Technofeudalism: The Death of Capitalism and the Rise of a New Power

Yanis Varoufakis posits a provocative thesis about the end of capitalism as we know it. In its place, technofeudalism is emerging—a system in which traditional market profit is being displaced by cloud rent. The main actors in this shift are cloudists, who control digital infrastructure, and vassals and serfs in the cloud, whose labor and attention are exploited by algorithms. This text explores the mechanisms of digital enclosure and identity dispossession, drawing parallels to historical feudalism. It is an in-depth analysis of systemic evolution that redefines the concepts of property, labor, and power in an era of the dominance of large technological platforms, pointing to an inevitable mutation of the global economic order.