Yanis Varoufakis, fake Marxist saving European capitalism

 

In several articles and an interview Varoufakis claims to be an erratic Marxist. Michael Roberts comments that Varoufakis is more about burying Marx and keeping Keynes alive. Unlike Piketty, Varoufakis at least has read Marx even if he got stuck on the maths in Capital Volume 2.  He cannot forgive Marx’s basic errors that led to dogmatism and authoritarianism. He was “dogmatic” and produced a “closed system” based on his exposition of capitalism on his Volume 2 ‘reproduction schemas’. Keynes, however, was genius because...

“It was this determination to “have the ‘complete’, ‘closed’ story, or model, the ‘final word’, is something I cannot forgive Marx for. It proved, after all, responsible for a great deal of error and, more significantly, of authoritarianism. Errors and authoritarianism that are largely responsible for the Left’s current impotence as a force of good and as a check on the abuses of reason and liberty that the neoliberal crew are overseeing today.”

Robert’s continues: “This erratic Marxist, now negotiating with the neo-liberal Euro leaders aims “to save European capitalism from itself” so as to “minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis; the countless lives whose prospects will be further crushed without any benefit whatsoever for the future generations of Europeans.” Apparently socialism cannot do this. YV says “we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapsing European capitalism will open up with a functioning socialist system”.

“Instead, according to YV, “a Marxist analysis of both European capitalism and of the Left’s current condition compels us to work towards a broad coalition, even with right-wingers, the purpose of which ought to be the resolution of the Eurozone crisis and the stabilisation of the European Union… Ironically, those of us who loathe the Eurozone have a moral obligation to save it!” Thus YV has campaigned for his Modest Proposal for Europe with “the likes of Bloomberg and New York Times journalists, of Tory members of Parliament, of financiers who are concerned with Europe’s parlous state.”

Let’s see what the Greek people think of this attempt to “save European capitalism from itself.”