By Yanis Varoufakis
If you own a bookstore, where would you place this book? Logically, it would seem the book belongs in the Political Science or Economics section. However, if you decided to locate it in the Horror section, you would have justification for doing so.
In the days before the dawn of capitalism, feudal lords had free reign to control their land and take from it what they wanted. The vassals managed the land, owed their existence to the feudal lords, and oversaw the serfs who worked themselves nearly to death just to subsist. In Varoufakis’s projection of the ascendant system of technofeudalism, those in control of AI and the cloud, whose platforms we increasingly rely upon to meet our needs, are becoming the new feudal lords. The remnants of market capitalism are being transformed into modern-day vassals. We, as consumers are becoming techno-serfs, and as workers we are becoming techno-prols. Our lives are no longer ours. On a daily basis, we are transferring ownership of our very being, our very identity, to tech companies in exchange for goods and services, whether we are dealing with Bank of America, or Uber, or Amazon or any other platform providing a service we need or want. In the process, algorithms are capturing every stroke, every like, and every hit to eventually tell us what we need and want. They own us, or at least they are in the process of doing so through what the author refers to as the overriding purpose of these sites – behavior modification.
Of late, and in response to the rise of AI Data Centers throughout the country, you may have heard left-leaning politicians such as Bernie Sanders call for a moratorium on their further development. Not only are their positions based upon the use of land, noise pollution, the use of water and electricity (e.g. one data center in Utah will consume as much energy as all current residents of the State), but also on what they describe as theft. And what exactly is being stolen? The theft they refer to is the mining of our personal information, creative expressions, spending habits, likes, dislikes, political dispositions, biases, desires, and other content, all of which are used to create what Varoufakis refers to as “cloud capital,” which is enriching a new elite in this country (and China), and replacing capitalism as our prevalent political economic model. One proposal being advanced takes this “theft” as a justification to legislate public ownership in all these AI companies and platforms, which would be used to set up a trust fund used for social purposes and to provide annual rebates to Americans. Does this make sense, or are we giving up believing this development is inevitable, fighting it is useless, and we may as well just give in to what Wendell Berry has described in the past as unquestioned acceptance of “technological determinism?”
This is a lot to take in. So think of it this way. The more dependent we become on remotely accessing goods and services and the more reliant we become on internet platforms (like Amazon), the more “cloud rent” these platforms can charge businesses (providers of goods and services). The more cloud rent charged, the more “competitive” in pricing the businesses must become. The result? Initially, the result effects profits of the new vassal class that can only be maintained by paying workers less and making them work more (the author points to Amazon workers who must inspect and scan 1800 packages each hour). Take this to a logical conclusion and eventually, when physical retail stores become inefficient and no longer viable, not only will workers be paid less but cloud rents can be increased even more, which will eventually be passed along to the consumer in higher prices. And just like the feudal lord who was able to take whatever he wanted from the serfs, the owners of these platform “fiefdoms” will have that power as well. In the process, markets disappear, replaced by targeted prompts catering to our individualized habits. We are trading in markets for convenience, and eventually for outright dependence.
The author’s answer to this? One might think that, like Marx, he would respond that it is up to the people to collectively define a better future once they recognize the challenge, understand its oppressive powers, understand their collective power as the source of all value, and then revolt. Or, as a neo-Marxist like Gramsci, he might have stated that education, interaction, and a new humanistic cultural awakening was necessary for any such revolution, one that became possible only when ideas, values and vision align to create a new cultural hegemony. Nonetheless, Varoufakis takes up the challenge and provides a detailed outline of the changes that, once enacted, would undo technofeudalism. Varoufakis is brilliant with a depth of knowledge and experience that escapes most of us. However, it is hard to understand how his prescriptions would work. Congress is not going to wake up one day and make these kinds of changes. Would it take a revolution? Would we put him and others like him in charge? Then, when folks on the ground clumsily take actions into their own hands, or begin using opportunity to upend the revolution, will they be branded counter-revolutionaries, and put in camps? I think the best we can do with this is see it as a visioning exercise of what is possible, without getting hung up on the details.
Later in the same final chapter, he does make some recommendations that are relatable. Much of his vision takes power out of the hands of the cloud elite and places them in the hands of the people through their respective municipalities, as well as within corporations, which would have only as many shares of stock as there are employees, and each employee would have one voting share. His elaborate vision comes close to Murray Bookchin’s call for a system of Libertarian Municipalism. But then the author goes on to discuss how such a reorganization of ownership would help the beleaguered South overcome the effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism, without discussing the dynamics of how parochial group ownership and operation would very likely undermine foreign investment, even if for good cause. He discusses how the cloud could be used against itself, to organize boycotts. But again, these “cloud mobilizations,” as he calls them would likely fail in the same way that John Dewey’s projection that once we had universal communication we would realize the Great Community has failed to come about, and that brings me to a final point.
I believe the basic assumption underlying Dewey’s famous prognostication was that when communication became universal, people would still reside within functioning communities. Local economies would still be relevant. Political power would be decentralized, as the economy was decentralized. That is no longer the case. Without community we are each of us on our own. Even though he also identifies the opportunity, Varoufakis makes this precise point about the challenges we face when he writes, “The great new barrier is the physical isolation of the cloud serfs and cloud proles from one another.” In isolation we are weak. In isolation we are most subject to manipulation, commercially and politically. As an organizer, I have learned you have to meet people where they are. You have to live and breathe the circumstances confronting them. You have to relate to them in terms that resonate with their own lives. You have to demonstrate the potential each of them has to be part of something real and meaningful, and something that can only be accomplished through their own collective action, prompted by their own reflective deliberation, in their own time and on their own terms, under their collective control and in ways that complement their life patterns. Meaningful, lasting change must be organic and must flow from the ground up, not from the top down.
There is a segment of Eyes on the Prize III where Ossie Richards discusses how I “harassed” her on a daily basis to become involved with the sweat equity group, Banana Kelly. I was trying to make the case that the South Bronx was going to be rebuilt, and we have to decide whether we would benefit from that rebuilding or would let outsiders do it. Her reaction? “I tried to dodge him, talking all that stuff. But then he said that maybe I would like to get an apartment.” That was the hook and Ossie became a homesteader, a leader, and chaired the board of directors in those early years. There were as many reasons to participate in this effort as there were members of the organization at the time. But what joined them was the potential for a better quality of life and some control over their living circumstances – control they, as Black and Brown citizens in America, never had. They already knew oppression, discrimination, racism, institutional resistance. It had a face, and an institutional framework, which they were prepared to challenge once they realized they were stronger working together. With techno-feudalism, our first challenge is to provide information and an educational framework to understand what we are up against. Once able to “name the problem,” I believe the answer lies in the revival of community, in its most powerful sense, based upon commonality, interdependence and collective capacity. In the meantime, we can get behind Sanders’ proposal for a 50% tax (paid for in shares of ownership) on AI companies, along with mobilizing for a moratorium on expansion until local issues of utility costs, noise pollution, air pollution, water use and other problems are addressed.
This book is well written and I endorse it. The narrative technique used is a book length conversation with the author’s father (much like the technique used by Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me, but with his son), which allows the author to provide a lot of background, making the economic arguments less boring and more palatable. Throughout, his message is loud and clear – under capitalism, alienation separated us from the product of our labor and control over the processes of production. “Under technofeudalism, we no longer own our minds.”