Yanis Varoufakis – Michal Rozworski

Europe ready to kill Greece to keep TINA alive

My latest piece on Greece was published yesterday at Ricochet. In short, Europe and the IMF’s message that ‘there still is no alternative’ proves that objective of punitive austerity is political, not economic. Here it is in full:

The project’s aim is to make an example of Greece and solidify austerity as the only option within a Europe united by elite interests. Emergency summits, duelling proposals, trickles of banking system support and stern warnings create an economic veneer to paper over ultimately political aims.

Take the latest “compromise” proposal made yesterday by Greece’s ruling party Syriza. It offers a whopping additional €8 billion in austerity measures over the next year and a half. These measures amount to 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2015 and nearly 3 per cent of GDP in 2016. Rather than a compact for growth, or even stability, Europe has squeezed out yet more painful austerity that will make it much harder for Greece to escape its 21st-century Great Depression.

It is “not the right moment” to discuss debt relief, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU Commission, was quoted saying, despite the increasing concessions. This is the political, not economic, function of the Greek debt. It’s not the right moment economically to discuss the debt because Greece has long been insolvent, its debt repayments kept on track by drip-fed funding via subsequent agreements of austerity. Politically, it’s never the right moment, because each new agreement maintains austerity as the only possible option.

Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek elections plus the state of the left in Poland

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I’ve been visiting family in Poland for the past few weeks so, fittingly, this week’s podcast deals with the situation of the left at two opposite ends of the European periphery: Greece and Poland. My first guest is Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics at the University of Athens and candidate for SYRIZA in this Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Syriza is the main Greek left party and is poised to take the most votes, potentially even form a parliamentary majority, on Sunday. Yanis spoke with me about Greece’s economy on the eve of the elections and Syriza’s economic program.

My second guest is Jakub Dymek, Polish academic, journalist and editor. Jakub is, among other things, the Polish correspondent for Dissent Magazine and a member of the editorial collective of Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), the major journal of Poland’s “New Left”. Unlike its Greek counterpart, Poland’s electoral left is currently at its lowest point since the post-Communist transition. I spoke with Jakub to get a sense of this electoral decline, the situation of left social movements and the future prospects of Poland’s left.

Very briefly, I say that Greece and Poland are at the opposite ends of the European periphery for two reasons. First, Greece has undergone years of recession and brutal austerity in response to the global crisis of 2007/8; Poland, on the other hand, has managed to grow through the crisis, at least according to the major economic measures. Greece and Poland are also opposed when it comes to the fortunes of the electoral left. It is in Greece that the left has may well take government this Sunday or at least become the largest force in parliament, whereas in Poland the electoral left is currently virtually non-existent. Looking at these two lefts and the political economic conditions that led to their different fortunes makes for a fruitful juxtaposition.