Today for my podcast, I read Capitalists Hate Capitalism, my latest column from Locus Magazine. It’s a meditation on the difference between feudalism and capitalism, and how to know which one you’re living under.
I recorded this on a day when I was home between book-tour stops (I’m out with my new techno crime-thriller, The Bezzle). Catch me this Wednesday (Apr 17) in Chicago at Anderson’s Books, then in Torino for the Biennale keynote on Apr 21, then in Marin County at Book Passage Corte Madera on Apr 27, then in Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and beyond! The canonical link for the schedule is here.
Varoufakis’s argument turns on an important distinction between two types of income: profits and rents. These terms have colloquial meanings that are widely understood, but Varoufakis is interested in the precise technical definitions used by economists.For an economist, ‘‘profit’’ is income obtained by mixing capital – tools, machines, systems – with your employees’ labor. The value created by that labor is then divided between the worker, who draws a wage, and the capitalist, who takes the rest as profit.
‘‘Rent,’’ meanwhile, was income derived from owning something that the capitalist needs in order to realize a profit. In feudal times, hereditary lords owned plots of land that serfs were bound to, and those serfs owed an annual rent to their lords. This wasn’t a great deal for the serfs, but it also needled the nascent capitalist class, who would have very much preferred to have those lands enclosed for sheep grazing. The sheep would produce wool, which could be woven into cloth in the ‘‘dark, Satanic mills’’ of the industrial revolution. The former serfs, turned off their land, could be set to work in those factories.
Here’s that tour schedule!
17 Apr: Anderson’s Books, Chicago, 19h:
https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1
19-21 Apr: Torino Biennale Tecnologia
https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia
2 May, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Winnipeg
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337
3 May, Wordfest, Calgary
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/
4 May, Massy Arts, Vancouver
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207
5-11 May: Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/
6-9 Jun: Media Ecology Association keynote, Amherst, NY
https://media-ecology.org/convention
(Image: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, modified)
Hello Cory,
If I may be so bold, I have a suggestion. I suggest finding a different way to say it when you say things like, “capitalists hate competition”, or “capitalists hate capitalism.” I understand that you mean that people who want to maximize profits hate competition and they do things like form monopolies to eliminate competition. But when you say “capitalists hate capitalism,” I feel like it plays into the sentiment that capitalism is a failed system. I feel like it will provide sound bites for young people who wonder if we should replace capitalism with something else. I believe capitalism is the best system but it just needs enforcement of the Sherman act to keep it working.
Capitalists love capitalism. True capitalists revel in beating the competition.
Suggestions? … How about: Monopolists hate competition. Oligarchs hate capitalism.
I believe there US needs to remember why we chose the systems we picked. And destabilizing entities would love to promote the idea that capitalism and democracy have failed. Let’s not make it sound like capitalism is the problem.
Love your work,
Brian