Who will oppose feudalism? Former Greek Finance Minister says: The Star Trek you love to watch—that is communism.

Everyone, former Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis recently had a conversation about the big question of "who will fight feudalism." He started with a rather deflating little point: Twitter's technology is actually not important at all. Really. Twitter has three or four alternatives—Bluesky, Mastodon, and so on—which are technically better, more interesting, and easier to use, but they have no chance. Why? Because Twitter has first-mover advantage. Then he told his own "personal tragedy": I don't like Twitter because I don't like Musk; but I have 1.2 million followers on Twitter. I went to Bluesky and only got 600,000. And when I left I couldn't take my followers with me and tell them, "Hey, let's move to Bluesky"—that sort of thing doesn't happen. It's not just Twitter; Amazon is likewise hard to replace, because Amazon has a massive number of sellers, and whatever you want to buy, it's there. Even if you and I could build a better platform, a better way of organizing information, call it whatever you like, as long as it has hundreds of millions of users, it would easily succeed; but we don't have hundreds of millions of users, so it will die—even if your engineers are stronger than Amazon's. So these techno-feudal giants, these cloud lords, just sit there naturally, and whether you switch platforms or not makes no difference to them. In his book he mentions a question his father asked him in 1993: Would computers and the internet make capitalism impossible to replace, or would they expose its contradictions? His answer was blunt: Of course it can be replaced; there is nothing that cannot be replaced. So what are the steps? The beauty of the techno-feudal system is that it is technology, artificially made—we can change it, we can set it aside, we can build new things. We must believe in human capacity and our own imagination to replace everything we have already built. The worst kind of imagination is to treat capitalism as a natural system. It is not a natural system; it is a crazy system. Techno-feudalism is likewise not a natural system; it is actually a very stupid system—using very clever technology to do very stupid things. So we can do better. To be fair, feudalism was also a stupid system, but it lasted a long time. If it were 1810 and we were discussing this in Paris, London, or Beijing, I would say: Come on, just copy feudalism. If you turned to me and asked, I would add: Wait, there has never been a country in history without feudalism—but that doesn't mean other possibilities don't exist. So we must keep our confidence. Look at the classic works that defended feudalism: power, capital, technology are always there. So what is left that can let us replace this system and build the right thing? Because the right system has never appeared. So the question becomes: How do we move from the dark side of technology to a society where technology serves the good? His answer is—techno-communism. How to begin? First, work hard on theory, philosophy, and research. Then there is something especially important: let people know that the status quo is not inevitable. Making people understand that "things could be otherwise" is not easy, but it is important. His previous book Another Now was doing exactly this: for today's world and a worthwhile human life, with the technology we already have, depicting a different world that could be internationalist. He is not asking everyone to follow what is written in his book, but rather saying that, on both the level of imagination and the level of real possibility, we must take some practical action. The second level is: tomorrow, in six months, in twelve months, turn these changes into the actions we said we would take. Both levels must be done. But first, still the first question. Because when you talk to people, you have to use their own cultural memory, their own cultural symbols. The example he gave is especially brilliant: when you meet Americans, ask them, "Are you familiar with Star Trek?" They say, "Of course, I'm a die-hard Trekkie." Then he says: My friend, that is communism. There is no private property, no exploitation, no wages, and no profit; there is capital, and a lot of it; there is a hole in the wall, you order a coffee, and the coffee comes; no one pays, because machines are producing everything for you—that is artificial production, everything is public, it is common property. So people can discuss philosophy and go to other galaxies to meet other species. That is communism, and it is American. Every culture has a similar tradition. For example, at New Year, your mother, your aunt, and your father cook together, everyone sits around to eat, and finally it is your turn to clear the table. If you said to your mother, "I'll pay you 10,000 yuan, I won't wash up, you do it"—there is no market in the family. So no matter which culture you talk to people from, communism is their ideal, and people actually understand it. The key is only that you have to tell them in a way that resonates with them.