Absurd, idiotic headline. Apart from being pure slander of the Soviets, the whole premise vulgarizes socialist economic theory and what economic planning even means. The more i read from Varoufakis the more i’m beginning to think he’s really a moron.

He thinks he’s so clever coming up with these comparisons, with nebulous concepts like “neofeudalism”, as if he’s just discovered something completely new that no one discovered before, when all it is, is just monopoly capitalism. All to avoid applying a good old fashioned Marxist analysis which is more than enough to explain these phenomena without resorting to estoteric theories about a new “feudalism”.

The more you read him and others like him the more you start noticing the conspicuous, Marxism-shaped hole in their analysis. Because of course we can’t be seen to be talking in Marxist terminology and applying dialectical analysis can we? That wouldn’t be respectable, our liberal academic peers would call us names…

The result of this Marxism-phobia is that he has to vomit up onto the page sentences like:

So, just as the Soviet Union generated one kind of feudalism in the name of socialism and human emancipation, today, Silicon Valley is generating another kind of feudalism — technofeudalism, I have called it — in the name of capitalism and free markets.

No, you pretentious wannabe, the Soviet Union was not “feudalism” and neither is monopoly capitalism.

Idk why anyone ever thought this guy, who is clearly an anti-communist radlib, had anything intelligent to say.

    • Marat@lemmygrad.ml
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      23 days ago

      I will say Varoufakis is at least listenable. I cannot listen to Zizek for more than a minute because he’s really self important, and the guy really needs a tissue to blow his nose with.

      My personal favorite is Chomsky though. Not politically, just that I like listening to him. I know he’s slow foe a lot of people but idk I’m fine with it

      • cornishon@lemmygrad.ml
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        22 days ago

        At least Zizek was entertaining. @cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml

        I will say Varoufakis is at least listenable. I cannot listen to Zizek for more than a minute because he’s really self important, and the guy really needs a tissue to blow his nose with.

        That’s by design. They are the same “product” tailored to different audiences; Zizek if you want “edgy and funny” analysis, Varoufakis if you want a “respectable” one. Both will tell you that the problem is we are doing capitalism wrong but at least we’re not USSR.