Despite the website name, a lot of good stuff in this!
The question is this: Is capitalism undergoing one more of its many metamorphoses, thus warranting nothing more than a new epithet, e.g. rentier capitalism, platform capitalism, hyper-capitalism or xxxxx-capitalism? Or are we witnessing a qualitative transformation of capitalism into a brand new exploitative mode of production?
Absolutely disagree. We are not witnessing a qualitative transformation into some non-capitalism or techno-feudalism or whatever. It's still capitalism. "Early adopters" collecting rents from property is part of the crisis of capitalism as it moves from free markets to monopolies and then the monopolies are forced apart by trust busting only to then become monopolies again. There is no stable ground in capitalism over longer terms, it's always churning, destroying itself, and recreating itself.
If Varoufakis was alive in the 50s, he would've called the New Deal a fundamental shift away from capitalism to bureaucratic management or something and then neoliberalism appearing a couple of decades later would have utterly confused him.
I disagree with varoufakis over techno part (although I agree with government part in profit distribution).
The only thing Facebook/google is doing is inserting itself as unremovable middle man in every transaction, algorithms are all bull shit, they make money from sales, they reduce profit for normal capitalists by being middleman, it’s same as it ever was, it’s basically commercial capital
this is very similar to M Wark's 'vectoralist class' line of thinking, with the added confusion of the combined 'techno-feudalism' term not really being very explanatory of its meaning, but Yanis's book sounds pretty cool
this is potentially useful for deworming certain kinds of lib brains that are enthralled by crypto/fintech - he's definitely good at explaining the economic realities that exist
