Podcast with Yanis Varoufakis

On his new book, Technofeudalism

Here’s the link to the “Politics and Letters” podcast that David Barfield and I did with Yanis Varoufakis, the left-wing economist, politician (of Syriza fame), and public intellectual. His new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, was published yesterday in the US by Melville House, the independent publishing house that brought us David Graeber’s Debt: The First Five Thousand Years in 2011. Let us hope that Varoufakis has a similarly bracing effect on our analysis and discussion of these worst of times. In any event, he has written a very personal book that asks us to follow him on the difficult path toward a new set of assumptions about the character of exploitation, the function of markets, the reach of digital platforms—and the staying power of capitalism. It is a theoretically sophisticated, empirically grounded book that is also a pleasure to read. When was the last time you stumbled on such a thing?