Technofeudalism: Ending it

Yanis Varoufakis has described a state of affairs which should have us all worried: capitalism has been replaced but not by socialism but instead techno-feudalism (Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism (ISBN: 9781847927279)). That instead of moving forward, Western economies have instead retreated back into a neo-feudalism. That non-wealthy people have been transformed from free people to renters, and owners of corporations into rentiers: "(People) will own nothing, and be happy", as European technocrat had put it some time ago.

There is much to what Varoufakis has argued: the things we buy have turned into boxes that can hold licences. Computers programs have transformed into apps which require yearly rental fees instead of being programs that we buy once and can use forever so long as the disc lasts. We can no longer buy movies, music albums, and games but instead licenses to play the movies, music, and games, which can be revoked at any time by the license issuers. We can no longer buy cars but instead are encouraged to purchase leases or are offered expensive loans. Same with houses but on a scale 40 times worse. We own nothing.

What we do own, we can't even repair. Electric and hybrid cars restrict who can use the tools required to replace parts. John Deer and Tesla are following the Apple model of restricting who can do repairs to their vehicles by utilizing licensing. At any time, due to how leases are structured, these corporations can revoke them and reclaim the vehicles up and until the vehicles are fully purchased, and then they'll offer another contract for another vehicle. Even with ownership of the car, these corporations can act without impunity and reclaim the vehicles at cost to the owner simply by owning the towing business that takes the vehicle.

This system of licensing has long been a part of labour as well. We need licenses to practice law, medicine, accounting, and teaching. These professions all used to be like the trades: professionals could take on apprentices and train them to take the exams needed to earn these licenses. However, universities have captured this entire process, and now education's being priced into the stratosphere. The same financilization that has captured the education process also controls the rental market for students, which also restricts the licensing process to determine who can do what labour even after graduation. Students graduate into onerous loans and leases, and they are restricted in their jobs and lives from doing anything outside the norm.

At every step of our lives, we are now under the control or under the threat of fees, leases, and licenses. Our healthcare systems are either in the control of insurance companies or are under threat from them: privatization.

We have been transformed from free people into indentured servants of the wealthy. Or we have become a people even lower than that: clowns and serfs, who toil about unseen entirely. The wealthy crow how we are free from ownership, but we have instead become servants in a techno-caste society. There are the seen and unseen servants of the wealthy. Those who must pay some or even all of what they own simply to be a participant of society. And those who fall apart and fall down are left to the sidewalks and streets. To the gutters and alleyways and prisons with them who do buy not buy the licenses they need to function. They who have fallen are no longer citizens but instead targets: to be aimed at with kicks or by the police with their batons: imprisoned and enslaved.

We are convinced this is a natural state of order, something we cannot overturn because to overturn this system is to overturn society. But at this point, in a state of misery, what threat is this to us, the indentured and the enslaved?

We must become revolutionary in our words and actions. We must speak the language and adopt the politics of socialist revolution. We must become as family, and solid in our efforts to strengthen the whole of our solidarity.