Essays
Η ανατομία του Νέου Ψυχρού Πολέμου, η μετεξέλιξη του καπιταλισμού κι η ανάγκη για ένα Νέο Κίνημα Αδεσμεύτων – Ομιλία στην Κούβα
, 06/02/2023
Στην Αβάνα, προσκεκλημένος της Κουβανικής κυβέρνησης, ανέλυσα τη μετάβαση από το νεο-ιμπεριαλιστικό μοντέλο, με το οποίο ο παγκόσμιος καπιταλισμός κέρδισε τον Ψυχρό Πόλεμο (1971-2008), στο σημερινό τεχνοφεουδαρχικό μοντέλο το οποίο πυροδοτεί έναν Νέο Ψυχρό Πόλεμο – κι ο οποίος, με τη σειρά του, καθιστά απολύτως αναγκαίο ένα Νέο Κίνημα Αδεσμεύτων που θα επεξεργαστεί, και θα […]
My prediction on what 2023 will bring – Project Syndicate
, 01/01/2023
This will be the year that Europeans realize the designed irrelevance of the European Union. The quagmire in Ukraine’s killing fields will bring on the realization of the need for a diplomatic process to end the war, but also the realization that the EU is radically incapable of playing any significant role in it. Who […]
Crisis, Recession, the Left & the state of economics – INDIA & GLOBAL LEFT podcast
, 01/01/2023
00:00 Highlights 01:55 Who is Yanis 05:34 Financial crisis & recession 20:06 Revolutionary changes 22:04 European Right 30:22 European Left 37:15 Academics and economics.
Greece’s Varoufakis brings his anti-establishment party to Italy – POLITICO
, 06/12/2022
Yanis Varoufakis tried to rescue Greece from the austerity imposed by the liberal establishment. Then he wanted to rescue the whole EU. Now the motorbike-riding, leather jacket-wearing former Greek finance minister has turned his attention to Italy. “If ever there was a moment it is now,” the economist told POLITICO in an interview to mark the […]
The Techno-Feudal Method to Musk’s Twitter Madness – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 06/12/2022
Immediately after taking over Twitter and pronouncing himself Chief Twit, Elon Musk affirmed his commitment to safeguarding the platform as the “public square” where anything and everything is debated. It was a smart tactic, because it successfully diverted the public’s attention from what Musk is really up to. ATHENS – Elon Musk had good reasons […]
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 […]
Should electricity markets be reformed or disbanded? My debate with Michael Liebreich on Cleaning Up
, 01/11/2022
The other day, Michael Liebreich and I had a lively discussion on his CleaningUp podcast provoked by my call “to blow up the electricity markets”. It was fun but, of course, fell short of a comprehensive analysis of the complex issues pertaining to the political economy of electricity generation and distribution. Following our debate, Michael […]
Iran’s Revolutionary Moment as the Internationalist Left’s Great Challenge – by Shoja Azari
, 24/10/2022
Shoja Azari, is an Iranian visual artist and filmmaker based in New York, working with Sherin Neshat, his life-long partner and comrade, on art projects of note and substance. Their last project is Land of Dreams, a magnificent new film set in the United States but ever so redolent of meaning viz. the New Iranian […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Greek Watergate – UNHERD
, 23/09/2022
Nothing surprises me more than politicians professing to be surprised that their phones have been tapped. In the world revealed to us by Edward Snowden almost a decade ago, no phone is beyond the reach of motivated eavesdroppers. This is not to say, however, that phone-tapping political opponents has lost its capacity to poison democracy. […]
Why energy markets should be dismantled, especially during and after the war in Ukraine – On Democracy Now!
, 18/09/2022
We look at how the Ukraine war is contributing to an energy crisis across Europe with Greek politician and economist Yanis Varoufakis. Last week Russia announced it would not resume sending natural gas to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, blaming Western sanctions for supposed maintenance delays keeping the gas shut off. Prior to […]
Are we Greeks insufferable nationalists? UNHERD
, 18/09/2022
We Greeks have a reputation for being insufferable nationalists, most of whom genuinely believe that Greek culture is superior to that of other nations and peoples. We were even anointed the most culturally chauvinistic Europeans in a recent Pew survey. At the risk of confirming that stereotype, I shall blame it on… foreigners, with their immoderate […]
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 […]
, 18/09/2022
Greeks and other southern Europeans could now be feeling schadenfreude as Germany faces the collapse of its economic model in the face of the Ukraine war and the new cold war with China. But with a democratic Europe in the balance, this is no time to gloat. ATHENS – It is never easy to wake […]
Inflation, socialism’ for corporations & austerity for workers: FORTUNE comments on Yanis Varoufakis’ take
, 18/09/2022
Known for sporting a leather jacket in meetings with foreign dignitaries during his brief stint as Greece’s finance minister in 2015, Yanis Varoufakis has become a bit of a rebel in economic circles. A member of Greece’s Hellenic Parliament and founder of the left-wing European Realistic Disobedience Front, or MeRA25 party, Varoufakis hasn’t historically pulled any […]
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 […]
Chatting with Owen Jones on Rwanda, Brexit, Keir Starmer, Assange, Melenchon, Ukraine and Paul Mason – video
, 20/06/2022
We had a lot to talk about: Britain’s deporting of refugees to Rwanda, how Boris Johnson’s ‘oven-cooked’ Brexit deal is unravelling, Keir Starmer’s dishonest leadership of the Labour party, the political situation in Spain, the revival of the French left, how the horror of the Ukraine war can end, the extradition of Julian Assange, and […]
Should we save capitalism? | Slavoj Žižek, Paul Krugman, Yanis Varoufakis, Shoshana Zuboff, and more – iai video
, 12/06/2022
Leading economists and philosophers discuss in depth the downfall of capitalism and its implications for our social reality. Featuring: Slavoj Žižek, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Shoshana Zuboff, @Yanis Varoufakis, @Mariana Mazzucato , Deirdre McCloskey and Guy Standing. 00:00 | Introduction 00:31 | Paul Krugman 04:07 | Guy Standing 07:01 | Joseph Stiglitz 11:03 | Deirdre […]