Online Conference and Lecture by Yanis Varoufakis |

Member of Greek Parliament and MeRA25 leader, DiEM25 co-founder; Professor of Economics, University of Athens

Postcapitalism: Its Present, Its Two Possible Futures and a Story in between

Since the 2008 collapse of the financial system, the capitalist order has undergone a continuous crisis that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. In this broad context the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute has undertaken its postcapitalism project, aimed at thinking about and advancing action that goes beyond the capitalist order. The starting point of the emerging postcapitalist stance is a critique of the core of the existing order—that is, the subservience of all areas of life to profit-making, but the aim is to formulate far-reaching structural alternatives that go beyond existing models of a welfare state defending itself. At the heart of the project is the following question: How should life—including time, work, political structures, the relation to the other, and the relation to nature—be organized so as to create a society based on human aims, the foremost of which are freedom and equality?