A new form of capital called cloud capital has emerged with unprecedented commanding power.

Evidence

It was the pandemic, with the flood of state money it unleashed, that ushered in the Age of Cloud Capital. And if we want a milestone with which to mark its formal arrival, that summer’s morning will do nicely. But as I have hinted already, the story of the rise of cloud capital on the back of state money actually begins earlier than this, for it was in the wake of the crash of 2008 that state money began to be printed en masse by the world’s central banks and started to have its strange and counter-intuitive effect on profit. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 378 (#expands, via linked claim)

Back then, I hadn’t a clue. But today, I see it clearly: Stelarc’s Movatar prophesied what was to happen to us when traditional capital evolved into cloud capital, from a ‘produced means of production’ into a produced means of behaviour modification. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 655 (#expands, via linked claim)

Saul Landau has observed of our current situation that there has never been a moment in the history of capitalism when this last enjoyed greater elbowroom and space for maneuver: all the threatening forces it generated against itself in the past — labor movements and insurgencies, mass socialist parties, even socialist states themselves — seem today in full disarray when not in one way or another effectively neutralized; for the moment, global capital seems able to follow its own nature and inclinations, without the traditional precautions. … The postmodern may well in that sense be little more than a transitional period between two stages of capitalism, in which the earlier forms of the economic are in the process of being restructured on a global scale, including the older forms of labor and its traditional organizational institutions and concepts. That a new international proletariat (taking forms we cannot yet imagine) will reemerge from this convulsive upheaval it needs no prophet to predict: we ourselves are still in the trough, however, and no one can say how long we still stay there. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 892 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Traditional capitalists have become vassals to cloud capital’s feudal overlords — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 17; Global capital now operates with unprecedented freedom from organized resistance. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 892; The pandemic’s state money flood marked the formal arrival of cloud capital — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 378 (+6 more)

Related

• The pandemic’s state money flood marked the formal arrival of cloud capital (similarity 0.91)
• Capital itself, mutated into cloud capital, has killed capitalism (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud capital functions as a produced means of behaviour modification. (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud capital is capital’s mutation into feudal wealth extraction, not capital’s death (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud capital’s physicality and commanding power do not distinguish it from earlier capital forms (similarity 0.85)
• A new form of capital with unprecedented commanding power now dominates the world (similarity 0.83)
• Cloud capital made humanity work for free or a pittance (similarity 0.83)
• Traditional capitalists have become vassals to cloud capital’s feudal overlords (similarity 0.83)
• Technofeudalism displaces capitalism by substituting cloud capital for terrestrial capital. (similarity 0.83)
• Cloud capital has displaced markets and profit from the center of the economy (similarity 0.82)
• Cloud capital reproduces itself without waged labour, unlike all prior capital. (similarity 0.82)
• By 2020 cloud rents dominated the developed world’s aggregate net income (similarity 0.81)
• Cloudalists had to build their rent-extraction powers from nothing. (similarity 0.81)
• Cloud capital is physical networked machinery plus unwaged user labor (similarity 0.81)
• Global capital now operates with unprecedented freedom from organized resistance. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Global capital now operates with unprecedented freedom from organized resistance. #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 892
• The pandemic’s state money flood marked the formal arrival of cloud capital #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 378
• Cloud capital functions as a produced means of behaviour modification. #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 655
• Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 660