Solidarity 424, 30 November 2016

On 23 January 2015, several days after being named as the Finance Minister of the new Greek government, Yanis Varoufakis answered questions from Channel Four. His first objective, he explained, was to take emergency steps to reduce the social effects of the crisis, and the third was to re-negotiate the debt. Between these two, and before even getting to the question of the debt, Varoufakis named as his target the system of oligarchy: “We are going to destroy the Greek oligarchy system”. These intentions were not followed through with, but Varoufakis clearly understood that a double rupture was...

Newly-elected US president Trump will surely hack back migrants', workers', women's, and civil rights; speed environmental destruction; and raise risks of war, especially with Iran. He may also disrupt the large trends which have allowed capitalist growth for 60-plus years. A trade-liberalising, world-market-boosting trend, embedded in institutions keystoned by the USA, was launched in 1947 and has emerged from five major convulsions since then strengthened or intact. It survived the US dollar's breaking of its link with gold, in 1971, and the crises of the 1970s: in fact, global financial...