Wednesday 18 February 2015

Yanis Varoufakis, on Marxism, Capitalism and Thatcherism; Greece, Minister of Finance




"How I became an erratic Marxist" by Yanis Varoufakis

"Before he entered politics, Yanis Varoufakis, the iconoclastic Greek finance minister at the centre of the latest eurozone standoff, wrote this searing account of European capitalism and and how the left can learn from Marx’s mistakes".

From The Guardian, read this long article adapted from a lecture originally delivered at the 6th Subversive Festival in Zagreb in 2013

Excerpt:

"My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair".

Related:

Wall Street Journal

"Mr. Varoufakis said his disagreements with the rest of the eurozone are over economics, not style. Monday night’s meeting started awkwardly. Mr. Varoufakis walked in 20 minutes late followed by a television camera as Mr. Draghi was speaking, officials said. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who leads the meetings, interrupted Mr. Draghi and angrily told the cameraman to leave.“I am being treated as a strange bird because I talk macroeconomics,” he said in an interview. “It’s astonishing to me that having a quasi-sophisticated discussion of economics is almost considered to be bad manners.” Mr. Varoufakis’s entrance didn’t go down well with several officials. One said afterward it was another example of his grandstanding for the media".
When will the money run out? (The Guardian)

Euroworking Group on Thursday? (Kathimerini)

Greek submission on Thursday...

Mats Persson, The Telegraph


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