Yanis Varoufakis. Demotix/spirofoto. All rights reserved.Over the past few months the world has witnessed the short career of a Greek government vainly endeavouring to uphold an anti-austerity platform against the implacable power of the Eurozone’s financial institutions. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek Minister for Finance, was a central player in this drama. Interestingly, this political maverick did not play his part to the standard script. The distinctive characteristics of Varoufakis’ mode and purpose in politics are both troubling as regards what they tells us about the norms of contemporary politics, and fascinating as a possible paradigm for a new type of politics in the age of twitter and the blog.
Strangely, one of the most disturbing aspects of Varoufakis’ stint as a Finance Minister concerns the fact that he is an economist. One thing we now readily assume is that economics is the language of power. This gives academic economists a status somewhat like a theologian in relation to the practical priestcraft of public office. However, there are very few professors of economics that actually get into office as politicians, just as you seldom get institutionally savvy bishops or mega-church leaders who are serious theologians. When an economist becomes a politician, this is going to be interesting.
In a few short months, Varoufakis completely exploded the idea that economics is the language of power. What we saw when an actual economist landed in the middle of the Eurozone crisis is that the most basic truths about economic reality have nothing to do with power. The idea that asphyxiating Greek banks and killing the Greek state is good for its economy makes no economic sense at all. The idea that continuing to pursue a savagely contractionary austerity agenda will make it possible to generate sustained state surpluses large enough to repay impossible debt burdens, defies any sort of economic rationality. The conviction that it is somehow both moral and necessary to fiscally execute the Greek polity or eject Greece in order to preserve the financial integrity of the Eurozone, is not a stance grounded in economic science.
