Rescuing Democracy by Reviving Socialism
A Conversation at the Edinburgh Book Festival, August 20, 2018
Once a year a tented village goes up in the heart of Edinburgh for the annual Book Festival. The best attended events of 2018 were political panels on how to curb the power of corporations and banks; and the parallel fights for public education and health, and the resistance against privatization across Europe and the Americas.
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist, academic and politician. He was a Syriza member of the Hellenic Parliament and served as the Greek Minister of Finance from January to July 2015. He resigned in protest over the imposition of structural adjustment and bailout loans on the Greek people.
Varoufakis has since appeared in numerous debates, lectures, and interviews. In February 2016, he co-founded the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), and subsequently backed a Remain in the European Union vote in the UK’s Brexit referendum of 2016.
Jeremy Corbyn is a leader of the British Labour Party and of the Opposition in Parliament since 2015. He was first elected MP for Islington North in 1983. Corbyn identifies as a democratic socialist.
He advocates reversing austerity cuts to public services and welfare funding made since 2010; and proposes re-nationalization of public utilities and the railways. An anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigner since his youth, he broadly supports non-interventionism and unilateral nuclear disarmament.
In the snap 2017 general election, Labour (under Corbyn) again finished as the second largest party in parliament, and increased their share of the popular vote to 40%. That increase in vote share was the largest in a single general election since 1945.
Corbyn and Varoufakis were recorded on August 20, 2018 at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)
