>Towards the end of Technofeudalism, Varoufakis canvasses some proposals, drawn from his earlier book Another Now (2020), for how to address these issues. These include ending the cloudalists faux “free service” model and replacing it with a universal micro-payment model, instituting a Bill of Digital Rights, and using digital technology to “democratise companies” (with decisions being taken collectively by “employee-shareholders”)
employee owned coops are a major socialist idea, and are a definitive step away from privately owned capital, toward collectively owned production by the employees (proletariat, if you will).
> nor is Yannis Varoufakis even remotely advocating eliminating the notion of private property ownership.
uh, yes, he does.
> I try to create a vision of a liberal, socialist society that is not based on private property but does use money as a vehicle for exchange and markets as coordinating devices. I preserve money and markets because the alternative would be to fall to some fearsome hierarchical control, which, for me, is a nightmare scenario.
when capitalism sublimates everything into commodity form, it's important to be reminded of the water we fish swim in.
Fun or Play can be considered useless if not being commoditized or sold, but of course they are essential. Byung-Chul Han has some nice books about this.
personally, i adopt the marxist analysis of capitalism being a particular mode of production where private productive property is owned and controlled by the owners/shareholders and labor is exchanged for wages.
if we are going to make a distinction between feudalism and capitalism, surely we can similarly make a distinction between capitalism and X, instead of simply defining capitalism uselessly as "free markets" or "human nature." it's inclusive of the institutions which uphold these relations.
longevity? uh... no. capitalism is very young in human society.
for clarity, feudalism lasted twice as long as capitalism has currently existed.
and while competition has dominated the scientific and cultural narrative for a while, that's not the exclusive interpretation, or even necessarily the best or correct one.
> The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary
that would be true if you had no understanding surplus value. i highly recommend you at least try and read the first few chapters of Marx's Capital, which was quoted directly in the article.
notice profits are skyrocketing while wages are dead? "rising tide raises all ships" economics is dead.
Deleuze has a good really short essay called Postscript on Societies of Control[1] on the machinic nature of capitalism.
maybe we are saying the same thing, and I absolutely agree that Americans have a fundamentally individualist viewpoint.
however I still see your argument as being rooting in human perspective. capitalism is a human institution as much as our human body is a cellular institution. apoptosis is as fundamental to a functioning human body as exploitative labor relations are to capital.
I don't see it as submissive because in a control society, governed by computers and machine learning models, humans are in fact freed in a certain way, channeled toward production. this is coupled with ideology which is already present to make it feel less alienating, even preferable.
however capital is far from dead. and whatever human individual or institutional churning happens in the next 30 years due to tech I don't see having a significant impact.
Plato said the same thing about writing/reading killing people's ability to remember/speak.
> If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
the same was said about books, novellas, tv, movies, audio books, etc etc.
I read the book mentioned in the article after a suggestion here, and Marshall McLuhan said it much better and without the boomer resentment. the author was a student of McLuhans but failed to say something unique.
the fact that you have to have owned a business to be allowed to have an opinion about working productivity to so fucking telling about capitalist ideology
my primary keyboards are a planck for my personal desktop and ergodox infinity for work. i guess if i used the planck every day i'd get used to it but i think that the braces/brackets/parens are common enough they deserve their own keys instead of chords. but again, i've not given the time to learn to type with chords as a daily driver.
i would like one of these though and maybe move on from the planck for my desktop. the minimalism is sexy as hell
i believe in gift economy and don't agree that extending credit even at favorable rates to the global south is fair. even in your description here you use euphemism to cover the forceful removal of what you in the same paragraph as 'life-changing products'
> life-changing products to people in need ... to have some level of stable income ... the asset can be recovered
they NEED the LIFE-CHANGING asset as long as they can PAY interest. if they default, i guess they don't NEED it.
it's not ethical! sorry. it's the same old neoliberal capitalism, just tied to a product which can't be exchanged for food like the old microloans, and can be more easily repossessed.
i'm glad you enjoyed the Jacobin article, but you missed the forest for the trees. if you want to do it right, don't charge interest and restructure as a co-op.
wow, astute observation. i'm sure the author never realized that life is painful, or that the capitalist mode of production requires productive labor in a free market in order to survive.
i'm sure they didn't bother to write this whole article because they have crushing anxiety about getting things done _in spite of_ the very astute facts you noted, and still found difficulty and failure.
bravo. you really just see the world the way things are, ignatius. welcome to the confederacy
Progress is dead! Long live the plane of immanence!
history doesn't progress in a forward arrow. just like evolution, it explodes outwards in every direction all at once, driven by desiring machines. humans, corporations, states, animals, plants, even the systems of the earth themselves have made themselves into political actors.
anybody who has described a vector and metrics to demonstrate it should be scrutinized for their politics and what goals they are trying to achieve.
economic indicators are used (by capitalist economists) to bludgeon those who dislike the status quo into accepting that "it's not as bad as you experience it" and keep chugging along towards our climate demise in the name of capital and profit.
>Towards the end of Technofeudalism, Varoufakis canvasses some proposals, drawn from his earlier book Another Now (2020), for how to address these issues. These include ending the cloudalists faux “free service” model and replacing it with a universal micro-payment model, instituting a Bill of Digital Rights, and using digital technology to “democratise companies” (with decisions being taken collectively by “employee-shareholders”)
employee owned coops are a major socialist idea, and are a definitive step away from privately owned capital, toward collectively owned production by the employees (proletariat, if you will).
so, yes. he does. in this article.