Yanis Varoufakis argues that the left, originally focused on liberation from economic and social oppression, gradually abandoned its commitment to freedom. Instead, different factions of the left prioritized state-controlled equality (in the East, e.g., USSR, China, etc.) or social justice within capitalism (in the West, e.g., social democrats in Germany, Britain, etc.), both at the expense of true emancipation.
Key points:
- Early leftist movements, including Marxism and feminism, were primarily about freedom from exploitation, not just equality or fairness.
- The 1914 split between pro-Soviet and social-democratic factions led to both sides abandoning their original commitment to freedom.
- The Soviet Union’s central planning (Gosplan) aimed to replace markets but ultimately mirrored corporate algorithms like Amazon's, except optimized for party control rather than private profit.
- Western social democrats accepted capitalism’s dominance but sought to redistribute wealth rather than challenge economic power.
- With the left abandoning the cause of freedom, libertarians co-opted the concept, reducing it to corporate and market freedom rather than human emancipation.
- Yanis calls for the left to reclaim liberation as its core goal, rather than settling for managed capitalism or authoritarian egalitarianism.
In essence, the argument is that the left lost its way when it stopped prioritizing freedom and became focused on either state control or market-based social justice, leaving libertarians to hijack the idea of liberty.
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Part 2: Watch the full episode: Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (w/ Yanis Varoufakis)