PROMINENT Greek leftwinger Yanis Varoufakis is set to call for “a new non-aligned movement” today when he addresses Progressive International’s Havana Congress for a New International Economic Order.

At the opening session of the congress, the Greek MP and former finance minister is expected to say that a global movement is needed “to break down the existing, exploitative, catastrophically extractive imperialist international economic order so as to build a new one in its place, a new international economic order in which people and planet can breathe, live and prosper together.”

He will address 43 delegates, including scholars, diplomats, parliamentarians and policymakers from 26 countries across all six inhabited continents.

Mr Varoufakis will argue that to be “politically and ethically non-aligned … does not mean to be neutral.” Rather, it is to be both on the side of the “victim” and “be the first to criticise abuses … wherever these take place.”

Denouncing state violence from Peru to Iran, he will say that a new non-aligned movement could “reclaim freedom” and broaden beyond a “narrow role of bringing together the G77 and the Brics” to include workers in the global North. “Imperialism’s victims,” he will suggest, “are both in the colonies and in the metropolis.

“Nothing less than the total vanquishing of capital’s authority over human societies can end depravity and save the planet,” Mr Varoufakis will insist.

He will also discuss the emerging new cold war, warning that US President Joe Biden “declared total economic war against China last October” with his microchip embargo, adding that the US  “shock-and-awe strike aimed at Chinese big tech” is driven by competition.

Over two days, delegates at the congress will discuss geopolitics, climate, finance, technology and trade through panels and keynote speeches, including from Ecuadorean presidential candidate Andres Arauz, a former director-general of his country’s central bank, and Colombian Senator Clara Lopez.