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Tag Archives: Essays

DiEM25’s Vision of Europe for the post-Pandemic Era: Some personal thoughts

DiEM25 was created in February 2016 because Europe was disintegrating as a result of a pseudo-technocratic takeover of the EU that was imposing austerity everywhere in response to the financial crisis caused by the EU pseudo-technocracy’s controllers. Today, now that a mindless virus has placed European capitalism in suspended animation, it is time to re-assess our analysis and to re-purpose our policies. Our...

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Reflections on 2019 – my foreword in THE GUARDIAN BEDSIDE 2019

Every year for nearly 70 years, the Guardian has collected the best of its journalism into a book – the BEDSIDE GUARDIAN. This year,  Bedside Guardian 2019 is edited by Aditya Chakrabortty with Paul Johnson, deputy editor, alongside  Jonathan Freedland, Zoe Williams Emma Graham-Harrison. The editors were kind enough to ask me to write the Foreword. As it reflects my take on 2019, I thought posting it here might...

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Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford University

[embedded content] The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of  Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing...

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Im Reich der Gier – der Freitag

Mythos Der Kapitalismus ist entzaubert und bringt uns das größte Faschismusproblem seit den Dreißigern Was im Herbst 2008 an der Wall Street geschah, hatten die allermeisten Menschen bis dahin für unmöglich gehalten, schließlich hatte man ihnen jahrelang weisgemacht, dass etwas Derartiges schlichtweg nicht passieren könnte. Es war, als ob man dabei zuguckt, wie die Sonne, kurz nachdem sie am Horizont aufgeht,...

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The Globalising Wall: How Globalisation built walls and divisions. By Y. Varoufakis & D. Stratou, in the Architectural Review

Our theme is a wall. A wall that is neither some ordinary physical structure at a specific site, nor a symbolic wall. It takes a material form in sites around the globe while transcending locations and leapfrogging whole continents as if in a strange quest to globalise itself, to infect our supposedly unifying world with a sinister, impenetrable division – a wall that is so familiar and yet so inconvenient that...

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The terrible prophesies of Brexit – op-ed in literary magazine FIVE DIALS

Brexit rode to victory on the coat-tails of a type of discontent whose power sprang from its insuperable reluctance to specify its nature. Seemingly focused on a foreign power centre that British voters saw (with some justification) as the usurper of their democratic rights, its real focal point was nebulous and imprecise enough to encompass a potent mix of grievances. The unifying force behind the variety of...

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Marx predicted our present crisis; and points the way out – The Guardian, LONG READ, 20 APR 2018, print and audio versions

For a manifesto to succeed, it must speak to our hearts like a poem while infecting the mind with images and ideas that are dazzlingly new. It needs to open our eyes to the true causes of the bewildering, disturbing, exciting changes occurring around us, exposing the possibilities with which our current reality is pregnant. It should make us feel hopelessly inadequate for not having recognised these truths...

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Internationalism vs Globalisation: Why progressives across Europe and beyond must forge a common internationalist movement – Talk at the Royal Festival Hall, accompanied by Andreas Gursky’s images and Danae Stratou’s ‘The Globalising Wall), 9 APR 2018

Ladies and Gentlemen, my heartfelt thanks for your presence here tonight. Thanks also to the good people at South Bank who honoured me with the humbling idea and invitation to combine my own musings on globalisation with the remarkable images of Andreas Gursky – images which have, over the years, done so much to enlighten us regarding the topsy-turvy world that we have been helping bring about. Yes, a picture is...

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SHAKING THE SUPERFLUX: Shakespeare, economics, and the possibility of justice – 6th Annual Shakespeare Rose Lecture, 19th March 2018, Rose Theatre, Kingston

Full script of my lecture at the Rose Theatre on Shakespeare: Since brevity is, indeed, the soul of wit, let me begin by stating the obvious: I am as qualified to deliver an annual Shakespeare lecture in this splendid theatre as an ant that walks in wonder on an iPhone is able to explain the mystery that goes on under its feet. When Professor Richard Wilson approached me out of the blue, during some political...

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