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Britain, Europe, the New Cold War Finance & Technofeudalism – at the Cambridge Union
, 24/03/2023
On 7th February 2023, I returned to the Chamber to discuss a wide variety of issues, beginning with a Europe-at-war, post-Brexit Britain, the New Cold War that marks capitalism’s global transition to (what I call Technofeudalism), the state of the Left in Eastern Europe and more. Thanks Cambridge Union!
The New Non-Aligned Movement and New Economic System we have a duty to work towards – Havana Address, 27th January 2023
, 26/02/2023
The War in Ukraine has sped up the division of the world into two technofeudal fiefdoms – one US dollar denominated and one Chinese yuan denominated. As the world bifurcates, class struggles within each technofeudal fiefdom, as well as between them, generate destructive forces that threaten our species survival – from a New Cold War, […]
The New Iranian Revolution as an opportunity for the Internationalist Left – Project Syndicate
, 15/11/2022
Iran’s protesters will neither submit to the fascism hidden behind the regime’s pseudo-anti-imperialism nor surrender their country to the hegemony of the United States or their economy to financialized capital. The Western left should learn from them. ATHENS – Dealing with random, unprovoked abuse is never easy. But dealing with random, unprovoked praise can be […]
Rishi Sunak’s ‘grown-up’ austerity is designed to keep zombie capitalism alive
, 10/11/2022
The demise of Trussonomics was a welcome victory for decency and common sense in a minor battle within a broader class war. Sadly, the class that Liz Truss tried to bolster with copious tax and regulatory gifts will win this war by deploying an even nastier, blunter, dirtier weapon: austerity. Britain’s wealthy owe a debt […]
How the West poisoned its money – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 10/10/2022
ATHENS – Capitalism conquered the world by commodifying almost everything that had a value but not a price, thus driving a sharp wedge between values and prices. It did the same to money. The exchange value of money always reflected people’s readiness to hand over valuable things for given sums of cash. But, under capitalism, […]
Is This the End of ‘Socialism for the Rich’? – The Atlantic
, 10/10/2022
Last Thursday, the International Monetary Fund spooked the markets and surprised the commentariat by chiding the U.K. Conservative government for fiscal irresponsibility. The shock was palpable. For the IMF to criticize the government of a major Western economy was a little like the janitor scolding the landlord for putting the building’s assessed value at risk. That sense […]
Zombie capitalism is unravelling – THE NEW STATESMAN
, 29/09/2022
This is no sterling crisis. It is a crisis of British capitalism caused by 40 years of underinvestment and deindustrialisation, exacerbated by chronic reliance on speculative bubbles and triggered by Liz Truss’s extravagant kindness to Britain’s wealthy. While all eyes are on the fall of the pound, the real drama revolves around the Bank of England’s […]
Time to Blow Up the Electricity Markets – Project Syndicate
, 18/09/2022
The European Union’s power sector is a good example of what market fundamentalism has done to electricity networks the world over. With the end of cheap natural gas, retail consumers and businesses are paying the price for their governments’ embrace of a shoddy theory. ATHENS – The blades of the wind turbines on the mountain […]
Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong – Project Syndicate op-e
, 30/07/2022
The blame game over surging prices is on. Was it too much central-bank money being pumped out for too long that caused inflation to take off? Was it China, where most physical production had moved before the pandemic locked down the country and disrupted global supply chains? Was it Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine took […]
Discussing Crypto, the Left & Technofeudalism with Evgeny Morozov – CRYPTO SYLLABUS long interview
, 23/04/2022
Rare is the person who could expertly comment – in a single interview! – on the rise of NFTs and their origins in the virtual worlds of gaming, the logic of the emerging regime of techno-feudalism, and the folly of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-heavy negotiating tactics with the IMF. Luckily, we have found this person in […]
How the euro divided Europe, and why countries like Bulgaria should not join – Project Syndicate, Oxford Union video & Keynote audio
, 26/01/2022
This January marked the 20th anniversary of euro notes and coins circulating. In an op-ed published by Project Syndicate I argue that the euro was an unmitigated failure even by the criteria of its architects. This is an updated analysis of a keynote I delivered a few years ago at the Oxford Union – see […]
The State of the Global Economy under the heavy burden of twelve lost years – Keynote (audio + text)
, 21/01/2022
A keynote summing up my view that, since 2009, the world has wasted enormous resources in a bid to re-float finance and at the expense of our capacity to look after each other, and the planet, at a time humanity is facing existential threats – from climate catastrophe to war and toxic politics. My discussants […]
What’s behind the Cop26 fraud? – The Guardian
, 16/11/2021
There are three reasons Cop26 proved such a spectacular debacle: A planet-wide collective action problem over “free-riding”. A global coordination failure. And… capitalism! “Make no mistake, the money is here, if the world wants to use it,” said Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor who today serves as UN climate envoy while also representing […]
What’s behind our #yourNHSneedsYou campaign: DiEM25 ushering in a new way of doing progressive politics – The New Statesman
, 06/11/2021
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 […]
Hypatia: my choice of a great life to re-visit and celebrate – on BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives
, 27/09/2021
When I was still in primary school, I sought my mum’s help in countering a friend’s bigoted assertion that “women are useless”, which he had based on the fact that our teachers never mentioned a single woman mathematician or scientist. My mum’s reply came immediately: Hypatia! So, when the producers of BBC Radio 4’s Great […]
What is money, really? And why Bitcoin is not the answer (even if blockchain is brilliant & potentially helpful in democratising money)
, 02/08/2021
Recently, I argued that a central bank cryptocurrency can be a useful tool in the struggle to democratise money. Such a tool is, of course, not enough. The main task in democratising money is first to democratise the central bank – before deploying useful instruments like a central bank cryptocurrency. As many readers (correctly) pointed […]
Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 05/07/2021
This is how capitalism ends: not with a revolutionary bang, but with an evolutionary whimper. Just as it displaced feudalism gradually, surreptitiously, until one day the bulk of human relations were market-based and feudalism was swept away, so capitalism today is being toppled by a new economic mode: techno-feudalism. This is a large claim that […]
Is Universal Basic Income a good idea? My debate with Daron Acemoglou on Pairagraph
, 11/06/2021
Pairagragh hosts structured debates between pairs of scholars, politicians etc. taking opposing views on some issue. In this one, Daron Acemoglu and I are debating Universal Basic Income – Daron opposing it and I defending it. Enjoy! Daron Acemoglou’s opening salvo We need a better and stronger social safety net. We need ways of combating […]
What Europe Must Now Do – DiEM25’s Progressive European Policy Agenda for the 2020s
, 01/04/2021
Covid-19 has unveiled the EU’s lack of institutions that can address a public health crisis. It has also confirmed that the EU continues to lack the institutions necessary to reduce the economic imbalances which undermine the Union, suppress investment and cause preventable economic failures that undercut the life prospects of the majority of Europeans. Lastly, […]
The EU’s multiple failures are due to its immunity to democracy – The New Statesman
, 14/02/2021
From denial, to grudging acceptance, to substantial intervention, to debacle: that was the European Union’s trajectory once the storm that nearly consumed Wall Street in 2008 had crossed the Atlantic, starting the euro crisis. Twelve years later, the EU’s reaction to Covid-19’s arrival is following an ominously comparable trajectory. Eurosceptics take aim at the EU’s […]
“Is Global Stability A Pipe Dream?” Watch Yanis Varoufakis debate John Bolton at the Ηolberg 2020 Debate
, 08/12/2020
While the catastrophic pandemic is pushing hundreds of millions into economic destitution, our world is being subjected to an escalating climate emergency and a New Cold War between the West and China, not to mention ominous tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Libya etc. In the midst of all this instability, is Global Stability […]
ANOTHER NOW – An intimate introduction (video&text)
, 08/10/2020
Why did I write ANOTHER NOW? As a critic of capitalism, I have long been painfully aware that critics of capitalism have no real answer to the hard question: “If you don’t like capitalism mate, what’s the alternative?” So, I decided it was time to take on two hard but pressing tasks: First, to describe […]
How progressives could still win the 21st century – The Correspondent
, 06/10/2020
Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of authoritarianism in whose wake the vast majority of humanity have experienced unnecessary hardship and the planet’s ecosystem has suffered avoidable climate destruction. For a brief period – a period the British historian Eric Hobsbawm described as “the short 20th century” – establishment forces were united in dealing with challenges […]