The Digger

Excerpts: This text deals with strategy, but strategy cannot be seen separate from people and their histories and actions. SYRIZA has always been an uneasy conglomerate of groups of many political persuasions, but ever since it came to power in January 2015, until its capitulation seven months later, two main fractions fought a fierce fight. On one side, there was the heterogeneous left, which wanted to make good on the electoral promise (the Thessaloniki program): there was going to be no austerity any longer, Greece would negotiate a debt write off and if the Troika pushed the country to the brink, the group advocated leaving the euro zone. The leadership, on the other side, also wanted to end austerity. But under no condition was it willing to exit the euro zone. As Lapavitsas explains, the Syriza leadership convinced itself that if it rejected a new bailout, European lenders would buckle in the face of financial and political unrest. The mastermind of this strategy was Yanis...

Excerpts: Inequality is an issue everywhere. Corporate profits have never been higher, labor’s share of national income has almost never been lower, and inflation has been replaced by deflation. Is there a set of economic ideas, a new economic paradigm that can help to reverse this situation? I do not think that it is helpful to think in terms of paradigms. Paradigms imply giant interconnected sets of ideas where everything presents itself neatly, and you choose between clear options. Think about neo-nationalism. We’ve just mentioned that there are two strains. According to the country you look at, you may find even more strains. Let’s take the case of Sweden. Why are the Swedish extreme right doing so well? To me the most convincing explanation is not immigration, because that does not really move that much in the polls. And it is certainly not inequality because Sweden is still one of the most equal societies on the planet. The answer has to do with the fact that for many yea...