Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 49
December 30, 2020
A Festive Message on behalf of DiEM25 for 2021: “Because things are the way they are, things will not remain the way they are.” B. Brecht
2020 leaves behind much debris – pain, fear, broken lives, smashed dreams. But, we also owe a debt of gratitude to 2020: It has helped expose seven fundamental secrets.
We used to think of governments as powerless. But since Covid-19 struck we know better: Governments have
stupendous powers
that they hitherto chose
not
to use, deferring to the exorbitant power of Big Busines
Yes, the money-trey
does
exist after all. Except, of course, thatis only harvested by the powerful on behalf of the oligarchy: Money created by the rich for the rich.
Solvency is a
political
decision because power-politics, not markets, decide who is bankrupt and who is not.
Wealth has
nothing
to do with hard work or entrepreneurship. America’s billionaires made 931 billion dollars from the pandemic. They got richer in their sleep.
Yes, 2020 was a vintage year for capitalists, but capitalism died! Liberated from any remaining competition, colossal platform companies like Amazon own everything. So, yes, during 2020, Capitalism morphed into an insidious Technofeudalism.
Our Europe, its civilisation and power notwithstanding, continued to sell its soul in 2020. One word suffices: Moria, the refuges prison camp in Lesbos – a mirror reflecting Europe’s cruelty and lost soul.
Yes, it has been a difficult year. We lost too many people to the pandemic. We saw exploitation flourish, driving so many into the embrace of destitution. Civil liberties took a major hit. But, despite it all, 2020 let us in on a brilliant, hope-inspiring seventh secret: Everything could be different.If this pandemic proved anything, it is that Bertolt Brecht was right when he once said:
“ Because things are the way they are, things will not remain the way they are.”
I can think of no greater source of hope than this. We must thank 2020 for it. Now, it is up to us to make 2021 a year of radical change in the interests of the many. Everywhere!
Happy New Year and Carpe DiEM25!
“What New Institutions Do We Need For An International Green New Deal To Be Feasible?” Geneva Lecture Series, video & a review by Marie-Christine Ghreichi
LECTURE REVIEW
by Marie-Christine Ghreichi, graduate of Sciences Po, Paris and the US, a French International Security specialist with a focus on Diplomacy and the Euro-MED.
Despite its intensification with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, Varoufakis argues that this crisis simply amplified the basic workings of the 2008 financial crisis, which was never adequately addressed. As a result, relatively low investment on savings and perpetual stagnation have produced sinister byproducts of populism, racism and xenophobia. The crisis of 2008 proved to be a pivotal moment in which a variety of actors agreed that a recalibration of global financial institutions was imperative due to the imbalances in trade and flow of capital.Professor Varoufakis reflected on the emergence of the Bretton Woods system in the 1940s, specifically the vision of Harry Dexter White, representing the United States, which would characterize the new world order. White proposed a structure anchored on the American-post war trade surplus. This entailed fixed exchange rates pegged to the US dollar. Such a system implies that the surpluses of certain countries are “recycled” into deficit countries, with the United States being the only surplus position at this time in history. This dynamic ushered in an era of capitalism characterized by growth, low inflation, shrinking inequality, and low unemployment.
When this surplus collapsed in the late 1960s and with the advent of the oil crisis, American trade deficits began to increase. This meant that by the mid 1980s, The United States was importing en masse from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands Japan, China and the various petrol states. As a result, this deficit left factories in other parts of the world facing less demand. Moreover, 70% of profits of these net import countries were “recycled” into the American financial market. This period was marked by an enormous wave of capital and its financialization from the 1980s until 2008. The resulting austerity measures in the aftermath of the crisis led to an imbalance between global savings and global investment, and consequently economic stagnation.
Varoufakis offered his vision for an alternative to this structure, a sort of new Bretton Woods that would reflect the rejected vision of British economist, John Maynard Keynes at the conference. According to Varoufakis, global stability is undermined by capitalism’s innate tendency to create a wedge between surplus and deficit economies. Surplus and deficits become larger in periods of growth. However, when the “bubble bursts” into a recessionary period, the burden to rectify this pattern falls disproportionately on the deficit, decreasing global demand everywhere.
Porfessor Varoufakis seeks to modernize the proposal of Keynes to establish an international clearing union that acknowledges a world of variable exchange rates. Like Keynes’ model, all trade and capital flow would be denominated in some new unit and it would consist of two levies. The first one, an automated process compiling all trade interactions where percentages are taken from all surplus and deficit countries proportionally and placed into a global equity green wealth account. The second mechanism would employ a sort of capital surge levy for cases in which capital has flowed but also been drained from rising economies. This rapid flow typically results in a crash as the rush of capital creates an asset price inflationary period. Real estate increases, imports explode, and access to loans proliferates. When owners of this capital observe how their returns are not as high as expected, the capital flows out. Therefore, his proposed mechanisms would impose a levy on actors who are responsible for this sort of exploitation. The funds acquired from these two levies will then be directed towards prioritizing a green transition. These mechanisms should also ideally lessen trade and capital imbalances that inevitably lead to crisis.
Varoufakis ended his discussion on the quandary surrounding potential leaders for this new system. He did assert, however that such a system would require tight cooperation between the United States, the EU and China. Though he expressed doubts on each entity’s ability to do so, claiming the US has effectively abandoned its leadership role in the world since 2008, trapped by its own constitutional limitations. China faces its own domestic challenges concerning its human rights record and authoritarianism.
Finally, for Varoufakis the EU is incoherent and in a constant state of paralysis. The onus must fall on Western states, particularly the EU but also polities themselves to impose on their leaders and demand for international institutions that lessen crisis and capitalism’s tendency to create new ones while also tackling climate change.
In the group discussion with the UMEF students and other participants, professor called upon on the younger generation to question power however it manifests. He cited the astronomical wealth of Jeff Bezos for example to underscore how these sorts of figures accrue immense wealth simply through the possession of existing wealth, demonstrating a system of power beyond the market. The vision Adam Smith offered for the market would ensure a system where no one individual or entity monopolized power, allowing smaller and medium sized actors to thrive. However, today the vast majority of capital and wealth belongs to a handful of companies, a sort of modern feudalism. Moreover, these companies own the vast majority of existing media institutions and by default, the information provided to consumers. Therefore, he re-affirmed the importance of thinking autonomously in a world characterized by this neo-feudalism. In regard to questions surrounding global populism and recent American elections, Varoufakis called for the overthrow of the ruling political class which has been corrupted by the semi-feudal financial elite and cannot be persuaded to reform.
Regarding Europe, Professor Varoufakis asserts that the EU is not a genuine union, and functions more like a cartel since its inception. The project began as an economic community, but sought greater political legitimacy as it expanded, culminating in the founding treaty of the EU. However, he claims that this cartel possesses a hierarchical structure of appointed officials, which cannot be considered democratic, with a parliament that is unable to even pass legislation. The source of Europe’s problem for Varoufakis lies in its claim to enormous wealth misdirected and poorly invested. Consequently, the current generation is condemned to precarious work and the impending impacts of climate change. Such an arrangement is not inevitable however, if resources are directed towards a green transition which prioritizes more secure labor. The new generation must place pressure for such a transition with the older generation offering tools and a roadmap to effectively utilize this wealth.
Varoufakis ended the discussion by answering a question regarding the failure of communism to respond to capitalism. He reminded listeners that moments of progress did not consolidate overnight, citing the French revolution’s and the Haitian revolution’s experience with various spouts of violence and counter-revolution for centuries. Therefore, we must constantly re-imagine a new world order, as the current system increasingly threatens the liberal individual with the big tech industry pre-determining our tastes and interests. His new book, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, addresses this question, seeking to create a more utopian world where we are free to choose our lifestyles and are free from fear of hunger, precarity, ill-health etc. This book, therefore, offers an alternative to the brutal form of feudalist capitalism we are experiencing today.
Former Finance Minister of Greece, Professor Yanis Varoufakis answered the call of the Swiss UMEF University in Geneva on November 23, 2020, and gave this lecture under the auspices of the Geneva Lecture Series – Contemporary World of Geo-economics.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/2212202...
“Global Trade & Capital Imbalances imperil Global Stability” – Redaction Politics reviews my Holberg 2020 debate with John Bolton
Yanis Varoufakis lamented economic equality and pushed for global co-operation while John Bolton urged diplomatic confrontation as the pair battled over the question of “global stability” last week.
In an intriguing clash at the 2020 Holberg Debate, the former Greek Finance Minister claimed economic inequality was the root cause of global instability.
He cited the post-war Bretton Woods agreement and FDR’s New Deal as prime examples of fixing the imbalance and promoting global cooperation.
His counterpart, predictably, said the solution was military confrontation and dominance.
It was no surprise from Trump’s former National Security Adviser, a hawk who supported regime change in Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea.
Mr Varoufakis said: “There is a tendency during periods of growth, during periods of increasing prosperity, increasing hope and optimism – for existing global divisions between trade-surplus countries and trade-deficit countries to have their surpluses and deficits get larger while GDP grows.
“But then, at some point – courtesy of this global imbalance – something happens, like Wall Street in 1929 or 2008, and the bubbles burst.
“We then have the burden of adjustment falling disproportionately on the trade-deficit parts of our countries and the deficit nations – and that causes raptures, and divergencies.”
As they suffer disproportionately, trade-deficit nations become even more embedded in the surplus-deficit dynamic after recovering.
The Bretton Woods system brought together capitalist nations under the dollar – which currencies were now pegged to – and provided stability within Western nations for decades after World War II.
“You need to expand it globally if stability is going to come out of this system,” Varoufakis added.
“The lynchpin of this was the American surplus – America was the only creditor post-war, and it was the intention of those in command of policy in Washington to recycle some of the American surpluses to Europe and Japan to stabilise the dollarised global system, and therefore allow it to be a source of stability.
“And of course it worked very well – but it was doomed to fail, because by the end of the 1960s, America was no longer in surplus.”
American hegemony continued long after the Bretton Woods era ended in the 1970s, but it was through financialisation, the Fed and China that Washington maintained its dominance, he said.
Mr Bolton, bizarrely dismissing the argument as “Marxist description”, said China maintained an “authoritarian threat” and should be confronted as such.
“It’s not that anybody is seeking confrontation, it’s the fact that others are seeking confrontation with us,” he said.
“The legitimate focus of decision-making in the United States is how to protect American interests and values in the world along with our allies.
“The world will be a dangerous place in the 21st century; but the way that you deal with that threat is not to ignore it and not to say we can find mutually beneficial ways of overcoming it. The way to deal with it is to have adequate structures of deterrents to deal with the threat till it ceases to exist.”
Varoufakis responded: “Global security, just like climate change, are collective, humanity-wide problems that require collective decisions and action.
“The US after 1944 has played a very significant and positive role in helping bring together the nations of the world in a degree of harmony with some efficiency. Europeans must elicit from the US a new readiness to come to terms with a new internationalism that deals with these global threats as a common enemy. If we fail, we will be on a perilous road to a barren future.”
December 24, 2020
Christmas Day message to Julian: A hard day to mark while you are locked up in Britain’s Guantanamo
December 16, 2020
In conversation on the postcapitalist vision in my ANOTHER NOW – JACOBIN interview & DISSENS podcast
State socialism has failed because of its authoritarian excesses, but the idea of socialism still offers the only alternative for a viable future – says Yanis Varoufakis. In 2015, in the midst of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, he became finance minister under Alexis Tsipras until he resigned after the referendum. In the meantime, he has founded the pan-European movement DiEM25, which has set itself the goal of using democratization to keep the EU from collapsing. Since last year he has returned to politics and is represented in the Greek parliament, as head of MeRA25, the party offshoot of DiEM25.
Varoufakis is still one of the loudest critics of European financial policy and with his latest book Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present presents a speculative alternative to our capitalist present. In the fictional world of Varoufaki’s SciFi novel, the economy functions according to the principles of »libertarian socialism«: no stock exchange, no banks, no bosses and instead democratic self-administration by the employees. In an interview he explains how this could be organized and why the democratization of the financial sector is so central.
Let’s talk about your new book Another Now . There you design a post-capitalist alternative to our present. In this fictional world there are no private banks or stock exchanges and the companies are owned by the employees. What made you decide to write a science fiction novel?
Science fiction gives you the opportunity to speculate about another now. Like most leftists, I have long avoided thinking about what the alternative to capitalism might look like. Because the Soviet Union is not an alternative. And I see no future for social democracy. I wanted to write down my vision of another society and think about what market socialism might look like today.
But when I tried to develop a utopia of it, I wanted to give up immediately. I just didn’t feel like writing a book like this. That’s because I have many different perspectives on these issues and sometimes contradict myself.
The form of the novel allowed me to get into the heads of different characters and to shed light on different points of view that I believe to be correct – even if they are sometimes not always compatible.
In your book you not only describe an alternative to our financialized capitalism, but also an alternative to authoritarian socialism. I would describe this as a kind of libertarian socialism. What are the most important economic differences between our present and the present that you describe in your novel?
Before I go into the main differences, I would like to note that I have long considered myself a libertarian Marxist. This causes laughter and outrage from both Marxists and libertarians because they accuse me of being a hypocrite. If you are libertarian you cannot be a Marxist and if you are a Marxist you cannot be libertarian, they say. I see it differently.
I don’t think you’re in favor of freedom if you don’t mind Google or Amazon owning the world. And I don’t think you can be a Marxist if you don’t abhor power, no matter whose hands it is in. This also applies to the political commissars of the Communist Party and the state.
But now to the differences between the present, which I describe in the book, and our present day. Let me name the most important ones.
First, every employee in a company automatically receives a company share and thus also a voting right. You can imagine it as if you as a student at the beginning of your studies automatically receive a library card from the university. You can’t sell it, you can’t transfer it to someone else, and you can’t have more than one library card. And it would be the same with voting rights in the company. You can’t sell it, you can only use it for collective decision-making. If companies worked like this, we would have created some form of economic democracy within the company. However, this does not mean that everyone would be paid equally, there could even be very large wage differences, however, these would be democratically agreed by the members. I call this “corpo syndicalism”. If you did that, there would be no more stock markets, which is why I also refer to the other now as post-capitalism.
The second difference is that central banks would open accounts for each and every one of us. At the moment only private banks can do that, but you and I can’t. But if everyone had an account with the ECB, then suddenly there would no longer be a need to open an account with a private bank. The stock markets and private banks would not be banned in this scenario, they would just no longer play a major role, and so the enormous market power concentrated in the hands of a very few would dissolve. And so we would have markets without capitalism.
How would wages be set in such a company? It seems to me that you are describing the great dream of abolishing wage labor through the democratization of companies.
That’s right, the democratization of companies would mean the abolition of profits and wages.
Assuming you, me and fifty other people started a company and each of us had a stake in the company, that wouldn’t mean we all got equal pay. If we collectively conclude that some are more valuable to our collectives than others, we would be paying them higher wages than the rest of us. Otherwise there is a risk that we will lose these people to another company. The difference to our current capitalism is that we would have decided the pay difference democratically.
In my book, the Korpo Syndicalism model, I propose the following. First: Everyone decides together what percentage of the income will be spent on research. The more we invest in research and development, the less we collect as income. We decide collectively what the minimum wage is in a company and what bonuses are left over.
Then of course it has to be decided how these bonuses will be distributed, which is not that easy. I propose a solution that is similar to the voting principle in the Eurovision Song Contest. If you ignore the horrible music, the voting mechanism is very interesting. Each country receives a certain number of points that can be freely awarded, except for yourself. This is how it would work in our company. Each and every one would receive 100 points, which he or she could distribute to the others, depending on how important their contribution is to the company. At the end of the day, these points would then be allocated and the sum of the bonus paid out in proportion to the individual’s points.
What would happen to people like Jeff Bezos? In this scenario, would he have the same influence on who gets how much and what is done in the company as a caretaker?
There could be a transition period. I don’t mind if Jeff Bezos keeps his billions first. What bothers me more is that he is making even more profits every day by exploiting the market, employing workers on unworthy terms and having to close small bookstores and small businesses.
If Bezos wanted to work in a company like ours and we thought he was a smart and innovative person, we could assign our points in such a way that in the end he would still get a higher salary than you and me, only in this case we would decided on it together. That’s what it’s about me. I want wage differentials to be approved by all members of a company.
Where would the money come from with which companies could invest in new technologies if there were no more commercial banks, no stock exchanges and no more investment companies?
As I grew up, free market advocates, defenders of liberal capitalism, insisted time and again that capitalism was based on investment. And I’m sure that this is what the young people at the universities are still being told today. It is then asserted that families, individuals and households are saving and that companies then borrow these savings to make investments.
By now people should know that this is not the case. The money the banks lend is not anyone’s savings. This money is conjured up from nowhere. The banks can simply invent amounts and then lend this money to whoever – usually people who neither need the money nor want to do something good with it. For this very reason, the level of investment relative to available savings is lower today than it has ever been in the history of capitalism. This applies to both European and global capitalism. So the system no longer works as it should, even if capitalist propaganda is believed.
So where would the money come from if there was no longer an exchange? Well, in my book, I suggest that every baby be given not only a birth certificate at birth, but also an account with the central bank and a trust fund of around $ 100,000. You can only have this paid out as soon as you are of legal age and can present a convincing business or education plan. That would be a bit like when scientists submit research proposals to universities in order to receive funding. Let’s say you decide at some point to get into a company, then you would have 100,000 euros that you could bring in and invest in the company, but not in the form of shares. You’d just lend this money to the company, it doesn’t even have to be the company you work for
So in the socialist-democratic world of Another Now we would still borrow and lend money and do so via a very efficient digitized mechanism. The investments come from savings, as it should be in capitalism, but has not happened for a long time.
And then maybe there would be a few small banking cooperatives that investors and lenders would support. So the market for money would become much more efficient once you got rid of the stock exchanges and private banks.
Your book reads like a big proposal for the democratization of our coexistence, in addition to companies and finance, you also write about the areas of land, housing, migration and digitization. But you are also delivering a plan to democratize democracy.
Exactly, because in the book I also suggest that companies should be subject to social control. What I have in mind are citizens’ assemblies for every sector, in every district, in every region, one third of which would be occupied by elected representatives, but two thirds with randomly selected representatives from the entire population, who rotate every six months to revise the companies monitor. Because even democratized companies could do some damage to society. So my endeavors towards democratization do not end at the corporate gates, but also extend to the area of political democracy.
Market socialism has a long tradition, even if it is not very well known. How feasible are economic democracy and self-administration by the employees?
Capitalism is a terrible system in my eyes, but not because it is unfair and produces social inequality. The left made a big mistake, especially the SPD in Germany. The social democratic movement across Europe at some point in the 1930s accepted the premise that capitalism was ultimately an efficient machine for generating wealth but leading to inequality. So social democratic governments must intervene and redistribute wealth. I think differently.
The problem with capitalism is that it is inefficient. It creates one crisis after another. He’s destroying the planet. He’s wasting human potential. At the same time, I don’t want to have to work in a company that is just as hierarchically structured as Google, but that belongs to the state. The state socialism of the Soviet Union would be a nightmare for me. So there remains only market socialism.
This form of self-government has only been tried out in one country in the history of the last century, namely in Yugoslavia. There were many reasons for the collapse of this market socialism, but it had nothing to do with self-government and the democratization of companies. The failure is more likely to be blamed on the authoritarian Yugoslav government. And it is due to the fatal decision to take large loans from Western bankers in the early 1970s, which became extremely expensive in 1975 due to the huge surge in interest rates. But the system has been very successful for twenty years, so it can work.
I find it interesting that in your book the transition to corpo syndicalism is not initiated by social movements or trade unions, but by hackers who use the weapons of financial capitalism against banks and the stock markets. Are trade unions and social movements like Diem25 no longer up to the problems of our time?
No, I wouldn’t say that. Rather, I believe that social movements, trade unions, political parties are no longer enough today and that we should use the enemy’s weapons. We must bring financial management to its knees just as it did the working class, the young people, who brought people in the developing world to their knees with its financial engineering tools.
When I read your book, I asked myself how libertarian socialism or market socialism would deal with the corona crisis.
Well, we as humanity are more exposed to the threat of viruses, as our economy is dominated by large corporations that exploit natural resources in a certain way, that commercialize animals. At the same time, public health is suffering from the privatization of our hospitals and medical services. Finally, the public money that is printed in the central banks is extremely lavishly distributed to bankers and CEOs. And they don’t invest this money in anything that would be of value to society, but go public with this money to buy back their own shares.
None of these things would happen like this. In large conglomerates we would decide together how we use our resources. The companies would be much smaller and they would all be under democratic control. In addition, public health care would not be constantly threatened by privatization. And thirdly, the economic energy would not be wasted, but used for what is important to the people.
How is the situation in Greece right now?
In Greece, where the first lockdown was rather mild compared to Central Europe, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, as Covid-19 did not spread so much across Greece or the Balkans, the government did not respond to the second wave prepared. Given the exponential increase in deaths and infections, the government has now lost control and is panicking. And in order to divert attention from its own mistakes in the public debate, it is increasingly approaching authoritarianism. For example, the police are investigating me and two other politicians from parliament, the chairman of Syriza and that of the Communist Party, because we dared to criticize the state. We held a symbolic demonstration with four other MPs with a sufficient safety margin to draw attention to the government’s poor crisis management – which has failed to hire more doctors and nurses. Greece is slowly becoming the third illiberal democracy in the European Union, alongside Hungary and Poland. It is barely reported on the news, but I can assure you that the government is actively working to “orbanize” Greece. I say this with deep regret. But we are in Parliament and we will continue to fight against it. Greece is slowly becoming the third illiberal democracy in the European Union, alongside Hungary and Poland. It is barely reported on the news, but I can assure you that the government is actively working to “orbanize” Greece. I say this with deep regret. But we are in Parliament and we will continue to fight against it. Greece is slowly becoming the third illiberal democracy in the European Union, alongside Hungary and Poland. It is barely reported on the news, but I can assure you that the government is actively working to “orbanize” Greece. I say this with deep regret. But we are in Parliament and we will continue to fight against it.
You stand up against the collapse of Europe and for more solidarity. How do you assess the reaction of the European Union during the Corona crisis?
There is a considerable difference between 2020 and 2010 when the euro crisis erupted. In the meantime, the propaganda from Brussels, Berlin, Paris and our governments has become much more effective. Because most people in Europe and especially the commentators – including those who have criticized EU policy over the last ten years – are now of the opinion that the EU has responded adequately to the crisis and that the rescue funds are a sign of the Solidarity. It was said to be Europe’s Hamilton moment.
I think this is propaganda and I believe, rather, that the European Union and the political leadership have not lived up to their duties, in many ways.
First, the economic fund is way too small and way too late. It amounts to just 0.7 percent of GDP over a period of four years. We are calling for support of 7 percent, especially for the poorer classes and for small businesses. This difference is absolutely substantial, especially when you consider that a severe recession is falling over us.
The second aspect concerns the symbolic and political level and, in my opinion, is even more fatal. Because this fund was decided in the name of solidarity. This upset a lot of people in the Netherlands and Germany who are against tax transfers from the north. They said: Why should the Germans pay for the Greeks? And in a way, they’re right. Because this rescue fund is structured in such a way that the poorer German workers will subsidize the Greek and Italian oligarchs. Because the money from the fund will not go to the poor Greek population. Small farmers will see nothing of this money, the unemployed will see nothing of this money. It will go to the oligarchs. It will even go to German companies which our airports have taken over in the last ten years as a result of the bankruptcy of the Greek state. And now they will get the money from the German workers to invest in their airports in Mykonos and Santorini for free.
That’s a scandal. Then there is the process in which a decision is made about the distribution of this money. You sit down at a table and decide how much money should flow from the Netherlands and Germany to Greece. The advantage of a fiscal union lies precisely in the fact that the rich countries do not subsidize the poor countries, but rather the rich areas could support the poorer areas. What I would like to see would be that taxes from the rich north of Athens, from the rich parts of Stuttgart, from the rich part of Lombardy would flow to the low-income citizens of Germany, Greece and Italy. But that doesn’t happen. And I think,
That sounds pretty depressing. Now it is also said that one should not let a crisis pass unused. With this in mind: What lessons should the European and global left learn from the corona shock?
What we should have learned in 2008 and before that is that we cannot solve climate change, poverty, national debt and the banking crisis at the national level. We need a Green New Deal for Europe and the whole world. DiEM25 and the Progressive Internationale have been calling for this for a long time. We need such a project behind which the progressives worldwide unite.
Unfortunately, the fascists know only too well how to do it. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, the AfD – they’re all militaristic internationalists. They act as a unit. But we on the left don’t do that, we think in terms of the national state and look at the politics of the LEFT, the Greens, the SPD and so on. So the lesson is: the left must internationalize the struggle with a common program for the world.
Interview with Yanis Varoufakis conducted by Lukas Ondreka, Translation by Astrid Zimmermann
For Jacobin’s site, click here
Dissens verlost ein Exemplar “Another Now. Dispatches from an Alternative Present” unter allen Fördermitgliedern und denen, die es bis zur nächsten Folge werden Infos zum Buch hier
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Lukas Ondreka @ondreka
Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis
Diem25 @DiEM_25
Progressive International @ProgIntl
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Musik DOS-88 – City Lights: https://youtu.be/egKdVELkKVI
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Dissens Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA
“Ούτε στα πέτρινα χρόνια δεν έπληξε η Δεξιά τον Κοινοβουλευτισμό όπως τον πλήξατε σήμερα κ. Μητσοτάκη” – βίντεο
Το ότι αυτά που είχε πει η Αγγελική από το βήμα της Βουλής ήταν και ορθά και απολύτως τεκμηριωμένα δεν είναι το ζήτημα. Το ζήτημα είναι ότι διώκεται ποινικά βουλευτής για πράγματα που είπε από το βήμα της Βουλής!
Η ελευθερία λόγου έχει νόημα μόνο αν εξασφαλίζει το δικαίωμα σε βουλευτές να πουν πράγματα που κάποιοι δεν θέλουν να ακούσουν.
Σήμερα, ο κ. Μητσοτάκης διέταξε τους βουλευτές του να ψηφίσουν την κατάργησή της – την κατάργηση της ελευθερίας του λόγου. Ούτε στα πέτρινα χρόνια της ΕΡΕ δεν είχαν τολμήσει κάτι τέτοιο!
Είναι λοιπόν επίσημο: Ο κ. Μητσοτάκης επέλεξε την σταδιακή μετατροπή της Ελλάδας σε Κοινοβουλευτική Δικτατορία. Σε Δικτατορία που δεν κλείνει τη Βουλή αλλά καταργεί ντε φάκτο τον Κοινοβουλευτισμό ακολουθώντας το μοντέλο Ερντογάν και Ορμπάν το οποίο, ως πρώτο βήμα, προβλέπει την κατάργηση του συνταγματικού δικαιώματος ελευθερίας λόγου των βουλευτών.
Το ΜέΡΑ25 είμαστε εδώ για να βάλουμε φρένο στον ξέφρενο ρυθμό με τον οποίο η κυβέρνηση Μητσοτάκη οικοδομεί, αντιγράφοντας Ερντογάν και Ορμπάν, Δικτατορία με Κοινοβουλευτικό Μανδύα.
Σήμερα ήρθαν για την Αγγελική, και οι της Νέας Δημοκρατίας συναίνεσαν.
Αύριο θα έρθουν για βουλευτή του ΚΚΕ, και οι της Νέας Δημοκρατίας πάλι θα συναινέσουν.
Όταν, κάποια στιγμή, θα έρθουν για εκείνους, ίσως με άλλη κυβέρνηση, ποιός θα έχει μείνει να τους υπερασπιστεί;
Για αυτό εμείς, το ΜέΡΑ25, αντιστεκόμαστε στην Νέα Δικτατορία με Κοινοβουλευτικό Μανδύα υπερασπιζόμενοι ακόμα και το δικαίωμα των βουλευτών της Νέας Δημοκρατίας να μας συκοφαντούν. Γιατί αυτό απαιτεί ο Κοινοβουλευτισμός που ο κ. Μητσοτάκης σήμερα αποφάσισε να πλήξει βάναυσα.
December 11, 2020
On CHANGE MAKERS discussing personal drive, happiness, capitalism, socialism and… Star Trek
Yanis Varoufakis is a member of Greeceâs Parliament and parliamentary leader of MeRA25, the Greek political party belonging to DiEM25 â Europeâs first transnational paneuropean movement. Previously, he served as Greeceâs Finance Minister during the first six months of 2015. Yanis read mathematics and economics at the Universities of Essex and Birmingham and subsequently taught economics at the Universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Sydney, Glasgow, Texas and Athens where he still holds a Chair in Political Economy and Economic Theory. He is the author of a number of best-selling books, including Another Now: Dispatches from an alternative present, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism and And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability. In February 2016 Varoufakis co-founded DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement â Europeâs first transnational movement. In March 2018 DiEM25 founded MeRA25, its Greek political party. Led by Varoufakis, MeRA25 entered Parliament with nine MPs in the July 2019 General Election.
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