IMAGINE THE REACTION if Finance Minister, Grant Robertson,
announced a broad-ranging, government-sponsored seminar on progressive economics
chaired by Yanis Varoufakis. Vilified and demonized by EU bankers and
politicians for his heterodox economic ideas, Varoufakis resigned as Greece’s
Finance Minister in 2015 rather than impose yet another of the European Central
Bank’s crushing economic diktats on his impoverished homeland.
Inviting Varoufakis to chair a seminar on progressive
economics would constitute the clearest possible proof that the Labour-NZ First
Coalition’s promise to be a “transformational government” was genuine.
International and domestic market reaction to such an announcement would,
however, be instantaneous and extreme. New Zealand’s government would be
portrayed as having taken leave of its senses.
And, in many respects, the markets would be right.
Varoufakis is one of neoliberal capitalism’s most outspoken and acute critics.
Winston Peters might have declared his determination to give capitalism a human
face, but Varoufakis would likely argue that the necessary transplant operation
would entail far more effort than it was worth! Hardly surprising given his
belief that the leading capitalist nations have been waging an unrelenting war
on their poorest citizens for the past forty years.
Writing for the latest newsletter of Project Syndicate, Varoufakis marvels at the “bourgeois rage”
directed at the “militant parochialists” responsible for Brexit and Trump:
“The range of analysis is staggering. The rise of militant
parochialism on both sides of the Atlantic is being investigated from every
angle imaginable: psychoanalytically, culturally, anthropologically,
aesthetically, and of course in terms of identity politics. The only angle that
is left largely unexplored is the one that holds the key to understanding what
is going on: the unceasing class war unleashed upon the poor since the late
1970s.”
As evidence for his class war claim, Varoufakis presents the
following stark statistics:
“In 2016, the year of both Brexit and Trump, two pieces of
data, dutifully neglected by the shrewdest of establishment analysts, told the
story. In the United States, more than half of American families did not
qualify, according to Federal Reserve data, to take out a loan that would allow
them to buy the cheapest car for sale (the Nissan Versa sedan, priced at
$US12,825). Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, over 40% of families relied on
either credit or food banks to feed themselves and cover basic needs.”
Unleashing Varoufakis on the equivalent New Zealand data
would doubtless produce a series of equally startling conclusions. Which is why
Grant Robertson, himself, would, almost certainly, resign rather than invite
someone like Varoufakis to draw the obvious policy conclusions from the last 30
years of class war in New Zealand – especially since many of that war’s most
destructive campaigns were conducted under the generalship of Labour Party
politicians!
Robertson’s pitch to New Zealand’s capitalist class is very
different from Varoufakis’s unabashed “economic humanism”. Only this morning,
(11/12/17) speaking to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Robertson declared:
“For us to keep being able to afford the policies necessary
to achieve higher living standards we must remain fiscally responsible. It goes
without saying that a Government that presides over high deficits, increasing
debt, or a shrinking economy could not provide the quality public services that
New Zealanders want and deserve. That is why we have developed and committed to
our Budget Responsibility Rules.”
Which is precisely the sort of language that Varoufakis
encountered when he travelled to Brussels on his doomed missions to secure a
more rational approach to managing the consequences of Greece’s crippling
indebtedness. That Robertson shows every sign of being as committed to
following “the rules” as the European Central Bank’s pitiless bailiffs,
strongly suggests that, even if he could, somehow, be prevailed upon to
organise a seminar on progressive economics, and invite Varoufakis to chair it,
the maverick Greek economist would feel obliged to decline.
The former Greek Finance Minister’s own experience tells him
that “the rules” formulated by the world’s economic and political elites; “the
rules” bankers and politicians consider themselves bound in solemn duty to
uphold and enforce at all costs; are, in reality, no more than “the rules of
engagement” in neoliberal capitalism’s “unceasing class war” against the poor.
If Varoufakis was ever to accept an invitation to chair a government-sponsored
seminar on progressive economics, it would only be because he had already been
convinced, by their actions, that the politicians asking him to elaborate a
more “transformational” political economy were rule-breakers – not
rule-keepers.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 12 December 2017.
