Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 32

LA STAMPA interview on the Italian edition of ANOTHER NOW: From Marinnetti & the Sex Pistols to Hephaestus & favourite books

On the occasion of the publication of my ANOTHER NOW in Italian (Un Altro Presente), La Stampa put to me some quirky and irreverent questions. Just in case you wanted to read them, and my answers, in the English original, here they are. Have fun!

Marinetti and the Sex Pistols are milestones for Costa: is that true for you as well?

Marinetti’s Manifesto for the future made more sense to me when the Sex Pistols sang “there is no future” than before. It was this negation of Marinetti that proved more of a milestone for me.

Why are Italians and Greeks traditionally considered prone to “wheelin and dealin”?

Because “wheelin and dealin” was always the modus vivendi of pre-industrial, Mediterranean commerce. From the Phoenicians to the Greeks and the Romans, our common civilisation was built on bartering, trading, wheelin and dealin – while Northern Europeans specialised on conquest (from the Vikings to the Goths). It was only with the industrial revolution and capitalism that “wheelin and dealin” was contrasted against large-scale, technologically advanced manufacturing whose commodities dominated markets. Even the North-South divide within Italy is due to this transformation.

The Eurovision Song Contest is a model for assigning bonuses in the Other Present: how did this idea cross you mind? (Are you keen on kitsch musical events?)

I did not invent the idea. I saw it being practised in a flat-managed US corporation. They told me they borrowed the idea of each employ getting a number of ‘points’ that they could only award other employees (but not themselves) from Eurovision. Am I keen on Eurovision? Not in the slightest. But I do confess that, in the past, I have enjoyed skipping the dreadful songs and watching the scoring process!

The soviet model has been a failure. Does catalonian anarchosyndacalism offer the right path?  

Yes, the soviet model failed. But it did succeed in certain ways and there are important lessons we can learn from it. Indeed, the Japanese postwar growth model borrowed heavily from soviet central planning (Gosplan) and owes much of its success (and several of its failures) to those ideas and practices it borrowed from Gosplan. Similarly with the Chinese model. However, the soviet, Japanese and Chinese experiences confirm – in different ways – that the Catalan anarchosyndicalists were absolutely right to fear at once (and equally) the power of the state’s bureaucracy, on the one hand, and the power of privately owned corporations, on the other hand. In ‘Another Now’, I tried to come up with a sketch of how firms could operate today, using today’s technological means, so as to allow production to combine freedom both from state power and from oligarchic corporate power.

In the best world capitalism is dead: do you think it’s really possible?

At the risk of raising too many eyebrows, I am of the firm view that capitalism is dying anyway – not in ‘another now’, but in this now. Let me explain: Capitalism, in all its forms (19th century competitive capitalism, early 20th century oligopoly capitalism, post-Bretton Woods financialised capitalism etc.), has two characteristics: it is driven by profits and it extracts value through markets. But, after 2008, and especially in the post-pandemic era, the economy is driven, not by profits but, by central bank money. Moreover, markets are steadily displaced by platforms (e.g., Amazon, Facebook etc.) that are digital fiefdoms. In short, a type of technofeudalism is already taking us over. If I am right, the question is not whether capitalism will die but what system will replace it: One that democratises work and play? Or one that allows a new cast of technofeudal lords to rule over everyone? In ‘Another Now’ I attempt to sketch a blueprint for the former.

Economic depression can be a breeding ground for political monsters: what is coming out of the pandemic? (Are you vaccinated?)

(Of course I am vaccinated – a fanatical supporter of vaccines as a public good) I have been warning since 2007 that deflation breeds political monsters, a prediction that was sadly realised as the post-2008 policies of ‘socialism for bankers and austerity for everyone else’ begat the Nationalist International (from Trump and Salvini to Modi and Bolsonaro) which, in turn, begat our post-democratic, post-capitalist present – a process that was accelerated by the pandemic. This is how the new regime, which I call technofeudalism, was born. It is the reality that we must now either submit to or, as I suggest, try to overthrow.

In your novel, poetry is “all we have to prevent our dreams turning into nightmares”: which are your favorite poets?

This is an impossible question. It is like being asked to mention my favourite piece of music or my favourite film. But since you are asking me, I will fall back on some ‘golden oldies’: Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Kavafi and T.S. Eliot.

The guide for a better society isn’t Marx anymore, but Star Trek’s Captain Picard?

Marx would have loved Picard! Consider Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 25 of Season 1 (The Neutral Zone) where Picard is chatting with a 20th century businessman (just unfrozen) who cannot wrap his mind around the news that, in the 24th century, technology has allowed humans to do without money, private property, poverty etc. Picard explains further that, with needs and wants satisfied by replicator technology, private profit became meaningless and people’s motivation has become not to accumulate but to improve themselves. To which the smart businessman replies: “You got it all wrong Captain. It was never about possessions or money. It was always about power.” To which Picard replies: “Power was always an illusion”. Had he been able to watch this, Karl Marx would have stood up to salute and applaud Picard!

A character of your novel explains that happiness is in ourselves, and never lies “elsewhere.” It looks like an almost spiritual, mystical, religious call to an inner search. Are you interested in spirituality, besides politics?

Of course. I am a libertarian Marxist because of my spiritual materialism. Where others see contradiction, I see a dialectical blending of opposites into something splendid that makes life worth living.

What is happiness for you?

A state of bliss that can only be attained if you are not trying to attain it. A state that you may, if lucky, find yourself in as a byproduct of leading a life of creativity and virtue. Not dissimilar to doing good – which you can only genuinely do if you are doing it for no reason, for the hell of it.

Better being always in disagreement (as Iris) rather than building the perfect society?

Since no society can be perfect (thankfully!), constantly disagreeing with our circumstances is a prerequisite for both the good life and the good society.

In the epilogue, one of the main characters leaves on a motorbike. Judging from some photos, it seems like you also use the motorbike. What does it mean for you?

Joy! Seriously, I am now 60. But to this day, every time I get on my motorcycle to drive away, which is all the time, I feel the same thrill, the same smile forming on my face, as I did when I was 16.

Hephaestus’s myth warns us: will technology be humanity’s downfall? Are Luddites right?

Technology is, as we all know, both a blessing and a curse. And here is its beauty: It forces us to be responsible for the great powers we unleash by inventing them. As for the Luddites, they are the most misunderstood movement. They were never against technology. They were against the use of technology by the owners of the machines against the majority of the workers. We need to recover their agenda: to turn machines into our slaves, not vice versa.

When you were a minister, the infamous markets trembled at every move you made. Did you feel guilt, satisfaction or indifference for the ensuing instability? 

This is not true. International markets were rather calm during my tenure. By the time I became minister, the troika had already cynically transferred Greece’s debt from the silly private bankers (who had stupidly lent mountains of money to our corrupt state) onto the shoulders of European taxpayers. That why the international markets were mostly calm in 2015. What happened in 2015 is that Berlin, the ECB and the troika engineered a bank run in Greece, paving the ground for bank closures, so as to crush a government which said no to yet another credit card. When they succeeded, following my resignation, another credit card was given. And then another. And now, during the pandemic, another via the ECB. The result? Greece and the Greeks are more bankrupt today than ever, our bankruptcy costs Europeans more than ever, but no one talks about it. Omertà!

Have you ever bought shares (maybe feeling guilty like Costa)?

No, I have not. But my Australian pension fund has been buying shares, with my pension contributions, whether I consented or not!

What is the most important book you’ve ever read?

Homer’s Odyssey

Which book made you dream as a child?

Jules Vernes’ The Mysterious Island

Which books are on your bedside?

Iris Murdoch’s The Prince

And which works had the deepest influence on your political thinking? 

Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

Is there a mistake you made as a minister that you wouldn’t make again?

Working hard in favour of a four month ‘cooling down’ period to give our negotiations with the troika a chance to reach a viable agreement. I should have, instead, pulled the plug from Day 1.

Do you think that Greece has recovered from its crisis?

Are you serious? In 2010 we were declared (correctly) bankrupt because our national income had fallen from €220 to €200 billion, while the state’s debt had risen to €295 billion. Today our national income is less than €170 and the national debt €360!

Debt is one of capitalism cardinal sin. Did you ever get into debt? (credit card, loans, etc.)

Of course. I lived most of my life, as a student and later a lecturer, immersed in debt. I have first-hand experience of its burden.

What do you do in order to relax and empty your mind?

I play the piano. I find it wondrous how doing so very quickly makes me forget who I am, where I am, everything. I am forever grateful to it for allowing me to exit my ‘ego’, my circumstances.

Will you ever give up your engagement in politics?

No, never. I breathe as, what Aristotle called, a political animal.

Democracy was born in your Greece, where it showed its greatness and its limits. The tragic destiny of the righteous, wise Phōkíōn shows that the people aren’t always able to act with fairness and choose what’s best for them… What do you think about it?

This is correct. And that’s what why we need democracy. Democrats are people who have the decency to know that none of us have the answers and, therefore, that we must crowdsource the answers – even the questions!

Why did you opt for an almost sci-fi form in writing a political novel?

Because sci-fi is the archaeology of our present.

For the La Stampa site, please click here.

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Talking to the Bunker about ANOTHER NOW

Renowned economist, politician, and author Yanis Varoufakis stopped by the Bunker to talk about his latest book, Another Now, which is an alternate history in which our world developed into a post-capitalist world after the economic crash in 2008.Yanis shared the story of how he was politicized early after the Greek civil war and his father’s imprisonment, and how that helped shape his economic vision that led him to become an accidental politician (he led the bailout talks between Greece and the European Union) and a best selling author.

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What’s behind the Cop26 fraud? – The Guardian

There are three reasons Cop26 proved such a spectacular debacle: A planet-wide collective action problem over “free-riding”. A global coordination failure. And… capitalism!“Make no mistake, the money is here, if the world wants to use it,” said Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor who today serves as UN climate envoy while also representing an alliance of financiers sitting on a pile of $130 trillion worth of assets. So, what does the world want? If only humanity had the power to organise a global poll based on one-human-one-vote, such a species-wide referendum would undoubtedly deliver a clear answer: “Do whatever it takes to stop emitting carbon now!” Instead, we have COP26 and a decision-making process culminating into the colossal fiasco currently unfolding in the fine city of Glasgow.The failure of COP26 reflects our failed democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. President Biden arrived in Glasgow as his people back in Washington were pushing through Congress his infrastructure bill – an exercise in corrupt politics that decoupled the bill from any serious investment in renewables, dropped polluter taxes, maintained oil subsidies, and funded an array of carbon emitting infrastructure such as new roads, airports etc. Meanwhile in the European Union, the rhetoric may be a bright green but the reality is a dark brown – with even cash-rich Germany commissioning new lignite-fired power stations and looking forward to copious amounts of natural gas promised by Mr Putin in exchange of green-lighting his Nordstream2 gas pipeline.Europe’s failure is doubly sad because if the EU is capable of one thing that’s the creation of a paneuropean Renewable Energy Union which, alas, our leaders are not even debating. And as if it were not enough that the US and the EU are betraying the green transition within their jurisdictions, they are fermenting a New Cold War against China. Yes, China is a heavy polluter. But, setting aside the inconvenient fact that China is already investing in climate change amelioration more than the US and the EU combined ($3.4 trillion over this decade), the West’s choice to target China now is inconsistent with the vital US-EU-China common front against climate disaster.Three are the reasons COP26 is proving a spectacular debacle. The first reason is a planet-wide free-riding trap. Large businesses, as well as states, take a leaf out of St Augustine’s prayer “Lord please make me chaste but not just yet”. Everyone prefers a planet on which no one emits carbon to a planet that sizzles. But, everyone also prefers to delay paying the cost of transition to non-polluting practices whatever everyone else does: If the rest of the planet do the right thing, the planet is saved even if you selfishly delay your costly conversion to environmental probity. And if the rest of the planet do not do the right thing, why be the sucker who does?The second reason is a global coordination failure. Mark Carney is, in this sense, correct: Yes, mountain ranges of cash are lying idly in the global financial system, its ultra-wealthy owners keen to invest it in low-carbon activities. But, a private investment in, say, green hydrogen, will only return profits if many other investors invest in it too. But they will only do so if they think that others like them believe that most investors like them will think that everyone else of their ilk will… invest in green hydrogen. And so they sit around waiting! Meanwhile, corporations, communities and states join this waiting game, unwilling to take the risk of committing to green hydrogen until Big Business does. Tragically, there is no global coordinator to match the available money, technologies and needs.The third reason is… capitalism. From its outset, it gained pace through the incessant commodification of everything, beginning with land, labour and technology before spreading to genetically modified organisms, even a woman’s womb or an asteroid. As capitalism’s realm spread, priceless goods turned into pricey commodities. The owners of the machinery and the land necessary for the commodification of goods profited while the rest progressed from the wretchedness of the 19th century’s working class to the soothing fantasies of mindless petit-bourgeois consumerism.Everything that was good was commodified – including much of our humanity. And all the bads that the same production process generated, were simply released into the atmosphere. To power the capitalist juggernaut, carbon stored for millennia in trees and under the surface was plundered with only the private costs of mine, land and factory owners to slow down its use. For two centuries immense wealth, and corresponding oodles of human misery, was produced by exploitative processes depleting ‘free’natural capital, carbon in particular. Workers around the world are now paying the cost to Nature that the capitalist market never bore.Free-marketeers would like us to believe that business has yielded to science and is, thus, ready and willing to step into the void of government inaction. We must not believe this for a moment. Yes, Mark Carney is right: The money for the belated green transition is here and it is ample. Those who possess it will, undoubtedly, invest it to supply, say, green hydrogen if we, society, pay them to do so. But, at the same time, they shall not cease voluntarily from producing other stuff whose production entails releasing into the air the next stored carbon ton.This is why polluters adore NET ZERO targets. Because they are a brilliant cover-up for not restricting emissions. In exchange for quicksilver, non-verifiable offsets, it gives them licence to continue to plunder the planet’s remaining stored carbon until the point comes when their marginal private cost surpasses their unit revenue. By cynically placing NET ZERO at its centre, COP26 became nothing more than an expensive cover-up for continued emissions. And so, hiding behind COP26, the great and the good lie to the young, lie to the vulnerable and even lie to themselves that the “money is there” to be invested in the planet’s salvation.What needs to be done? Two things at the very least. First, a complete shutdown of coalmines and new oil and gas rigs. If governments can lock us down to save lives during a pandemic, they can shut down the fossil fuel industry to save humanity. Second, we need a global carbon tax, to increase the relative price of everything that releases more carbon, and from which all proceeds should be returned to the poorer members of our species.To earn a shot at rising to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, we must first confront both the funders and the owners of the fossil fuel industries. Though this clash will not guarantee our future, it is a necessary condition for us to have one.

For The Guardian site please click here.

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Assessing the Biden Presidency one year after his election – Rick Wolf & Yanis Varoufakis

In this edition of THE INTERNATIONALIST, following news from the global struggle against reactionaries, Rick Wolf and I discuss the US situation (from the 8th minute onwards). Yes, it has been one year since Joe Biden came into office. While he is at COP26 making weak and unconvincing commitments on the climate, the global crisis of society and environment is unfolding. So, Rick and I share perspectives on the current political and economic order and its future, from techno-feudalism to the new Cold War on China. We also speak about the ongoing pandemic and the profound transformations taking place in our time.

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Explaining to friend & comrade Slavoj Zizek that which why I didn’t get a chance to tell my father: why I think capitalism has evolved into technofeudalism

I must have been no older than five or six when my dad introduced me to the idea that technological progress forces the pace of history. I remember him explaining how written records coincided with humanity’s ability to smelt copper tools. Of how history accelerated when ancient smiths progressed from copper to forging iron tools and, later, weapons made of steel. Of how the invention of iron engines that could harness the power of steam begat capitalism.Dad was a chemical engineer by profession, who spent countless hours in his spare time studying ancient technologies, and an accidental young communist. By the late 1980s, when History supposedly ended, he had lost most hope that we would manage in our time to replace capitalism with something better. He assumed capitalism would survive for a long time even though he knew it would not last forever. Like many of his generation, dad had settled for the ambition that, since we are doomed to live under capitalism for a long while, we might as well to civilise it.Still, every now and then, he would speculate on how capitalism might end. His wish was, I remember him telling me, that it would not die with a bang, because bangs had a tendency to fell good people in awful numbers. At around the same time, dad sought my help in making his first desktop computer work. At first, he marvelled at it as a cross between glorified typewriter and impressive calculator. But then, one day, when I helped him connect to the fledgling internet, he asked: “Will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles’ heel?”Only now do I have an answer for him: “Dad, it was capitalism’s Achilles’ heel, after all. The digital technologies it spawned proved capitalism’s comeuppance. The result? Humanity is now being taken over by something that I can only describe to you as a technologically advanced form of feudalism – a technofeudalism that is not what we had hoped would replace capitalism.”Alas, caught up in my own projects and dramas, by the time I was ready to have this chat with him, dad was already ninety-five and finding it hard to follow my musings. And so, here I am, a few weeks after he passed, doing the next best thing: Explaining my weird theory to my great friend and comrade Slavoj Zizek.

For our complete, two hour hour-long conversation, which took place as part of the Indigo Festival on 21st October 2021, click below

 

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Can capitalism be fixed? An Intelligence Squared debate between Gillian Tett (Yes!) and Yanis Varoufakis (No!)

Gillian Tett, the Financial Times Chair of the Editorial Board & Editor-at-large, believes that capitalism can be fixed, through copious regulation and institutional interventions. I, on the other hand, not only think that capitalism cannot be fixed but, additionally, that capitalism has made itself irrelevant through a surreptitious transformation into a new version of the system it replaced: technofeudalism. Gillian think that I am a utopian dreaming of a socialist postcapitalism. I think that Gillian is a utopian hanging on to the idea that capitalism can be both saved and civilised. ENJOY THE DEBATE that Intellience Squared were kind enough to organise.

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Star Trek vs The Matrix: Chatting with Briahna Joy Gray about my ANOTHER NOW on BAD FAITH

Truly enjoyed this chat with Briahna Joy Gray which began with a discussion of my novel ANOTHER NOW, and the question of what a non-capitalist world could look like in the here and now, and drifted nicely to our favourite show, Star Trek – the ultimate depiction of a liberal communism worth working towards; which I juxtapose against The Matrix which, to me, represents the alternative natural limit of today’s Technofeudalism – that we shall end up with if we let the powers-that-be do as they are currently doing.

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What’s behind our #yourNHSneedsYou campaign: DiEM25 ushering in a new way of doing progressive politics – The New Statesman

A new campaign to save the NHS from privatisation-from-within (#yourNHSneedsYou) is going from strength to strength  in the UK. In this New Statesman article,  Yanis Varoufakis, Nathalie Bennett and John McDonnell explain why and how the NHS is being eaten up from within by Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Business more generally. What makes this DiEM25-inspired campaign more pertinent in this historic moment is that it is a template for a new way of doing progressive politics: one that involves people from different progressive organisations, parties, trades unions – leaders and rank-and-file activists who have hitherto failed to work together. DiEM25 will work hard to ensure that #yourNHSneedsYou campaign is only the beginning!Ever since Margaret Thatcher began to vandalise Britain’s pubic goods, her heirs and successors have loathed the NHS for three reasons. First, because it demonstrably gives the lie to their creed that markets always know best. Secondly, because the British public love the freedom-from-the-market that the NHS affords them when it comes to their health. And, thirdly, because their ‘associates’ lose mountains of cash due to the remaining barriers to the commodification of health services and data.That these barriers to commodification are still standing is a feat largely attributable to the brave staff working in the NHS and the public’s passion for it.But, decades of concerted assaults by privateers, under the political cover provided by the Major, Blair, Cameron and May governments, have left these defences rickety and full of holes through which the rats of privatisation manage to smuggle out increasing amounts of value extracted at the expense of public health.For decades now, its sworn enemies have been proclaiming that “the NHS is safe with us” while portraying it as a black hole that no amount of public money can plug and which only privateers can streamline. This is, of course, a lie whose real purpose was always to pave the ground for privatisation-from-within. Their prize? Billions of pounds siphoned off from care and into the coffers of privateers, mostly US corporations who are now deeply embedded in what once was an integrated, publicly run service. And when the ill effects of their lucrative mismanagement affect the public, e.g., waiting lists, they divert blame to the same doctors and nurses whom their shenanigans starve of resources.So far, privatisation was justified as the prescribed medicine for the chronic underfunding. But underfunding was never only the problem although we do spend less than other comparable nations.. Waste of resources due to privatisation was. Put differently, privatisation within the NHS created the disease of underfunding it was meant to cure. The numbers don’t lie. In the 1980s, NHS administration costs accounted for just 4% of the budget. By the mid-2000s, they ate up 14% of a much larger budget.It makes sense: The greater the penetration of privateers in any health system the greater its inefficiency, as highly paid managers bring in more underlings from the private sector, pay themselves more, and facilitate the outsourcing to their private sector buddies of things the NHS could provide internally more cheaply and collegially. In the limit, when care is fully privatised, inefficiency and ill health reach their zenith. The United States, were private health reigns supreme, is the case in point: Administration accounts for 36% of the health budget and life expectancy lingers at levels lower than in several Indian prefectures or African states.Today, the new excuse for wrecking what is left of the NHS is digitisation, artificial intelligence and robotics. Privateers linked to Big Tech await outside the NHS gates while their political mouthpieces in Parliament and the media are waxing lyrical about a brave new NHS that the public sector cannot deliver. They envisage an NHS acting as a market where privateers provide ‘clients’ genomic sequencers to check their food, wearable technology to detect their cancer – and in which medical engineers are replacing doctors while robots are taking over nursing. “When that almighty crunch point comes”, wrote recently Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph, “the creaky, tax-sucking public sector leviathan will be shown for what it is: a system that trapped the country in an insane hell of cyclical problems.”Their dystopic manifesto is being implemented now. The government’s Health and Care Bill is its foundation. By breaking up the English NHS into 42 Integrated Care Systems, the Bill is demolishing the barriers preventing, first, the complete monopolisation of NHS budgets by US insurance conglomerates and, second, the expropriation of the most valuable NHS asset: its data. Health corporations and Big Pharma will have free rein over the NHS budget while Big Tech (with Google and Amazon leading the pack) will realise its dream of adding incredible value to their Apps by immersing them in the rims of health data the NHS has amassed since the 1940s.The time to stop them is now. While Boris Johnson continues to lull the public into complacency, and Keir Starmer continues to speak of the NHS “partnering with the private sector”, it falls to the British public to resist. This is why we have launched, along with doctors, academics, artists, journalists, unions, and a range of dedicated civil society organisations, the national #yourNHSneedsYou! Campaign.Our aim is to stop the Bill and start the renationalisation of the NHS: the restoration of a market-free system delivering care as a right, not as a commodity, within a community of providers who extend public provision to social, dental and optician care, and do so by using the latest in modern technology and also focusing on public health measures to reduce the need for treatment without falling prey to Big Tech’s hunger for data extracted from patients in order to turn them into commodities.There is another aspect of our #yourNHSneedsYou! campaign that progressives can draw comfort from. It emerged after progressives were gathered by DiEM25 to iron out differences in the context of a series of discussions that we labelled the ‘New Putney Debates’. Together, we recognised that, post-Brexit, and in the face of further intensifying attacks on our public services and liberties, it is time to move beyond past differences and electoral considerations. Instead, as the #yourNHSneedsYou! Campaign demonstrates, we decided to encourage our friends, members and supporters to work together toward common goals. Starting with the preservation of the NHS as a magnificent commons, we hope to show the way for a new form of progressive, collaborative politics in the UK and beyond – something we’re already seeing in some local authority ‘rainbow coalitions’.

So far #yourNHSneedsYou! has been endorsed by: Brian Eno, Stephen Fry, George Monbiot, Frankie Boyle, Jonathan Ross, David Tennant, Russell Brand, Jo Brand, Steve Coogan, Joe Lycett, Johnny Vegas, Vicky McClure, Romesh Ranganathan, Ed Byrne, Dane Baptiste, Shappi Khorsandi, Rachel Parris, Charlotte Church,  Caroline Lucas, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Lemn Sissay and Michael Rosen.

 

 

 

 

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Σκληρό Μαρκάρισμα Νο. 6.Με τον Γιώργο Ευγενίδη

Χωρίς απαγορευμένες ή υπαγορευμένες ερωτήσεις. Χωρίς ταμπού θέματα ή προσυμφωνημένες ατζέντες. Συνεντεύξεις όπως πρέπει να γίνονται. Στο έκτο «Σκληρό Μαρκάρισμα» απαντώ στις ερωτήσεις του Γιώργου Ευγενίδη για το ενδεχόμενο εκλογών και για το αν διάγουμε μια προεκλογική χρονιά, για την οικονομία και την ανάπτυξη, για την αμυντική συμφωνία με τη Γαλλία και τον αστάθμητο παράγοντα που λέγεται Τουρκία,   για τα κόκκινα δάνεια και την πρώτη κατοικία, για την πορεία της πανδημίας και τους εμβολιασμούς, για το προσκλητήριο Τσίπρα στις προοδευτικές δυνάμεις αλλά και για το αν το ΜέΡΑ25 θα βρίσκεται και στην επόμενη Βουλή.

 

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ANOTHER NOW: Socialist Alternatives to Capitalism Explored in New Novel – On Democracy Now!, with Amy Goodman

In an extended interview with Yanis Varoufakis, member of the Greek Parliament and former finance minister of Greece, we discuss his new novel, “Another Now,” and why he chose to write fiction after years of nonfiction. “All my life as a lefty, I had to find ways of escaping the poignant question: ‘If you don’t like capitalism, what is your alternative?’” Varoufakis explains. Now 60 years old, he describes how he explored the answer through the characters in his book, some of whom are based on real people.

 

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.We’re joined now for Part 2 of our interview with Yanis Varoufakis, member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece. We spoke with him about the outcome of the German elections in the first part of our interview. His latest piece for Jacobin, “Angela Merkel Was Bad for Europe and the World.” He’s also a professor of economics. But he’s written a novel. It’s his new book. It is called Another Now.Yanis Varoufakis, thank you for staying with us. Start off with that title, Another Now.YANIS VAROUFAKIS: All my life as a lefty, I had to find ways of escaping the poignant question: “Mate, if you don’t like capitalism, what’s the alternative? How could the system work differently? Labor markets, companies, land use, housing, foreign trade — how would it all work if people like you could reshape the world?” And I have to admit that this is a question that most socialists, like myself, whenever we heard it, we run for cover, because it’s a very difficult question to answer. You can’t possibly even begin to imagine that the Soviet Union is a good model for what we need here now. It was a gulag. I would be the first one to end up in the gulag. I always knew that. So it was a question that, for a long time, I avoided by concentrating on criticizing capitalism.And, you know, now I’m 60, Amy, and I decided that it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. But, you know, sitting down to write a treatise of how would markets work, how would this work and so on, was just too boring to do. So I decided I’m going to write a novel, because, you see, when you have a novel, you have characters. And when you have characters, you can put different ideas — your own ideas, different ideas, because I have conflicting ideas in my head, about how a democratic, socialist, liberal, market society should be like — so I put different ideas into different characters, and I let them fight it out.And I created — I used the medium of science fiction in order to imagine what would have happened in 2008 if a transnational, international technorebellion took place. How could we transform capitalism, overcome capitalism, replace it with a thoroughly democratized economy? And, you know, how could it come to be? And what would it be like? So, there you are. I would have created another now by the end of writing this novel, I thought, and that’s what I hope I have done.AMY GOODMAN: So, and you’ve done it brilliantly. Tell us the story of Costa, your main character, a brilliant but deeply disillusioned computer engineer.YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, by the way, can I break some news to you? Costa is based on a real person. He’s also called Costa, and he — I hope he’s not listening to me now. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a high-tech freak. He’s a great friend of mine, so I’m allowed to say that. He’s a Cretan, a Greek from Crete, who studied electrical engineering, computing science in Germany, who worked designing, initially, missile systems and then had a massive existential crisis and gave this up. And then he concentrated on designing bionic ears — not bionic eyes, as I have it in the book.But he represents — from where I’m standing, he represents the early and defeated hope that digital technologies — the internet, all these fantastic digital contraptions and technology — would liberate us. It’s, we know, one variety of defeated modernity, right? Another one is the Marxist left, who thought that, you know, we would rise up and storm the winter castle, and then we would bring about the good society. We didn’t. We brought about the gulag. Costa is the techie who gets very excited by technology, until he realizes what Big Tech and capitalism does with them. So he becomes utterly disillusioned and finds a way of making a lot of money for himself in order to find ways of channeling his creativity to projects that will help liberate us from, you know, the illusions that consumerism and capitalism implant into our minds.AMY GOODMAN: So, Yanis, tell us about his journey to England and the women he meets up there.YANIS VAROUFAKIS: So, there are three main characters. Costa, the tech-savvy tech evangelist who turns technophobe, because he sees what Big Tech does, what capitalism does with big technology. And then there is a neoliberal, mainstream economics professor who used to work for Wall Street, until 2008. She got burned in 2008. Then she became a professor in the United, and then in England. And she represents the other variant — sorry, I’ll say that again. And she represents the other variant of modernity, which is the neoliberal one, because the neoliberals also believe in progress. They believe that if you do away with the state, if you let the state wither and you enable markets to do their thing, to perform their miracle, everybody’s going to become better off, and everybody’s going to become free. This is another variety of modernity, the idea that reason and rationality will triumph. And that crashed and burned in 2008, as we know, when Wall Street came down, and then we had socialism for the bankers and harsh austerity for everyone else. So, that’s Eva. And then there’s Iris, the Marxist feminist, very radical Marxist feminist. She doesn’t like Marxism, she doesn’t like feminism, because she thinks that all these projects, in the end, generate different kinds of oppressions amongst comrades. So, she represents the left-wing variety, variant, of modernity.And they all meet together. And an accident that takes place in one of the contraptions that Costa has concocted, has invented, allows them to glimpse at, through a wormhole, at an alternative trajectory of the time-space continuum. The idea here is that, in 2008, the crisis was so great — I like to imagine that — that the time-space continuum split in two: the one we live on, where capitalism survived and used central banks and Big Tech and so on in order to solidify the power of the very few, but there was another trajectory where, you know, the Occupy Wall Street kind of movement, using financial engineering, using mass digital strikes, mass trade union activity and so on, overthrew capitalism and created something much better. So, those three characters can see through this wormhole. They can get glimpses of what that alternative now is like. And they get to debate it and to really have huge arguments against one another —AMY GOODMAN: The other now.YANIS VAROUFAKIS: — about its merits. The other now.AMY GOODMAN: And so, as you reflect both on your fictional writing, creating the other now, and what your job was before, as finance minister, was it strange working with fictitious capital and then turning to fiction to express your worldview?YANIS VAROUFAKIS: It’s weird and wonderful, because, let’s face it, capitalism is based on fictitious capital. You heard the other day that the International Monetary Fund created $650 billion worth of something called SDRs. What’s that? It’s fictional, fictitious capital. It’s the money tree. When the Fed creates money, that’s fictional money, fictitious money. But, of course, it’s very powerful, because those who get it, those who receive it — and it’s usually the Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs — then they give it to their mates in Apple, Google, Exxon and so on, and that gives them enormous power over the rest of us. So, it’s fictional or fictitious capital, which has a real impact in the distribution of power, of who gets to order other people around. That’s what politics boils down to, and that’s what economics boils down to: the power to make other people do that which is in your own interest. That’s how capitalism works.So, I tried to imagine: Is there a way that we could, as a species, as humanity, harness the power of humanity to create fictitious capital, for the many, not for the view, to put it in — to put it in the service of organizations like FreeSpeech.org, cooperatives, social enterprises, where everyone has one vote, because everybody has one share, because this is what you do? You have corporations, you have companies, you have media companies, and you have factories, operating along the lines of a college, where, you know, when you enroll in college, you get a library card. You can’t sell it. You can’t rent it. You can’t lease it. You can’t speculate on it. But it gives you power. It gives you the power to borrow books. It gives you the power to enter the computer system of the college.Imagine if shares were like that. Suddenly, yes, we would have corporations. We’d have freedom. We have would have competition. But we wouldn’t have labor markets, because everybody would share the profits, not necessarily equally, but even the inequality, the bonuses that are given, could be decided democratically on the basis of one person, one share, one vote. Then you do away with Wall Street, because there would be no share market, because, you know, shares will not be tradable.So, if you allow your realistic fantasy, your realistic imagination, to take it further, there is a possibility. And that’s what I’m trying to do with Another Now, to dissolve the toxic dogma of TINA, that “there is no alternative,” because, astonishingly, there is always an alternative.AMY GOODMAN: Yanis, I wanted to ask you about the organization you formed with Senator Bernie Sanders, who has become extremely powerful in the Senate. For many years, people would have thought that would be another now. But it happened. He is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. And I’m wondering if you can talk about the vision the two of you have, not just for the United States — and what it’s like for you to see him operate in the United States — but throughout Europe and around the world.YANIS VAROUFAKIS: The vision was really very, very simple. After 2008, the bankers of the world united, forming a bankers’ international. And they got the G7 to bankroll them and, effectively, to cover for all their huge losses after 2008 by getting the central banks of the world to print enough money to give them. That’s how they bailed them out. So there is a bankers’ international. The result, we can see everywhere, from Seattle all the way to Missouri, and, you know, from New York all the way to India and to, you know, to sub-Saharan Africa and to the European Union: austerity for the many and socialism for the very few.Soon after that, the discontent that the bankers’ international created fed into right-wing, xenophobic populism. And they internationalized. You know, Donald Trump, Prime Minister Modi of India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, all the neofascists in Europe, they loved each other — the Brexiteers, the right-wing Brexiteers in Britain. And they collaborated magnificently. So there was a nationalist or ultranationalist international — which is a contradiction, but it’s not really, because they cooperate. The only people who never manage to get together and collaborate are the progressives.So, this is what, you know, Bernie and I said in Vermont in November 2018, that it’s about time. And we called upon people of the Earth to collaborate in the context of a Progressive International. Now, then Bernie had, of course, to run for president. And he did very well, and we all supported him. And I’m very pleased that he has taken up the opportunity that Biden has given him to try to push the American Senate in a progressive direction. At some point he’s going to be eaten alive by this regime, but it’s good that he’s trying. The rest of us are putting together and they are realizing that vision of the Progressive International.And let me give you an example. During Black Friday, last December, we organized a unique industrial action. We called it #MakeAmazonPay, in support of workers that are exploited, both in terms of low pay but also in terms of the automation of their bodies through the machinery that Amazon uses in its warehouses — [inaudible] humans, without humanizing the robots. So, we had this rolling strike in Amazon warehouses that was called and organized by the Progressive International. It started in Bangladesh. On the same day, it rolled into India. Then it went to Germany. Then it went to New Jersey. Then it went to Seattle. This is the kind of thing we’re doing.We now have an organization comprising different trade unions and climate activists around the world, and so on, and antiwar movements. We have about 200 million people that are, through their organizations, participating in the Progressive International. You know, we’re trying to make this work in the way that the bankers and the fascists have completely made it clear we need to move, to internationalize, because it’s the only way of fighting them.AMY GOODMAN: Well, Yanis Varoufakis, I want to thank you so much for being with us, member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece. His new book is a novel. It’s titled Another Now. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

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