Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present. By Yanis Varoufakis. Bodley Head. 249 pages. £16.99
At the inaugural summit of the ‘Progressive International’ (a new attempt to link up various vehicles for left-leaning politicians) Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and the driving force behind the Diem25 portion of this new international, gave a keynote speech: ‘Why we need a Progressive International that must plan for today and for beyond capitalism’ (tinyurl.com/y5vvrtmn).
The plan he proposes is actually banal, including targeted boycotting of companies such as Amazon and companies that engage in abusive practices in a ‘Day of Inaction’. There is no vision of co-ordinated democratic political action. He does say ‘while this is neither the moment nor the place to plan for postcapitalism, it is useful to imagine what a postcapitalist world might be like.’
As it just so happens, he has a new book out which addresses this very activity. Its conceit is that a group of radicals get access to their versions in an alternate reality, one in which the crisis of 2008 spurred radical action that dismantled the world financial system and abolished both the labour market and massive financial institutions.
In his Other Now (as his alternate world is referred to), the labour market is abolished. There are still firms, and jobs, but once someone joins a firm they can do whatever work they want within the firm, all pay above a basic share of the firm’s profits and a universal basic dividend (collected by taxing the revenue of firms, rather than profits) is democratically allocated by the workers of the firm based on perceived merit. This shares similarities with Michael Albert’s idea of Parecon. It is amenable open to the same criticism as Parecon, based on the Yugoslav experience.
Self-management of Yugoslavian firms fell victim to the inequality of the technological differences inequalities between firms: some were more productive and profitable than others, without any difference in skill or effort difference between those partner-workers and those of a different firm. The workers there would defend their relatively high wages by excluding other workers, and ultimately using the features Varoufakis describes for workers hired for a specific role (as opposed to employees/partners) to exploit the labour of other workers (he calls this the disjointedness criterion – where it is possible to measure an individual’s contribution, rather than value created by teamwork). This would create a situational logic and incentive for the restoration of exploitation. That said, his depiction of a firm without rigid division of labour is itself enticing and interesting to think through. He is savvy enough to note that unofficial hierarchies and prejudices may still linger in the Other Now, which is worth consideration.
More than a good deal of the book is given over to talking about banking. Given the massive expropriation implied in converting all firms to co-ops and abolishing the labour market, this seems redundant (and wouldn’t the banks themselves now be worker co-ops?). This is particularly the case, given he assumes an express ban on buying and selling shares. The workers own the firms, but cannot sell them. But, in great detail, he discusses creating public utility banking that would wipe out the commercial high-street banks, and form a means for handing out the universal basic dividend. He prefers a dividend to a fixed income, since this is then a share in the collective product of society, rather than being perceived as some sort of handout.
He still envisages a banking function, but one, given the ban on investment banking, where banks return to being simple financial intermediaries rather than ‘creating money.’ (In a slightly more intelligent sophisticated than usual version of the usual currency crank narrativestory, he avers that now banks can create money based on a claim of expected profits, and related to their interventions in the share markets). Of course, this would only exacerbate the inequality between capitals, since some individuals would be able to harvest interest profits from other firms. So much for ending capitalism.
Consciously, he depicts the continued existence of financial crises in this society: albeit that he adds that swift government action of creating money quickly resolves the matter. Again, this means that so long as there are markets, he accepts there is a situational logic for speculation/fraud and financial instability.
In the Other Now, all land titles have been transferred to regional authorities which operate as trusts (quite how this could happen through the sort of minority targeting of companies described in the book is mysterious, such expropriation would require a determined and organised conscious movement, that would surely meet serious resistance) which operate as trusts. The properties would be let commercially, with the community collecting the rent. A permanent auction system would be used to ensure people pay the right rent without excess bureaucracy (essentially, each occupier would assess the value of the property, with the threat that anyone else could ‘bid’ a higher value/rent to take it off them).
The central thread is that this saves markets from capitalism: and avoids the worse alternative of centralised allocation and rationing in a soviet style, which he rightly deplores. The framing device is of two radicals: Eva, a radical capitalist (who is won over by the workability of this market system) and Iris, a woman who could ‘ever conceive of a good market, a noble war or an unjust strike’.
In a strange detour via discussing ‘politically correct transactional love’, Varoufakis does discuss the idea of a society where people freely give, where commodities are ended. He refers to it as Star Trek Communism, but maintains that until Star Trek style replicators are available, money will remain essential. That does seem a limited outlook as, even where resources are scarce, there are alternatives to both money and centralised allocation that can be used.
The character of Iris is manoeuvred into opposing the Other Now, because its market system might hinder her preferred no-commodity society (opposing everything else which is something of a caricature position that some people falsely impute to us, and which, as far as we know, no-one actually holds or ever held). Further, disgracefully, the text also pathologises her position by stating ‘raging against the system was [her] only way of being, her loneliness vaccine’. What comes across, is that Varoufakis is wrestling with a notion of moneyless socialism, and finding the ideas attractive, he struggles to dismiss and contain them through an ad hominem dismissal of its proponents.
The book is intelligently written, and none of the characters are mere cyphers. That it opens the conversation to post-capitalism, and because it (unsuccessfully) wrestles with views like ours, it is a welcome addition to debate.
Pik Smeet
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