SPEAKERS Yanis Varoufakis: Greek MP & former finance minister of Greece and author of Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present Gillian Tett: Chairman of the US editorial board and U.S editor-at-large at the Financial Times Gillian Tett is the pioneering columnist who has spent the last decade documenting the rise of ‘conscious capitalism’, a movement led […]
Essays
My farewell to Mikis Theodorakis – Der Freitag
I must have been 6 or 7 years-old when I got whiff of the significance of Theodorakis’ music. It was around 1968 when my parents warned me not to tell anyone at school or in the neighbourhood that they owned records of his – and certainly not to admit that we listened to them. “Even […]
Remembering Mikis Theodorakis – BBC Radio 4, The World Tonight
My first inkling that his music was significant was when my parents warned me – I must have been 6 or 7 yrs old – that merely whistling a Theodorakis tune was an arrestable offence – such was the fear that his music caused in the minds of our fascist rulers during the awful dictatorship […]
Star Trek versus Imperialist Doctrine – Common Dreams & Project Syndicate
America’s liberal imperialist doctrine has been responsible for appalling carnage in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Central America. But America has also produced a liberal anti-imperialist doctrine that remains ensconced in a TV series that has been captivating US audiences since 1966. ATHENS – On February 9, 1967, hours after the US Air Force pounded […]
Lessons from this summer’s calamitous Greek forests inferno – The Guardian
After the second world war, Greece’s countryside experienced two debilitating human surges – an exodus of villagers, then a most peculiar human invasion of its fringes. These two surges, aided by a weak state and abetted by the climate crisis, have turned the low-level drama of naturally redemptive forest fires into this summer’s heart-wrenching catastrophe. […]
What is money, really? And why Bitcoin is not the answer (even if blockchain is brilliant & potentially helpful in democratising money)
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 […]
A central bank cryptocurrency to democratise money – Project Syndicate & Jordan Times
The history of money has been the history of the struggles to control the payment system and the money tree. Today, with control over both resting in the hands of bankers, central banks’ efforts to boost business end up amplifying inequality while failing to address either economic stagnation or the looming climate disaster. The time […]
From the creation of DiEM25 to Technofeudalism’s takeover during the pandemic – in conversation with The Cambridge Journal of LAW, POLITICS & ART
To read the interview pdf form, click here Click here for the Journal’s site.
Central bank independence is a myth. What about green central banking? – op-ed in Green Central Banking
Last week the ECB announced its new policy of ‘going green’. How can a conventional central bank do this? Only by discriminating against bonds and equities issued by companies damaging the environment that it accepts as collateral, or which it buys, in return for loans ‘greening’ its purchase/acceptance policy. Is ‘green central banking’ a move […]
Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over – Project Syndicate op-ed
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 […]
Revisiting the causes & effects of Brexit – New Statesman video interview
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 […]
Is Universal Basic Income a good idea? My debate with Daron Acemoglou on Pairagraph
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 […]
Where is Global Capitalism Going? My discussion with Ammar Ali Jan on the occasion of the 1st Anniversary of the Progressive International
Honouring the one-year anniversary of the Progressive International, Council members Yanis Varoufakis and Ammar Ali Jan engage in a wide-ranging debate about the direction of global capitalism in a turbulent age of crisis, pandemic, and political unrest. Ammar Ali Jan is a historian and member of Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement in Pakistan. Yanis Varoufakis is Member of […]
Η κρυφή γοητεία της Λιτότητας
Αν η Λιτότητα είναι μια ιδέα τόσο κακή όσο λέω ότι είναι, κι η εφαρμογή της συρρικνώνει την οικονομική δραστηριότητα ακόμα και των ισχυρών, τότε γιατί είναι τόσο δημοφιλής μεταξύ των κραταιών της γης; Κατά τη δεκαετία του 1840, ο Τόμας Πηλ αποφάσισε να μεταναστεύσει από την Αγγλία στον Κύκνειο Ποταμό της Δυτικής Αυστραλίας. Ευκατάστατος […]