Hello and welcome to another episode of the Politics Theory of the podcast. My name is Alex

Dority. In recent years, a number of economists and political commentators have argued that our

era of stagnating economies, businesses that increasingly substitute rent for profit making,

and monopolistic

platform giants that prey upon our data, can no longer usefully be described as capitalist.

Amongst their number is the economist and former finance minister of Greece, Janice Varifakis.

In his latest book, Technofugilism, What Killed Capitalism,

Yanis argues that the owners of big tech have in effect become fuguel overlords,

replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system.

In our conversation, we discussed why Janice believes capitalism is no longer the appropriate term to describe contemporary economic and social relations.

We also talked about the financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and how central bank responses

to both crises serve to build the power of the tech giants. And I also put to Janice

some of the arguments made by those who are critical and suspicious of the techno-fugilist thesis.

Finally, we also briefly discussed the situation in Gaza and why Janice believes reports of the

decline of US global hegemony are, for the moment, rather exaggerated.

Today's episode is brought to you by PTO's supporters on Patreon and also by Verso Books,

who have lots of great left-wing titles perfect for PTO listeners.

One you might like to check out is Workshop of the World, Essays in People's History, by

Raphael Samuel. Described by Stuart Hall as one of the most outstanding original intellectuals

of his generation,

Raphael Samuel's historical writing transformed what history was, who was allowed to do it,

and who it was for. Workshop of the World, Essays in People's History, is a new collection of

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