Yanis Varoufakis on Privatization, Human Rights & Capitalism
acTVism Munich Rewind Video: Yanis Varoufakis talks about Privatization, Human Rights & Capitalism.
Notable excerpt from the video:
"Zain Raza: Let's move on to
some topics that I think require more scrutiny. Wolfgang Schäuble,
followed by the media here, made a big fuss about Greece's moral
obligations to pay its debt. The media here in Germany hasn't made much
fuss about the moral obligation to end the suffering of the Greek people
- I want to test the "Memorandum of Understanding" and its
"compatibility with the "Declaration of Human Rights" and I've picked
two articles from the declaration and let's go through them together
and I want to know your opinions about them, whether they are compatible
or not.
Article I:
“All human beings are born free equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscious and should act towards one another in a
spirit of brotherhood.” Your opinion?
Yanis Varoufakis:
Well, it's a very fine piece of text, but it is not particularly
pertinent when it comes to the policies of the European Troika, as
anyone with experience with those machinations know. But let me make a
very simple point: Capitalism only flourished when moralizing about debt
ended. Let me remind you, that there used to be debt prisons in the
19th century. If you were a businessman and you lost your capacity to
repay your debt, you ended up in debt prison - effectively you were
finished as a human being, you lost your human rights, your dignity.
Capitalism only took off when the concept of limited liability was
introduced - You can start a business, you can fail, but that doesn't
mean that your kids are going to end up in a debt prison.
When we
are brining a moralizing agenda back into the midst of a crisis like the
one we are having in the Eurozone, what we are doing is [that] we're
undermining the very principles of capitalism and it takes a left-winger
in order to say that. So even if you are a liberal who believes in the
market's capacity to bring about a miracle of growth and stability and
so on and so forth - this kind of moralizing and finger pointing is not
helpful and must end and let's not forget that Germany was given an
opportunity to pick itself up from the boot straps in 1953, only due to
the American's insistence that the London Conference in 1953 should
write off more than 60% of German debt in order to allow this country to
fulfil the speech of hope that secretary Barnes issued in Stuttgart. If
we condemn a whole generation to permanent poverty because of debts
that should have never been accumulated, we are doing a major disservice
to Europe."
