Yanis Varoufakis

Beginnings: From the dictatorship of the Colonels to the tyranny of economics

I was born in Athens back in the mists of 1961. Greece was, at the time, struggling to shed the post-civil war veil of totalitarianism. Alas, those hopes were dashed after a brief period of hope and promise. So, by the time I was six, in April of 1967, a military coup d’ etat plunged us all into the depths of a hideous neo-Nazi dictatorship. Those bleak days remain with me. They endowed me with a sense of what it means to be both unfree and, at once, convinced that the possibilities for progress and improvement are endless. The dictatorship collapsed when I was at junior high school. This meant that the enthusiasm and political renaissance that followed the junta’s collapse coincided with my coming of age. It was to prove a significant factor in the way that I resisted conversion to the ways of Anglo-saxon cynicism in the years to come.

When the time came to decide on my post-secondary education, around 1976, the prospect of another dictatorship had not been erased. Given that students were the first and foremost targets of the military and paramilitary forces, my parents determined that it was too risky for me to stay on in Greece and attend University there. So, off I went, in 1978, to study in Britain.
> more

Techno-Feudalism and the End of Capitalism

Apr 30, 2021 – Left-wing economist Yanis Varoufakis tells us about his (proposed) post-capitalist utopia, ahead of his appearance at Sheffield’s Festival of Debate on 7 May.
> nowthenmagazine.com/yanis-varoufakis-techno-feudalism-and-the-end-of-capitalism