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“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, […]
Reversing Europe’s and Australia’s slide into irrelevance & insecurity – National Press Club of Australia speech
, 14/03/2024
“Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda.” Yanis Varoufakis’s address at the National […]
The Two Faces of the Euro: Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble – Project Syndicate Long Read
, 03/02/2024
Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble had the greatest impact on Europe. Between them, the two men, who passed away within a day of each other in December, shaped today’s European Union, warts and all. ATHENS – Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang […]
NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD
, 12/01/2024
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]
How should we tax wealth & multinationals globally? Speech at UNDP, New York 14th NOV 2023
, 18/11/2023
Ms Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Esteemed colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, before I address the question of taxing serious wealth seriously, I you forgive my inability to proceed without an acknowledgement of the human tragedy in the Middle East. As Secretary General Goutières correctly put it, nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing is […]
Alexis Tsipras resigns: lessons for progressives
, 02/07/2023
Following Greece’s latest election, after which Alexis Tsipras announced his resignation, a journalist asked me: “What conclusion do you draw from this situation?” Here is my answer: The crucial conclusion to be drawn is that radicals are never welcomed for long into the club of the powerful, even if they are willing to betray their […]
La Stampa interview (English version) on Greek gvt refugee policy, Greece’s economy, MeRA25′ electoral setback, the euro, Italy’s PD and… Angela Merkel
, 29/05/2023
In this post you will find my original answers (in English) to La Stampa‘s varied questions (27/5/2023); from the Greek government’s shameful policy on refugees and MeRA25’s electoral setback, to the future of the Eurozone, my friend Elly Schlein’s leadership of Italy’s main opposition party, the PD and, yes, Angela Merkel! Almost all parties, on […]
Europe’s latest illiberal democracy: Greece! – New Statesman
, 24/03/2023
“Like lambs to the slaughter” was how an elderly neighbour described the deaths of youngsters travelling on Intercity 62 which, on the night of 28 February, crashed head-on with a freight train in Greece killing 57 people. Many of the dead were students returning after a long weekend from Athens to their universities in Thessaloniki. […]
On the shameful deal Osborne-Mitsotakis are hammering out over the Parthenon antiquities – UNHERD
, 24/03/2023
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support the British Museum’s inalienable property rights to the artefacts it, eventually, purchased from him. Over […]
Comradely disagreements between progressives over Ukraine & the New Cold War – Reply to Anthony Barnett
, 12/10/2022
Anthony Burnett, a friend, comrade and collaborator, just published an article in openDemocracy, a splendid and much loved source of progressive ideas and material, to which he alerted me in a mail reading: “Dear Yanis, we disagree but in solidarity!” Since Anthony’s article mentions me, along with Jeremy Corbyn, in its subtitle, here I am, […]
Trickle-down Truss is carrying on the dirty work of Thatcher, Blair and Osborne – THE GUARDIAN
, 01/10/2022
If Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget survives the storm it triggered, a banker on a million-pound annual salary stands to receive £50,000 of income tax relief – on top of the extra bonuses the bank can throw in, now that the Liz Truss government has removed the cap on them. Meanwhile, a Deliveroo rider gets a pep […]
Here is what Central Banks could do to stem inflation without crushing the poor or killing off the Green Transition – The Guardian
, 16/04/2022
Inflation is a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor. Even before Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, whose byproducts include soaring energy and food prices, inflation was already over 7.5% in the US and above 5% in Europe and the UK. Calls for its taming are, therefore, fully justified – and the interest rate rise in the US, […]
On Brexit and the task of confronting technofeudalism – Interview in The Morning Star
, 03/01/2022
ONE YEAR since the final deal for Brexit was announced, it remains one of the most divisive political subjects for a generation. Perhaps unknown to most, the incendiary B-word had its genesis in the term “Grexit” — coined during tumultuous years after the 2008 credit crunch when a Greek exit from the EU was speculated, […]
Explaining to friend & comrade Slavoj Zizek that which why I didn’t get a chance to tell my father: why I think capitalism has evolved into technofeudalism
, 06/11/2021
I must have been no older than five or six when my dad introduced me to the idea that technological progress forces the pace of history. I remember him explaining how written records coincided with humanity’s ability to smelt copper tools. Of how history accelerated when ancient smiths progressed from copper to forging iron tools […]
Merkel’s tenure condemned Germany to wealth-fuelled decline & the EU to debt-fuelled stagnation – JACOBIN
, 28/09/2021
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 […]
Revisiting the causes & effects of Brexit – New Statesman video interview
, 24/06/2021
Here I am conversing with New Statesman’s George Eaton, reflecting on five years since the EU referendum, Scottish independence, a UK progressive alliance, and whether the EU can stay relevant post Brexit. Lest I be misunderstood, viz the New Statesman’s title: Given the EU’s post-2008 trajectory, & its behaviour more recently, if I were a […]
mέta – DiEM25’s & MeRA25’s Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation premiers tonight, 13th May, at 19.00CET
, 12/05/2021
Imagine the world anew, together. Thursday 13 May 2021, at 19.00CET (17.00GMT, 20.00 Athens time), streaming at mέta’s YouTube channel and at facebook.com/meta.cpc. Through a sequence of intensifying crises, capitalism has already morphed into a dystopian postmodern, hi-tech version of feudalism. Postcapitalism is, thus, already here. Through art and research, argument and poetry, mέta, the […]
The Eternal Marx: Reviewing Shlomo Avineri’s KARL MARX: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
, 04/05/2021
Shlomo Avineri’s recent biography demolishes the charge that Karl Marx was a self-hating anti-Semite. And by dragging Marx, kicking and screaming, back into the Rhinish Jewish community that shaped him, Avineri yields new insights pertinent to today’s global challenges. Shlomo Avineri, Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution, Yale University Press, 2019. The problem with egotists is that […]
Identity, solidarity and DiEM25
, 25/01/2021
If I were a transgender person and a bunch of Lefties dared lecture me that the exploitation of factory workers by capitalists is more important than my daily struggle tο function as a transgender person, I would tell them to get lost. No one has the right to tell those who are hurt, terrified, exploited […]
Hoping for a return to normal after Trump? That’s the last thing we need – The GUARDIAN
, 11/11/2020
Normalcy and the restoration of a modicum of decorum to the White House: that is what many elite supporters of Joe Biden hope for now that he has won the election. But the rest of us are turned off by this meagre ambition. Voters who loathe Trump celebrate his loss, but the majority rue the return […]
Why we need a Progressive International that must plan for today and for beyond capitalism – Keynote at the PI 2020 Summit, 18 SEP 2020
, 19/09/2020
Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a Twin Authoritarianism in whose wake the vast majority of humanity experience unnecessary hardship and the planet’s ecosystem suffers avoidable climate destruction. For a brief period, that Eric Hobsbawm described as the short 20th Century, Establishment forces were united in dealing with challenges to their […]
Covid-19 has “turbocharged” the EU’s failures – Interviewed by the NEW STATESMAN’s George Eaton
, 12/05/2020
For Yanis Varoufakis, lockdown has not been a time of contemplation. “I have more work now than I ever did. As you know, everything has shifted to Zoom meetings, which means zero separation between the private and the public,” he explained when we spoke recently, during one such video call. The 59-year-old economist, former Greek […]