitalists repeatedly justified participating in it and promoting its continuation.
I don't think Facebook actually has much material power to become a dominant mode of production of anything except propaganda / psyops. Amazon and Wal-Mart, though, could easily exert a stranglehold over the entire country's supply of both treats and necessary supplies and both already have massively exploited and mistreated labor pools due to their domination of their markets; labor often has nowhere to go, is forced to sell itself for starvation wages and the only place to buy shit in town is Wal-Mart, with Amazon supplying specialty treats. Amazon places fulfillment centers in awkward locations with little infrastructure - their workers either need to commute long distances or depend on very few options for buying the necessities.
Imagine an Amazon-Wal-Mart merger. One store controlling all supply for the vast majority of goods and having little need to compete in the labor market. They'd rapidly crush other "big box" stores. Company towns version 2.0 is a very real possibility, it will all depend on how much resistance can be organized these tendencies.
It seems like he's describing the death of liberalism in the imperial core rather than the death of capitalism. It's more like a techo-Gilded-Age than technofeudalism.
He does have a point about profit no longer being required though. Was that ever true before? Could any company lose money in perpetuity and expect to be supported by the government?
Food production has enjoyed guarantees that amount to being unable to seriously fail, but I agree that the financial aspect of perpetually propping up a large series of megacorporatuons with MMT is fairly new for the imperial core. But I would hesitate to conclude that it's a new era with regards to capitalism vs. something else. More like a life raft that is headed for serious ruin, as the mechanisms they're using are the tools that are deployed for periodic downturns, so they'll run out of them when the crisis start piling up and shit will far more likely get progressively weirder and then implode rather than adopt a new techno-whatever status quo that's different from capitalism.