GenZedong

I'm getting through of Varoufakis's "Technofeudalism" and I'll hold off judgement until I've relearned my political economy [this project has expanded much more than I thought it would] but I really despise his truisms about AES states.

I'm not saying a work can't be good without being explicitly made by a Leninist [Princes of the Yen and Confessions of an Economic Hitman are both pretty good despite their authors], but...let me elaborate more

Varoufakis occasionally throws in a couple lines about AES states being bad. He says they "had a dogmatic idea about equality" [note: he calls these "socialists of the east" despite cuba being...a thing?] and later says the states turned out something closer to "George Orwells animal farm or 1984." [Conviently ignoring that both of these works were propaganda pieces against the soviet union]. Or that he and his father had concerns that "the same people they fought with [the greek communists] would throw him into a gulag," But...he never proves this. [The last thing he doesn't have to prove, but I still have problems with it]

I'm not saying he has to, but "no investigation, no right to speak." Maybe he has a later section, but currently he throws these out with the basic premise that the reader uncritically agrees with him. But the book is tailored towards the left or those curious about it or who dislike capitalism [in its current form], and makes active references to marxism. So what does this serve? The book is not explicitly a criticism or analysis of AES states.

I think, if I can get into his headspace, he either is getting too conversational [as the book is a letter to his late father, which he and his father agree on AES states and such], so he doesn't feel the need to justify it but, poetically, cannot stop himself from bringing it up.

There's also the possibility that it is his own anxieties that he aims to keep down by repeating a mantra.

More materially there is hegemony, and of course cue the Parenti article.

But I criticize these truisms both because they lack creative and critical thoughts, but also because they are unnecessary. Why denounce leninism in this way, when your book is going to be seen by leftists? Yes there are many of the western left who agree, but plenty also disagree, and others can be undecided. In any case it's either pure selfishness, pure ideology, or uncritical thinking which is concerning for his future study, and only serves to deradicalize people, which is antithetical to what he is [ostensibly] trying to do.

I know Varoufakis published another book recently focusing on Revolution and resistance. I have a lot on my plate right now, but if this would shed more light onto his thinking, then I might read it at some point.