Under the Skin - Yanis Varoufakis Flashcards
Yanis Varoufakis Books:
Adults in the Room: My battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment
And the weak suffer what they must: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability
Talking to my Daughter about the Economy: A brief history of capitalism
Karl Marx was responsible for framing his perspective of the world we live in. Marx left an indelible imprint on his thinking.
What caught his eye was Marx’s mesmerising gift for writing a dramatic script for human history, indeed for human damnation, that was also laced with the possibility of salvation and authentic spirituality.
This podcast asks: is it possible to change the world?
Greece was effectively a Dickensian prison camp by 2010/11 - there was universal bankruptcy. Everyone owed everyone and nobody could pay.
The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
2011 protests in Athens - oxygen of hope. The smell of CS gas was the smell of freedom.
The parliamentarians didn’t even want to vote for the austerity bills but they had a gun to their head.
Young protestor screamed at an MP, “Just vote No.”
The MP got angry and said “Who are you to tell me what to do?”
She replied “Who do I have to be?” Sometimes a single voice speaks for a collective consciousness.
The protests were quashed through police action. However, a movement begun and led to a political party culminating in Yanis becoming Finance Minister.
Alienation is the ultimate form of slavery. The worst form of slavery is one that is volunteered into.
The democratic process is a fig leaf for oligarchy.
Oligarchy: a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
There were 2 adversaries: the aristocrats (against democracy) and the democrats. Interestingly, the democrats were against elections because they saw them as an instrument of the oligarchy. What they preferred were lotteries (this is where the jury system came from.) The oligarchy wanted elections because they could win them.
Aristotle said that democracy should be governance by the poor.
Aristocracy: a class of persons holding exceptional rank and privileges, especially the hereditary nobility.
Corbyn’s manifesto was condemned as the longest suicide note in history.
Faith is important in life. We cannot even prove our existence scientifically.
Every system of belief is based on faith. Logic and reason is built on top of this.
What is the notion of faith fuelled from?
Alienation is a spiritual thing: life has no purpose or meaning, you’re a cog in a machine, tourists looking at pointless distractions, ashen faces, jobs people don’t enjoy.
We are not simply a mechanical model governed by entropy.
No authoritarian system can reproduce itself purely on violence alone.
What keeps authoritarian systems (even capitalism) under control?
The ideology of the authoritarian system is reproduced and legitimised in the minds of the oppressed. That’s alienation.
One of the instruments by which the masses are repressed is organised religion. The Pope, priest, King was always on the right hand side of the despot.
The impetus for religion is the need to have a connection with the system that governs us.
Why do we only see things within the framework of free-market Keynesian economics?
The moment you remove human transcendence from economics, you end up with terrible politics and ethics.
Otherwise, we hit the wall of analytical reasoning.
Our economists today are much dumber than those of the 1960s. Economics and social theory are not a science. Economics is a belief system.
The weather does not give a damn what you think about it.
The only way to become free of superstition is to study it.
I believe in theology as an atheist. It is essential to know what you are criticising.
The free market is a God, in whose belief we are invited to engage because it serves the powerful. It is a deity constructed by man in order to impose power.
Should there be a new story for the 21st century?
What underlines the process we disdain is the commodification of everything. We have commodified genetics, woman’s wombs, space etc.
The substitution of human values for exchange values needs to be stopped.
Higher education has been commodified to such an extent that it is no fun anymore.
If there is no story to the human soul what should we do?
How can we break the spell of commodification, materialism and individualism?
Very simple - we must decouple the material from the commodity. Think of a small child giving a drawing to a parent.
The spirit is the most important thing.
I despise the atheists who are scornful of non-atheists.
Religious people might be able to experience the human condition in a superior way by embracing the story.
Alienation is what kills the human spirit and it is the number one enemy.
It denies the connection between human beings and it prioritises the idea of our individual lives.
There is such a thing as purpose and connection. If these ideals are not leveraged in the systems we organise, we are fucked.
The concept of the individual is a highly problematic one. We must blame the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Smith and David Hume.
The concept of ‘I’ was alien to the Ancient Greeks. Politics comes from ‘polis’ meaning city state.
The only way to become human is to reflect about other people’s lives.
It’s no wonder that Thatcher said ‘there is no such thing as society’. ‘Economics is the method. The object is to change the soul’.
We have to find it impossible to conceptualise ourselves individually.
There is no individual without relationship.
The narrative of the individual is a useful tool in this continued alienation. Millions of individuals are easy opponents for the powerful: divide and rule.
We must challenge the sacred cow of free-market Keynesian economics.
If we are going to challenge the process of commodification and right of the bourgeoise, we have to contest the concept of borders.
Avatar:
1/ a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.
2/ an icon or figure representing you in a video game
I’m a patriot but not a nationalist. There is a big difference. Nationalism is a toxic form of patriotism,
Inside me there is deep infatuation with self, ego and power.
There is a nano-Hitler inside all of us that wants power.
Was Macbeth really powerful? He was going from one crime to the other in an existentialist panic over the lack of control in his life. This is why we need theatre, music and the arts. If you don’t have this background, then you wouldn’t realise that the political encounters are games, whereby ministers/bureaucrats are pawns or subjugated players in a larger drama.
Marx describes so beautifully the epic drama of capitalism. Rather than the machines becoming our slaves, we become their slaves. The capitalist desperately does not want to become one of the workers, so he loses his humanity by squeezing the living daylights out of them.
In the end the workers become alienated, and the capitalist owners are never able to achieve happiness.
Marx’s view of capitalism is not so much that it’s unfair or unequal, it’s one where every member of humanity is condemned to a substandard life including the capitalists, who are also subjugated by their ideology.
A significant argument for feminism is that patriarchy is bad for men as well.
Patriarchy: a system that privileges men and masculinity as better than and more respected than women
Feminism: the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men
I don’t believe in God but I believe in the Scriptures.
There is a Nuremberg in my soul and everyone is invited.
At their annual party rally, the Nazis announce new laws that revoke Reich citizenship for Jews and prohibit Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood.” “Racial infamy,” as this becomes known, is made a criminal offense. The Nuremberg Laws define a “Jew” as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classify as Jews thousands of people who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.
“Wenn es einem Gott gibt, muss er mich um Verseihung bitten.”
“If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness” -a phrase carved into a Jewish cell by a concentration camp in Mauthausen.
Thatcher was a fascinating person. Theresa May is bland.
Thatcher was a fantastic character. She was a powerful woman.
The monster is the false opposition between the deep establishment (large corporations, Wall Street, City of London where power is entrenched), which has a manner for reproducing itself. This was defeated in the Trump election and the Brexit vote.
And the right wing nationalists reminiscent of the 1930s fascist movement, seemingly anti-establishment and against the financial sector.
Take France: Emmanuel Macron would never have won if Marine Le Pen (false opposition) was not the main opponent. They are unwitting accomplices. They are symbiotic - having an interdependent relationship.
By leaving the EU, the UK will be more vulnerable to the establishment and the British ruling class.
Faith deployed correctly is an understanding that we don’t know.
Democracy is the appropriate regime for people who don’t know what all the answers are.
The more crowdfunding we do of ideas the better the chances we have of confronting this sameness. What do people talk about at West London dinner parties? - second mortgages.
