Yanis Varoufakis argues that Amazon marks a shift to “technofeudalism”, claiming its ownership of digital infrastructure forces capitalists, governments and users to pay it economic rents (How Amazon turned our capitalist era of free markets into the age of technofeudalism, 27 November). This rests on an idealised view of capitalism. Early capitalism saw similar dynamics: the East India Company, backed by the British state, controlled trade routes, exploited resources and wielded political power, enabling it to charge above-market prices for commodities such as tea and spices.

In Capital, Karl Marx noted that English landlords helped establish capitalism by dispossessing peasants and commodifying land. They earned monopoly rents from their exclusive control of this productive resource – a portion of surplus value originally created by exploited labour and first appropriated by industrial capitalists before being transferred to landowners.

Varoufakis contrasts this with today’s firms, arguing that they extract rents rather than produce goods. But these rents still originate in labour. Every product sold on Amazon depends on human work – whether in factories, warehouses or delivery networks.

Far from signalling feudalism’s return, Amazon exemplifies capitalism’s evolution. Its power lies not in escaping capitalist logic but in intensifying it: global supply chains, algorithmic management and relentless cost-cutting squeeze labour harder than ever. The global working class today is hundreds of times larger than in Marx’s era, and its exploitation underpins the rents that Varoufakis describes. To frame this as “technofeudalism” risks obscuring the real problem – not a break from capitalism but its deepening grip on production, distribution and everyday life.
Prof Benjamin Selwyn
University of Sussex