Eric
Draitser sits down with economist, and former Greek finance minister,
Yanis Varoufakis to discuss the shifts in the political landscape of
both Europe and the US, and what they mean for political activism and
progressive politics. Eric and Yanis discuss the nature of the EU and
whether it can be reformed or democratized, as well as the forces at
play within it. The conversation also touches on the US election as
Yanis and Eric debate the utility of "lesser evil"
politics, while also examining the ascendance of the fascist right in
Europe and the US, with particular attention to the Brexit vote and
its implications. The bond bubble and potential economic collapse,
the long view of the 2008 crisis, the importance of addressing
climate change, the necessity of internationalism, and many other
topics are discussed in this wide-ranging interview with one of the
best economic minds in the world today.
Some
interesting parts of Varoufakis' comments:
Brexit is
also an economic phenomenon. It's not just a political revolt against
the elites, against the EU, against the city of London - the bankers.
The main reason why the English, not the British, the English working
class voted to get out of the EU, is the slow burning recession. The
fact that living standards in almost every town outside of London,
within England is depressed. You walk through city centers in
Doncaster, in Leeds, in York and all you find is misery and
desperation. A whole working class feels utterly abandoned by the
elites, even by the Labor Party, the Social-Democrats, and this is
the reason why Brexit won.
The period
between 2010 and today can be seen from a Greek perspective as an
experiment. Greece was a laboratory in which the
globalized/financialized elites experimented with how they would try
to deal with a crisis of their own making. And the experiment
produced monsters. One of these monsters is the neo-nazis of Golden
Dawn. The Donald Trump experience is also quite intimately connected.
The very notion that you have somebody like Trump running as
candidate of one of the two major political parties in the US, back
in 2010-2012 it would be absurd.
The cruel,
vicious austerity policies that were created in the Greek laboratory
were then exported to the rest of Europe. This experiment backfired
because you can never deal with financial crisis through austerity.
This is one thing we've learned from the early 1930s which gave rise
to the nazis in Germany. A period of deflation gave rise to the worst
kind of xenophobic Right-Wing populism. And this is what we have in
the form of the Golden Dawn thugs hitting Greece, Donald Trump in the
US, the Right-Wing Brexiters in Britain.
What we have
now is a bifurcation, word-wide not just in Greece, we are seeing the
formation of two political blocs. One is very similar to the troika
of creditors that we had to deal with in Greece last year, who
crushed us in the end. It's a technocracy of globalized, financial
capital, together with bureaucrats that want to spread their wings
and power globally. They also corporate Atlanticists, those who want
to utilize brute force in order to become, or remain the policemen of
the Cosmos. This political bloc of globalized, financialized
Atlanticists have developed a capacity to be more tolerant with
minorities, less tolerant with racism, quite relaxed about migration,
as long as it doesn't threaten their political capital.
In
opposition to that, we have the xenophobic Populist Right, which is
investing on racism, fear and nativist myths about the return to some
kind of kingship within the nation-state where you erect walls around
your country the riffraff away.
It is this
toxic confrontation between the nativists xenophobic Populist Right
and the financialized, globalized Atlanticists pack who don't even
know how to stabilize the world that they aspired to create. This
conflict is always going to give rise to rather unpleasant
developments for the whole of humanity.
Hillary
Clinton never was and never will be part of the Left. The
Social-Democrats in Germany are part of the problem, not part of the
solution. We have an opportunity now to cease upon the way this
global economic and political crisis is developing, in order to do
what we failed to do in the 1930s. In other words, to create a solid,
internationalist, progressive bloc that opposes the vicious cycle
between the globalization elites and the xenophobic populist reaction
to it.
Hillary
Clinton is part of the problem. Hillary Clinton run an outrageously,
scandalously, sinister campaign against Bernie Sanders. Hillary
Clinton is in the pocket of the establishment. Hillary Clinton will
probably start another war.
The crisis
that hit us in 2008 has never gone away. It is simply transforming
itself taking different guises and different parts of the world even
within our own countries. One day it's the crisis of banks, the next
day it's the crisis of real investment, the third day it's the crisis
of deteriorating the jobs' quality and so on. But the crisis of
Capitalism that hit us in 2008, just like the crisis of Capitalism
that hit in 1929 did not go away until the beginning of the WWII.
If you look
at the 1920s and 1930s, fascism became dominant, hegemonic and took
over governments with mass support, only when industrial capital, at
some point, in order to stem the rise of the Left Wing that was
antithetical to capital's interests, threw their lot in with the
fascists. It was the support of industrialists in Germany and Italy
that gave rise to the nazis and the fascist governments. So far, the
establishment, the financialized capital, military-industrial complex
and so on, have not thrown the lot in with the fascists movements.
It's what keeping them from power, but we should not take it for
granted that this won't happen and we should be prepared.
Full
interview:
I can see this clearly. So far the Oligarchs have settled for indirect control through a purchased Kleptocracy. Let Sanders or Warren win, and this will change to direct control via marshal law or extension of the Imperial Presidency to fight some supposed crisis. The new president might not even get to take office.
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ReplyDeletecourtesy of ClubOLov.blogspot.gr, :
Delete" A 2014 study, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page conclusively showed how the preferences of average citizens matter not a whit, while those of moneyed elites and interest groups certainly do."
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ReplyDeleteVaroufakis: The Anti-Russian Trojan Horse Exposed
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