Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 11

Reversing Europe’s and Australia’s slide into irrelevance & insecurity – National Press Club of Australia speech

“Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda.”Yanis Varoufakis’s address at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday 13 March, 2024.Thank you very much, thank you ladies and gentlemen. It is with a deep sense of the obligations and dues we owe to the owners of the land on which we meet today, the Ngunnawal people, that I, too, pay my respects to their elders, past, present and future. I also wish to note and acknowledge the special role played by the women of the first nations, not just because last week we marked International Women’s Day, but because of their leading role as custodians of complex knowledge, as community organisers, and as beacons of wisdom especially for those of us afflicted with a masculine condition.Ladies and gentlemen, today I look forward to discussing with you some thoughts, concerns and ideas about Europe and Australia with a view to reclaiming a shared future for our two continents in a world where Europe and Australia are increasingly marginal. And to do so not just as a European politician but also as a proud citizen of Australia.Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda.The three post-war phases that shaped Australia’s and Europe’s habitatOur present moment in Europe and in Australia has been shaped by three distinct postwar phases.The first was the Bretton Woods system. America exited the war as the only surplus, creditor country. Bretton Woods, a remarkable recycling mechanism, was, in effect, a dollar zone built on fixed exchange rates, sustained by capital controls, and erected on the back of America’s trade surplus. With quasi-free trade as part of the deal, Washington dollarised Europe, Japan and Australia to generate aggregate demand for the products of its factories – whose productivity had skyrocketed during the war. Subsequently, the US trade surplus sucked the exported dollars back into America. The result was twenty years of high growth, low unemployment, blissfully boring banking and dwindling inequality. Alas, once the United States lost its trade surplus, Bretton Woods was dead in the water.The second phase was marked by the violent reversal of this recycling mechanism. The United States became the first hegemon to enhance its hegemony by boosting its trade deficit. Operating like a powerful vacuum cleaner, the burgeoning US trade deficit hoovered up the world’s net exports. And how did America pay for them? With dollars which it also hoovered up from the rest of the world as German, Japanese and later Chinese capitalists sent to Wall Street 70% of dollar profits made from their net exports to the US. There, in Wall Street, these foreign capitalists recycled their dollar profits into Treasuries, real estate, shares and derivatives.This audacious inverted recycling system, built on US deficits, required ever increasing American deficits to remain stable. In the process, it gave rise to even higher growth than the Bretton Woods era, but also to macroeconomic and financial imbalances as well as mind-numbing levels of inequality. The new era came complete with an ideology (neoliberalism), a policy of letting finance rip (financialisation), and a false sense of dynamic equilibrium – the infamous Great Moderation built on hugely immoderate imbalances.Almost inevitably, on the back of the perpetual tsunami of capital rushing in from the rest-of-the-world to Wall Street, financiers fashioned gigantic pyramids of complex wagers – Warren Buffet’s infamous Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction. When these crashed, to deliver the Global Financial Crisis, two things saved Wall Street and Western capitalism:The G7 central banks, that printed a total of $35 trillion on behalf of the financiers from 2009 to last year – a peculiar socialism for bankers. And,China, which directed half its national income to investment, thus replacing much of the lost aggregate demand not only domestically but also in Germany, Australia and, of course, in the United States.The third period is more recent. The era of technofeudalism, as I call it, which took root in the mid-2000s but grew strongly after the GFC in conjunction with the rapid technological change that caused capital to mutate into, what I call, cloud capital – the automated means of behavioural modification living inside our phones, apps, tablets and laptops. Consider the six things this cloud capital (which one encounters in Amazon or Alibaba) does all at once:It grabs our attention.It manufactures our desires.It sells to us, directly, outside any actual markets, that which will satiate the desires it made us have.It drives and monitors waged labour inside the workplaces.It elicits massive free labour from us, its cloud-serfs.It provides the potential of blending seamlessly all that with free, digital payments.Is it any wonder that the owners of this cloud capital – I call them cloudalists – have a hitherto undreamt of power to extract? They are, already, a new ruling class: today, the capitalisation of just seven US cloudalist firms is approximately the same as the capitalisation of all listed corporations in the UK, France, Japan, Canada and China taken together!Where did the money for so much cloud capital to accumulate come from, if not from profits? Remember the $35 trillion of central bank monies printed to refloat Western banks? That’s where. For example, 9 out of every 10 dollars that went into creating Facebook came from these central bank monies.So, the issue is not what AI will do to us in the future but what cloud capital has already done to us. And now a question of immense importance to Europe and to Australia: In which countries is cloud capital, and with it the exorbitant extractive power it grants its owners, concentrated? In the United States and in China. Nowhere else! Hold that thought, while I turn to Europe.EuropeMost of you will know me as the ejected finance minister of the most bankrupt European state – though I take solace from hearing that several people here in Canberra, including a government minister or two, knew me first as their Sydney University lecturer. Lest we forget, I was elected to that post because of a catastrophic collapse caused by Europe’s inane handling of an inevitable crisis, hot on the heels of the Global Financial Crisis – with Greece the canary in that mine.The reason Europe was damaged permanently by the GFC was our ludicrous monetary architecture: A monetary union that had a central bank but no federal treasury to have its back. And nineteen state treasuries without a central bank to bankroll the bailouts of their nineteen separate banking systems! In short, even if European governments wanted to emulate the sensible response of the Rudd government to the GFC, we lacked the institutions to do it.The result? Europe’s doom loop between banking losses, stagnation, unpayable public and private debt and an investment strike lasting quarter of a century thus leading, now, to Europe’s and, in particular, Germany’s de-industrialisation. Quarter of a century later, in addition to its deepening North-South divide, Europe now suffers an incurable East-West divide while:the essential fiscal and political union is further away from the horizon than everthe EU’s Green Deal is honoured in the breach, not in the implementationEurope’s industries are falling rapidly behind their competitors in the United States and China in every technological race that matters, in green tech and green energy in particularour continent lacks cloud capital in an age of technofeudalism where power stems from cloud capital, that only the United States and China possess in substantial quantities.Why is there a New Cold War?In my introduction, I said that Europe and Australia are facing irrelevance and marginalisation. Two are the reasons: One, neither Europe nor Australia possess significant cloud capital – it is a little like trying to make our way during the 19th century without steam engines. The second reason is the New Cold War, which is upending our business models, Europe’s and Australia’s.Speaking of the New Cold War, almost a year ago Paul Keating, in this prestigious forum, famously lambasted the Albanese government for making the wrong call in allowing Australia to become complicit in Washington’s pursuit of the New Cold War against its own interests. The one question Mr Keating did not ask, however, was: Why is Washington doing this? Why did President Trump kickstart it with a ban on Huawei and ZTE? And why did President Biden turbocharge it with the microchip ban which was meant explicitly as a declaration of economic war on Beijing?When I ask this question, I get two answers. One is Taiwan. The other is China’s escalating military threat to international trade routes in the South China Sea. Neither will do. Ever since Nixon went to China, and during the long period Washington was pushing Australia to induct China into the WTO and the globalised capitalist world order, the One China policy and Beijing’s determination to maintain sovereignty over Taiwan were, rightly or wrongly, unchallenged givens. As for China’s military threat, on this I am with Malcolm Fraser who opined that nothing short of Chinese navy surveillance ships anchored outside America’s navy bases at San Diego or Norfolk, Virginia can count as provocation. And, please, can someone, anyone, explain why on earth a country so reliant on a trade surplus and imported energy would ever wish to threaten international trade routes? No, the New Cold War is neither due to Taiwan nor to China’s military build-up. The answer lies in cloud capital.America’s hegemony, built on its trade deficit, relies entirely on its capacity to extra rents from the rest of the world courtesy of its monopoly of international payments. But Chinese cloud capital has already achieved something that the dollar system cannot achieve: a seamless integration of cloud capital with a free digital payments system – for example, WeChat, the private App belonging to Tencent, and the public digital currency already offered by China’s Central Bank.Why is there no American equivalent seamlessly blending Big Tech and Big Finance? Because Wall Street refuses to share their financial rents with either US cloudalists or with the Fed. And there is the rub: America maintains its dominance over international payments travelling along a rickety dollar highway, one full of potholes but still the highway of choice for global capitalists. Meanwhile, Chinese cloud capital has built an all-singing-all-dancing payments superhighway, denominated in yuan, that few used. But, this superhighway’s very existence is a clear and present danger to the US monopoly of the dollar payment system on which America’s hegemony rests. Especially after the Ukraine war created jitters amongst oligarchs around the world.In short, the New Cold War has nothing to do with trade routes, Taiwan, or Chinese escalation in the Pacific. It is, rather, the manifestation of a dangerous clash between two technofeudal systems – one denominated in dollars, the other in yuan.What should Australia do domestically?So, the question becomes: What should Australia do in this topsy-turvy, increasingly technofeudal world? At the domestic front,First, ditch the old rentier business model of banking on holes and homes. That’s now a Ponzi scheme whose maintenance will result in a country marred by minimal investment, low productivity, debilitating inequality, high inflation and low wages pushing its talented people into a low innovation sinkhole.Instead, adopt a Green New Deal for Australia as a necessity, rather than a luxury. Europe is about to impose a border-adjustment carbon tax. America will surely follow. Australia must end its dependence on fossil fuels and unrefined minerals and let rip with solar and wind power that produces green hydrogen, not for export but, for powering new factories that will produce, domestically, green copper, green nickel, green cobalt and green steel for export to South East Asia and to China where they will be used to produce the electric cars and the cloud capital that Europe will then purchase tariff-free. To achieve this, this country needs a massive public investment project, a latter-day version of the 1950s Snowy Scheme.Second, acknowledge that never before has it been so dismal to be young in Australia.Reverse the absurdity of the Australian government collecting more money from HECS than it does from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.Tax rents properly to make higher education free again.End negative gearing and, especially, the inane capital gains exemption on real estate investments. Tax those with concentrated power to set prices and rents through the nose and, instead of inefficient tax cuts that just inflame house prices and consumer price inflation, build social housing that benefit not only those who live in them but suppresses private house price inflation.Third, since Australian capitalists cannot compete with America’s and China’s cloudalists, it is the role of the Australian government, in the same way it once created the ABC, or the CSIRO, to put at the disposal of Australians important new technologies; to build up public cloud capital – beginning with a digital Australian dollar, essentially a free checking account for every resident using only a tax file number and a pin which would allow for free transactions and pay interest on deposits equal at the Reserve Bank’s overnight rate.What should Australia do internationally?What about internationally?First, Australia must restore a reputation tainted by blindly following America into lethal adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and, today, via its active and crucial complicity in Israel’s deliberate war crimes in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.Children are not starving in Gaza today. No, they are being deliberately starved. Without hesitation or remorse. The famine in Gaza is no collateral damage. It is an intentional policy of starving to death thousands until the rest agree to leave their ancestral homeland.By lending credence to the notion that Israel is exercising the right to self-defence and by de-funding, on the basis of unsubstantiated Israeli accusations, the only agency that can ameliorate the starvation, Australia damaged its already wounded reputation. Reversing this decision is now too-little-too-late for the Australian government to wipe clean its complicity in ethnic cleansing by weaponised, designer-hunger. It will take a great deal more than that.Just as there was a bipartisan campaign, led by Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke, to end South African apartheid when Washington was supporting it, the Australian political class needs to lead a campaign to end apartheid in Israel-Palestine. This is Australia’s duty for another reason: Because of the sorry history of terra nullius, the white settlers’ ideological cover for the genocide of native populations, which has been transferred from Australia to the land of Palestine under the banner of “A Land Without a People for a People Without A Land”.Second, Australia has a duty to de-escalate the New Cold War. To understand that this can only be done if Australia ends its servility to a United States’ actively creating the threats that they then make us pay through the nose to protect us from.Imagine an Australia that helps bring a just Peace in Ukraine, as opposed to a mindless forever war. A non-aligned Australia that is never neutral in the face of injustice but, also, not automatically aligned with every warmongering adventure decided in Washington.Imagine an Australia which, having re-established its credentials as a country that thinks and acts for itself, engages with China in the spirit of peaceful cooperation – a far better way of addressing Beijing’s increasing authoritarianism toward its own peoples than buying useless, hyper-expensive submarines that only succeed in forcing China’s political class to close ranks around a more authoritarian core.Imagine a truly patriotic Australian Prime Minister who tells the American President to cease and desist from the slow murder of Julian Assange for the crime of journalism – for exposing American war crimes perpetrated behind the back of US citizens in their name.In the end, American powerbrokers will appreciate such an Australia better – in the same way you appreciate better a friend who tells you when you are wrong compared to a yes-man who never opposes you directly but whinges behind your back.ConclusionTo conclude, if Europe and Australia are to escape gross irrelevance, we need separate but well-coordinated European and Australian Green New Deals. This will prove pie in the sky in a world buffeted by an uncontrollable New Cold War that threatens the green transition necessary to preserve our viability as a species. To have a future, Europe and Australia must end our mindless slide from strategic dependence on the United States to improvised-impulsive-inexpedient servitude to the United States.DiEM25, our paneuropean movement, is working toward this goal. In the last fortnight, during this visit, I was thrilled to discover that there are talented people and effective organisations dedicated to the same cause. Optimism is perhaps not yet empirically justified. But hope burns strongly.Thank you.

For a pdf of the above speech, click here.

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Πώς το καρτέλ της ΕΕ ένωσε τους τσιφλικάδες του Βορρά με τους αγρότες του Νότου | 247 News

Θεωρητικά, η ΕΕ ενστερνίζεται τον φιλελευθερισμό της ελεύθερης οικονομία. Στην πραγματικότητα, ξεκίνησε ως καρτέλ παραγωγών άνθρακα και χάλυβα που, ανοιχτά και νόμιμα, έλεγχε τις τιμές και την παραγωγή μέσω μιας πολυεθνικής γραφειοκρατίας στις Βρυξέλλες.Ο Μάνος, αγρότης έκτης γενιάς από τη Θεσσαλία, μου το έθεσε ωμά όταν του ζήτησα να μου εξηγήσει γιατί ήταν διατεθειμένος να οδηγήσει το τρακτέρ του 400 χιλιόμετρα μέχρι την Αθήνα για να κατασκηνώσει έξω από τη Βουλή “Αν δεν το κάνω, το αγρόκτημά μου σύντομα θα χαθεί όπως και το σχολειό, ο συνεταιρισμός, το ταχυδρομείο και το υποκατάστημα της τράπεζας του χωριού μας”.Η ιστορία του δεν είναι ούτε πρωτόγνωρη ούτε αφορά μονάχα την Ελλάδα. Έχουμε συνηθίσει να βλέπουμε τους Γάλλους αγρότες να κλείνουν δρόμους και να αποσπούν σημαντικές δεσμεύσεις από τους πολιτικούς τους προτού επιστρέψουν στον τόπο τους. Κατά καιρούς, έχουμε δει κι εντυπωσιακές σκηνές στις Βρυξέλλες – όπως το 2012, όταν ένας πολυεθνικός συνασπισμός αγροτών ψέκασε το Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο με τόνους γάλακτος, σε ένδειξη διαμαρτυρίας για τις περικοπές στις ποσοστώσεις γαλακτοκομικών.Το νέο σε αυτόν τον τελευταίο γύρο διαδηλώσεων των αγροτών είναι ότι δεν είναι μόνο οι συνήθεις ύποπτοι που έχουν βγει στους δρόμους των πρωτευουσών μας. Οι τηλεοπτικές μας οθόνες δείχνουν τους αγρότες να κινητοποιούνται σε ολόκληρη την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση, από την Πολωνία μέχρι την Ιρλανδία. Δεν έχουμε συνηθίσει τους Γερμανούς και ολλανδούς αγρότες, παραδοσιακά πολύ πλουσιότερους σε σχέση με τους μεσόγειους συναδέλφους τους, να μπαίνουν στις πόλεις μας με τέτοιο πάθος και σε τέτοιο αριθμό.Αν ρωτήσετε τους Oλλανδούς ή τους Γερμανούς αγρότες γιατί εξεγείρονται, η απάντησή τους είναι παρόμοια με αυτή που μου έδωσε ο Μάνος: θα σας πουν ότι κινδυνεύει ο τρόπος ζωής τους, η ικανότητά τους να συνεχίσουν να δουλεύουν τη γη. Τους πιστεύω. Αλλά και οι βρετανοί αγρότες αντιμετωπίζουν υπαρξιακή απειλή αλλά δεν κλείνουν τους αυτοκινητόδρομους προς το Λονδίνο.

Διαδηλώσεις αγροτών στη Βρετανία AP PHOTO Alberto PezzaliΣχεδόν οι μισοί από τους καλλιεργητές φρούτων και λαχανικών του Ηνωμένου Βασιλείου και το ένα τρίτο των γαλακτοπαραγωγών απειλούνται με πτώχευση σε λιγότερο από δύο χρόνια. Γιατί λοιπόν δεν κλείνουν το Piccadilly ή δεν καταλαμβάνουν την πλατεία Trafalgar με οργή; Οι πολιτισμικές διαφορές μπορεί να παίζουν ρόλο, αλλά ένα διαρθρωτικό χαρακτηριστικό της ΕΕ εξηγεί γιατί οι Ευρωπαίοι αγρότες εξεγείρονται και οι Βρετανοί όχι.Θεωρητικά, η ΕΕ ενστερνίζεται τον φιλελευθερισμό της ελεύθερης οικονομία. Στην πραγματικότητα, ξεκίνησε ως καρτέλ παραγωγών άνθρακα και χάλυβα που, ανοιχτά και νόμιμα, έλεγχε τις τιμές και την παραγωγή μέσω μιας πολυεθνικής γραφειοκρατίας στις Βρυξέλλες. Αυτή η γραφειοκρατία, η πρώτη Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή, εξουσιοδοτήθηκε με νομικές και πολιτικές εξουσίες που υπερίσχυσαν των εθνικών κοινοβουλίων και νόμων.Προφανώς, το πρώτο της μέλημα ήταν να καταργήσει τους περιορισμούς στη διακίνηση και την εμπορία χάλυβα και άνθρακα μεταξύ των κρατών-μελών. Ποιο θα ήταν άλλωστε το νόημα ενός διασυνοριακού καρτέλ αν τα προϊόντα του σταματούσαν στα σύνορα και φορολογούνταν; Κατόπιν, οι Βρυξέλλες επέκτειναν το πεδίο εφαρμογής του καρτέλ πέρα από τον άνθρακα και τον χάλυβα, προσαρτώντας τη βιομηχανία ηλεκτρικών ειδών, τους κατασκευαστές αυτοκινήτων και, φυσικά, τις τράπεζες. Και το τρίτο φυσιολογικό βήμα, αφού καταργήθηκαν οι δασμοί στους βιομήχανους, ήταν η κατάργηση όλων των δασμών για όλα τα αγαθά.Αυτό όμως σήμαινε, μεταξύ άλλων, ανεξέλεγκτο ανταγωνισμό από εισαγόμενο γάλα, τυρί και κρασί για τους γάλλους και γερμανούς αγρότες – οι οποίοι, βέβαια, δεν θα το δέχονταν με τίποτα. Για να εξασφαλίσουν οι Βρυξέλλες τη συγκατάθεση αυτών των μεγαλοαγροτών-τσιφλικάδων έπρεπε να τους αποδώσουν ένα σοβαρό τμήμα από τα μονοπωλιακά κέρδη του καρτέλ της ευρωπαϊκής βαριάς βιομηχανίας. Αυτό ακριβώς ήταν η Κοινή Αγροτική Πολιτική (ΚΑΠ) που διαμορφώθηκε στο πλαίσιο της Συνθήκη της Ρώμης, το πιστοποιητικό γέννησης της σημερινής ΕΕ.Πράγματι, η ΚΑΠ δεν ήταν παρά ένα άτυπο συμβόλαιο μεταξύ του καρτέλ της ευρωπαϊκής βαριάς βιομηχανίας και των πλουσιότερων αγροτών της Ευρώπης, σύμφωνα με το οποίο το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του ευρωπαϊκού προϋπολογισμού, που χρηματοδοτούν και εγκρίνουν οι πρώτοι, θα δινόταν στους δεύτερους. Ακόμα και σήμερα, αυτή είναι η κατάσταση. Το 2021, για παράδειγμα, η ΕΕ διέθεσε 378 δισεκατομμύρια ευρώ για την ΚΑΠ – το 31,8% του συνολικού προϋπολογισμού της για την εξαετία 2021-2027. Από αυτό τον πακτωλό ευρώ, περίπου το 80% καταλήγει στις τσέπες του πλουσιότερου 20% των αγροτών της Ευρώπης. Αυτά τα μυστηριώδη ποσά και η άνιση κατανομή τους έχουν βαθιές ρίζες στη συμφωνία των μέσων της δεκαετίας του ’50 που συγκρότησε την αρχική ΕΕ.Αυτή η άνιση κατανομή αιτιολογήθηκε λέγοντας πως προωθεί την “παραγωγικότητα” που, βέβαια, είναι μεγαλύτερη στα τσιφλίκια απ’ ότι στα μικρά αγροκτήματα. Το αποτέλεσμα; Οι τσιφλικάδες είναι πολύ τρομακτικά πιο κερδοφόροι ανά καλλιεργούμενο στρέμμα ή ανά εργάτη γης. Για παράδειγμα, σύμφωνα με τους Financial Times, το 2021, κάθε επιπλέον εργαζόμενος ενίσχυσε την καθαρή αξία μιας μικρής εκμετάλλευσης – που ορίζεται ως εκμετάλλευση με συνολική αξία παραγωγής μεταξύ 4.000 και 25.000 ευρώ – κατά περίπου 7.000 ευρώ. Αντίθετα, ένας επιπλέον εργαζόμενος αύξησε την καθαρή αξία μιας μεγάλης εκμετάλλευσης – μιας εκμετάλλευσης με παραγωγή αξίας άνω του μισού εκατομμυρίου ευρώ – κατά 55.000 ευρώ!Έτσι, παραδοσιακά οι περισσότεροι αγρότες στη Νότια Ευρώπη -συμπεριλαμβανομένων μεγάλων περιοχών της Γαλλίας, όπου τα αγροτεμάχια είναι πολύ μικρότερα από ό,τι, ας πούμε, στη Γερμανία ή τις Κάτω Χώρες- απλώς επιβίωσαν την ώρα που οι βόρειοι συνάδελφοί τους χαίρονταν σημαντικά κέρδη, πόρους και επιδοτήσεις. Αυτό εξηγεί γιατί οι Έλληνες, οι Ισπανοί, οι Νοτιοϊταλοί και οι Γάλλοι αγρότες ήταν πάντα εκείνοι που πρωτοστατούσαν στις αγροτικές κινητοποιήσεις: πριν από έξι δεκαετίες τούς «έκλεισαν» σε μια συμφωνία με τους τσιφλικάδες που τους «έριχνε». Σήμερα, ωστόσο, με την αποβιομηχάνιση να προχωρά πλέον με γοργούς ρυθμούς ακόμη και στη Γερμανία, το αρχικό, πανευρωπαϊκό βιομηχανικό καρτέλ από τα κέρδη του οποίου πληρώνοντας οι γενναιόδωρες επιδοτήσεις των τσιφλικάδων παρακμάζει και αυτό.Όσο για αγρότες όπως ο Μάνος, ο συνδυασμός παλαιότερων προβλημάτων και νέων συμφορών τους αποδεκατίζει. Το περασμένο φθινόπωρο, η κλιματική κρίση επισκέφθηκε την Θεσσαλία, όταν η καταστροφή του «Ντάνιελ» ξεκλήρισε όλον τον εξοπλισμό του, βυθίζοντας τη γη του σε όγκους νερού, προτού κινηθεί Νότια για να πνίξει χιλιάδες ανθρώπους στη Λιβύη. Οι συνήθεις, γελοιωδώς μακρές, καθυστερήσεις που χαρακτηρίζουν την ελληνική γραφειοκρατία αποτέλειωσαν ό,τι είχε μείνει.Αλλά μια ακόμη μεγαλύτερη απειλή για αγρότες όπως ο Μάνος είναι οι μαζικές κατασχέσεις αγροκτημάτων από τα πολυάριθμα αρπακτικά ταμεία. Εκμεταλλευόμενα την μακροχρόνια χρεοκοπία της Ελλάδας, έχουν εισβάλει στη χώρα για να αγοράσουν τα μη εξυπηρετούμενα δάνεια των αγροτών, σε εξευτελιστικές τιμές, προτού βγάλουν σε πλειστηριασμό τη γη τους. Έτσι, τα ολιγαρχικά συμφέροντα αρπάζουν εύφορη γη και, με επιχορηγήσεις και δάνεια από τις Βρυξέλλες, την καλύπτουν με φωτοβολταϊκά που παράγουν ρεύμα για να το πουλάνε χρυσάφι στους αγρότες αλλά και τους κατοίκους των πόλεων. Παράλληλα, καθώς μειώνεται η παραγωγή αγροτικών προϊόντων, η πλειοψηφία των Ελλήνων πληρώνει τεράστια ποσά για τρόφιμα χωρίς οι αγρότες να ωφελούνται.

Συλλαλητήριο αγροτών στην Αθήνα EUROKINISSIΓια πρώτη ίσως φορά, παρόμοιες ιστορίες διαδραματίζονται και στις πλουσιότερες περιφέρειες της ΕΕ, όπως στο Βέλγιο, την Ολλανδία και τη Γερμανία. Εδώ, υπάρχουν τρεις κύριες αιτίες. Πρώτον, έχοντας παραδώσει τις πρώην δημόσιες επιχειρήσεις ηλεκτρισμού στο ιδιωτικό καρτέλ που κρύβεται πίσω από τους ολλανδικούς οίκους δημοπρασιών, η ΕΕ παρέδωσε τους αγρότες από τις αδηφάγες ορέξεις των κερδοσκόπων της ενέργειας. Δεύτερον, πριν υποβάλουν αίτηση για το παραμικρό επίδομα, ή ακόμη και για το δικαίωμα να κλαδέψουν ένα δέντρο του οποίου τα κλαδιά τούς εμποδίζουν καθώς περνούν με τα τρακτέρ τους, οι αγρότες πρέπει να υποστούν έναν πραγματικό γραφειοκρατικό εφιάλτη.Τρίτον, υπάρχει η Ουκρανία: όχι μόνο εξαιτίας του αυξημένου κόστους των καυσίμων και του ανταγωνισμού από εισαγωγές “αλληλεγγύης” αξίας 13 δισεκατομμυρίων ευρώ μόνο πέρυσι, αλλά, το σημαντικότερο, λόγω της πιθανής προοπτικής ένταξης στην ΕΕ. Αυτό θα μετέτρεπε περισσότερες χώρες που είναι τώρα καθαροί αποδέκτες κονδυλίων της ΚΑΠ, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της Πολωνίας, σε καθαρούς αρωγούς της.Επί πλέον, υπάρχουν δύο επί πλέον προβλήματα που αγνοούνται εσκεμμένα. Το ένα είναι η Πράσινη Συμφωνία της ΕΕ που οι Βρυξέλλες διατυμπανίζουν αλλά δεν έχουν τη δυνατότητα να χρηματοδοτήσουν. Παραδείγματος χάριν, στην Ολλανδία το κορυφαίο οικολογικό πρόβλημα είναι τα νιτρικά άλατα που δηλητηριάζουν δεκαετίες τώρα τον υδροφόρο ορίζοντα. Μετά από δεκαετίες που η κυβέρνηση έκανε τα στραβά μάτια ξάφνου – υπό την πίεση των Βρυξελλών – απαίτησε από τους Ολλανδούς αγρότες να λύσουν το πρόβλημα με δικό τους κόστος, μεταξύ άλλων μέτρων, “θυσιάζοντας” μία στις τρεις αγελάδες.Ακόμα πιο δυσεπίλυτο είναι το δεύτερο πρόβλημα που προκάλεσε η 15ετής οικονομική ύφεση που ακολούθησε το τραπεζικό Κραχ του 2008. Το αποτέλεσμα των πανευρωπαϊκών πολιτικών λιτότητας, που ήταν η βασική πολιτική αντιμετώπισης της κρίσης αυτής, ήταν η κατάρρευση των επενδύσεων. Τα αποτελέσματα αυτής της επιλογής είναι καταιγιστικά: Η επενδυτική απεργία ευθύνεται για την σημερινή αποβιομηχάνιση της Γερμανίας και της Βόρειας Ιταλίας ταυτόχρονα.Ολόκληρο το βιομηχανικό καρτέλ της Βόρειας και Κεντρικής Ευρώπης αποδομείται και, έτσι, αδυνατεί να χρηματοδοτεί την Κοινή Αγροτική Πολιτική, όπως είχε συμφωνηθεί με τους τσιφλικάδες του Βορρά από την δεκαετία του ’50. Παράλληλα, μένει με άδεια τα ταμεία η Πράσινη Συμφωνία της ΕΕ, με τα βάρη της να πέφτουν δυσανάλογα στους ώμους των αγροτών και των λαϊκών τάξεων. Με άλλα λόγια, για τον ξεσηκωμό ακόμα και των πλουσιότερων Γερμανών και Ολλανδών μεγαλοαγροτών, που για πρώτη φορά συναγωνίζονται τους Έλληνες, Γάλλους και Ισπανούς συναδέλφους τους στις κινητοποιήσεις και στα μπλόκα, ευθύνεται ο ανόητος χειρισμός της αναπόφευκτης κρίσης του ευρώ.

*Το άρθρο δημοσιεύτηκε στην ιστοσελίδα UnHerd

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Europe’s responsibility for the Genocide of Palestinians – a summary indictment on DDN

The post Europe’s responsibility for the Genocide of Palestinians – a summary indictment on DDN appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Our Present Moment in History: a wide-ranging discussion with Aaron Bastani in a packed EarthH Theatre – 14th FEB 2024

On 14th February 2024, I had the great privilege of a live discussion with Aaron Bastani in front of a marvellous audience at EartH in Hackney, North-East London. We talked about, of course, Israel-Palestine, but also about China and, in particular, the New Cold War being waged for control of what I call cloud capital. We touched on the United States’ ‘liberal’ imperial ways, Russia, Iran, Germany (with special reference on Nordstream and the new intolerance of dissenting views) – and on whether legal bans on fascists is the way to tackle fascism’s resurgence.Thank you to Raoul and Francesca Martinez for organising this, along with the brilliant Novara Media, as part of the promotion of their  new documentary series, ‘In The Eye Of The Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis’ which can be watched here: www.eyeofthestorm.info00:00 Intro 03:03 2023 for Yanis 05:36 Israel & Palestine 13:45 The Problem With Liberals 24:45 Is The US a Dying Empire? 35:49 China, Russia & Iran 43:51 The New Cold War 55:45 Nordsteam & Germany 1:04:04 Novara Germany Wouldn’t Be Possible 1:06:23 Banning Fascists Doesn’t Work

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Novara interview on almost everything (e.g. Crisis, Democracy, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Journalism at gunpoint)

Ash speaks to Yanis Varoufakis and film director Raoul Martinez about their new film Eye Of The Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis, what the left got wrong after 2008 and the West’s complicity in the genocide happening in Gaza. You can buy ‘In The Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis’ at http://www.eyeofthestorm.info 00:00 Introduction 00:30Eye Of The Storm 04:40The Financial Crisis 07:16Why Wasn’t Democracy Enough?09:12Syria and Optimism 12:38Should we Confront State? 16:50But What About Don’t Pay? 20:20Israel Is Killing Journalists 22:55Palestinian Resistance Is Unacceptable To The West 28:17

The Polycrisis Novara Live broadcasts every weekday from 6PM on YouTube and Twitch. Episodes of Downstream are released Sundays at 6PM on YouTube. Support our journalism by buying Novara Media merch: https://shop.novaramedia.com

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PoliticsJOE interview on capitalism, technofeudalism, the Labour Party, Western Hegemony and Gaza

Sat down to discuss the downfall of capitalism and Western hegemony, the Labour Party’s shunt to the right, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Also, we discussed Raoul Martinez’s documentary In The Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis 

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The Guilty Feminist Culture Club: In the Eye of the Storm with Yanis Varoufakis and Raoul Martinez

Interviewed by by Deborah Frances-White in Brian Eno’s Studio, on the occasion of the launch of  Raoul Martinez’s IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: Yanis Varoufakis’ Political Odyssey

Recorded 15 February in London. Released 21 February 2024.

For THE GUILTY FEMINIST side, click here.

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The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD

Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.”His story is neither novel nor confined to Greece. We are accustomed to French farmers, in particular, blocking roads and exacting a significant price from politicians before returning to their home turf. Occasionally, an impressive stunt has been staged in Brussels — as in 2012 when a multinational farmers’ coalition sprayed the European Parliament with tons of milk, in protest against cuts to EU milk quotas.What is new, in this latest round of farmers’ protests, is that it is not only the usual suspects who have taken to the streets of our capitals. Our television screens are showing farmers mobilising across the European Union, from Poland to Ireland. We are not used to German and Dutch farmers, traditionally much wealthier relative to their Graeco-Latin colleagues, entering our cities with the passion — and in the numbers — that we are now witnessing.If you ask the Dutch or the German farmers why they are revolting, their answer is similar to the one Manos gave me: they will tell you that their way life, their capacity to keep working the land, is in jeopardy. I believe them. But British farmers are also facing an existential threat and they are not blocking motorways. Almost half the UK’s fruit and vegetable growers and a third of dairy farmers face bankruptcy within less than two years. So why are they not blocking Piccadilly or occupying Trafalgar Square in anger? Cultural differences may play a role but a structural feature of the EU explains why European farmers are revolting and British farmers are not.In theory, the EU is all about free-market liberalism; in reality, it began life as a cartel of coal and steel producers who, openly and legally, controlled prices and output by means of a multinational bureaucracy. That bureaucracy, the first European Commission, was vested with legal and political powers superseding national parliaments and democratic processes. And its first task was to remove all restrictions on the movement and trading of steel and coal between member-states. After all, what would be the point of a cross-border cartel if its products were stopped at borders and taxed? Brussels’s second step was to expand the scope of the cartel beyond coal and steel, co-opting the electrical goods industry, car manufacturers and, of course, banking. The third step, once tariffs on manufacturers were removed, was to remove all tariffs.Alas, that meant, among other things, untrammelled competition from imported milk, cheese and wine for French and German farmers. How could Brussels secure the consent of these larger, richer and therefore politically more powerful farmers to a European free-trade zone? By handing them a chunk of the heavy industry cartel’s monopoly profits.That’s precisely what the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was. You can see it in the Treaty of Rome, which established today’s EU: it is a contract between Europe’s heavy industry cartel and Europe’s wealthier farmers, according to which the largest chunk of the European budget, generated by the former, would be sprinkled upon the latter. In 2021, the EU allocated €378 billion for CAP: 31.8% of its total budget for the six-year period 2021-2027. Of this mountain of euros, about 80% ends up in the pockets of the richest 20% of Europe’s farmers. And the worst thing is, it’s hard to see a way out: these mind-boggling sums, and their unequal distribution, are based on the mid-Fifties deal that gave us the original EU; they’re baked into its structure.That unequal distribution was justified by claims of “productivity”. Large landowners are far more profitable per acre cultivated, or per farmworker. For instance, according to the  Financial Times , in 2021, each additional worker boosted the net value of a small farm — defined as a farm with a total output worth between €4,000 and €25,000 — by around €7,000. By contrast, an additional worker increased the net value of a large farm — one with an output worth more than half a million euros — by €55,000.As a result, traditionally most farmers in the south of Europe — including in large parts of France, where farm plots are much smaller than, say, in Germany or the Netherlands — merely survived. Meanwhile, their northern colleagues commanded substantial profits, resources and subsidies.

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This explains why Greek, Spanish, Southern Italian and French farmers always had the greatest tendency to block roads: six decades ago they were cut a deal that didn’t serve their best interests. Today, however, with de-industrialisation now proceeding apace even in Germany, the original, pan-European industrial cartel that was meant to pay for the rich farmers’ generous subsidies is also in decline.As for farmers such as Manos, a combination of old problems and new calamities has taken its toll. Last autumn, the climate crisis paid his valley a visit when Storm Daniel destroyed all his equipment by submerging his land in metres of water, before moving south to drown thousands of people in Libya. The usual, ridiculously long, delays that characterise bureaucracy in Greece meant its insurance companies were slow to come to Manos’s help.But an even uglier source of discontent among his peers is the mass repossessions of farms by the numerous vulture funds. Taking advantage of Greece’s long-standing bankruptcy, they have entered the country to purchase non-performing farmers’ loans, at five cents to the euro, before auctioning off the land. In this way, oligarchic interests grab fertile agricultural land and, with grants and loans from Brussels, cover it with solar panels. Farmers and urbanite Greeks then pay through the nose for the electricity it produces. And as the former are squeezed, domestic food supplies become scarcer.

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Now, similar stories are playing out in wealthier parts of the EU: in the Netherlands and Germany. Here, there are three main triggers. Firstly, having surrendered what used to be public electricity utilities to the private cartel hiding behind the Dutch auction houses, the EU does nothing to protect farmers from the voracious appetites of energy speculators and rentiers. Secondly, there is the bureaucratic nightmare farmers must endure before they apply for the smallest of benefits, or even for the right to trim a tree whose branches poke them in the eye as they pass by in their tractors. Thirdly, there is Ukraine: not just the heightened fuel costs and the competition from €13 billion worth of “solidarity” imports last year alone but, more importantly, the prospect that, were the war-torn country to join the EU, most countries that are now net recipients of CAP funds, including Poland, will become net contributors, with their farmers bearing the brunt.And then, of course, there are the two elephants in the room. One is the EU’s Green Deal. Brussels makes all the right environmental noises, demanding immediate green action, but lacks the ability to pay for it. Take the Dutch farmers’ bone of contention: the clear and present danger of nitrates in the water table, which must be addressed. After decades of turning a blind eye to the problem, their government — pressured by Brussels — suddenly demanded that Dutch farmers solve it by, among other measures, “eradicating” one in three cows.Even more intractable is the second, and larger, elephant: a 15-year European economic slump that, to my eye, can be entirely explained by the inane handling of the euro crisis. This slump explains why the continent is deindustrialising. It’s why the Common Agricultural Policy can no longer respect the original, Fifties-era deal between Europe’s industrial and agricultural cartels. And it’s also the reason why the EU’s Green Deal is just another European Potemkin village — another product of the EU’s penchant for announcing big numbers that dissolve under closer scrutiny.

For the Unherd site, click here.

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The Politics & Letters Podcast – a (joyous) discussion on my TECHNOFEUDALISM

What isn’t ending?  What isn’t on the verge of extinction?  It’s a short list of exemptions these days, and we, us human beings, aren’t on it. Neither are bees, bipartisanship, butterflies, coastlines, childhood, civility, coral reefs, democracy, elephants, empire, facts, families, frogs, gender, glaciers, God, higher education, humanities, love, male supremacy, manatees, manhood, men, morality, middle classes, minibars, national borders, Nature, objectivity, party systems, patriarchy, religion, science, sex, soil, tigers, transgression, whiteness, work . . . and these species are endangered according to activists, journalists, and writers of every political persuasion.   And now, if we are to believe Quinn Slobodian, Clara E. Mattei, McKenzie Wark, and Yanis Varoufakis, capitalism, too, has outlived its expiration date. Once upon a time, as the saying goes, it was easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. No longer.

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Jacobin Magazine’s David Moscrop reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM

The idea that we are entering an era of techno-feudalism that will be worse than capitalism is chilling and controversial. We asked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to elucidate this idea, explain how we got here, and map out some alternatives.The controversial concept of techno-feudalism suggests we have transitioned from capitalism to something even worse — a new era that exhibits disturbing feudal characteristics. On this view, capitalists now primarily rely on consolidated political power and rents to extract capital. If true, this form of feudal extraction represents a drastic shift away from the conventional mechanisms of capitalism. Importantly, it would mark a move from capitalism’s claimed foundational attributes of competition and innovation.

Jacobin’s David Moscrop recently talked to economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis about his latest book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Varoufakis makes the case for techno-feudalism, arguing that rents have displaced profits. He delves into the rise of cloud capital, the implications of what a new feudal order would mean for us, and the possibilities of an alternative future.

Capitalism, But Not as We’ve Known ItDAVID MOSCROPIn Technofeudalism, you argue capitalism has brought about its own demise, but not in the way that, say, Marx would have expected. Capitalism has its own contradictions — most fundamentally in the antagonism between capital and labor — and yet those contradictions seem to have produced a mutation that is perhaps worse than anyone might’ve expected. So how did capitalism kill itself and what is replacing it?YANIS VAROUFAKISThis book falls squarely within the Marxist political-economic tradition. I wrote it as a piece of Marxist scholarship. So, from my Marxist perspective, this is a tragic book to have to write.

The contradictions of capitalism didn’t lead to the anticipated resolution where, after all these centuries of class stratification, society would be distilled into two classes, poised for a high-noon clash. This decisive confrontation between oppressor and oppressed would result in the liberation of humanity — the emancipation of humanity from all class conflict. Instead of that, however, this clash between the capitalist — the bourgeoisie — and the proletariat ended up in the complete victory of the bourgeoisie: a complete loss after 1991, especially.

In the absence of a competitor in the form of trade unions — the organized working class — capitalism went into a rampant dynamic evolution that caused this mutation into what I call cloud capital. This transformation effectively marked the end of traditional capitalism. It killed capitalism — a development that embodies a Marxist-Hegelian contradiction, but not the kind of contradiction we would have hoped for.

Cloud capital has killed off markets and replaced them with a kind of a digital fiefdom where not just proletarians — the precarious — but bourgeois people and vassal capitalists are all producing surplus value for the vassal capitalists. They are producing rents. They’re producing cloud rent, because the fiefdom is a cloud fiefdom now, for the owners of cloud capital.

Cloud capital created a kind of power, which we as Marxists must recognize as being structurally, qualitatively different from the monopoly power of somebody like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, or the great robber barons. Because those people concentrated capital, concentrated power, bought out governments, and killed off their competitors to sell their stuff. Today’s “cloudalists” — cloud capital owners — they don’t even care about producing anything and selling their stuff. This is because they have replaced markets — they have not simply monopolized them.

If capitalism is market-based and profit-driven, well then this is no longer capitalism, because this is not marketplace-based. It’s based on digital platforms that are closer to techno-fiefdoms or cloud fiefdoms, and they’re driven by two forms of liquidity. One is cloud rent, which is the opposite of profit, and the other is central bank money, which funded the building of cloud capital. And that is not capitalism.

Now you can choose to call it capitalism if you want, if you redefine capitalism and if you say that anything that stems from the power of capital is capitalism, but it’s not capitalism as we’ve known it. To paraphrase Spock in Star Trek: “It is life but not life as we’ve known it.”

And I think that it’s important to make the linguistic transition from the word “capitalism” to something else, which is very difficult to make, because we’re all wedded to the idea that we’re fighting against capitalism. After all those decades of feeling that we came to this planet to overthrow capitalism, it’s really very difficult to have an idiot like me coming along and saying, “But this is not capitalism anymore.” You say, “Bugger off. Of course it is capitalism. If it’s not socialism, it must be capitalism.” That’s what a fellow Marxist said to me. And I killed myself laughing because I remember my Rosa Luxembourg. No, it can be barbarism.

Vampire-Like ParasitismDAVID MOSCROPIf techno-feudalism has replaced capitalism, as you’ve suggested, it has also led to the emergence of “cloud serfs” and “cloud proles,” modern equivalents of the serfs and proletarians discussed in historical contexts. How do these contemporary classes differ from their counterparts in the traditional capitalist model?YANIS VAROUFAKISFrom a Marxist perspective, the simple answer is that cloud serfs directly produce capital with their free labor. That has never happened before. Serfs under feudalism produced agricultural commodities. They did not produce capital — that was up to the artisans who produced tools and instruments and plows and stuff. In contrast, modern users contribute to capital formation simply by engaging with platforms, offering free labor to augment cloud capital for the capitalist. That never happened under capitalism.

Techno-feudalism remains deeply reliant on the capitalist sector, mirroring the dependence of capitalism on the agricultural sector and the feudal sectors for sustenance. And just as capitalism needed feudalism to ensure a food supply, techno-feudalism is parasitic, drawing essential support from the capitalist sector to sustain itself.

All surplus value is produced in the capitalist sector, but then it is usurped. It is appropriated by this mutant capital — cloud capital — most of which is not reproduced by proletarians.

So, the capitalist sector remains foundational. It is producing all value — it’s why this analysis is distinctly Marxist. All surplus value is produced in the capitalist sector, but then it is usurped. It is appropriated by this mutant capital — cloud capital — most of which is not reproduced by proletarians. It’s reproduced by people in their leisure time who work for no pay. That has never happened. That’s why I’m saying this is not capitalism. And it doesn’t help to think of this as capitalism, because if you remain wedded to the word capitalism, the mind fails to comprehend the great transformation.

DAVID MOSCROPYou mentioned that the rise of techno-feudalism is driven by two primary causes: the enclosure and privatization of the internet, similar to pasture enclosure in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, and a steady, heavy flow of central bank money, particularly after 2008. Could things have gone otherwise?YANIS VAROUFAKISWell, everything could be different. That’s what David Graeber has taught us, right? And as leftists, we have to believe that nothing was foretold. Otherwise, we don’t believe in human agency — otherwise, what’s the point of living? We might as well become couch potatoes watching the world go by. So, everything can always be different. The historical counterfactual is always interesting, but I cannot do it. I really cannot do it. I mean, I tried to do it often in my previous book, which was a political science-fiction novel called  Another Now . Effectively, I created another time line where in 2008 we did things differently with Occupy Wall Street to bring about socialist transformation. And that’s a great game to play with your own mind, but I don’t think it’s historically pertinent.

How could things have been different? Well, one could say that the privatization of the internet was inevitable because we live under capitalism. And capitalism has this capacity of eating up and infecting every capitalist-free zone. The reason why I could never align with utopian socialism, like that of Robert Owen in the nineteenth century. Despite his efforts to create capitalism-free zones, history shows that capitalism inevitably invades and corrupts these spaces. You cannot have pockets of socialism surviving for long within capitalism.

Now With More CrisisDAVID MOSCROPYou say techno-feudalism is parasitic on capitalism. If that’s the case, techno-feudalism will still require the existence of classical capitalist production. Amazon still needs producers to manufacture goods to sell on its platform. Uber and Tesla require physical vehicles. How will that relationship work in the long run under a techno-feudalist order?YANIS VAROUFAKISAgain, I need to make this point very clearly. Capitalism in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century, when it emerged, overthrew feudalism, but it needed the feudal sector to continue producing food because otherwise we would all have died. That’s why I’m saying that capital was parasitic on the feudal agricultural sector. So, it’s not that one dies and the other lives. What happens is that capital takes over the hegemony of the system, but it is parasitic on the previous system. That’s a standard Marxist, historical, material analysis.The takeover by cloud capital — the supplantation of capitalism by techno-feudalism — is making our societies more fraught with conflict.

Now what is happening is that at the center of techno-feudalism you have a capital sector, which is absolutely necessary. The capital sector is the only sector that produces value — exchange value in Marxist terms — but the owners of that capital, of old-fashioned capital, are vassals to the cloud capitalists. Their profits are being skimmed off. So surplus value is withdrawn from the circular flow of income by the “cloudalists.”

Now that makes the system even more unstable, even more prone to crisis, and even more contradictory and even less viable than capitalism was. That’s what I’m saying in the book: that the takeover by cloud capital — the supplantation of capitalism by techno-feudalism — is making our societies more fraught with conflict. They’re becoming more stupid, more conflictual, more poisoned, and less capable of allowing space within them for social democracy, for the liberal individual — for values that even the Right cherished under capitalism.

The Left was never against the idea of liberty; our critique lies in the limiting of liberty to a select few. But now even this limited form of liberty is under threat, and therefore the contradictions are getting worse. I hold on to hope that perhaps these growing tensions will push humanity into a decisive showdown between good and evil — between the oppressors and the oppressed. But the rapid approach of climate catastrophe poses the risk that we may reach the point of no return before that resolution takes place. So, we have our work cut out for us, and humanity is staring extinction in the face — unless we pull our socks up.

Not Your Parents’ RentiersDAVID MOSCROPYou spend a lot of time making the case that rents have usurped profit. Is it not the dream, though, of every “capitalist” to extract rent? Does any capitalist really want to be a capitalist? It seems to me every capitalist wants to be a rentier.YANIS VAROUFAKISWell, the era when capitalists wanted to be capitalists was gone a long time ago. I trust that Henry Ford liked being a capitalist in the same way that, in a strange and completely warped manner, Rupert Murdoch likes to be a newspaperman — even though he has done so much to destroy newspapers. But these people are either dead or on their way to hell. So, yes, capitalists don’t want to be capitalists, especially here in Europe, especially in my country. All the capitalists, and I’ve known quite a few, have stopped being capitalists; they’ve become rentiers.

The difference is that the capitalists who were transforming themselves into being rentiers, until the emergence of cloud capital, were essentially passing their capital stock onto others or possibly to private equity. These former capitalists extracted rent from the monopoly profits of these highly concentrated capitalist firms.

But what happens with people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, I mean, they want to do what they’re doing. They want to be cloud capitalists or “cloudalists,” as I call them. They love it. These people, a bit like Thomas Edison, love what they do. They’re not like standard rentiers. They’re not like the feudal lords of the past. They are not like the capitalists who no longer want to be capitalists. These people are enthusiastic’ and they’re very talented, and, unfortunately, they’re very smart. The combination of their drive with the exorbitant power of the cloud capital that they own creates a highly potent, concentrated form of “cloudalist” power, which we have to take very seriously.

DAVID MOSCROPThe end of the Bretton Woods system transformed global capitalism and ultimately made possible, among other things, techno-feudalism. Could we imagine a contemporary Bretton Woods cast in the mold of deep egalitarian multilateralism and a socialist financial system?YANIS VAROUFAKISOh, yes, I have done that. That was the reason why I wrote my previous book. Another Now envisions exactly what you say. It features a new Bretton Woods system inspired by John Maynard Keynes’s original proposal — rejected by Harry Dexter White and the Roosevelt administration — merged with a participatory democratic socialist framework. This setup has been designed for ongoing redistribution of income and wealth from the Global North to the Global South, especially in the form of green investment. So, I’ve mapped all that and can answer your question of how things could work today, with the technologies that we have, if property rights were equally distributed — which is what I believe socialists should be aiming at. But that was my political science fiction. This book is about what we’re facing.The World’s Biggest Excel File to the Rescue?DAVID MOSCROPAs part of an alternative order, you advance this idea of a central bank digital wallet system and monthly dividend. How would that work?YANIS VAROUFAKISWell, technically it’s dead easy. It can be done in a week because it is so straightforward. Imagine something like an Excel file, which is kept by the Fed, and every single resident in the United States is one row. And when a payment is made, the corresponding value transfers from one cell to another, representing the payer and payee. This process would be free, instantaneous, and anonymized. By creating a separation between the software operators and the identities of individuals, identified only by codes similar to Bitcoin addresses, privacy can be assured. And checks and balances could be established to ensure that the state is not watching what each one of us is doing.They’re printing trillions on behalf of financiers. Why not print them on behalf of the little people? Of everyone equally?

And because the money will be shuffled through the same spreadsheet, nothing stops the central bank from adding the same number to everybody every month. And that’s a universal basic income (UBI), which is not, and this is crucial, funded by taxation. Because the problem with the idea of UBI is that it is vulnerable to complaints like, “What are you talking about? You’re going to tax me, tax the dollars that I earn, to give to a bum, a surfer in California or to a drug addict or to a rich person?” But this proposal leverages the central bank’s capacity to generate funds. And we should let no one tell us that it would be inflationary or would be a problem — because they’re printing trillions on behalf of financiers. Why not print them on behalf of the little people? Of everyone equally?

Now, the reason why you don’t have this system in the United States and why you are very far away from a digital dollar is because if anybody in the Fed dares move in that direction, they will be murdered by Wall Street — they’ll experience political and character assassination. Wall Street will never allow it because it would spell the end of Wall Street. Because why would you want to have a bank account with Bank of America if you can have a digital wallet with the Fed?

Bank of America would be compelled to justify their services and fees. They’d have to come and convince you that you need to have an account with them because they want to give you something at a decent price — like a loan — without scamming you. And they can’t do that because the whole point of Bank of America or Citigroup is to extract rents from you by monopolizing payment systems and holding deposits. You keep your money with them because, currently, there’s no other way of keeping your money.

CONTRIBUTORS

Yanis Varoufakis was Greek finance minister during the first months of the Syriza-led government in 2015. His books include The Global Minotaur and Adults in the Room.

David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He hosts the podcast Open to Debate and is the author of Too Dumb For Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones.

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