Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 33

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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On Merkel’s Legacy, European Politics & the “Sordid Arms Race” on the Seas – On Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman

The centre-left Social Democratic Party in Germany has narrowly claimed victory in an election that marks an end to the 16-year era of Angela Merkel’s conservative chancellorship. We look at what this means for Europe and the world with Yanis Varoufakis, a member of the Greek Parliament and the former finance minister of Greece. The SDP’s narrow victory should be viewed critically, says Varoufakis, noting that the party “ruthlessly” practiced austerity in 2008 and 2009. “Not much has changed,” Varoufakis says. “It’s not as if an opposition party won.”TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn now to Germany, where the center-left Social Democratic Party narrowly claimed victory Sunday in an election that puts an end to the 16-year era of Angela Merkel’s conservative leadership. Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, won the second most votes, with the Green Party coming in third. Social Democrats will now have to form a ruling coalition, which could take weeks or possibly months. The SDP’s candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who positioned himself as a leader in the vein of Merkel during his campaign, vowed to tackle the climate crisis and modernize industry, he says.

Well, for more on what this means for Europe and the world, we’re joined in Greece by Yanis Varoufakis. He’s a member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece who negotiated with Chancellor Merkel and international creditors in 2015, when they demanded harsh new austerity measures for a European bailout of Greece, largely at Merkel’s behest, although at some points Varoufakis was excluded from the negotiations. His latest piece for Jacobin is headlined “Angela Merkel Was Bad for Europe and the World.” His new book is called Another Now.

We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Yanis. If you can first talk about what’s happened in Germany, what it means for Greece and for the world?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, it’s good to be back, Amy. Thank you.

Look, not much has changed. Let’s not hyperventilate about the great changes. Point number one: Angela Merkel was not defeated. She’s the first German chancellor in the postwar era that has not been defeated. She resigned. So, she is going home because she’s had enough. Point number one.

Point number two: The previous administrations, at least the last two, were administrations — the so-called grand coalitions between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, who now narrowly beat the Christian Democrats. So, it’s not as if [inaudible] Democrats are coming into government. They went into government. Olaf Scholz, who is going to be chancellor, if this coalition that he’s now concocting comes to fruition, he was finance minister until yesterday. So, let’s, you know, take down a few notches all the hype about the great changes that we’re going to see in Germany.

The other point, which is very important — two points, if I may, Amy, quickly, brief ones. Firstly, the austerity that hit our country here in Greece in 2010 was first practiced in 2009 — not to such an extent, but it was first practiced, put into place in Germany in 2009 — 2008, 2009, by the Social Democrats themselves. So it’s not as if the Social Democrats are an anti-austerity party. They were the inventors of austerity, and they practiced it ruthlessly in Germany.

And finally, the point I need to make is that whoever is in this government and whoever leads this government, this government is going to contain, for the first time since ages, the so-called Free Democratic — the Free Democrats of Germany, the FDP, which is a very strong, austerian, right-wing — libertarian even — party. And they are going to exact a pound of flesh from the Social Democrats or the Christian Democrats or the Greens, whoever joins them up. Their price for joining the government will be business as usual.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well ,Yanis Varoufakis, you have argued, in articles you published in the New Statesman and Jacobin, that Merkel’s austerity policies condemned Europe and Germany to decline. Could you expand on that?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Happily. Remember the Lehman Brothers and the great financial meltdown of 2008? Very soon after that, Angela Merkel found out, to her, you know, disbelief, that the German banks were also kaput, bankrupt. And so were the French banks. So were all the banks in the European Union, including the British ones. And they had to actually salvage them, like President Obama did in the United States, except that, unlike President Obama, the Europeans had given up on having a central bank, a national central bank. So they effected a cynical transfer of — instead of printing money, instead of having the Central Bank of Europe, the ECB, print the money, which is what Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and Barack Obama did in the United States — instead of doing that, they transferred their losses onto the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers, who were Greeks, you know, working-class Germans and so on. So you had socialism for the very few, for the bankers, and harsh austerity for everyone else — not just the Greeks, but the German workers, the French workers, the Slovak workers, the Portuguese workers, the Spanish workers.

Now, what happens when you do that? You know, the bankers have been refloated. They are constantly being given money that the Central Bank brings, eventually. And the masses are suffering and laboring under the yoke of austerity. Now, big business looks at the “little people” out there and says, “Oh, well, they will not be able to afford the equivalent of a German Tesla,” let’s say, so they don’t build one. They won’t invest. So investment is very low. Good quality jobs disappear. They are replaced by mini jobs, delivery jobs, you know, the gig economy. So you have discontent across Europe. You have low levels of investment in the places that are the richest, like Germany. And, of course, you have nonexistent investment in places like Greece.

This is what I said when I tried to make the point in the articles that you kindly mentioned, that Angela Merkel leaves the chancellery, the office of prime minister of Germany, much stronger than she inherited it, because of the crisis. She leaves Germany complete and replete and full of economic surpluses, of, you know, surplus money. But she also leaves it with low levels of investment and, effectively, condemned to be falling behind China and the United States when it comes to the things humanity and Europeans will be needing in the next few years, which is green energy, artificial intelligence, high-tech companies that can combine the green transition with some degree of shared prosperity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you

about another issue that marks, I guess, Merkel’s legacy, is the issue of immigration. I mean, we’re seeing new images again, not just in the United States of Haitians and Central Americans at the border, but, once again, in Southern Europe, of 600 asylum seekers yesterday in one boat in Italy, a huge increase in those escaping from Africa and the Middle East, coming to Europe. Greece, obviously, has been dealing with this. But Merkel was distinguished among the leaders by initially welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany, when other countries were trying to close their borders. Your sense of her legacy in terms of migration policy and how migration is affecting Europe, given the fact that these imperial powers keep waging wars, disrupting these countries, creating chaos, and then insisting that migrants cannot come into Europe?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Yes, you are so right. I mean, it was such a show of hypocrisy recently, when the Taliban moved into Kabul, and the liberal press in the United States, and then, of course, in the European Union, they were horrified by the sight of the Taliban taking over, and all these concerns about the liberal, progressive Afghans, especially women, and then, at the very same time, you know, our great and good leaders, the same ones who were lamenting the success of the Taliban, they started talking about raising the height of the fences that they’re building to turn Europe into fortress Europe — not one mention of letting the Afghan women that are being persecuted by the Taliban come in.

But going back to your question about Merkel’s legacy when it comes to immigration, look, there was a key word in your question. That was “initially.” Her initial response, in 2015, the summer of 2015, when the Syrian refugees came storming in, running away from the civil war in Syria — her initial response was great. I mean, I even tweeted that — and, you know, I’m not a political ally of Angela Merkel. I said in my tweet that I am proud to be European because of Angela Merkel, because she said, “Let them in.” My goodness! And she let 1 million people in. But then, immediately, her pragmatism kicks in. She is the leader of a conservative party that would — was about to eat her up alive, to put it blunt — not too bluntly, I hope. And within two weeks, she reversed course. So, that initial response shows that the woman is probably a very decent person. And, you know, all kudos to her. But within two weeks, she spoke to the Turkish president, Mr. Erdoğan, and together they concocted a travesty of a policy.

Effectively, the European Union, under Merkel’s guidance, bribed, with a few billion euros, the president of Turkey, the Turkish government, to allow the European Union to violate international law, not to allow refugees. You know, refugees, on these ramshackle boats that end up on Lesbos, the Greek islands — right? — here, they really don’t have the right to seek asylum, because Merkel and Erdoğan agreed, years ago, with the approval of my former comrades in this government, after I resigned, the French, the Italians and so on — they agreed that Turkey is a safe country, and therefore, no refugees from Syria, from Afghanistan, from wherever, has the right, the automatic right, to file an application for a refugee status, even if they’ve been tortured. You know, this is absolutely preposterous. So, you have the initial reaction, which was good, and then you have what has been happening over the last few years.

Let me give you some — a piece of information which I think is significant. Last week, two weeks ago, a concentration camp, a prison camp, was built with European Union money, as part of the Merkel legacy, on the island of Samos. Now, on the one hand, you have those who are waxing lyrical about it, because those refugees that used to live in tents, and they would — you know, tents that would be washed away whenever there was a wintery storm or rain, heavy rain falling — you know, suddenly, they had decent dwellings. They even had a restaurant, and they had Wi-Fi. But what they forget to mention is that there is also barbed wire surrounding them. So these people can stay in there for years for having committed the crime of coming to Europe to seek refugee status.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Yanis Varoufakis, you’re speaking to us from a Greek island, and so we’re having a little trouble with the Skype. But thank you all for bearing with us. You tweeted on Tuesday, “At a time when the US& France are competing on which of the two will undermine Peace in the Pacific more effectively, the Greek PM is pushing Greece further into debt bondage by purchasing French frigates–with a nod from Biden so as to placate Macron. Greece deserves better!” And, of course, talking about AUKUS, this new military alliance to marginalize China, many are asking if it’s Biden who is really creating a new cold war with China. He makes a deal with the U.K. and Australia for — it was a deal, $65 billion, nuclear-powered subs. And this cut France out. They felt stabbed in the back. So now France is making a deal with Greece, further militarizing the world. Your thoughts?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: I am ever so depressed by this. You know, we are not learning any lessons from the past. You put it quite rightly. There is a sordid arms race, arms deal race, happening in the Pacific. So, you know, the French want to make some money out of the Australians by selling them submarines. The Americans come in, and they cut the French out of the deal. The French get seriously peeved. All this is happening, supposedly, in order to increase security in the Pacific. It is doing exactly the opposite, because the Chinese are simply going to respond to this arms race by just upping the ante, building more of their own nuclear subs.

The nuclear subs are a waste in any case. Now, you know, we live in a technological world where we have transparent oceans. These old-fashioned nuclear submarines are neither here nor there. They are not increasing security. If they increase anything, it is insecurity.

But there’s a lot of money to be made, by the French, who want to sell them, by the American government, who wants to make sure that their mates that are producing these nuclear subs get the deals from Australia. And Macron is stabbed. And then, sadly, President Biden decides to throw him a few morsels of bread in order to pacify him. And that is to give the green light to the Greek prime minister to buy three or four frigates from the French government, which — exactly what are they going to contribute to our security? Yes, we do have a problem with Turkey. We have a recalcitrant Turkey. We have a Turkish regime that traditionally proves imperialist or acts imperialistically when it wants to solidify its own foundering base within Turkey, because it is a dictatorship, and our Turkish comrades, Turkish democratic comrades, are suffering under it. So, whenever the Turkish government feels unsafe, it creates tensions in the Aegean. But how exactly is this going to help? By “this,” I mean a few more high-tech frigates that Greece is going to buy from France — using what? More debt.

You mentioned that, you know, I was a finance minister at the height of the Greek debt crisis. Well, let me restate it for the record, that, back then, when every newspaper in the world, including in the United States, was covered with articles about the Greek crisis, our debt-to-GDP ratio was something like 170%, 150%, 170%. Right? One-and-a-half times our national income. Today it’s more than twice. It’s 210%, 212%. And still they are borrowing more money from the Europeans to buy European frigates to pacify Macron in terms of what he lost in the Pacific, while both the Pacific and the Aegean oceans and seas are becoming less secure and more prone to conflicts that will only have victims amongst the working classes of China, of Australia, of the United States, of Greece, of Turkey, of France and Germany.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Yanis, if you can say why you called your new book Another Now?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Because I’m a leftist. And we leftists have a problem, Amy, especially those of us who declare to be critical of capitalism or against capitalism, because the obvious question that then comes or is thrown at us is — and it’s a fair question — “Mate, if you don’t like capitalism, what’s the alternative? How could we have organized society — the economy, polity, the whole thing — differently without capitalism?” So I decided to write a novel, a science fiction novel, a political science fiction novel, in which I imagine that the 2008 great financial collapse led to not just Occupy Wall Street, but to a global movement that, with some degree of realism, built another now.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to ask you to stay so we can have a further conversation about Another Now and post it at democracynow.org. Yanis Varoufakis, member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece. His latest piece for Jacobin, we’ll link to, “Angela Merkel Was Bad for Europe and the World.” His new book is titled Another Now.

And that does it for our show. Happy Birthday to Paul Powell!

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George Varoufakis (1925-2021)

Shortly after midnight, on 29th September, George Varoufakis died. He was born in Cairo, Egypt in June 1925 where he finished his high school studies at the Ambetio School. After graduating, he worked at a branch of a Greek bank in Cairo before coming to Athens in 1946 to enrol in the Department of Chemistry at the University of AthensShortly before the outbreak of the second Greek civil war (1946-9), he went to the Dean’s Office, representing his students union, to protest against an increase in tuition fees at a time students were facing starvation. On his way out he was arrested by secret police. Refusing to sign the infamous ‘declaration of denouncing communism’, he was imprisoned in Athens and later exiled to the Makronisos prison camp –  a massive, open-air torture chamber. There, on that barren rock, he had the good fortune of surviving alongside poet Giannis Ritsos, actor Manolis Katrakis and author Spyros Linardatos. When Makronisos was shut down, following an international outrage, he was exiled to the island of Ikaria, before finally returning to Athens and the University of Athens, where he met his life partner Eleni Tsaggaraki. Eleni was the first female student in the history of the Department of Chemistry who would later work as a biochemist, would be active in the feminist movement and would be elected for many years municipal councillor (including on term as Deputy Mayor) of Palaio Faliro. George and Eleni had two children – Yanis and Trisevgeni.

After the secret police ensured that one after the other potential employers would steer clear of employing him as a chemical engineer, he managed to land a job in 1954 at Halyvourgiki, the country’s first steel mill – which over the net few years he helped expand into a large-scale modern steel factory. In 1961, he was appointed Director of the Quality Control, a position he cherished, until in 2003 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Halyvourgiki, a position he held until January 2020.From 1959 until almost his life’s end, in parallel with his demanding position at Halyvourgiki, he began systematically to study the erosion of the ancient bronze statues of Kouros and Artemis that are on display at the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus. Those metallurgical and experimental studies developed into a doctoral dissertation which he successfully defended at the University of Athens, which awarded him his doctorate in 1965.From 1965, and with the collaboration of leading archaeologists, he continued to study ancient metal finds and to publish original works in Greece and abroad. Among them were:The Mycenaean Metal Finds of Perati – in collaboration with professor and member of the Athens Academy Spyros IakovidisThe Steel Spears of the Geometric Era – in collaboration with  academician G. MylonasThe Study of Inscriptions Around the Quality Control of Metals and the Authenticity of the Silver Attic Coins of the 4th century BC – together with Ronald StroudThe Study of the Famous Derveni Crater – in the study of which he collaborated with renowned archaeologist Manolis Andronikos – and which he presented at the British Museum45 Figurines of the Minoan Era of CreteRaw Materials for the Casting of Figurines in KythiraIn 1979, George Varoufakis submitted a dissertation entitled “Chemical and Metallurgical Research Around 19 Iron Tripods of the Geometric Era”, which resulted in the award of the title of Lecturer and, in 1982, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Athens.His research took another important turn when he focused on the steel rods holding the Parthenon and the Erechtheion together; rods that run through  the large marble volumes of the cornice and the base of the temples. That study was published mainly in the Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society and changed the way archaeologists appreciated the knowledge and skills of ancient technologists. He then researched the iron links of the temple of the Bank of Aegio and Epicurean Apollo in an attempt to assess the evolution of technology from the archaic to the classical era. It was at that time that scientific societies invited him to present his research works abroad, including in Cyprus, at the British Museum in in London, Prague, Zurich, Sicily, the USA, etc.During the 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, George Varoufakis also served as President of the Greek Standards & Standardisation Authority (ELOT). During that long tenure, ELOT grew in importance, expanding its activities in Greece’s industrial and economic life . When his term ended, he was awarded the title of ELOT’s Honorary President.In parallel with his tenure at ELOT, in 1988 he was elected president of the Hellenic Archaeometric Society (EAE), which focuses on the scientific study of ancient technology. Combining his tenure at ELOT and EAE, he studied the history of quality control in antiquity. In 1996 he published a relevant book entitled “Ancient Greece and Standards: The History and Control of the Materials Which Left Their Mark on Greek Civilisation” (Aeolos Publications). The book was published also in English, in 1999. In 2005 he published a sequel, a new book entitled “The History of Iron from Homer to Xenophon: The Iron Findings and the Ancient Greek Literature through the Eye of a Metallurgist” (Ellinika Grammata).When asked by a foreign visitor a few years ago to summarise his life, he replied: “I am a boy from Cairo who was destined to fall in love with life, humanity and science in the prison camp of Macronissos.”

His funeral will take place on Friday morning, October 1st, 2021 at Athens’ Cemetery, at 11am.

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Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης 1925-2021

Χτες το βράδυ, λίγο μετά τα μεσάνυκτα, πέθανε ο Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης. Ο Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης γεννήθηκε στο Κάιρο της Αιγύπτου τον Ιούνιο του 1925 όπου τελείωσε τις γυμνασιακές του σπουδές στην Αμπέτειο Σχολή. Μετά την αποφοίτησή του εργάστηκε σε παράρτημα ελληνικής τράπεζας στο Κάιρο προτού έλθει στην Αθήνα το 1946 για να γραφτεί στο Χημικό Τμήματος του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών.Λίγο πριν ξεσπάσει ο δεύτερος εμφύλιος, μετά από διάβημά του στην Κοσμητεία διαμαρτυρόμενος εκ μέρους του φοιτητικού του συλλόγου για την αύξηση των διδάκτρων, συνελήφθη από την Ασφάλεια. Αρνούμενος να υπογράψει τη γνωστή τότε «δήλωση», φυλακίστηκε στην Αθήνα και αργότερα εξορίστηκε στη Μακρόνησο. Εκεί είχε την τύχη να συμπάσχει με συντρόφους όπως ο Γιάννης Ρίτσος, ο Μανώλης Κατράκης και ο Σπύρος Λιναρδάτος. Μετά την Μακρόνησο εξορίστηκε στην Ικαρία, πριν τελικά επιστρέψει στην Αθήνα και στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών όπου γνώρισε τη σύντροφο της ζωής του Ελένη Τσαγγαράκη. Η Ελένη ήταν η πρώτη φοιτήτρια στην ιστορία του Τμήματος Χημείας που αργότερα θα εργαζόταν ως βιοχημικός, θα δραστηριοποιείτο στο φεμινιστικό κίνημα και θα εκλεγόταν για πολλά χρόνια δημοτική σύμβουλος (συμπεριλαμβανομένης μιας θητείας ως Αντιδήμαρχος) Παλαιού Φαλήρου. Με την Ελένη, απέκτησαν δύο παιδιά – τον Γιάνη και την Τρισεύγενη.

Μετά από πολλές δυσκολίες, λόγω «κοινωνικών φρονημάτων», ο Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης ξεκίνησε την επαγγελματική του σταδιοδρομία το 1954 στη «Χαλυβουργική» όπου, το 1961, ανέλαβε την θέση του Διευθυντή του Τμήματος Ελέγχου Ποιότητας. Μετά την συνταξιοδότησή του, το 2003, διορίστηκε Πρόεδρος του Διοικητικού Συμβουλίου της «Χαλυβουργική», θέση που διατήρησε ως τον Γενάρη του 2020.Από το 1959, παράλληλα με την απαιτητική θέση του στην «Χαλυβουργική», άρχισε να μελετά συστηματικά τη διάβρωση των αρχαίων μπρούντζινων αγαλμάτων του Κούρου και της Άρτεμης που τώρα εκτίθενται στο αρχαιολογικό μουσείο του Πειραιά. Οι μεταλλουργικές και πειραματικές εκείνες μελέτες του εξελίχθηκαν σε διδακτορική διατριβή την οποία υποστήριξε επιτυχώς στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, το οποίο του απένειμε το διδακτορικό του δίπλωμα το 1965.Από το 1965, και με τη συνεργασία κορυφαίων αρχαιολόγων, συνέχισε να μελετά αρχαία μεταλλικά ευρήματα και να δημοσιεύει πρωτότυπες εργασίες στην Ελλάδα και το εξωτερικό. Ανάμεσα τους ήταν:Τα μυκηναϊκά μεταλλικά ευρήματα της Περατής – σε συνεργασία  με τον καθηγητή και μέλος της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών Σπύρο ΙακωβίδηΟι χαλύβδινες λόγχες της γεωμετρικής εποχής – σε συνεργασία με τον ακαδημαϊκό Γ. ΜυλωνάΗ μελέτη επιγραφών γύρω από τον έλεγχο ποιότητας μετάλλων και της γνησιότητας των αργυρών αττικών νομισμάτων του 4ου αιώνα π.Χ. – με συνεργάτη τον Ronald StroudΗ μελέτη του περίφημου κρατήρα του Δερβενιού – στην μελέτη του οποίου συνεργάστηκε με τον Μανώλη Ανδρόνικο – και την οποία παρουσίασε στο Βρετανικό Μουσείο45 ειδώλια της Μινωικής εποχής της ΚρήτηςΠρώτες ύλες για τη χύτευση ειδωλίων στα ΚύθηραΤο 1979 ο Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης κατέθεσε διατριβή επί υφηγεσία με τίτλο «Χημική και μεταλλουργική έρευνα γύρω από 19 σιδερένια πόδια τριπόδων της γεωμετρικής εποχής», η οποία είχε ως αποτέλεσμα στην απονομή του τίτλου του Υφηγητή και αργότερα του Επίτιμου Επίκουρου Καθηγητή του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών.Σημαντική είναι η μελέτη του επί των σιδερένιων συνδέσμων του Παρθενώνα και του Ερεχθείου, που συνδέουν τους μεγάλους μαρμάρινους όγκους του γείσου και της βάσης των ναών. Η μελέτη εκείνη δημοσιεύθηκε στο Journal of Historical Metallurgy Society. Η εν λόγω έρευνα συνεχίσθηκε με τους σιδερένιους συνδέσμους του ναού της Τραπεζάς Αιγίου και του Επικούρειου Απόλλωνα σε μια προσπάθεια να εκτιμηθεί η εξέλιξη της τεχνολογίας από την αρχαϊκή στην κλασική εποχή. Επί πλέον, ύστερα από πρόσκληση των εκεί επιστημονικών εταιρειών, παρουσίασε πολλές ερευνητικές εργασίες, μεταξύ άλλων, στην Κύπρο, στο Βρετανικό Μουσείο του Λονδίνου, στην Πράγα, στη Ζυρίχη, στην Σικελία, στις ΗΠΑ, κλπ.Για μια δεκαετία ο Γιώργος Βαρουφάκης διετέλεσε και Πρόεδρος του Ελληνικού Οργανισμού Τυποποίησης (ΕΛΟΤ). Κατά την διάρκεια της θητείας του ο ΕΛΟΤ αναβαθμίστηκε διευρύνοντας τις δραστηριότητές του στη βιομηχανική και οικονομική ζωή της χώρας. Όταν ολοκληρώθηκε η θητεία του, του απονεμήθηκε ο τίτλος του Επίτιμου Προέδρου του ΕΛΟΤ.Παράλληλα με την θητεία του στον ΕΛΟΤ, από το 1988 εκλέγεται πρόεδρος της Ελληνικής Αρχαιομετρικής Εταιρείας (ΕΑΕ) η οποία εστιάζει στην μελέτη της αρχαίας τεχνολογίας. Συνδυάζοντας την θητεία του στον ΕΛΟΤ και την ΕΑΕ, μελέτησε την ιστορία του ελέγχου ποιότητας στην αρχαιότητα. Το 1996 εξέδωσε σχετικό βιβλίο με τίτλο «Αρχαία Ελλάδα και Ποιότητα: Η ιστορία και ο έλεγχος των υλικών που σημάδεψαν τον ελληνικό πολιτισμό» (Εκδόσεις Αίολος). Το βιβλίο εκδόθηκε το 1999 και στα αγγλικά. Το 2005 εξέδωσε την συνέχεια εκείνου το βιβλίου υπό τη μορφή νέου βιβλίου με τίτλο «Η Ιστορία του Σιδήρου από τον Όμηρο στον Ξενοφώντα: Τα σιδερένια ευρήματα και η αρχαία ελληνική γραμματεία με το μάτι ενός μεταλλουργού», (Εκδόσεις Ελληνικά Γράμματα).Όταν πριν μερικά χρόνια του ζητήθηκε από ξένο επισκέπτη να συνοψίσει τη ζωή του, απάντησε: «Είμαι ένα παιδί από το Κάιρο που έμελλε να μάθει να αγαπά τη ζωή, τον άνθρωπο και την επιστήμη στην Μακρόνησο.»

Η κηδεία του θα γίνει την Παρασκευή το πρωί, 1η Οκτωβρίου. Περισσότερες λεπτομέρειες εντός της ημέρας.

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Μανιφέστο εναντίον της αναδυόμενης Τεχνοφεουδαρχίας σε 15′ – Βουλή 21/9/2021

Όταν ζούσα στην Αυστραλία, είχα συναντήσει οδηγούς φορτηγών που το προηγούμενο βράδυ είχαν απολυθεί από την εταιρεία τους, η οποία τους έλεγε μην ανησυχούν καθώς θα τους έφερνε νέες συμβάσεις το 1991, με τις οποίες όμως θα έπρεπε να δανειστούν και να βάλουν υποθήκη το σπίτι τους για να μπορέσουν να αγοράσουν τα οχήματα τους και να εργάζονται για την εταιρεία.Ο ακράτητος, ο ανελέητος, ο αβάσταχτος καπιταλισμός πάντοτε ελλοχεύει και προσπαθεί να τινάξει τους περιορισμούς που θέτει το κράτος και η κοινωνία για την εκμετάλλευση των εργαζομένων.Ποια όμως είναι πραγματικά η διαφορά Αριστεράς – Δεξιάς; Για μας στο ΜέΡΑ25 η πεμπτουσία αυτής της διαφοράς αφορά στον τρόπο αντιμετώπισης της έμμισθης εργασίας. Όπως οι Alchian Demsetz έγραφαν για την απόλυση του μπακάλη/εργαζόμενου και ο Samuelson, έλεγε πως δεν έχει σημασία ποιος μισθώνει/προσλαμβάνει ποιόν, η εργασία έχει καναντήσει πλέον, ένα απλό εμπόρευμα όπως θέλει η κάθε efood.Ενώ έχουν εξελιχθεί και οι τεχνολογίες με ένα πανοπτικόν πλέον να υφίσταται με απόλυτη παρακολούθηση και έλεγχο.Πρόκειται για τους Μοντέρνους Καιρούς του Τσάπλιν στη νιοστή! Αν αρνηθείς μια κλήση, χάνεις τους πόντους σου στο σύστημα. Το «σύστημα» όμως σε στέλνει να καλύψεις όλο και μεγαλύτερες περιοχές. Δεν πρόκειται για τεχνικά λάθη του συστήματος. Το ίδιο ισχύει και εντός των αποθηκών της AMAZON. H παραμετροποίηση του συστήματος είναι ανθρώπινη και συνειδητή επιλογή της διοίκησης με σκοπό να είναι σχεδόν ακατόρθωτο να πιάσει ο εργαζόμενος τους στόχους, ώστε να παραμένει χαμηλού κόστους για την εταιρεία, ενώ νιώθει κιόλας ότι φταίει ο ίδιος. Παραμετροποίηση που ενσυνείδητα αυξάνει την πιθανότητα για ατύχημα -για όσους έχουν δει την ταινία του συνοδοιπόρου μας Ken Loach “sorry we missed you”-. Γι’ αυτό η εταιρεία προτιμά να μην έχει καν την ευθύνη ατυχήματος: Επειδή η πρόκλησή του ατυχήματος είναι μέρος του business plan της. Για αυτό τους θέλουν ανεξάρτητους παρόχους – freelancer.Τίποτα πραγματικά καινούργιο ως εδώ δεν συμβαίνει όμως, όπως ακριβώς έγραφε ο Μαρξ στο Κομμουνιστικό Μανιφέστο, είναι σαν να έγραφε για την efood και την amazon: “Η ασταμάτητη εξέλιξη των μηχανών, των οποίων η ανάπτυξη βαίνει συνεχώς επιταχυνόμενη, κάνει τη ζωή τους (των εργαζόμενων) όλο και πιο επισφαλή καθώς οι συγκρούσεις μεταξύ των εξατομικευμένων εργαζόμενων και των εργοδοτών αποκτούν όλο και περισσότερο τον χαρακτήρα συγκρούσεων μεταξύ δύο τάξεων”.Το νέο όμως, το απόλυτα δυστοπικό, είναι οι τεράστιες οικονομίες κλίμακας που δημιουργούν αυτές οι ψηφιακές εφαρμογές, μετατρέποντας μία εταιρεία, από εταιρεία παροχής υπηρεσιών σε μια πλατφόρμα που καταβροχθίζει τα εστιατόρια, αλλά και τους καταναλωτές με τεράστια εξουσία απέναντι και στους δύο, με δεδομένα, με στοιχεία, με συγκέντρωση πληροφόρησης.Το Μοντέλο της ΑΜΑΖΟΝ, ως ένα τεράστιο φέουδο με μονοπώλιο πληροφόρησης και εκμετάλλευση όχι μόνο των ντελιβεράδων, αλλά και των εστιατορίων και των καταναλωτών. Με μετεξέλιξη μιας περιθωριακής αγοράς σε μεγάλο τεχνοφέουδο, μια τεχνοφεουδαρχία, όπου εξαρτώνται τα πάντα από αυτό, ακόμα και το τι βλέπει κανείς.Η μόνη λύση για μας στο ΜέΡΑ25 είναι η αυτό-οργάνωση των εργαζομένων.Οι γνώσεις και η θέληση δε λείπουν από τους εργαζόμενους, ούτε η συνεργατική τους διάθεση. Αυτό που λείπει όμως από αυτούς είναι το κεφάλαιο. Και ενώ έχει θεσμοθετηθεί χρόνια τώρα το Ταμείο Κοινωνικής Οικονομίας που θέσπισε η ΕΕ, ούτε ένα ευρώ δεν έχει μπει μέσα σε αυτό ούτε από τον κ. Σαμαρά, ούτε από τον κ. Τσίπρα. Σιγά να μην χρηματοδοτούσαν την ανεξαρτησία των εργαζομένων οι θεμελιωτές της Χρεοδουλοπαροικίας.Τασσόμαστε λοιπόν, υπέρ ενός νέου Ακηδεμόνευτου Συνδικαλισμού με νέες μορφές αντίστασης -όπως η συμμαχία των καταναλωτών και των εργαζομένων-, με νέες μορφές συνεταιρισμών, με την χρήση των ίδιων τεχνολογιών που σήμερα χρησιμοποιούνται για να συνθλίβουν τους εργαζόμενους και να χτίζουν την κλεπτοπία τους.Για αυτό είναι το ΜέΡΑ25 εδώ, για να στηρίξει αυτή την ανατροπή που θα γίνει από τους ίδιους τους εργαζομένους, από τα κινήματα, τις νέες μορφές συνεταιρισμών και την κοινωνία. Το ΜέΡΑ25 είναι εδώ για να βάλει πλάτες στην χαλιναγώγηση της νέας ψηφιακής τεχνολογίας, στην κατάσχεσή της από τους αναδυόμενους νέο-φεουδάρχες, ώστε να δουλέψει για τους εργαζόμενους -όχι εναντίον τους-, ώστε για πρώτη φορά να γίνει πραγματικότητα, η πραγματική συμμετοχική οικονομία – το προαπαιτούμενο δηλαδή για τον πραγματικό συνδυασμό αντίστασης, ελευθερίας, ευημερίας και αλληλεγγύης.

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Merkel’s tenure condemned Germany to wealth-fuelled decline & the EU to debt-fuelled stagnation – JACOBIN

Angela Merkel’s tenure will be remembered as Germany’s, and Europe’s, cruelest paradox. On the one hand, she dominated the continent’s politics like no other peacetime leader — and is leaving the German chancellery considerably more powerful than she had found it. But the way she built up this power condemned Germany to secular decline and the European Union to stagnation.Wealth-Fueled DeclineThere is no doubt that Germany is today stronger politically and economically than it was when Merkel became chancellor back in 2005. However, the very reasons Germany is stronger are the same reasons why her decline is assured within a stagnating Europe.Germany’s power is the result of three massive surpluses: its trade surplus, the structural surplus of its federal government, and the inflows of other people’s money into the Frankfurt banks, as a result of the slow-burning, never-ending euro crisis.While Germany is swimming in cash, courtesy of these three surpluses, this cash is mostly wasted. Instead of being pumped into the infrastructure of the future, public or private, it is either exported (e.g., invested abroad) or used to buy unproductive assets within Germany (e.g., Berlin apartments or Siemens shares).Why can’t German companies, or the federal government, invest these rivers of money productively within Germany? Because — and here lies part of the cruel paradox — the reason these surpluses exist is that they are not invested! Put differently, under Mrs Merkel’s reign, Germany made a Faustian bargain: by restricting investments, it acquired surpluses from the rest of Europe, and the world, that it could then not invest without forfeiting its future capacity to extract more surpluses.Looking deeper into their origin, the massive surpluses that empowered Germany under Mrs Merkel are the result of forcing German and, later, European taxpayers to bail out Frankfurt’s inane bankers on condition of engineering a humanitarian crisis in Europe’s periphery (Greece in particular) — a means by which Merkel’s government imposed unprecedented austerity upon both German and non-German workers (disproportionately, of course).In short, low domestic investment, universal austerity, and turning proud European peoples against each other were the means by which successive Merkel governments transferred wealth and power to the German oligarchy. Alas, these means also led to a divided Germany that is now missing out on the next industrial revolution within a fragmenting European Union.Three episodes offer insights into how Merkel exercised her power across Europe to build up, step by step, the cruel paradox that will be her legacy.Episode 1: Pan-European Socialism for Germany’s BankersIn 2008, as banks on Wall Street and in the City of London crumbled, Angela Merkel was still fostering her image as the tightfisted, financially prudent Iron Chancellor. Pointing a moralizing finger at the Anglosphere’s profligate bankers, she made headlines in a speech in Stuttgart where she suggested that America’s bankers should have consulted a Swabian housewife, who would have taught them a thing or two about managing their finances. Imagine her horror when, shortly afterwards, she received a barrage of anxious phone calls from her finance ministry, her central bank, and her own economic advisers, all of them conveying an unfathomable message: Chancellor, our banks are bust too! To keep the ATMs going, we need an injection of €406 billion of those Swabian housewives’ money — by yesterday!It was the definition of political poison. As world capitalism was having its spasm, Merkel and Peer Steinbrück, her Social Democrat finance minister, were ushering in austerity for the German working class, advocating the standard, self-defeating mantra of belt-tightening in the middle of an almighty recession. How could she now appear in front of her own members of parliament — whom she had for years lectured on the virtues of penny-pinching when it came to hospitals, schools, infrastructure, social security, and the environment — to implore them to write such a colossal check to bankers who until seconds before had been swimming in rivers of cash? Necessity being the mother of enforced humbleness, Chancellor Merkel took a deep breath, entered the splendid Norman Foster–designed federal Bundestag, conveyed the bad news to her dumbfounded parliamentarians, and left with the requested check.At least it’s done, she must have thought. Except that it wasn’t. A few months later another barrage of phone calls demanded a similar number of billions for the same banks. Why? The Greek government was about to go bust. If it did, the €102 billion it owed German banks would disappear and, soon after, the governments of Italy, Greece, and Ireland would probably default on around half a trillion euros worth of loans to German banks. Between them, the leaders of France and Germany had a stake of around €1 trillion in not allowing the Greek government to tell the truth; that is, to confess to its bankruptcy.Angela Merkel casually engineered a humanitarian crisis in my country to camouflage the bailout of quasi-criminal German bankers.That’s when Angela Merkel’s team came into their own, finding a way to bail out Germany’s bankers a second time without telling the Bundestag that this was what they were doing: They would portray the second bailout of their banks as an act of solidarity with Europe’s grasshoppers, the people of Greece. And make other Europeans, even the much poorer Slovaks and Portuguese, pay for a loan that would go momentarily into the coffers of the Greek government before ending up with the German and the French bankers.Unaware of the fact that they were actually paying for the mistakes of French and German bankers, the Slovaks and the Finns, like the Germans and the French, believed they were having to shoulder another country’s debts. Thus, in the name of solidarity with the insufferable Greeks, Mrs Merkel had planted the seeds of loathing between proud peoples.Episode 2: Pan-European AusterityWhen Lehman Brothers went bust in September 2008, its last CEO begged the US government for a gigantic credit line to keep his bank afloat. Suppose that, in response, the US president had replied: “No bailout and, also, I am not allowing you to file for bankruptcy!” It would be utterly absurd. And yet that was precisely what Angela Merkel told the Greek prime minister in January 2010 when he desperately begged for help to avoid declaring the Greek state bankrupt. It was like telling a falling person: I am not going to catch you, but you are not allowed to hit the floor either.What was the point of such an absurd double nein? Given that Merkel was always going to insist that Greece take the largest loan in history — as part of the hidden second bailout of the German banks (see above) — the most plausible explanation is also the saddest: Her double nein, which lasted a few months, succeeded in infusing such desperation in the Greek prime minister that, eventually, he agreed to the most crushing austerity program in history. Two birds were thus killed with one bailout: Merkel surreptitiously bailed out the German banks for a second time. And universal austerity began to spread out across the continent, like a bushfire that began in Greece before spreading everywhere, including in France and Germany.Episode 3: To the Bitter EndThe pandemic offered Angela Merkel a final chance to bring Germany and Europe together.Great new public debt was inevitable, even in Germany, as governments sought to replace incomes lost during the lockdown. If there was ever a moment for a break with the past, this was it. The moment was crying out for German surpluses to be invested across a Europe that, simultaneously, democratizes its decision-making processes. But Angela Merkel’s final act was to ensure that this moment would be missed, too.In March 2020, in a fit of harmonized panicking following our EU-wide lockdowns, thirteen heads of EU governments, including France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, demanded from the EU the issue of common debt (a so-called eurobond) that would help shift burgeoning national debt from the weak shoulders of member states to the EU as a whole, so as to avert massive Greek-style austerity in the post-pandemic years. Chancellor Merkel, unsurprisingly, said nein and offered them a consolation prize in the form of a recovery fund that does precisely nothing to help shoulder the rising national public debts — or to help press German accumulated surpluses into the long-term interests of German society.In typical Merkel style, the recovery fund’s purpose was to seem to do the minimum necessary of that which is in the interests of a majority of Europeans (including a majority of Germans) — without actually doing it! Mrs Merkel’s final act of sabotage had two dimensions.First, the recovery fund’s size is, intentionally, macroeconomically insignificant; that is, too small to defend the EU’s weakest people and communities from the austerity that will eventually come once Berlin gives the green light for “fiscal consolidation” in order to rein in the burgeoning national debts.Second, the recovery fund will, in reality, transfer wealth from the poorer Northerners (e.g., the German and Dutch) to Southern Europe’s oligarchs (e.g., Greek and Italian contractors) or to German corporations running the South’s public utilities (e.g., Fraport, which now runs Greece’s airports). Nothing could more efficiently guarantee the further toxification of Europe’s class war and North-South divide than Mrs Merkel’s recovery fund — the final act of sabotaging European economic and political unity.A Concluding LamentShe casually engineered a humanitarian crisis in my country to camouflage the bailout of quasi-criminal German bankers, while turning proud European nations against one another.She intentionally sabotaged every opportunity to bring Europeans together.She skillfully connived to undermine any genuine green transition in Germany or across Europe.She worked tirelessly to emasculate democracy and to prevent the democratization of a hopelessly antidemocratic Europe.And yet watching the pack of faceless, banal politicians jostling to replace her, I very much fear that I shall miss Angela Merkel. Even if my assessment of her tenure remains analytically the same, I suspect that, before too long, I shall be thinking of her tenure more fondly.

To read this article in German, visit Jacobin’s German site here.

To read this article in Jacobin’s own site, click here.

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Angela Merkel’s austerity condemned Europe and Germany to decline – The New Statesman

At the height of the eurozone crisis, one of Angela Merkel’s close advisers explained to me her driving ambition: to bequeath to her successor a stronger chancellery than she inherited. If so, as Merkel prepares to retire, she should be delighted.Germany’s trade surpluses, and thus political clout, are far greater now than when she took office in 2005. However, the policies responsible for enlarging Germany’s surpluses, and thus strengthening the chancellery, have condemned the country to secular decline and the European Union to stagnation. Power and paradox seldom mixed more grippingly than during Merkel’s tenure.Wall Street’s collapse in 2008 revealed two painful truths to her: that, judging by the unfathomable size of their dollar-denominated bets, German banks had been even more criminally reckless than American ones. And that persistent trade surpluses, on which Germany’s business model relied, had forced rich Germans to trust indebted foreigners with their savings, while undermining the living standards of poorer Germans. How did she respond? By spending the rest of her tenure covering up these defects.Merkel is not responsible for Germany’s current business model. That was established by Gerhard Schröder, her social democratic predecessor, whose administration stole a competitive march on France and the rest of the eurozone by embedding austerity into Germany’s postwar mercantilist model. Merkel’s responsibility lies in the way she sought to maintain this approach once the 2008 financial crisis revealed its unsustainability.The crash rendered Germany’s banks insolvent. Disguising this fact, so as to maintain the country’s business model and the eurozone’s flimsy economic architecture, required successive bank bailouts. In turn, those required Merkel to argue that the banks were not facing bankruptcy but, instead, temporary “illiquidity” difficulties. That’s how, in 2008, the first Merkel administration managed to inject around €500bn of German taxpayers’ money to the country’s bankrupt banks.When a year later that bailout proved insufficient to refloat Germany’s banks, a second one was devised. The eurozone’s poorer taxpayers would underwrite a €110bn loan to the Greek government on condition that the monies be channelled to German (and French) banks. To convince the Bundestag to sign off on this ludicrous plan, it was presented as a case of “tough love” for the unbearably spendthrift Greeks. In essence, Merkel was proposing to her parliament the exportation to the rest of the eurozone (beginning with Greece) of the austerity first imposed on German workers – only, this time, with a ruthlessness that will keep social historians busy for decades.Other bailouts followed. However, by the end of 2011, something had to give. Once the public likened bailouts to credit cards issued to repay previous credit cards, they had to end. A new source of cash had to be found that bypassed parliaments while still rolling over the burgeoning bad debts. That source was to be the European Central Bank (ECB) and Mario Draghi, its newly appointed president, was the right man.However, to tap the ECB’s printing presses, Merkel and Draghi first had to overcome two major obstacles: one was the Bundesbank. Never having come to terms with its loss of control over German money, the central bank was resisting the Merkel-Draghi plan. The second was Greece’s first Syriza government, elected with a clear mandate to challenge the combination of permanent bailouts and austerity.By the summer of 2015, both obstacles had been overcome. The crushing of Syriza by Draghi, whose ECB shut down Greek banks for that purpose, enabled Merkel to kill two birds with one stone. First, to signal to other Europeans not to dare elect an anti-austerity government. Second, to bypass the Bundesbank’s objections by demonstrating to Germany’s elites that printing euros to buy bad debt did not undermine the permanent class war (also known as austerity) against German and European workers.By 2018, Merkel and Draghi, aided by a global economic upturn, had claimed victory. Their opponents (within and without Germany) were soundly defeated, German surpluses continued to grow and European democracies showed no signs of generating serious dissent.But at what price? Concealing permanently the bankruptcy of states and banks caused investment to shrink across Europe (in proportion to available cash) to its lowest postwar level. Whereas in 2007, EU corporations earned around €100bn more than their US counterparts, by 2019 the situation had been reversed. Only in 2019, US corporate earnings rose 50 per cent faster than in Europe. In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, US corporates lost 20 per cent of their earnings but European corporates lost 33 per cent. European capitalists, and not just workers, seem to have paid the price for Merkel’s and Draghi’s success.Defenders of the chancellor often retort with the argument that she is responsible for Germany’s prosperity, not Europe’s. But even this does not wash. For, in addition to a stagnant Europe, Germany itself is suffering low investment. The result? Poor quality jobs, dreadful digital networks, increasing dependence on Russia for energy, antiquated infrastructure, a car industry and an artificial intelligence industry falling rapidly behind those of the US and China.Even the surpluses Merkel has helped Germany accrue are being squandered. Since 1999 they have been devalued by 7 per cent (compared to a 50 per cent gain for US assets). Why? Because low domestic investment forces the rich to lend their stash of trillions of euros to assorted foreigners whose subsequent distress leads to large losses.On 26 September 2021, German voters will go to the polls to elect Merkel’s successor. Is there any chance the next chancellor will discontinue the policies of expanding surpluses that cannot be invested in Germany or in the Eurozone without forfeiting Germany’s future capacity to extract more surpluses? Not really.Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate, who has emerged as the frontrunner, is running as Merkel’s natural successor – a credible claim given his fiscal conservatism, not to mention the fact he has served as Merkel’s finance minister since 2018. Moreover, of the five parties that stand a realistic chance of entering a new coalition government, only the Greens may envisage a break with Merkel’s legacy. However, even if they win the chancellery, they will not control the key finance ministry – and vice versa.It is, therefore, hard to imagine the end of Merkel’s greatest bequest to her successor: the paradox of German surpluses getting larger, boosting the chancellery’s power, pushing Europe deeper into a quagmire of stagnation, while weakening Germany’s workers and, simultaneously, diminishing German capitalism.

For the New Statesman’s site, click here

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Αγαπητέ Αλέξη: Το ΜέΡΑ25 εργάζεται για την παλλαϊκή συστράτευση που δεν θα αφήσει ξανά χώρο για υπακοή στις λογής-λογής Μέρκελ

Αυτό το γράμμα στον Αλέξη Τσίπρα δεν αφορά το παρελθόν αλλά το μέλλον. Σκιαγραφεί την αυθεντική παλλαϊκή συστράτευση που έχει ανάγκη ο τόπος κι η οποία δεν θα αφήσει ξανά χώρο για ανεύθυνη υπακοή στις διάφορες Μέρκελ τις οποίες το σύστημα γεννά ώστε να αναπαράγεται το ίδιο εις βάρος των λαών της Ευρώπης.Αγαπητέ Αλέξη,Θα θυμάσαι, φαντάζομαι, εκείνες τις μέρες στα τέλη του Γενάρη του 2015, όταν προετοιμαζόμασταν πυρετωδώς για το πρώτο Ευρωπαϊκό Συμβούλιο εσύ, το πρώτο Eurogroup εγώ. Θα θυμάσαι την κοινή γραμμή που αποφασίσαμε να ακολουθήσουμε: Να επιχειρηματολογήσουμε πως, ως ΕΕ, καλούμασταν να εξισορροπήσουμε, από τη μία, το  αποτυχημένο Μνημόνιο και, από την άλλη, την νωπή λαϊκή εντολή μας. Θα τους λέγαμε ότι, στην πραγματικότητα, δεν υπήρχε σύγκρουση μεταξύ της λαϊκής εντολής μας και των συμφερόντων της Ευρώπης. Θα τους αποδεικνύαμε γιατί το ελληνικό Μνημόνιο, το οποίο εμπνεύστηκε και επέβαλε βίαια η κυβέρνηση της κας Μέρκελ, όχι μόνο προκάλεσε ανθρωπιστική κρίση στη χώρα μας αλλά και έγινε η βάση όλων των πολιτικών λιτότητας στην υπόλοιπη Ευρωζώνη που πλήγωσαν βαθιά την Ευρώπη. Πράγματι, αυτά ακριβώς τους είπαμε – και σωστά.Προχθές διάβασα το άρθρο σου στην γερμανική Die Zeit σε αφιέρωμα με την ευκαιρία της αποχώρησης της Άγκελα Μέρκελ από την Καγκελαρία. Σε αυτό αναθεωρείς το ζητούμενο της πρώτης σου κυβέρνησης ανασκευάζοντας τον κοινό μας στόχο της εξισορρόπησης του Μνημονίου με την λαϊκή μας εντολή ως εξής:«Σε αυτή την κρίση έπρεπε να πετύχουμε ισορροπία μεταξύ της πολιτικής εντολής που λάβαμε μέσω των εκλογών και της κοινής δέσμευσης να εγγυηθούμε ειρήνη για τους λαούς της Ευρώπης.»Εκεί, δηλαδή, που είχαμε ταχθεί στην υπέρβαση του δίπολου «λαϊκή εντολή», από τη μία, και «καταστροφικό Μνημόνιο», από την άλλη, εσύ σήμερα μιλάς για δίπολο «λαϊκή εντολή», από τη μία, και «ειρήνη για τους λαούς της Ευρώπης» από την άλλη – λες και η λαϊκή εντολή του Γενάρη του 2015 ερχόταν σε σύγκρουση όχι μόνο με το συμφέρον των λαών της Ευρώπης αλλά και με την… ειρήνη!Έως προχτές, ήθελα να πιστεύω ότι οι δρόμοι μας χώρισαν επειδή διαφωνήσαμε για το κατά πόσον η ρήξη με το Βερολίνο και την τρόικα ήταν ενδεδειγμένη κίνηση υπέρ του κοινού σκοπού – που δεν ήταν άλλος από το να ανατρέψουμε τις μνημονιακές πολιτικές ώστε να ανακουφιστεί τόσο η Ελλάδα όσο και η υπόλοιπη Ευρώπη. Λέω «έως προχτές» επειδή με το άρθρο σου στην Die Zeit αποκήρυξες, έμμεσα αλλά σαφέστατα, όχι μόνο τη ρήξη αλλά και την λαϊκή εντολή που ζητήσαμε και πήραμε ως αντίθετη (άκουσον άκουσον!) με την… ειρήνη στην Ευρώπη. Κρίμα.Με αυτή τη δήλωση μετανοίας σου -και μάλιστα σε γερμανικό μέσο ενημέρωσης- κατέβηκες το τελευταίο σκαλί της συνθηκολόγησής σου. Ουσιαστικά απαρνείσαι τη λαϊκή εντολή του Γενάρη του 2015. Δεν σου αρκούσε το ότι έχεις από πολλού χαρακτηρίσει «αυταπάτη» την ρήξη για την οποία είχαμε εκλεγεί; Ότι έκανες τα πάντα να μην γίνει το 2015, αλλά και να δαιμονοποιηθεί χωρίς να έχει γίνει;Πολλοί θα αναρωτηθούν:  Έχει σημασία, μετά από τόσα και τόσα, αυτό το νέο σου βήμα, της πλήρους προσχώρησης στο δόγμα των «Βάστα Γερούν» που παρουσιάζουν την τότε κυβέρνησή μας ως αντι-ευρωπαϊκή, λαϊκιστική και επικίνδυνη για την Ευρώπη; Έχει σημασία η προσωπική σου διαδρομή από υβριστής της Άγκελα Μέρκελ σε υμνητή της;Ναι, έχει σημασία. Έχει σημασία επειδή το άρθρο σου σηματοδοτεί σε μεγάλο κομμάτι της κοινωνίας που στενάζει σήμερα κάτω από τη διακυβέρνηση της «Μητσοτάκης ΑΕ» πως, όσο καλές και να είναι οι προθέσεις ενός μεγάλου μέρους του κόμματος της αξιωματικής αντιπολίτευσης, η ηγεσία του πάνω απ’ όλα βάζει την ένταξή της στο σύστημα που τους συνθλίβει. Οι πολίτες ακούνε τους βουλευτές του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να καταφέρονται εναντίον του ξεπουλήματος της ΔΕΗ ή του ΔΕΔΔΗΕ κλπ και, όχι μόνο θυμούνται πως αυτά όλα δρομολογήθηκαν με το Μνημόνιο που εσύ υπέγραψες, αλλά και σε διαβάζουν τώρα να τους λες πως όλα τα ξεπούλησες, μαζί με την κα Μέρκελ, υπέρ της ευρωπαϊκής… ειρήνης.Αγαπητέ Αλέξη,Αυτό το γράμμα μου σε σένα δεν αφορά ούτε το παρελθόν ούτε την Ιστορία. Αναφέρεται στο μέλλον αυτής της χώρας. Εξηγεί γιατί αποκλείεται η οποιαδήποτε προοδευτική συμμαχία με την ηγεσία του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ. Σκιαγραφεί την παλλαϊκή συστράτευση που θα γεννήσει, αργά ή γρήγορα, η μονιμοποιημένη κρίση. Και θυμίζει ότι η αυθεντική παλλαϊκή συστράτευση που έχει ανάγκη ο τόπος δεν θα αφήσει ξανά χώρο για ανεύθυνη υπακοή στις διάφορες Μέρκελ που το σύστημα πάντα θα γεννά ώστε να αναπαράγεται το ίδιο εις βάρος της συντριπτικής πλειοψηφίας ελλήνων και ευρωπαίων.

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The post Αγαπητέ Αλέξη: Το ΜέΡΑ25 εργάζεται για την παλλαϊκή συστράτευση που δεν θα αφήσει ξανά χώρο για υπακοή στις λογής-λογής Μέρκελ appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.