by Yanis Varoufakis, “In Praise of Public Investment: On the importance of Mariana Mazzucato’s article in The Guardian”
“Two are the greatest untruths that have inflicted major damage upon our understanding of how social economies work; and, by extension, upon our societies. First, there is the pseudo-‘law’ of ‘crowding out’; i.e. the illusory belief that when public investment increases private investment suffers. Secondly, there is a widespread misconception that, under capitalism, value is created privately and then collectivised via the state (when, in truth, all value is produced collectively before it is privatised). In this post, taking my cue from Mariana Mazzucato’s excellent piece in today’s The Guardian, I shall be posting some strong words against the first illusion.”