Op-ed
My reply to Chris Giles celebration of the eurozone bailouts in the Financial Times
, 13/12/2024
@ChrisGiles (Financial Times) decided to have some fun by celebrating “The astonishing success of Eurozone bailouts”, using Greece as the poster girl/boy of that exercise in futility, the EU’s most spectacular failure. With such friendly scribblers, Europe has no need for sworn enemies! His evidence? That Greece, the basket case of the euro crisis, reported […]
Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism – interviewed by WIRED magazine
, 22/04/2024
The tech giants have overthrown capitalism. That’s the argument of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who became famous trying to defend debt-laden Greece from its German creditors. Varoufakis has never quite regained the notoriety of 2015. But he has remained a prominent left-wing voice. After a failed campaign for a seat in the European […]
A European War Union? – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 22/04/2024
Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project. But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle, and now the invasion has facilitated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier. ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of […]
NEW YORKER magazine: Has Capitalism Been Replaced by “Technofeudalism”?
, 01/04/2024
“I never planned to be a politician. Never. Not in my wildest nightmares,” the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said the other day. He was fighting his way toward the exit at Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall, where he’d just spoken at a conference on sustainable development. A man blocked his path: […]
Greece, EU elections, Palestine & the International Order – JACOBIN interview with David Broder
, 01/04/2024
Yanis Varoufakis’s new film series explains how elites used the financial crisis to terrorize Europe’s populations into submission. In this interview, he tells Jacobin why the anti-austerity movement failed and why the center is converging with the far right. Debt is to capitalism what hell is to Christianity: unpleasant, and essential.” Speaking in his new documentary […]
“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, […]
Does Australia know what it is getting into viz. the US-China New Cold War? GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA podcast
, 01/04/2024
Does Australia really want to become entangled in a war (Cold or Hot) between the US and China motivated by the clash of the world’s two super cloud fiefs?
The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD
, 22/02/2024
Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.” His story is neither […]
Jacobin Magazine’s David Moscrop reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 22/02/2024
The idea that we are entering an era of techno-feudalism that will be worse than capitalism is chilling and controversial. We asked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to elucidate this idea, explain how we got here, and map out some alternatives. The controversial concept of techno-feudalism suggests we have transitioned from capitalism to something even […]
FORTUNE Magazine’s Nick Lichtenberg reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 22/02/2024
When I admit to my fandom as we sit down for a zoom interview, he immediately tells me off. (This is exactly what I wanted.) “I don’t want fans in life, you know,” he says. “Ever since I entered politics, I acquired two things that I never wanted to have: enemies and fans.” You see, […]
Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy? The GUARDIAN
, 22/02/2024
It is one thing to U-turn on a modest green transition programme. It is another to do so using mendacious Tory economic paradigms. Rarely has a lacklustre policy been abandoned for a reason so bad that it threatens to inflict long-term damage on a society. Independently of whether the £28bn green investment programme was the […]
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 […]
Europe’s Bad China Bluff – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 24/12/2023
Against the backdrop of the new cold war between the United States and China, the European Union’s top brass seems to be adding to the pressure on China by issuing credible threats in response to four grievances. Alas, the Chinese authorities are probably more amused than alarmed. ATHENS – On the December 7, the presidents […]
Why Europe is not free to relate to China – China Daily op-ed
, 11/12/2023
As the 24th EU-China Summit concluded on Thursday, it is natural to want to look behind the declarations and official speeches to identify the deeper forces shaping the European Union’s relationship with China and its policies toward China. But to understand the nature of these forces, it is crucial to go back to the very […]
By continuing the persecution of Julian Assange, Biden jetissons the 1st Amendment – The Nation
, 11/12/2023
In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information. The persecution of Assange is […]
Europe’s 15-Year Slump – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 22/11/2023
The European Union’s supporters celebrate the survival of the euro, the fact that public debt is no longer the threat it was, and, crucially, that their mercantilist business model remains intact. But it has come at a steep price: Europe’s permanent stagnation and continuing fragmentation. ATHENS – Europe is languishing in a long-term economic slump whose origins […]
On Europe’s historic responsibility for the war crimes in the ancient land of Palestine – Al Jazeera
, 18/11/2023
On UpFront, interviewed by Marc Lamont Hill on Europe’s historic responsibility and current role in the Israel-Gaza war.
The big idea: has the digital economy killed capitalism? – The Guardian
, 03/11/2023
Enter Amazon and you have exited capitalism. Despite all the buying and the selling that goes on there, you have entered a realm that can’t be thought of as a market, not even a digital one.” When I say this to people, which I frequently do in lectures and debates, they look at me as they […]
Big Tech Cannot Be Regulated – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 01/11/2023
Big Tech is so profoundly different from other industries that it cannot be regulated like the trusts, cartels, or conglomerates of the past. After all, if regulators tried to break up Facebook or TikTok, they would be confronted by enraged users for whom the universal nature of these platforms is the reason they use them. […]
El Pais long interview on my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 20/10/2023
LONG READ by MIGUEL ÁNGEL GARCÍA VEGA in El Pais on my Technofeudalism. Miguel has interviewed me many times in the past but this time he did so exclusively for my new book TECHNOFEUDALISM: What killed capitalism which will shortly be available in Spanish also. Here is the English language version of Miguel’s piece, based […]
The NEW STATESMAN reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 07/10/2023
Socialists periodically predict the downfall of capitalism, but each decade the coffin remains empty. In his new book, Yanis Varoufakis – the former Greek finance minister, game theorist and “erratic Marxist” – offers a twist on this familiar narrative. Capitalism, he writes, has already died – we just failed to notice. By George Eaton “It […]
UNHERD interviews me on TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 05/10/2023
In his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis, the Leftist economist and former finance minister of Greece, suggests that the capitalist age has already come to an end. He argues that a new global economic and political system has stealthily replaced the old order, with the emerging dominance of tech monopolies like Amazon and Google. He […]
Long interview with Carole Cadwalladr, for the Observer/Guardian, on my Technofeudalism
, 04/10/2023
What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order? The mental imagery I have before the visit is roughly two parts Zorba the Gr eek to one part an episode of […]