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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 […]
ANOTHER NOW: My political science fiction novel depicting a fully-fledged socialism we could have had – THE GUARDIAN
, 05/09/2020
When Margaret Thatcher coined “Tina” – her 1980s dictum that “There is no alternative” – I was incensed because, deep down, I felt she had a point: the left had neither a credible nor a desirable alternative to capitalism. Leftists excel at pinpointing what is wrong with really-existing capitalism. We are good at demonstrating that […]
Something remarkable just happened this August: How the pandemic has sped up the passage to postcapitalism – Lannan Foundation virtual talk
, 21/08/2020
Two days ago, something extraordinary happened. Something that has never happened before in the history of capitalism. In Britain, the news came out that the economy had suffered its greatest slump ever – more than 22% down during the first 7 months of 2020. Remarkably, on the same day, the London Stock Exchange, the FTSE100 […]
The EU coronavirus Recovery Fund will take Europe another step towards disintegration – The Guardian
, 25/07/2020
During the early years of the eurozone crisis, I remember gauging its depths by the rapidly diminishing half-life of the celebrations that followed every European Union summit. Premature proclamations that the crisis was over inspired hope, which caused the money markets to rebound. But then, at some point, gloom would unfailingly return. As the years of […]
While EU leaders squabble, the Elephant in the Room remains unnoticed
, 18/07/2020
While the media are reporting the news of the deadlocked EU Summit negotiations over the so-called ‘Recovery Fund’, an eerie silence prevails regarding the Elephant in the Room: The huge wave of austerity the Eurozone is sleepwalking towards. Let’s look at the facts. Even if the Dutch Prime Minister, Mr Rutte, and the rest of […]
The Eurozone’s grappling with crisis, class war & the North-South divide – Berliner Verlag interview
, 16/07/2020
What did you think when the Euro-group elected its new leader last week? At least this was not the outcome Frau Merkel had wished? My first thought was that it spelled the end of any possibility of harmonizing corporate tax rates across the Eurozone, an issue that I am on Mrs Merkel’s side. The second […]
MeRA25: One year in Parliament
, 09/07/2020
In less than a year, MeRA25’s our parliamentary group has proven “your voice in parliament” They have attended all parliamentary proceedings and articulated profound, substantive and creative opposition! MeRA25’s parliamentary group has notably: Tabled more than 850 questions in the context of Parliamentary Control of the Government Submitted concrete proposals on a number of articles […]