Review
“It’s hard to read this book and deny its power” – WASHINGTON POST review of TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 01/04/2024
In the not-too-distant past, many Marxist philosophers were weighed down by a shared despair. Capitalism, they feared, had become so totalizing, so all-consuming, that there was no longer any possibility of overthrowing it. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” Karl Marx famously wrote in 1845, […]
TECHNOFEUDALISM reviewed by Geert Lovink
, 01/04/2024
A meme is spreading: capitalism is dead. We’re toiling around in its carcass. Nothing appears as it seems in this zombie state of affairs. But why didn’t we notice? There’s confusion all over. Climate, Covid, Ukraine, Gaza. Is history accelerating, or, rather the opposite, stagnating, even regressing? In his latest book Techno Feudalism, Yanis Varoufakis states that […]
Two reviews of TECHNOFEUDALISM by Conservative Publications ‘Free Beacon’ & ‘The European Conservative’
, 01/04/2024
In this age of self-referential bubbles, of performative mutual demonisation and of siloed ideological camps that make debate impossible, it was a breath of fresh air to spot two reviews of my TECHNOFEUDALISM by conservative publications: The Washington Free Beacon and The European Conservative. Disagreeing agreeably must surely be a major improvement to unreasoned, mutually […]
Anjan Basu reviews ANOTHER NOW for The Wire
, 01/11/2020
What would a post-capitalist society look like, if it was to avoid replicating the failed Soviet model? In which, important ways, will its economic and social institutions be dissimilar to modern capitalism’s? Will the market have a place in that society’s scheme of things? If the answer to this last question is yes, and assuming […]
Don Milligan reviews ANOTHER NOW in Prometheus
, 01/11/2020
Yanis Varoufakis’s dispatches from an alternative present must be read, reviews and precis will not do. It’s a tough read, not so much a novel, as a meditation on the technical and social impasse we appear to have arrived at. The potential for instituting real change provided by the pandemic is being squandered; investors are […]
ANOTHER NOW reviewed by Luke McCarthy in The Monthly
, 24/10/2020
Politics in a time of pandemic are grim. In the face of such global catastrophe, one that has only exacerbated the extractive, sclerotic nature of our existing economy, those on the left are burdened with the question: is there an alternative? And, if there is, how can we get there? These are the very questions […]
My review of Banerjee & Duflo’s (this year’s Nobel winners in economics) latest book – The Observer
, 14/11/2019
REVIEW: Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo A recent YouGov survey confirmed that economists are the least trusted professionals in the UK today. Brexit is only the latest contributor to the public’s understandable rejection of a profession that has either failed spectacularly to raise […]
CRASHED: Long version of my Observer review of Adam Tooze’s new book on the Crash of 2008
, 13/08/2018
Every so often humanity manages genuinely to surprise itself. Events to which we had previously assigned zero probability push us into what the ancient Greeks referred to as aporia: a state of intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The Crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly, the […]
Was defeat inevitable? A review of Adam Tooze’s meta-review of ‘Adults in the Room’ [1]
, 07/03/2018
To read one excellent review of one’s book is a joy. To read an engaging and deeply thoughtful review of different categories of reviews of one’s book is a rare privilege. Normally, I should have left matters there, enjoying the diversity of opinion that Adults in the Room engendered. But this is not an academic book […]
“La batalla de Varoufakis contra el ‘establishment’ europeo es el libro del año” – Review of Adults in the Room (Spanish edition) in El Confidencial, by RAMÓN GONZÁLEZ FÉRRIZ
, 17/02/2018
El libro de memorias de Yanis Varoufakis sobre sus poco más de cinco meses como ministro de Finanzas griego, ‘Comportarse como adultos. Mi batalla contra el establishment europeo‘, (Deusto) es, probablemente, el libro del año. Y lo es por muchas razones: su narración de las maratonianas reuniones del Eurogrupo sobre la posible reestructuración de la deuda griega y […]
Review of French edition of Adults in the Room – in LE GRAND CONTINENT
, 17/02/2018
« Nous allons, en même temps que le possesseur d’argent et le possesseur de force de travail, quitter cette sphère bruyante où tout se passe à la surface et aux regards de tous, pour les suivre tous deux dans le laboratoire secret de la production, sur le seuil duquel il est écrit : no admittance except […]
Allein gegen die Troika (Alone with the troika) – review of German edition of ‘Adults in the Room’, by Wilfried Loth in FAZ
, 13/02/2018
Schon als Minister legte er Wert auf große Gesten. Yanis Varoufakis bleibt sich auch in diesem Buch treu. Νein, die ganze Geschichte der Auseinandersetzung um die Griechenland-Hilfe im ersten Halbjahr 2015 ist das nicht, was Yanis Varoufakis, der erste Finanzminister der Regierung von Alexis Tsipras in diesem umfangreichen Memoirenwerk bietet. Es ist eine Abfolge von Gesprächen, […]
Varoufakis: “No se engañen, la crisis sigue ahí: el euro corre peligro” – El Pais, 2/1/2018
, 02/01/2018
El exministro de Finanzas griego ha publicado un libro sobre las entretelas de la política europea Yanis Varoufakis, exministro de Finanzas de Grecia. Barcelona, 9 de noviembre de 2017 ALBERT GARCIA Polémico. Atractivo. Brillante. Controvertido. Los seis meses de Yanis Varoufakis(Atenas, 1961) al frente del Ministerio de Finanzas de Grecia lo convirtieron en una celebridad global, en una suerte […]
NYT: “What to Get Theresa May for Christmas?” Answer: Adults in the Room!
, 25/12/2017
LONDON — If Santa is listening, here’s a suggestion about what to deliver Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and David Davis, her chief Brexit negotiator: a copy of Yanis Varoufakis’s “Adults in the Room.” Mr. Varoufakis is the former Greek finance minister and his book sets out in excruciating detail the story of the 2015 […]
‘Adults in the Room’ and ‘And the Weak Suffer What They Must?’ reviewed by B. Baumer for the INDYPENDENT
, 07/12/2017
Along with French economist Thomas Piketty, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is making economics sexy again. Journalists enjoyed snapping photos of Varoufakis, clad in a black leather coat, commuting to the finance ministry’s offices on his Yamaha motorcycle. But his short tenure in the Greek government was marked by clashes with the country’s […]
Adults in the Room – reviewed by C. Collier for Brave New Europe
, 26/11/2017
How far should economists engage in day-to-day politics? “Researchers have an obligation to society to take positions on questions on which they have acquired professional competence,” says French economist Jean Tirole[1]. But how does an academic do this when media are not, in Tirole’s words, his ‘natural habitat’? Yanis Varoufakis, in his recent incarnation as […]
My ‘Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism” reviewed by Ireland’s finance minister
, 25/11/2017
It is not often that one’s book is reviewed by a sitting finance minister. But these are strange times. On 4th November Ireland’s finance minister Paschal Donohoe took the trouble to review my ‘Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism” for The Irish Times. To my utter surprise, he had some […]
New York Times review of ‘Adults in the Rooom’, by Justin Fox
, 23/11/2017
“A gripping tale of an outspoken intellectual’s sudden immersion in high-stakes politics,… an attempt to divine why smart, seemingly decent politicians and bureaucrats would continue pushing a pointlessly cruel approach long after its pointlessness had become clear.” “Varoufakis wasn’t always trying to make waves. And he seems to have approached his chief task with great seriousness.” Why […]
Review of ‘And the Weak Suffer What They Must?’, by Andy Hartropp, The Center for Enterprise, Markets & Ethics
, 02/11/2017
In this book, Yanis Varoufakis (Professor of Economics at the University of Athens) gives a highly informative and very well-informed account of the austerity measures enforced by the institutions of the European Union (EU) since the financial crisis which began in 2007-2008. He also sets these events and policies in the wider context and history […]
Doug Henwood’s review of ‘Adults in the Room’ (Baffler) & a radio discussion between us
, 28/10/2017
Doug Henwood’s long review of my Adults in the Room follows. Plus a radio interview with Doug for BEHIND THE NEWS. FINANCE MINISTERS RARELY BECOME CELEBRITIES. Sure, there was a moment in the 1990s when Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary Robert Rubin came close. But that was because so many people thought they were getting rich off the […]
Book review of ‘Adults in the Room’ in the Los Angeles Review of Books
, 28/10/2017
The Ins and Outs of Europe’s Deep Establishment By Stan Persky I. ONE EVENING in spring 2015, a finance minister walks into a bar in Washington, DC, looking for some insider advice. No, this is not one of those man-walks-into-a-bar-type jokes. On this occasion, the man walking into a bar is Yanis Varoufakis, the then-newly-minted finance […]
‘Talking to my daughter about the economy’ – Book review in The Guardian by Anna Minton
, 28/10/2017
Not many authors write a book in nine days, and fewer still are likely to announce it in the prologue. Yanis Varoufakis has no qualms about doing so in this brief history of capitalism, structured around the device of talking to his daughter, Xenia, not long a teenager. It was first published a few years ago, when she […]
Adults in the Room: The Sordid Tale of Greece’s Battle Against Austerity and the Troika – by Dean Baker, Huffington Post
, 15/09/2017
Yanis Varoufakis begins his account of his half year as Greece’s finance minister in the left populist Syriza government (Adults in the Room, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) with a description of a meeting with Larry Summers. According to Varoufakis, Summers explains that there are two types of politicians. There are those who are on the […]
Review of Adults in the Room – The Fabian Society
, 21/08/2017
Book review: A whistleblower’s tale Vassilis K Fouskas 21 August 2017 Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment, Yanis Varoufakis, 2017, Bodley Head, £20Yanis Varoufakis, a British-trained economist who taught for many years in Australia, Britain and Greece, was Greece’s finance minister for 162 days during Syriza’s first few months in office […]