Posted on February
16, 2016 by yanisv
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/02/16/bernie-sanders-backers-arent-voting-for-socialism/
WRITTEN BY Tim Fernholz
The last socialist to freak
out the establishment with a radical plan, former Greek finance minister
Yanis Varoufakis, said Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders is earning votes for his common sense, not his political theory, in
a recent Quora post:
Last year, the Greeks elected
people like me not because they suddenly became leftwing! Similarly with Bernie
Sanders. The New Hampshire voters did not suddenly discover they were
democratic… socialists! They just had enough of phoney politics and decided to
back someone who has been saying the same common sense stuff for decades. They
would not vote for a ‘transition to socialism’ (like my voters would not have
voted me in last year if I was proposing such a ‘transition’ to them).
But they understand that
Bernie and us—his comrades on the Atlantic’s other side—are modest in our aims.
We understand that socialism is far, far away—and that it will probably only
become pertinent when technology develops further … For now, all we propose is
the return to basic liberal democratic principles that the establishment has
confined to the dustbin of history—at the cost of everyone (except some, very
few, entrepreneurial spivs).
Varoufakis captivated the
media with his long-shot efforts to push his country out of a punishing debt
repayment plan, but they ended in his own resignation and national capitulation
to the EU’s unrealistic demands. Last week, the IMF official in charge of
monitoring Greecewrote
that that the country’s inadequate pension reforms and the EU’s refusal to consider
debt relief mean a Greek exit from the euro zone will soon be back on the
table.
In contrast, Sanders’ plans
for the US, including single-payer healthcare and publicly funded education,
are well within the political mainstream of Europe—even in tight-fisted
Germany, Varoufakis’ sworn enemy.
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