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  • Published: 28 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529194609
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Technofeudalism

What Killed Capitalism





The #1 bestselling economist opens our eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world

No one noticed when capitalism was ... replaced. Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold.

Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies went to big tech instead. Having privatised the internet, big tech has been able to replace capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism: the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and the greatest current threat to social democracy.

Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it.

  • Published: 28 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529194609
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the author of a memoir, Adults in the Room, and a history, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, which reveal and explain the catastrophic mishandling of Europe since the financial crisis. Both were number one bestsellers. His latest bestseller is Talking To My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism. Born in Athens in 1961, Yanis Varoufakis was for many years a professor of economics in Britain, Australia and the USA before he entered government and is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Since resigning from Greece's finance ministry he has co-founded an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe and speaks to audiences of thousands worldwide.

yanisvaroufakis.eu / @yanisvaroufakis

Also by Yanis Varoufakis

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Praise for Technofeudalism

An incisive critique

Guardian

A book for anybody who wants to understand the mess we're in - and since we're all in this mess, that makes it a book for everybody

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

With superb storytelling, Varoufakis shows how capitalism has eaten itself alive, mutating into an entirely different and more dangerous beast, and calls on us to free ourselves from digital serfdom

BRETT SCOTT, author of Cloudmoney

Provocative and accessible, this is sure to be a key touchstone in debates about the future of the global economy

NICK SRNICEK, co-author of Inventing the Future

Compulsive and necessary reading

KEN LOACH

What if capitalism died and no one noticed - not even the capitalists? Digital platforms usurped capitalism and installed something far worse. This book is an urgent demand to seize the means of computation

CORY DOCTOROW

What an amazing piece of work this is. Ground-breaking, thought-provoking and highly accessible. Everyone should read it. This is where we’re going. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. 100 out of 100

IRVINE WELSH

An important new book ... that describes what is happening in terms of an epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift in Varoufakis's telling, this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power

Carole Cadwalladr, Observer

Arresting … an ambitious thinker and a lively writer … Varoufakis is right that we are in thrall to digital platforms, who hold our data hostage and prevent us from switching to "a competing cloud fief"

The Times

Varoufakis is a remarkable combination of analyst and dreamer… as always, Varoufakis makes his readers think… an important achievement

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

In his characteristically enthralling style, Varoufakis guides the reader through some of the most significant trends in the modern economy, showing clearly how the big tech giants have built an economy that works for them - and how everyone else can take power back

GRACE BLAKELEY

Reading Technofeudalism generates an urgent impulse to imagine new techno-utopias… an entertaining read for anyone interest in how the socio-economic structure is morphing across the globe

Scottish Left Review
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