Democracy – and International Solidarity – Triumph in Bolivia
Bolivia’s elections suggest a formula to restore democracy and win popular power.
LA PAZ — Following a year of repression, reprisals, and racist violence, the people of Bolivia have restored their democracy and returned the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) to the presidency. The Progressive International salutes the Bolivian people for their courage in the course of this peaceful election, a source of inspiration for progressive forces everywhere.
Bolivia’s election not only showed the world how to defeat authoritarianism and its imperialist allies. As the Progressive International’s delegation to Bolivia observed this week, the election also revealed the power of international solidarity to defend democracy around the world.
The PI delegation — headed by Gerardo Pisarello (Spain), Sofia Sakorafa (Greece), and Maciej Konieczny (Poland) — arrived to La Paz with a clear mission: to ensure that the people of Bolivia exercise their democratic rights freely and fairly. Funded by the donations of the Progressive International’s global membership, the delegation carried the hopes of movements, parties, and people fighting for democracy across the planet.
But officials from Bolivia’s de facto government attempted to derail the mission with escalating tactics of intimidation. Marcel Rivas Falon, Director General of Migration in Bolivia, threatened that the PI delegation would “suffer the consequences” at the hands of his agency. Bolivian interior minister Arturo Murillo accused the PI delegation of being “agitators” that would be “put on a plane or behind bars”, adding ominously: “We know who you are and where you are.”
The delegation refused to bow to these intimidation tactics. As Maciej Konieczny MP stated: “I decided to join the Progressive International observation mission out of concern over possible electoral fraud or another coup d’état. The authorities tried to intimidate us, and launched a campaign of lies and deception. But our worst fears did not materialize on election day. Instead, we witnessed a true celebration of democracy.”
On 18 October, the PI delegation criss-crossed the cities of La Paz and El Alto to observe Bolivia’s democratic process.
At over 10 polling sites — including schools, sports complexes, a rural community centre, and a prison in the heart of La Paz — the vote was peaceful and orderly. “We are witnessing the mass expression of popular sovereignty, a fundamental element of the Bolivian constitution. At every polling station on our route, we observed thousands of voters peacefully exercise their democratic rights,” said Tessy Schlosser of the PI delegation.
The triumph of democracy in Bolivia is a testament to the mobilization of a powerful popular movement — not only on election day. A sustained campaign of strikes and roadblocks, orchestrated by trade unions across the country, were critical to securing the vote long before the polls opened on Sunday.
Standing behind the people of Bolivia was a common front of international observers, sending a clear message to the de facto government: we are watching. More than 100 international observers traveled to Bolivia despite the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic. International solidarity — and resolute support for the democratic process — provided a final check on the forces of reaction that threatened to undermine Bolivia’s “fiesta democrática,” or celebration of democracy.
As Gerardo Pisarello, member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies from Catalunya en Comú and a member of the PI delegation delegation said:
“Bolivia has sent a resounding message — to the region of Latin America, to the United States, to Europe — that it is possible to repair our democracy.”
As David Adler, PI General Coordinator and member of the PI delegation, said:
“The election in Bolivia is a watershed moment: the era of authoritarian impunity is over. A new wave of popular power is now rising to restore democracy and reclaim the institutions of the state, taking inspiration from the people of Bolivia in their heroic struggle this year.”
This statement was originally published in the Progressive International’s WIRE.
How progressives could still win the 21st century
Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of authoritarianism in whose wake the vast majority of humanity have experienced unnecessary hardship and the planet’s ecosystem has suffered avoidable climate destruction.
For a brief period — a period the British historian Eric Hobsbawm described as “the short 20th century” — establishment forces were united in dealing with challenges to their authority. It was a rare period in which the establishment had to face a variety of progressives, all seeking to change the world: social democrats, communists, self-management experiments, national liberation movements in Africa and Asia, the early, radical, ecologists etc.
I grew up in mid-1960s Greece, governed by a right-wing dictatorship that was instigated by the United States under Lyndon Johnson (whose administration was one of the most progressive domestically, but which nonetheless did not hesitate to prop up fascists in Greece or carpet-bomb Vietnam). The fear and loathing of right-wing populism that can be found today plastered on every page of the New York Times was simply absent back then.
Things changed after 2008, the year the western financial system imploded.
Following 25 years of financialisation, under the ideological cloak of neoliberalism, global capitalism had a 1929-like spasm that nearly brought it to its knees. The immediate reaction to this crisis, intended to prop up financial institutions and markets, was to turn on the central banks’ printing presses, and to transfer bank losses to the working and middle classes via so-called “bailouts”.
This combination of socialism for the few and stringent austerity for the masses did two things. First, it depressed real investment globally, as firms could see that the masses had little to spend on new goods and services, producing discontent among the many while the very few received huge doses of “liquidity”.
Secondly, it gave rise initially to progressive uprisings — from the Indignados in Spain and the Aganaktismeni in Greece to Occupy Wall Street and various left-wing forces in Latin America. These movements, however, were relatively short-lived, and they were efficiently dealt with either by the establishment directly (the crushing of the Greek Spring in 2015, for example) or indirectly (leftist Latin American governments fading as Chinese demand for their exports collapsed).
As progressive causes were snuffed out one by one, the discontent of the masses had to find a political expression. Mimicking the rise of Mussolini in Italy, who promised to look after the weakest and to make them feel proud to be Italian again, we’ve witnessed the rise of, what we can call, the Nationalist International, most clearly expressed in the rightist arguments fuelling Great-Britain’s exit from the European Union and the election successes of right-wing nationalists: Donald Trump in the United States; Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil; Narendra Modi in India; Marine Le Pen in France; Matteo Salvini in Italy and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
This clash between the liberal establishment and the Nationalist International was utterly illusory
And so for the first time since the second world war, the great political clash has shifted from between the establishment and assorted progressives, to one between different parts of the establishment: one part appearing as the stalwarts of liberal democracy, the other as the representatives of illiberal democracy.
Of course, this clash between the liberal establishment and the Nationalist International was utterly illusory. In France, the centrist Macron needed the threat of far-right nationalism under Le Pen, without whom he would never be president. And Le Pen needed Macron and the liberal establishment’s austerity policies that generated the discontent that fed her campaigns. Similarly in the United States, where the policies of the Clintons and the Obamas that bailed out Wall Street fuelled the discontent that gave rise to Donald Trump whose rise, in a never ending circle, shored up Clinton’s and Biden’s defences against someone like Bernie Sanders. It was a reinforcement mechanism between the establishment and the so-called populists that has been replicated across the world.
Nevertheless, the fact that the liberal establishment and Nationalist International are, in reality, codependent does not mean that the cultural and personal clash between them is not authentic. The authenticity of their clash, despite the lack of any real policy difference between them, made it next to impossible for progressives to be heard over the cacophony caused by the clashing variants of authoritarianism.
This is exactly why we need a Progressive International — an international movement of progressives to counter the fake opposition between two variations of globalised authoritarianism (the liberal establishment and the Nationalist International) which trap us in a business-as-usual agenda that destroys life prospects and wastes opportunities to end climate change.
The question then is: what would a Progressive International do? To what purpose? And by which means?
If our Progressive International simply creates space for open discussion in city squares (as Occupy Wall Street did a decade ago) or just seeks to emulate efforts such as the World Social Forum, it will again eventually fizzle out. To succeed we will need a common plan of action and an uncommon campaign strategy to energise progressives around the world to implement that plan. Last but not least, we’ll need the shared will to envision a postcapitalist reality.
Allow me to unpack these three prerequisites one at a time.
Prerequisite 1: A common progressive action plan
The fascists and the bankers have a common programme. Whether you speak to a banker in Chile or to one in Switzerland, to a supporter of Trump in the US or a Le Pen voter in France, you will hear the same narrative. Bankers will say that regulation and capital controls are detrimental to progress; that financial engineering increases the efficiency with which capital flows to the economy; that the private sector is always better at delivering services than the public sector, that minimum wages and trades unions impede growth or that climate change can only be dealt with by the private sector.
For their part, the Nationalist International narrative is as follows: electrified border fences are essential for preserving national sovereignty, migrants threaten local jobs and social cohesion; Muslims in particular cannot be integrated and need to be kept out; foreigners conspire with local liberal elites to weaken the nation; women must be encouraged to raise their children at home; LGBTQ+ rights come at the expense of basic morality and, last but not least: “Give us the power to act in an authoritarian manner and we shall make our country great and you proud again”.
By rebalancing wages, trade and finance at a planetary scale, both involuntary migration and involuntary unemployment will recede.
Progressives also need shared narratives. Thankfully, we know what must be done: power generation must shift massively from fossil fuels to renewables, wind and solar primarily; land transport must be electrified while air transport and shipping must turn to new zero-carbon fuels (such as hydrogen); meat production needs to diminish substantially, with greater emphasis on organic crops; and strict limits on physical growth (from toxins to cement) are of the essence.
We also know that all this will cost at least 10% of global income, or nearly $10 trillion, annually — a sum that can be easily mobilised as long as we are ready to create institutions that will coordinate the various works and redistribute the benefits from the global north and the global south. To accomplish this, we need to invoke the spirit of Franklin D Roosevelt’s original New Deal — a policy that succeeded because it inspired people who had given up hope that there are ways of pressing idle resources into public service.
Our International Green New Deal will have to utilise transnational bond instruments and revenue-neutral carbon taxes — so that the money raised from taxing diesel can be returned to the poorest of citizens relying on diesel cars, in order to strengthen them generally and also allow them to buy an electric car. To plough these resources into green investments, a new Organisation for Emergency Environmental Cooperation, is necessary to pool the brainpower of the international scientific community into something like a Green Manhattan Project — one that aims, instead of mass murder, at ending extinction.
Even more ambitiously, our common plan must include an International Monetary Clearing Union, of the type John Maynard Keynes suggested during the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, featuring well-designed restrictions on capital movements. By rebalancing wages, trade and finance at a planetary scale, both involuntary migration and involuntary unemployment will recede, thus ending the moral panic over the human right to move freely about the planet.
Prerequisite 2: An uncommon campaign
Without this, our common plan, the International Green New Deal, will stay on the drawing table, so here is a campaign idea: let’s identify multinational companies that abuse workers locally and target them globally, utilising the great disparity between the cost to participants of, for example, boycotting Amazon for a day and the costs of such boycotts to targeted firms. Global consumer boycotts are not new but now, using the power of platform megafirms, like Amazon, against them, they can be far more effective. Especially in a second phase, they are combined with local strike action involving the relevant trades unions. Such global action in support of local workers or communities has immense scope. With some clever communication and planning, they can become a popular way people around the world share a feeling that they are helping make the world a freer, fairer place.
Of course, to make this happen, our Progressive International requires a nimble international organisation. The problem with organisations that are capable of global coordination is that they, surreptitiously, reproduce within them bureaucracies, exclusion and power games. How can we prevent neoliberalism and authoritarian nationalism from wrecking the world without creating our very own variety of authoritarianism? Granted, it is harder to find the right answer to this question as progressives who reject hierarchies, bureaucracies and the encroachments of paternalism, but we have a duty to find it nevertheless.
Prerequisite 3: A shared vision of postcapitalism
Consider what happened on 12 August 2020, the day the news broke that the British economy had suffered its greatest slump ever. The London Stock Exchange jumped by more than 2%! Nothing comparable had ever occurred. Similar developments unfolded on Wall Street in the United States.
In essence, when COVID-19 met the gargantuan bubble with which governments and central banks have been zombifying corporations and financial institutions since 2008, financial markets finally decoupled from the underlying capitalist economy.
The result of these remarkable developments is that capitalism has already begun to evolve into a type of technologically advanced feudalism. Neoliberalism is now what Marxism-Leninism used to be during the Soviet 1980s: an ideology utterly at odds even with the regime invoking it. Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, and of financialised capitalism in 2008, we are well into a new phase in which capitalism is dying and socialism is refusing to be born.
If I am right in this, even progressives who still entertain hopes of reforming or civilising, capitalism, must consider the possibility that we must look beyond capitalism – indeed, that we must plan for a postcapitalist civilisation. The problem is that, as my great friend Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, most people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
To counter this failure of our collective imagination, in a recent book entitled Another Now: Dispatches from an alternative present, . I try to imagine that my generation had not missed every pivotal moment history presented us with. What if we had seized the 2008 moment to stage a peaceful high-tech revolution that led to a postcapitalist economic democracy? What would it be like?
To be desirable, it would feature markets for goods and services since the alternative — a Soviet-type rationing system that vests arbitrary power in the ugliest of bureaucrats — is too dreary for words. But to be crisis-proof, there is one market that we cannot afford to preserve: the labour market. Why? Because, once labour time has a rental price, the market mechanism inexorably pushes it down while commodifying every aspect of work (and, in the age of Facebook, of our leisure even). The greater the system’s success in doing this, the less the exchange value of each unit of output it generates, the lower the average profit rate and, ultimately, the nearer the next systemic crisis.
Can an advanced economy function without labour markets? Of course it can. Consider the principle of one-employee-one-share-one-vote. Amending corporate law so as to turn every employee into an equal (though not equally remunerated) partner, via granting them a non-tradeable one-person-one-share-one-vote, is as unimaginably radical today as universal suffrage used to be in the 19th century. If, in addition to this pivotal transformation of company ownership, Central Banks were to provide every adult with a free bank account, a postcapitalist market economy would be delivered.
With share markets gone, debt leverage linked to mergers and acquisitions would also become a thing of the past. Goldman Sachs and the financial markets oppressing humanity will suddenly become extinct – without even the need to ban them. Freed from corporate power, unshackled from the indignity imposed upon the needy by the welfare state, and liberated from the tyranny of the profits v wages tug-of-war, persons and communities can begin to imagine new ways of deploying their talents and creativity.
We are at a fork in the road. Postcapitalism is underway, albeit on a path to dystopia. Only a Progressive International can help humanity alter this path.
First published by the Correspondent.
Photo: San Francisco 2020, after the labor day fires.
Photo Source: Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash.
We surveyed our members! Here’s what they said
At the start of the summer, we ran a survey to get a quick pulse of DiEM25’s membership — and 1527 members responded!
It’s taken some time, but we can now share findings with you. Here’s what we learned!
Members’ feel very positive about DiEM25 (and have a few criticisms).
We asked members to describe what they think of DiEM25 in three simple adjectives. ‘Hopeful’, ‘necessary’, ‘innovative’ and ‘democratic’ were among the top descriptors.
In this word cloud, there were 539 different adjectives represented; all adjectives that were mentioned at least 5 times are displayed. 416 people felt we were “European” (as one might expect), while ‘democratic’ was used by 153 people, ‘hopeful’ by 96, ‘innovative’ by 56… and ‘bureaucratic’ (ouch!) by 48 people.
Most members first heard about DiEM25 through the press, followed by internet searches and YouTube.
Word-of-mouth was a distant fourth place. Street actions and petitions brought us very few new members.
The vast majority of members interact with DiEM25 via email!
In an age of social media, traditional mailing lists certainly proved to be the most resilient method for member interaction. Only 14% of members said they use our members’ forum, with just 6% claiming to interact with other DiEMers over Telegram. (Not active in our DiEM25 Forum yet? Get started now by engaging in existing threads, or start your own!)
While we strongly believe in offline action – nothing can replace a physical meeting! — due to the pandemic most of our recent coordination and outreach activity has been online. Like all of you, we are looking forward to being more present in the real world, bringing our message and actions to those who are not yet familiar with them.
Most members get their news from DiEM25 via our newsletter.
… with the website in second place. (Haven’t signed up? You can here.)
Almost half of members, when given the choice, responded in English.
The German language came in second place, followed by Greek and Spanish.
This valuable feedback is already helping us to guide our plans and build a better, stronger movement. Thank you again to all who contributed!
The Belmarsh Tribunal put the US on trial for crimes revealed by Assange
As we await the verdict of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, the struggle for his liberation continues.
Too often we hear that protests do not succeed. That resistance does not achieve results. With press freedom on trial, the stakes are too high to subscribe to such pessimism.
Julian Assange’s extradition hearings in central London have now come to a close after a full week trial, with the verdict set to be decided in January 2021. During Assange’s hearings, the Progressive International hosted the Belmarsh Tribunal in order to put the United States on trial for its imperialist crimes against humanity.
The Belmarsh Tribunal
The Belmarsh Tribunal was inspired from the Russell-Sartre Tribunal of 1966, “when representatives of 18 countries gathered to hold the United States accountable for their war crimes in Vietnam, in the absence of an international authority that dared to do so.” Tariq Ali present at the Belmarsh Tribunal is known for his testimony at the Russell Tribunal addressing US involvement in Vietnam.
At the tribunal, we gathered to defend Julian from 175 years in an American prison. To defend the right to publish government policy made behind closed doors. And the right of whistleblowers to expose corruption. It included voices of politicians, journalists, philosophers, human rights lawyers, and many courageous supporters lining the street outside the courthouse of Old Bailey:
“Let’s be clear: Julian Assange should have never been charged with a crime, unless it’s a crime to expose war crimes.”
— Roger Waters, Activist, Pink Floyd co-founder
“We must turn the tables on those who seek to persecute Julian and make them defendants who must answer for their crimes.”
— Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder
“The trial in Old Bailey is a farce: a parody to give the appearance of justice over the criminalization of a man who removed the veil over war crimes, surveillance, and corruption.”
— Alicia Castro, Argentine diplomat, ambassador to the UK 2012-2016
“We found out that, in exchange for financial support, my successor Lenin Moreno agreed to hand over Julian Assange to the United States.”
— Rafael Correa, former President of Ecuador
“The insistence by the Western world, mainly the United States and its British satellite, is to impose one narrative and to prevent other news that might challenge the narrative. That is the war against Julian Assange.”
— Tariq Ali, activist, historian, journalist, filmmaker
“The media that made so much of Wikileaks disclosures is now absent when it comes time to defend the journalist who was their source.”
— Jeremy Corbyn, former UK Labour party leader
“Julian showed us that there is a dark side of the Moon, and that the worst unfreedom is the unfreedom which we experience as freedom.”
— Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and DiEM25 Advisory Panel member
“I’ve cited Wikileaks cables in the International Court of Justice, so it’s striking to me that the person who helped us lead these accountability efforts is in jail.”
— Jennifer Robinson, human rights lawyer
Why Belmarsh?
Belmarsh is the prison where Julian is currently held. 11 October marked 18 months in the jail designed to hold terrorists. While Belmarsh has reportedly improved since being deemed “Britain’s Guantanamo”, Julian Assange’s detention is excessive and clearly meant to further torture the Wikileaks founder.
The case against Julian Assange.
Make no mistake: Assange is persecuted because Wikileaks publishes material governments do not want you to see. The US government has made no illusion about their case, charging him under the Espionage Act. Espionage Act charges against a publisher would criminalise journalists, the Obama administration decided after mulling over charges against Assange.
We must not forget the ongoing unjust proceedings occurring along with the case itself. Technical issues prevented Assange representatives from being heard and the press was frequently barred from video streaming access. We expand on these and other problems in our trial coverage.
As mentioned, a verdict on Assange extradition is set for January 4, 2021 — though this is seen as just the beginning of the legal saga, as appeals are likely to ensue. While prosecution and defense lawyers prepare closing arguments, which will be written and not delivered orally in November, Assange remains in Belmarsh with growing concerns over self-harm, including suicide.
Resistance without end!
As long as Julian remains in Belmarsh, the Belmarsh Tribunal will resist extradition. If Julian is extradited, we will resist the case seeking to shut him away. If he is found guilty in the US, we will resist imprisonment.
This is not just about Julian Assange, but about the free press and the right for whistleblowers to expose corruption.
We must not, cannot, give up this fight.
Sign the petition against Julian Assange’s extradition here.
Photo Source: Screenshot from ‘Collateral Murder‘ by Wikileaks.
Cooperatives must be centerstage as the 21st century unfolds
Cooperatives offer more resilience during crises such as the current pandemic and can empower workers on an unprecedented scale
The British Cooperative Movement has a long and well established history. A cooperative is an alternative business model in which individual members and other cooperatives own the enterprise, as well as controlling and running them. Cooperatives are influenced by internationalist values. They are present in multiple industries, in countries across the world. In the 21st century the model can also be applied in the digital realm. DiEM25’s concept of a Digital Commonwealth imagines the proliferation of platform cooperatives which are democratically owned.
The COVID-19 health crisis and the ongoing development of the digital age means there are greater numbers of people online than ever. Platform cooperatives can become standalone enterprises and/or extensions of existing ones.
The first cooperative of the pre-industrial age was set up in Fenwick, Scotland in 1761 by 16 weavers. In England, one of the early cooperatives came in the form of a flour mill set up in Hull in 1795. Over the course of the 19th century cooperatives became increasingly common, with socialists such as Robert Owen, encouraging their formation. He would come to act as a figurehead to the growing working class cooperative movement.
One of the most successful expressions of the cooperative movement in the UK in the 19th century was the founding of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, which opened its first shop in 1844. In this era the British working classes did not have the right to vote nor any system of organised education. The formation of a cooperative empowered them through voluntarist and democratic means, especially important given the backdrop of the industrial revolution.
The movement has continued to grow and in 1863 the Co-operative Wholesale Society was established, now known as The Cooperative Group. It values the participation of its members and encourages the values of democracy, self help and solidarity. A member is eligible to vote once they’ve spent £250 a year, which amounts to only £4.80 a week. The John Lewis Partnership, which owns the well known department store John Lewis and the supermarket Waitrose provides an interesting example. It is not strictly speaking a cooperative, although there is an element of employee involvement and a culture of transparency. This does not match up to the example of The Co-op Group, but it can be seen as an example of progress towards the ideal of greater democratic control of the workplace. The long history of the cooperative movement, its inception dated from 1761, and its current standing in the British economy, shows its resilience and strength.
Cooperatives do however have limitations and weaknesses. The democratic component means decision making can take longer as more people need to be consulted about the running of the enterprise. This is in contrast with a commercial business which has a freer hand to pursue profit and need only consult with the owners or managers during the decision making process. In addition, another issue is the limited availability of capital. Those involved in cooperatives may not have access to the same level of capital which a commercial enterprise does. As a result, cooperatives may be outcompeted. These are general issues however which are not unsolvable and do not undermine the wider potential of the sector in the UK.
A 2020 report outlines the strength of the cooperative sector in the UK. The sector boasts 7,063 co-ops which employ 241,714 people, collectively with an annual turnover of £38.2bn. The size and resilience of the sector shows its future growth potential.
DiEM25’s purpose of ‘promoting self-government (economic, political and social) at the local, municipal, regional and national levels’ can be actualised through the cooperative scheme
It is important to understand the distinctiveness of cooperatives in order to make an argument for their proliferation. They are private, in the sense that they are non state actors, but they act for the common good of its members and wider society. And crucially, it consists of individuals choosing to contribute their efforts to an enterprise that they will benefit from economically and socially.
DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe, established in April 2019, argues for a sustainable future in which economic activity no longer exploits and destroys our environment. Cooperatives and community projects are put forward as a key component of this undertaking. The cooperative model of economics ‘can increase job security, empower workers and be at least as productive as capitalist business models.’ The benefits therefore, are threefold; continued economic prosperity, greater democratisation of work and a sustainable approach to our environment. For these reasons cooperatives must be centerstage as the 21st century unfolds.
This contrasts with state ownership where workers act in a public capacity, paid by the taxpayer, but in service to the government. It also contrasts with private enterprise in the free market wherein corporations hire workers but do not engage with them beyond the labour they provide and remuneration offered. In both arrangements the individual is held at an arm’s length, and is not permitted — for a multitude of reasons — to participate and shape the workings of the organisation they are a part of.
Cooperatives have spread far and wide beyond Britain, with some of the largest cooperatives in the world based in Europe. Japan, the US and South Korea also have notable examples, such as the National Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives, Wakefern Food and National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, respectively, which suggests cooperatives are feasible as an alternative business model. This is an ongoing development with extraordinary growth potential, with the promise to empower workers on an unprecedented scale.
Photo Source: fauxels on Pexels.
This article has been edited in light of additional information concerning the cooperatives mentioned.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Lessons in grassroots democracy from an occupied school in Athens
Amid a large increase of COVID-19 infections in Greece, a wave of school occupations has spread across the country.
Students accuse the government of having failed to make preparations, ahead of last month’s opening of schools, to protect the student population from the pandemic. As a result, they are forced to have classes in a highly pressured and unhygienic environment.
Up to 25 students are very often crammed into small classes, obliged to wear masks all day long. Break time has been heavily reduced and excursions suspended altogether. Providing cloth masks for free was the single measure that the government took to protect schoolchildren from COVID-19. This turned into a fiasco when it was revealed that the masks it had ordered were grossly oversized.
Outside a drab school under occupation in the Athens district of Petralona, I overheard a boy having a conversation with a middle-aged woman leaning over the balcony of a nearby building. The woman complained about the loud music coming from the school at night. The boy, one of the leaders of the occupation, apologised politely and then started explaining the student demands:
“There is no funding. We demand more teachers, more cleaning personnel…”
“Otherwise we’re gonna burn the place down!” shouted a classmate on a BMX bike.
“Shut up and let me do the talking!” the first boy intervened.
A passer-by took the side of the students: “They’re kids! Let them live!”
The wider reality facing these teenagers is bleak: public secondary education in Greece is hugely underfunded and in dire need of modernisation.
Half the teachers are above 50 years old, since hirings have virtually stopped during the past decade of harsh austerity. Their job prospects are abysmal, even if they manage to get a university degree: Greek graduates have the lowest employment rate throughout the OECD. No wonder almost half a million young professionals (out of a total Greek population of 11 million) have migrated since the crisis began.
The boy tells me that the students organized their first vote when the school principal demanded proof that those in favor of the occupation were in the majority. He explains how they conducted a secret ballot using a cardboard box, which they sealed when all the votes had been cast. Out of 280 students, 4 voted against, 3 voted blank and the rest in favor. Ever since, they have been voting to decide various matters on their own initiative. During the 3 weeks that the school has been occupied, they have held no less than 8 votes. Grassroots democracy requires regular affirmation of the popular will.
In the meantime, they try to win over support from the neighborhood, keep the school clean and prevent vandalisms, so that the police or angry parents do not have an excuse to forcefully enter the building. Grassroots democracy requires constant vigilance.
Greek law provides for the election, during the start of every school year, of a 15-member student organ to represent the student community in each school. The occupiers decided not to hold that election, out of fear that those 15 students would be singled out and targeted by the Ministry of Education or prosecuting authorities. Nevertheless, they continue to deliberate and decide collectively in their assemblies. Grassroots democracy requires bypassing the “democratic” institutions imposed upon you by a system that wants to control you and, instead, self-instituting your political community by inventing your own.
The boy complains: “Out of all the students who voted to continue the occupation in the last vote, only 80 were here last night. You can’t hold an occupation with so few people!” Grassroots democracy requires high levels of participation.
Like in many parts of the world, teenagers in Greece have been subjected to an overwhelming social pressure to study, to get a degree, to do well.
The ultimate source of this pressure is the ultra-competitive job market that awaits them when they finish school. For most, free time has evaporated, taken up by private lessons after school hours to make up for the serious deficiencies of public education. This puts considerable strain on their parents’ finances, which further intensifies the pressure on them.
In ancient Greece the phrase “Σχολήν άγω” meant “to live at one’s leisure”. Σχολή (skolē) meant leisure, free time, idleness. But because when you have no work to do you start having philosophical discussions, soon the meaning of the word shifted to “using your free time to cultivate your spirit”. Already from the age following Alexander’s conquests, the word had come to signify teaching and the place where teaching is held. This is the root of the modern European words school, schule, école, scuola, escuela, škola, школа, shkollë, etc.
For Greek teens, occupying their school is both an exercise in radical democracy and a way to reclaim precious leisure time.
The lost chance to be able to reflect and deliberate in a time and space of their own, free from the influence of adults who insist that they succumb to a predicament which makes no sense. These students seize the day by collectively dreaming, planning and resisting. The most important lesson of all: Grassroots democracy requires leisure time.
Recognising that the profits of large companies like Google are produced collectively but appropriated privately, DiEM25 has proposed a Universal Basic Dividend for all people without exception, to be financed by a portion of these profits.
Such a measure would alleviate extreme poverty, social exclusion, workplace humiliation and exploitation, even trafficking and forced migration. Furthermore, it could largely replace today’s welfare state, which is characterised by stigma, if not exclusion. Free from the agonising pressure to earn enough to cover their basic needs, people would be able to follow their own interests in pursuit of self-fulfillment. Finally, simply by virtue of granting people the luxury of leisure time, a Universal Basic Dividend promises to liberate an enormous democratic potential.
Photo Source: Ppap on Twitter.
The EU’s Green Deal isn’t enough to save us from climate catastrophe
Only radical political action can hope to redress the climate crisis.
The climate crisis is one of the most serious threats that mankind must face in the next decades. The substantial inertia that characterized the (in)action of governments in the last few years clearly showcases the political crisis of the European Union. Due to the rise of movements dedicated to addressing climate breakdown and demanding political action — movements that surprisingly engage people across ages and cultural backgrounds — green investments seem to be included in the EU agenda.
Recently, Ursula von der Leyen stated that the goal is to reach a 55% reduction of emission by 2030, through the mobilisation of at least €100 billion over the period 2021-2027. This number differs in a substantial way from the requests of some protest movements, like Fridays For Future and Extinction Rebellion which contested a ‘cheated’ communication from the EU. In an article titled ‘The EU is cheating with numbers — and stealing our future’, Greta Thunberg states the following:
“One of humanity’s greatest, present threats is the belief that real sufficient climate action is being taken, that things are being taken care of — when in fact they’re not. Not at all. The time for ”little steps in the right direction” is long gone and yet this is — at best — exactly what our leaders are trying to achieve. They are literally stealing our future right in front of our eyes.
The proposed 55%, 60% or even 65% CO2 emission reduction targets for the EU by 2030 are nowhere near enough to be in line with the below 1.5°C or even the “well below 2°C” target of the Paris Agreement.”
In an open letter, many public figures and activists are demanding climate action that meets the threat of climate breakdown.
A fundamental question therefore arises: how much effort is enough to face the climate crisis?
To answer this question, the starting point should be the considerations of the scientific community about the phenomenon. The scientific reference is represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental body of the United Nations established in 1988.
One of the most important special reports is the one which explains the potential dramatic impacts of global warming if this exceeds 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, and the related global greenhouse gas emission pathways to limit the rise of the temperature. The 1.5 °C rise is a level which would limit disastrous impact on the planet, impact that world, and some region especially, is anyway already facing. Indeed, we are already feeling the effects of the climate crisis with sea level rise and increased intensity and frequency of climate and weather extremes. A warming greater than 1.5°C is by now geophysically unavoidable.
The IPCC report states: “In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050.” It also adds that: “Estimates of the global emissions outcome of current nationally stated mitigation ambitions as submitted under the Paris Agreement would lead to global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 of 52–58 GtCO 2 eq yr −1 (medium confidence). Pathways reflecting these ambitions would not limit global warming to 1.5°C.”
Nevertheless, the IPCC proposes two pathways providing a one-in-two to two-in-three chance of warming either remaining below 1.5°C or returning to 1.5°C by around 2100 following an overshoot, depending on the velocity by which we will be able to implement such changes.
The current international agreement does not follow the advice of the international scientific community.
Moreover, it does not consider another fundamental aspect, also highlighted in the IPCC report: that of climate equity. In fact, most of the past and current greenhouse gases have been emitted by only several nations such as China and the United States. Event if most industrialized countries will be able to reach zero net emission by 2050, this action will preclude the possibility of underdeveloped countries to benefit from the same possibilities that Europe, US and China had to develop their economies, exacerbating the gap between them. Any Green New Deal must therefore ensure a just as well as sustainable transition, considering the implication of any deal for the Global South.
The scientific community gives us a guideline to judge the aptitude of any “green deal”. And any plan that does not lead a nation to reach zero net in 2050 is definitely not enough. Neither is any project that does not rapidly contain emissions before 2030, as the one proposed by Ursula von der Leyen. Moreover, it’s simply not acceptable not to consider the aspect of equity and the reasonable margins to contain the risks.
Up until now, the only credible plan to tackle the climate crisis is that of the Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE).
The Green New Deal for Europe is the most ambitious investment plan ever presented by a european party. On its own, a pure investment plan is insufficient to address the climate and environmental crises. Many attempts to limit greenhouses emission by non-binding agreements such as the Kyoto protocol have led to very poor results. A much broader legislative package is necessary to reign in environmentally destructive practices and realign policymaking with the scientific consensus.
A policy maker that does not take sufficient action against climate breakdown is implicitly choosing between two options: not believing in science, or accepting the catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis. Which one is the EU choosing?
Photo Source: Markus Spiske from Pexels.
Solidarity actions for Julian Assange in Belgium
Julian Assange has accomplished his role as a journalist by informing the public. The guilty ones are those who committed the war crimes he has exposed.
DiEM25 Belgium is part of the Free Assange Committee in Belgium, together with other movements and individual members. And while we may be at odds on issues with other groups on the committee, we are all completely united in the defence of Assange. It is an obvious move for DiEM25 to be involved with the Free Assange Committee, not only because Julian Assange is a member of the Advisory Panel of DiEM25, but because he is fighting for transparency.
In a world where citizens are spied on all the time and all over the place, whether on their phones or computers, or even on the street, Wikileaks has put the spotlight back on those in power, who don’t like their little secrets to be known, especially if they are far removed from official propaganda.
We must defend whistleblowers because they reveal what governments are doing ‘in the public interest’.
Freedom of the press is at stake. Because, after Assange, it is other journalists who will be targeted. Already, journalists are paying a heavy price for carrying out their profession. Glenn Greenwald, who published the NSA leaks that Snowden gave him, is still being persecuted. Journalists are being murdered every year.
Wikileaks has made hundreds of thousands of pieces of information available to the press from around the world. Only the US government is prosecuting him and demanding his extradition. This is something that other people in power may not be unhappy about, since Assange is shaking the table. Tomorrow it may be other governments that demand the extradition of their journalists.
Half a century ago, brave whistleblowers let Americans know what crimes their country’s leaders were committing in Vietnam on their behalf. They were persecuted by the American authorities. But now Hollywood has made a film to the glory of the Washington Post, which published the documents that the governments of the time wanted to keep secret.
Since April 2019, the Free Assange Committee has demonstrated each Monday after 5pm.
On the first Monday of the month we demonstrate in front of the British Embassy, the other Mondays on the Place de la Monnaie in Brussels, and sometimes in front of the American Embassy, just like on the 5th October 2020. The only time we didn’t demonstrate in the streets was between the end of March and the end of May 2020 because of the national lockdown due to COVID 19. But during this period, we stayed active online.
Photo: We made a chain by joining hands in front of the Palais de Justice in Brussels in the summer of 2019.
In January 2020, with financial help from DiEM25, we put statues up in this city of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, works of art by the Italian artist Davide Domino. The statues were installed during a ceremony attended by Brussels city officials.
In addition to staying active online and the continuous dissemination of information on the situation of Assange and the legal proceedings, the Committee organised a petition campaign against the extradition of Assange to the United States: thousands of signatures were collected and the petitions were handed over to the British Embassy. The Committee also organised conferences and film screenings with debates.
A letter-writing campaign targeted the press (newspapers, radio and television), the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the chairmen of political parties, as well as members of Parliament. Some positive responses were received, notably from the European Parliament, some of whose members took part in demonstrations in front of the British Embassy. We now also have an active group in Namur.
Several campaigns are currently underway: tying yellow ribbons (the colour of Assange’s prisoner armband) in places where people pass through, such as the Atomium, on the outskirts of the Federal Parliament. And a campaign entitled “Silence, on informe” (“Shhh, we’re being informative”) is aimed at the press.
Photo: People have photographed themselves with a placard calling for the release of Assange, which is addressed specifically to a certain press organ. (Sign reads: “To journalists: If Assange shuts up… the press will no longer be able to speak”)
Last week, the Progressive International, in its Defend Assange Campaign, organised the Belmarsh Tribunal.
Figures such as Yanis Varoufakis, Roger Waters, Lula Da Silva, Yanis Varoufakis, Rafael Correa, Alicia Castro, Pamela Anderson, Slavoj Zizek, John McDonnell, Jennifer Robinson, Angela Richter, Srećko Horvat, MIA, Tariq Ali all called for the immediate release of Julian Assange. This event put an emphasis on the criminal activities exposed by Assange — indeed, it is the State of the USA which should be on trial. Watch it here!
Join us at our demonstrations to condemn the imprisonment of Julian Assange.
During our weekly demonstrations and through our online presence we regularly recruit new members. Almost every week, people whom we have convinced of the rightness of Assange’s cause come to join us, to distribute leaflets, to hold up signs, to get petitions signed.
Join us in defending Assange and turning the charge against his persecutors — he has only done his job as a journalist by informing us. The guilty are those who committed the war crimes he has exposed.
If you want to join our demonstrations, contact the Free Assange Belgium Committee. The next meeting is on Monday 12th October at 5 p.m. at the Place de la Monnaie.
No-Platforming: A right-wing means for undermining progressive ends
In much of popular opinion (meaning not only on Fox News) contemporary progressives have increasingly become associated with a distaste for free speech — a cynical apprehension towards the freedom of discussion which once seemed integral to democracy
Loud radical posturing within private universities and the Western art establishment, has unfortunately come to taint the popular image a significant part of the world once held of progressives and the beleaguered left. As 21st century leftists , we wear stigma which by now are no longer new: the damages of the so-called “culture wars” that first spilled over from an insular and insecure academia, into the mainstream media and cultural establishments during the neoliberal Clinton 1990s.
Generations spoon-fed with Western cultural products, typical arguments and movie plotlines popularised in that period (my “millennial” generation along with the “zillennials”) came of age in the past decade, and began entering jobs in media fairly recently. Among our generations’ poets and writers, those who access the most prominent stages (while simultaneously claiming a marginalised status) speak the language of the Clinton era. That period once called “the End of History” (meaning the end of ideological conflict) by Francis Fukuyama, saw no irony in combining multicultural gestures and diversity politics with unprecedented North American cultural imperialism, while promoting a bootstrap neoliberal fiscal agenda for the world that destroyed cultures and left intellectuals, artists and workers without a present or a future.
In recent years, a host of primarily centrist-liberal and center-right magazines have appeared — among these Quillette 1, Areo magazine,“Unherd”, Triggernometry and others. They cropped up claiming an identity of being the embattled, genuine “old left” still in favour of free speech. These intellectual publications enjoy tremendous popularity, because they feed a thirst and fill a void unacknowledged by much of the left. Unfortunately, most of these recently risen publications end up either catering to young conservatives, or hope to reverse the “imperial cultural decline” threatened by the spread of certain mediocre discourses in the West, and meanwhile firmly advocate a faith in capitalism and all that is Western.
What most of these magazines’ preferred material and editorial lines often share in common in their analyses of the roots of contemporary censorship, is their avoidance of finding clear connections between the rituals of “cancel culture” and the psychology of the market. Yet the oneness of these forces manifests itself violently in the increasing insecurity and turmoil of our “liquid” society, driven by the new values of neoliberalism, its emptiness and social atomisation.
Reclaiming free speech debates from the Centre-Right: the time is ripe
We who wish to uphold the historic traditions that erupted in the Spanish Republic and the anti-colonial revolutions of the 20th century now sorely need our own non-academic vanguard publications in which to showcase writers who confront the damage done to societies on the receiving end of imperialism, with intellectuals and poets who also resist the cultural pseudo-intellectual imperialism as it is imposed on us in the name of progress.
The logic of contemporary censorship emerges largely from the unfettered market, allowing the customer or consumer to determine what item should be “cancelled” or even destroyed, even if the offending “product” happens to be an idea, a painting, a poem.
In the DiEM25 movement, this debate remains a recently opened Pandora’s box
De-platformers often claim to defend positions and values that belong traditionally to the left, while they resort to the traditional tactics of the right. For example, well before the innocuous-seeming Harper’s Letter “On Justice and Open Debate” rippled on mainstream radars, the conservative National Review reported how American economics professor Paul Krugman (who embarrassingly self-identifies as “left”) calls for a right wing economy professor from the University of Chicago to be fired from his teaching position, as penalty for having criticised Black Lives Matter.
‘‘De-platforming’’ as a tactic here and elsewhere significantly undermines discussions that could be won with arguments — like the facts behind militarisation of civilian police forces armed with weapons left over from the Iraq war. Deplatforming a Chicago Boys-era professor endows him and the debunked shock-doctrine ideas with an undeserved aura of the free speech dissident, allowing him the moral upper hand–whereas challenging his conventional, badly-founded arguments could have sooner have led to victory (rather than more petty bourgeois struggles between academics over tenure).
Perhaps more controversially, one can agree with those feminists who support the decriminalisation and legalisation of prostitution as another form of work, and find the “anti-sex-slaver’’ campaigns of politicians in Europe in recent years served as just another front for more xenophobia, deportations and wars against labour. The decriminalisation position makes a valid observation: self-proclaimed abolitionists often refuse to acknowledge the difficult economic decisions and survival-strategies of such women — who often may be supporting their families from abroad, when authorities and NGOs who cast these foreign women as helpless victims, move in “to the rescue’’, deporting them back to destitute home-towns in their countries of origin.
Still, we could learn new perspectives by attending or even “platforming” such debates. It totally undermines that important conversation, however, if otherwise sympathetic pro-legalisation feminists (often of my millennial generation) as if in an attempt to artificially speed the hand of progress, enact de-platforming campaigns against “abolitionist” feminists — simply on the grounds that “their time is up’’ or “they’re the status quo” thereby censoring opponents.
Let’s change the course of culture-warfare, away from a barren territory and back to a more creative arena, free of censorship
For if we accept conservative tactics, we present the adversary with a win-win situation, precisely at the moment when we should flourish, as the neoliberal and neoconservative establishment has lost all credibility, and the Empire finally risks dying from embarrassment thanks to the most vulgar presidential face it has worn in recent memory.
Many of those who dismissed the Harper’s Letter, insist that only conservatives fixate on “political correctness” “wokeness vs free speech” and “safe spaces” in rhetoric — particularly in established conservative platforms like Spectator Magazine, Fox, and L’Incorrect. Our in-house denialists of cancel culture fail to understand that political actors with a warrior-caste mentality on the right, know how to effectively find, identify and strike at the Achilles heel of an opponent, time and again, successfully. To deny “cancel culture” at this historic moment, means to deny the historic identity of the left, a movement of self-criticism — reducing us instead to self-glorification, that pastime of enlightened imperialists.
Rather than silence on censorship, or allowing these debates to remain the exclusive domain of the liberal-centrist vanguard’s publications (the so-called Intellectual Dark Web) we would celebrate an emergence of new magazines or publications true to the internationalist, anti-capitalist political tradition, while at once fearlessly discussing concerns about free expression vs censorship, critical of the censorship all too frequently embraced by many progressives to our own detriment.
The recent rehabilitation of proven fraud Francis Fukuyama, brought back onto the media pulpit by “resistance Journalism” happened because, rather than despite cancel-culture. Whenever we anti-capitalists abandon our commitment to free speech, it arms our enemies with great advantages.
Establishment neo-liberals who propagated Thatcher’s doctrine of “There Is No Alternative” have over the years directly hollowed out the shell of liberalism, and its values of open debate. Abbreviated as TINA, there is no slogan more unabashedly authoritarian — and yet its logic of imposed consensus is embraced by liberal centrists from Tony Blair to Emmanuel Macron.
If we now attempt to censor spokespersons of the neo-liberal establishment, we allow them to claim loyalty to those very principles they had forsaken: today many hardcore neo-liberals disingenuously claim to be the torchbearers of classical liberalism’s heritage, despite having brutally opposed the youth around Sanders in their project of reviving the Rooseveltian roots of social democracy.
The ghost of Gramsci
An increasingly fashionable contemporary right gains traction. We must take the challenge seriously, and have empathy. Young conservatives following pop culture anti-heroes like Jordan Peterson comically struggle to explain the origins of the “culture wars” with exhilaratingly paranoid theories about Neo-Marxist plots or even a subtle “Gramscian march through the institutions” behind the HR staff in major corporations and colleges. Think-tanks like the Acton Institute have spread the belief of Gramsci’s being the dark elf behind contemporary identity politics.
All these trends, unfortunately, have much more banal origins. If only Human Resources clerks studied and applied Antonio Gramsci! The current “culture wars” would never have gained such prominence: Gramsci, the Italian socialist writing from a Fascist prison, believed more than any of his comrades in dialectic and dialogue. He insisted that he found it infinitely preferable for the Right wing to have its intellectuals and ideas, however flamboyant or mediocre. For when the Right no longer can resort to the battle of ideas, it resorts to the repressive security State, in which we currently find ourselves surrounded and surveilled.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.