Europe’s Recovery Fund: An instrument of class war against weaker Europeans everywhere
“Behind the narrative of Northern Frugality hides the spectre of Bungled Exploitation.”
Europe was never the battlefield on which the frugal North clashed with the profligate South.
Instead, every European country has been the battlefield where a vicious class war is fought by a transnational oligarchy-without-frontiers training its armour against the weaker residents of every country, every region, every community.
COVID-19, and the European Union’s response to it, only magnifies the human costs of this unremitting class war. All talk of a North-South clash is founded on a gigantic lie, that is based on many small truths, conveniently hiding from Europeans’ gaze the class war that diminishes their life prospects.
The crisis of financialisation in 2008 intensified Europe’s class war massively, holding a majority of Northern and Southern Europeans behind and leaving Europe, including its capitalist class, much weakened in relation to the rest of the world — the United States and China in particular. Twelve years on, COVID-19 gives this crisis a new, violent spin. The weak are weakened much, much more while Europe as a whole falls further and further behind the United States and China.
While the EU’s leadership and bureaucracy have been quite active in the past three months, producing one impressive-sounding policy announcement after the next, the sum of their actions boost the class war that enfeebled Europe over the past decade and weakened a majority of Europeans everywhere.
The context: Europe’s place in the Global Class War.
To understand the nature of Europe’s class war, we first need to re-assess the global class war underpinning Globalisation. In the era of global capital flows and financialisation, nation-state-based analyses of economics, finance and politics are bound to mislead. Indeed, if we have learned anything in recent decades, it is that it is pointless to focus on any single country’s economy.
Once upon a time, when money moved between countries mostly to finance trade, and much of domestic consumption was satiated by domestic producers, it was possible to assess the strengths and malignancies of a national economy. Not anymore. Today, the malignancies of China and Germany are viciously intertwined with the malignancies of countries like the United States and Greece.
The unshackling of finance in the early 1980s, following the end of the capital controls left over from the Bretton Woods system, enabled gargantuan trade imbalances to be funded by rivers of money created privately via financial engineering. American hegemony grew as the United States shifted from a trade surplus to a massive trade deficit because global demand is maintained by American imports which, in turn, are financed by a flood of foreigners’ profits into Wall Street — a strange recycling process that is managed by the world’s de facto central bank, the Federal Reserve. Maintenance of this majestic, albeit utterly imbalanced, system necessitates the constant intensification of class war both in the deficit and in the surplus countries.
Deficit countries are all the same, at least in one important sense: They are condemned to generate debt bubbles and for their working classes helplessly to watch as industrial areas morph into rustbelts, whether they are powerful countries like the United States or weaklings like Greece. Once the bubbles inevitably burst, workers from the Midwest to the Peloponnese are, thus, engulfed by debt bondage and free-falling living standards.
Surplus countries differ a great deal from one another, the commonality of the fierce class war against their working classes notwithstanding. Take, for example, China and Germany. Both feature large trade surpluses in relation to the United States and the rest of Europe. And both repress their working class’ income and wealth. The important difference, however, between China and Germany is that, while China maintains huge levels of investment through a domestic credit bubble, Germany’s corporations invest much less and rely on the credit bubbles building up in the rest of the eurozone — credit bubbles that benefit massively the local oligarchies in Greece etc.
The true nature of the euro crisis thus becomes obvious: It was never a clash between the Germans and the Greeks, whom I use here as shorthand for the fabled North-South clash. Instead, what we always had was an intensification of class war within Germany and within Greece at the hands of an oligarchy-without-frontiers living off financial flows disproportionate to actual production or trade. For example, when the Greek state went bankrupt in 2010, the austerity imposed on most of the Greek population did wonders to restrict investment not only in Greece but also in Germany, thus indirectly repressing German wages at a time when the central banks’ money-printing was pushing share prices and German directors’ bonuses through the roof.
Adding to this picture the fact that Deutsche Bank was made whole by the Greek ‘bailout’, that Fraport and other German companies were given for a pittance 14 lucrative Greek airports and other public assets, that the Greek oligarchs were also bailed out by the EU and were enlisted in the fight against the Greek Spring of 2015, it is clear how the EU’s institutions worked tirelessly so that the euro crisis is not wasted — that it ended up benefitting German and Greek oligarchs at the expense of Greek and German workers and smallholders.
Bungled Exploitation: A very European failure.
Class war is, arguably, more brutal in China and in the United States than in Europe. However, the lack of a European political union ensures that Europe’s class war is verging on the pointless, even from the capitalist class’ perspective. Proof that German capitalists squandered the wealth extracted from the working classes of the European Union is not hard to find. The surpluses the German private sector amassed from 1999 onwards were devalued by a massive 7% (compared to a 50% gain of US assets) courtesy of having no alternative but to lend theses trillions of euros to assorted foreigners whose subsequent distress led to large losses.
This is not only a German problem. It is a condition afflicting the other surplus EU countries as well. Handelsblatt revealed last week a notable reversal. Whereas in 2007 EU corporations earned around €100 billion more than their US counterparts, in 2019 the situation was reversed. Moreover, this is an accelerating trend. Only in 2019, corporate earnings rose 50% in the US more than in Europe while, projections suggest, that in 2020 the US corporates will lose 20% of their earnings compared to 33% in Europe.
The gist of Europe’s conundrum is that, while it is a surplus economy, its fragmentation ensures that the incomes losses of German and Greek workers do not even become sustainable profits for Europe’s capitalists. In short, behind the narrative of Northern Frugality hides the spectre of Bungled Exploitation.
The European Union’s economic policy agenda in response to COVID-19.
Rumours that Covid-19 caused the EU to lift its game are grossly exaggerated. Good people who took heart from the news that, however reluctantly, the EU has embraced common debt in a bid to further the cause of pan-european solidarity, will soon be deeply disappointed. Behind the heroic pronouncements and the triumphant propaganda lurks a sordid truth: The class war against Europe’s weaker people is escalating. And so is Europe’s descent into global irrelevance.
It all began with the quiet death of the Eurobond. Eurobonds, as advocated by DiEM25, would perform a simple task: They would automatically convert any new Italian, Spanish or Greek public debt (due to the impact of the pandemic on public revenues and expenses) into European debt (in the same way that US Treasury Bills absorb the costs of a recession in Missouri and Wisconsin). But, once the Eurobond was killed off by the Eurogroup in early April, it is now a given that the gigantic increase in national budget deficits will be followed by equally sizeable austerity in every country — a euphemism for the intensification of the class war that depletes the already atrophied incomes of the majority in each of our countries.
What about the large Recovery Fund under deliberation currently? Can it absorb austerity’s impact and thus shield Europe’s working classes from a further loss of income and prospects? Is perhaps the agreement for the European Commission to issue common debt to fund this Recovery Fund Europe’s Hamiltonian moment and an opportunity to bring about solidarity with the weak across the Continent? I am afraid the answers to these questions is a large, unequivocal ‘No!’
Yes, common debt instruments are a necessary condition for ameliorating the intensified class war. However, they are not a sufficient condition. Two conditions are needed for common debt to play a potentially progressive role; i.e. one that favours the weaker people across an economic block:
First, that the common debt is open-ended, rather than fixed term. If debt is issued for a specific period of time, and needs to be repaid by a certain deadline to the full, it constitutes a loan from the surplus to the deficit regions and from the rich to the poor citizens; i.e. it is the opposite of… solidarity. Lest we forget, the EU’s Recovery Fund is exactly this: a fund with an expiry date to be funded by common debt that must, however, be fully repaid by a certain deadline.
Secondly, to play a progressive role, common debt must fund the weaker citizens and firms across the common economic area: in Germany as well as in Greece. Automatically. Without reliance on the kindness of local oligarchs. It must operate like an automated recycling mechanism that shifts surpluses to those in deficit within every town, region, state. In the United States, for example, without any involvement of governors and local bureaucrats, food stamps and social security payments support the weak in California and in Missouri while, at once, shifting resources from California to Missouri. [Which is, of course, why American class warriors are hellbent on cutting social security and curtailing food stamps.]
In sad contrast, the so-called European Recovery Fund was announced complete with a precise sum of euros to be dispensed to each nation-state via its government. This fixed allocation to different member-states will turn one nation against the other, as the fixed sum to be given to Greece will be portrayed in Germany as a tax on Germany’s working class. Moreover, one can only be appalled by the idea of transferring monies to the Greek government, effectively entrusting the local oligarchy behind it with the task of distributing the monies to the people of Greece!
Conclusion: Europe’s class war and fragmentation will intensify in the post-pandemic era
The media adore a boxing match allegory. While the Dutch, Finnish, German and Austrian representatives attempt to water down the EU’s Recovery Fund, commentators will be making the most of the opportunity to present Europe as a ring in which, in the blue corner, the Frugal Protestants prepare to take on the Profligate Greco-Romans in the red corner. However, in exactly the same way that the spectre of trade wars between China and the United States is employed to hide the intense class wars within the United States and within China, so too in Europe the real bout is between a North-South alliance of oligarchs against everyone else.
There is, however, a difference that distinguishes Europe’s class war as particularly inane: Unlike China and the United States, whose institutions are capable of managing the class war so as not to weaken their corporations, Europe’s institutions are incapable of doing this. Thus, European capitalism wanes even though the class war against the weaker Europeans intensifies. In short: European oligarchs are not even good at serving their interests! Europe’s class war is intensifying but European capitalism falls behind day in day out. Bungled exploitation seems an apt term here.
Where Europe’s establishment seems to have improved is in its capacity to convince even some progressive Europeans (desperate for some good news) that recent policy announcements, like the EU’s Recovery Fund, are broadly in the right direction. They are the opposite. A good look at the Recovery Fund’s makeup, seen against the backdrop of huge new austerity, dispels any hope that the unremitting class war against Europe’s many is about to subside. Instead, what becomes obvious is that the EU is, yet again, investing in solidarity among oligarchies — North and South, East and West.
Solidarity amongst Europe’s oligarchs will never empower Europe’s majority. It will only intensify the omnipresent class war that short-changes almost all Europeans and pushes a majority of them into despair. This is why DiEM25, our transnational Democracy in Europe Movement, is more relevant than ever: Because the only force that can oppose the oligarchy’s class war tactics is a transnational movement that knows no frontiers and transcends the borders of Europe’s member-states.
Varoufakis: I urge people in Croatia to vote for the Green-Left Coalition
Croatia is going to the polls as COVID-19 is decimating the livelihoods of the majority of people everywhere.
The new Croatian government will be called upon to protect the people of Croatia not only from the virus but, perhaps even more importantly in the long run, from pauperisation. Like Greece, Croatia is too dependent on tourism. And even though, unlike Greece, Croatia is not in the euro, its ruling class is not willing to contemplate a currency devaluation that would be in the interests of most Croats.
Why? Because Croatia’s oligarchs are more interested in maintaining the euro value of their assets intact, thus prioritising entry into the eurozone above protecting the living standards of the majority. Devaluation would help but, of course, would not be enough.
Croatia needs a Green New Deal of the type proposed by DiEM25, involving mass investments in the green transition away from fossil fuels, tourism, soul-destroying menial jobs and toward green energy, niche tourism connected to organic agriculture, electrification of transport and a plethora of small, cooperative, startups that allow younger Croats to participate in the 4th Industrial Revolution without emigrating.
In the current elections, such an agenda is only put forward by the Green-Left Coalition.
I urge my friends in Croatia to vote for the Green-Left Coalition and I am looking forward to them entering Parliament so that we, DiEM25 and its Greek party MeRA25, can join forces to build a progressive Europe together.
Reparations: the Black Salvation of the EU
On June 19, 2020 the European Union recognised slavery as a crime against humanity.
How did the assassination of George Floyd lead to this EU resolution? How should crimes committed during the colonial era be dealt with given the systematic looting of African cultural heritage and natural resources that took place after the abolition of slavery? This article aims to put into perspective the sequence that led to this significant advancement, while it also draws a table of its limits as well as its hopes.
The coronavirus crisis has brought about a profound challenge to the very meaning of our existence : health, economic and political crisis, are issues that the world will still have to deal with in the coming month. In the midst of all of it, the assassination of George Floyd pointed out the structural violence of the neoliberal system of oppression. This has led to an unprecedented uprising with revolutionary potential.
The future seems uncertain for some observers, but for numerous others these symbolic earthquakes are necessary to change the world.
Now, the Black Lives Matter movement should go beyond the question of police violence and racism in northern societies to question the foundations of capitalism. For instance, Reparations for the damage caused by colonial slavery was the main demand of a Black Lives Matter movement in Nantes. At the same time, all over Europe, various acts involving the destruction of statues by militants of anti-racist and anti-colonial movements are calling into question the foundations of the colonial system, which generated the wealth of Western nations.
Aime Césaire said that this system continues thanks to the racist beliefs we have inherited from the colonial power structure. Historically, the end of slavery coincided with the establishment of forced labour in Africa and the adoption of the 13th amendment in the United States of America. The amendment stipulated that slavery was prohibited — except when it concerned individuals guilty of crimes. This amendment still perpetuates the deprivation of liberty and has vast consequences on the individual and collective health of African descendants in the United States and the world.
We are seeing outcry when self-reparation actions occur, such as those observed in the ultra European departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
The destruction of the Victor Schoelcher statue in France has sparked strong opposition from the head of state. The same scenario can be observed in countries such as Great Britain and Italy, with the latest positions taken by the mayor of Milan.
These upheavals affect the whole planet to such an extent that the protests have now become global, with official reactions and large popular demonstrations appearing on the five continents: even the African Union is requesting an official UN declaration to deal with anti-black racism. In Paris, African activists intended to recover a work of art kept at the Musée du Quai Branly, believed to be originally looted from members of their family and tribe during the colonial era.
Likewise, Black Lives Matter wraps up the global protest against police brutality and racism, so that the world is currently on the verge of a radical paradigm shift that could help transform the power structure.
Given that neoliberal oppression is linked to the roots of colonialism, Europe must also re-humanise the continent, which has suffered the oppression of slavery and colonisation by taking responsibility for reconnecting it to the “civilised” world.
European societies will either fully recognise the humanity of people of African and other non-European descent, or Europe as a continent will fail to integrate them as part of its population.
How can we talk about black lives, colonial slavery and reparations without mentioning Africa?
Before even starting the implementation of the Reparations principle at the heart of the recognition mechanism, the so-called “aid” to African countries should be considered as a decentralised reparations mechanism. This is necessary in order to avoid the organised and systematic theft of the wealth and resources of a state by its leaders, which Gregory Ngbwa Mintsa called ‘Patrimonicide’.
Far from Africa, a revolution is underway in the USA. This revolution has already had an impact on European nations and other nations across the world. Will the recent recognition of slavery and colonisation as crimes against humanity have an impact on African nations? We can only call for it. This poses the problem of repairing the multidimensional damage caused by colonial slavery, which has been made more and more visible by the Black Lives Matter movement since the assassination of George Floyd, but it is even more symbolic in the incarnation of this fight.
A great black man calling his mother, as one implores God for salvation, in a final moment pushes us to say to ourselves that perhaps salvation is in women. And why should it not be so?
Why should we not use other mythological references in our political struggles? Why should we not think that salvation could look like Isis, goddess of the Nile Valley, wife and sister of a great black man, also murdered by asphyxiation before being reborn thanks to the work and courage of the goddess. Indeed, the time for other metaphors has come.
Assa Traoré, leading the fight in Europe to demand justice for the death of her brother, or Priscilla Ludosky leading the fight for justice for the working class in ecological transformation are sure signs that the coming revolution will also be Afro-feminist.
Many wish to avoid the debate over reparations. They fear that any symbolic reparation will be accompanied by violence, which could transform this quest for justice into a true Nemesis: causing the Western world to burst into flames. But the planet is already on fire: the time for a global change in direction is already underway and cannot be delayed. DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe makes clear that a just transition must prioritise climate reparations and confront ‘crimes of colonial plunder and resource extraction’.
A global Green New Deal, as advocated by DiEM25 and the Progressive International, must include Reparations as a significant part of our quest for social, economic and ecological justice. If we admit the antique symbol of justice — the goddess Maat — to be the goal that we are trying to reach through the very healing process we are going through, we also have to accept that our main issue is to reintroduce the type of sensitivity Isis embodied within our deeds.
This piece was a collaboration between Dia Alihanga, Mame Faye-Rexhepi and Brice Montagne. Image by Anita Faye : “not yet free”.
Short-time work fraud during COVID-19: we want your testimonies!
Companies that wrongly receive short-time work aid are committing theft.
We are looking for witnesses for questioning — that of course will be treated strictly anonymously — on the subject of subvention fraud with Corona short-time work! We would like to bring this topic into the light of the public to prevent entrepreneurs from exploiting their employees and stealing from the state!
Help us and simply write us your experiences to [email protected] or via Facebook Messenger to DiEM25 Luxembourg DSC. Or we can meet in person for a talk – it’s up to you. If you are not working in Luxembourg, of course you can write us as well and we will direct you to a DSC in the respective country that will take care of the issue.
What is it about?
In order to mitigate the economic damage of the Lockdown, many European countries, including Luxembourg, offer immediate help for companies in the form of short-time work benefits.
The employer pays short-time work compensation to his employees and then states the exact work loss for each affected employee in order to have it reimbursed by the state.
Especially now, in times of the coronavirus crisis and the increased work from home without electronic recording of working hours, it is not easy for the state to control the truth of the data. This tempts many companies to benefit unjustifiably from the government’s short-time work subsidies and to adjust the actual working hours to their advantage.
Why is that a problem?
Quite simple: Increased profits through short-time work at the expense of the employee!
From nice hints that “the short-time work is not a holiday” and “everyone has to contribute to the well-being of the company during this difficult time” to threats that all those who do not support the fraud will lose their jobs sooner or later – the employee is forced to give up part of his salary and still perform the full workload.
In many cases, short-time work is only started on a normal employee basis; top management and leadership positions usually continue to work as normal, i.e. continue to receive their full salary. This is an injustice that shows that the reason “to have to make sacrifices for the common good” is only a pretext to exploit the weakest employees even more.
Are you witnessing subsidy fraud with the coronavirus short-time work regime?
Unfortunately, in many cases even the works’ council is aware and silent, so it is difficult for workers to take measures to stop exploitation. Ideally, the National Employment Agency (ADEM) or the labour union should be informed.
Or you address the press to make them aware of the problem, if you want to stay anonymous and minimise the risks for yourself.
I am not affected by short-time work fraud in my employment – why should I be bothered by the fraud of individual companies against the state?
The state itself has no money of its own; the main income is taxes such as income tax, sales tax or inheritance tax, and is therefore paid by the people. The government decides what the money — our money — is spent on. Money that is wrongly paid out as short-time work aid, for example, is thus no longer available for really important issues such as social institutions, climate change or the public infrastructure.
In short – companies that wrongly receive short-time work aid are committing theft. In addition, tax evasion and tax avoidance by companies and private individuals in the European Union accounts for 1,000 billion euros of taxpayers’ money – and Luxembourg is at the top of the list as one of the most popular tax havens.
Every company should contribute 10% of shares for a Universal Basic Dividend
The way in which monopoly capitalism evolved to create socialism for the bankers and the very rich — and the arena of the unfettered markets for the many.
“The notion of competitive capitalism that Adam Smith was referring to died around 1870-1880. (…) The idea of the brewer, the baker and the butcher goes and is replaced by General Electric, Ford, today by Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on. That is not competitive capitalism, it’s a market of monopolists.”
“Our job is to stabilize capitalism and to use its stabilization as a foundation on which to build an alternative to capitalism. (…) Then we can start to have the second conversation: what come after capitalism?”
What will postcapitalism look like?
“We all produce value together, collectively, but then some very smart and powerful privateers tax it, and they become the oligarchs.”
“What we are proposing is very simple: every company should contribute 10% of their shares to a welfare fund that collects dividends, and the dividends are then divided to every citizen.”
Video produced by Sustainable Human.
The EU turns a blind eye to Serbia’s rigged elections
This time there were no surprises. Over the past eight years of Aleksandar Vučić’s regime, we have witnessed as many ways to rig the elections as you can possibly imagine — from shutting down the media space for those from the opposition, threats and intimidation towards anybody who dares to raise their voice, and the use of pro-regime tabloids for the character assassination of those who oppose the ruling party.
The machinery for ensuring the votes for Vučić’s Srpska napredna stranka (SNS) was carefully built over the years. It included the creation of jobs in the public sector for “distinguished” party members who are then obligated to vote for the SNS or face losing their jobs. Additionally, those who are “in debt” to the party have to ensure “capillary votes”, i. e. securing votes through a network of interconnected blackmailed or otherwise compelled people. Such votes are often proven on the day of elections by providing to the SNS headquarters a photo of an ID next to the ballot paper. 
Photo: For the “favor” from the party, i.e. a job, SNS members would have to prove their “loyalty”
A variation of the same method is the intimidation of workers in public companies and misuse of public resources, where the SNS party has appointed their members as General Managers. These managers are tasked to ensure that the entire collective of employees will vote for SNS, or else…
Last but not least, there is the famous “Bulgarian Train”, an organised “trade of votes” in a location near the ballot place, where votes are bought, often from the poorest, for a package of oil, flour and some pasta and/or for up to 3000 RSD (25 EUR).
The swapping of ballot papers once the polls are closed has been reported to the Police but it was never brought to light by the legal institutions or courts. Oh, wait, legal institutions in Serbia are also heavily influenced by the SNS and corruption, as reported by the European Commission: “Currently, the scope for political influence remains of concern” — they are also part of the machinery!
It is also common knowledge that “after the sun sets, the dead are going out to vote.”
This brings us to the voting list, which officially has 6,5 million voters while Serbia is supposed to have 7 million citizens. If only we actually knew how many citizens of Serbia are eligible to vote, and how many of those on the official list are “idle votes”, i.e. dead or in the diaspora and are used to boost the turnout or to pull out the majority.
In sum, these are the conditions for any elections held in Serbia for the past decade.
What was the opposition doing?
Since 2012, the opposition in Serbia has been composed of those who were in power after 2000 and Milošević’s era — chiefly the Democratic Party (DS). DS’s legacy is the opening of the “free market”, EU funds (read: loans) and the privatisation of the public sector. This has led most of the DS voters in 2012 to ask themselves: How bad can it be if they finally lose the elections?, It’s democracy, we will change the next ones if they are no good. What an illusion.
It has become clear that the opposition wants power back due to their access privileges that they are entitled to as an MP and business deals that they now have to share with, or have lost to, SNS. Therefore, the majority of the electorate is either disappointed in their previous choices or wondering about the “alternatives”. These voters mainly consider the newly formed right-centre satellites of the ruling party and/or are not voting at all.
Over the past year, the opposition drained the little energy that people still had by dragging them around pointless protests without any plan or programme, and entirely building their platform on oratory skills pointed against Vučić and his clique. Unable to unite or to find a leader suitable for “the masses”, at some point half of the opposition decided to boycott the elections, while the other half decided to run after all. As ridiculous and pathetic as it may seem, this whole charade called elections, might finally make some parties go to well deserved retirement.
As any further analysis of Serbian opposition would be a waste of time. The only possible solution would be to create a brand new scene of options, based on social and economic reforms that would lead the country out of its colonial position — out of the privatisation of our land, water and commons, out of further austerity and out of the pull for cheap labour force for the West.
For all of the reasons above, 40,000 people per year are packing their bags to leave the country. Others are ending their lives in despair, stripped of any hope that things can be changed for the better.
As far as the EU is concerned, they turn a blind eye to dictatorship and rigged elections, to lack of civil rights and freedom of the press, to abuse of freedom of speech and repression. They do this as long as they see Vučić, or anyone else, as the obedient conductor of austerity measures, as long as Serbia plays its part in stopping the immigration to EU member states and as long as he [promises] to put an end to the Serbia-Kosovo situation. The cries for help from Serbia, mainly coming from the civil sector, are therefore not heard inside of the Brussels corridors.
Anyone who even thinks of getting involved in Serbian politics needs to deal with two main burning issues first: Kosovo and EU membership, as the anti-EU sentiment is rising over the years.
A coherent, realistic programme for change instead of populism and trite criticism of “others” is the only way out. This is a space for DiEM25 to come up with a proposal on how to put our economy and industry back on its feet. We cannot isolate ourselves in our nation states, nor choose between imperialists such as Russia or China who want to colonise the country — rather, we must be part of a [united] Europe.
In order to survive the next four years of Vučić’s rule, DiEM25 must summon these disappointed and unrepresented people around its ideals of solidarity and a common European project and by providing comprehensive solutions around a cohesive political programme. It could constitute a new political force in Serbia that would displace those parties and coalitions designed to get the same old corrupted and recycled politicians back to the payrolls of boards and parliaments. It will take time and effort. Above all, it will take courage to confront the criminal establishment.
It will get worse before it gets better. Or it won’t get better. It’s up to us!
The Greens must reject new austerity in Ireland
The new #Programmeforgovernment for Ireland is not the answer.
Four months after the General Election in Ireland, and following a long phase of negotiations, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party have finally come up with a #ProgrammeForGovernment.
As members of DiEM25 Dublin DSC we have read the new #ProgrammeForGovernment carefully, and we find it largely inadequate, misleading and dangerous.
It is inadequate because it does not get even close to the level of radical change that Ireland would need to address its current deep environmental and social crisis.
It is misleading because the few green “concessions” that are included mainly consist of a repackaging of commitments already made by the previous government — commitments that have not been honoured. For example, the 7% p.a. emissions reductions were already included in the Paris agreement.
Overall, the subtle use of policy jargon throughout the programme also frames seemingly progressive positions in terms of future “consideration”, “examination”, “review”, “assessment”, “committee to be established”, or goals to be back loaded after the proposed term of government.
The fee and dividend compensation that should come with a carbon tax, in order to make it a progressive, redistributive measure, silently disappeared — despite the Green Party championing this system recently during their last European election campaign in May 2019.
On the other hand, everything that appears to protect the vested interests of the Irish establishment (see Corporation Tax) is described in terms of clear “commitment”.
We also believe it is dangerous because it clearly opens the door to a new phase of austerity.
And there is no better way to bury mass consensus for environmental action than trading some marginal environmental promises on the expenses of the most vulnerable.
It is an act of perverse audacity to include expressions such as “Green New Deal” and a “New Social Contract” in a political programme like this one.
There is also a serious problem of lack of credibility with this potential future government. Politics is not only a matter of nice promises included in policy papers, it is above of all about the past records of those who make those promises and the vested interests they represent.
On both of these criteria the two historical establishment parties cannot be trusted, considering that Fianna Fail brought the country to bailout, and Fine Gael has transferred the cost of it to the most vulnerable.
Also, as members of a pan-european movement that aims to reform the European Union, and end the austerity era, let us stress the point that the ambivalent role played by the Irish government during the Eurobond debate (cosigning Conte’s letter to EU commission demanding Eurobonds, and then carefully avoiding being vocal on the issue at national and international level), has definitely not helped Ireland, nor Europe, to find a way out of the pandemic crisis.
For all these reasons we sincerely hope that the grassroots Greens are going to reject this deal, and push their party to work for new elections within a broad progressive coalition that really can bring to Ireland the change it deserves.
We also invite all those who want to contribute to a real grassroots led change, to join DiEM25 and the Green New Deal campaign for Europe!
The need for a working-class consciousness within the UK press
The issue of working-class representation within the UK press has become more pertinent than ever, with the mainstream coverage of events such as the Grenfell tragedy proving divisive. It’s been three years since the fire, which caused the deaths of 72 people and left many more grieving the loss of relatives, friends, their homes and possessions. However, it has since become clear to many that the fire was far from a freak accident.
The Grenfell fire is emblematic of a widespread issue within social housing in the West — that of private construction companies and governments willfully disregarding safety regulations in favour of cheaper, flammable materials and higher profit margins. Since the Grenfell tragedy, fires, which have been exacerbated by dangerous cladding materials, have destroyed student accommodation in Bolton and led to the deaths of 5 people in Minnesota, the centre of recent anti-racist protests.
In response to the Grenfell tragedy, prominent figures in the media, such as Jon Snow, voiced their concerns over the disconnect between the media and the working class.
A longstanding blog called the Grenfell Action Group, which continues to advocate for those affected by the fire, had catalogued unsafe living conditions in the area since 2012, and had tirelessly fought for the rights of tenants and against the criminal ineptitude of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) and the local council.One blog post, from November 2016, had suggested that only with a horrific event, such as that which occurred on the 14th June 2017, would the crimes of the KCTMO and local government become public knowledge. They even mention Grenfell in their predictions:
“It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice! The Grenfell Action Group believe that the KCTMO narrowly averted a major fire disaster at Grenfell Tower in 2013 when residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring.”
It is important that we respond to the failings of the media to document localised social issues.The long and well-documented struggle between residents and the KCTMO highlights more than just a lack of sufficient investigation on the part of journalists; it indicates a disregard for issues that are outwith the interests of the elite and the intended readership, and, moreover, the eradication of influential regional platforms. The later issue had been expressed within the mainstream press in response to Grenfell, but it is hard to imagine how such a discourse will continue in today’s broadsheets, with many receiving hefty bailouts under the guise of a public information campaign that overlooked independent press bodies.
Academic and independent research into inequality in print and online journalism has highlighted the prominence of those from privileged backgrounds within the profession.
A number of dedicated studies revealing the full extent of the issue. Figures from the 2014 Labour Force Survey show that journalists are almost twice as likely to have at least one parent from the highest earning work classification than the average worker, with over half of the UK’s top journalists privately-educated. In fact, it is thought that only around 11% of UK journalists come from a working-class background.
The failure of the mainstream press to represent and advocate for the working-class is indicative of the continued academisation of journalism. Pathways into the press have become the main sites for the reproduction of elite authority within the profession, with almost all journalists working for the major UK newspapers holding undergraduate degrees. Furthermore, higher education work placements have been described as “filtering sites” by academics and almost all recent entrants into the profession will have completed an internship, in which they will not have been paid for their work.
Measures need to be taken to revive and safeguard the regional press to ensure social mobility in the profession. Regional journalism outlets act as platforms and sources of vital information to those in deprived areas, sustaining local representation and opportunities amid a media landscape, whose elite workforce succeeds in serving only a reflection of itself. Without a stable and functioning regional press, we will see a consolidation of elite authority within national newspapers, and the continued discouragement of those from economically-deprived areas from pursuing a career in journalism.
The concept of the native reporter, most commonly found in alternative forms of journalism, could also ensure a more representative national press through proper integration.
The native reporter refers to a journalist who acts as an authority on behalf of their community, subverting the power afforded to experience and social-standing within the UK press. It was in fact a journalist for the Observer, Robert Chesshyre, who, upon his return to Thatcher’s Britain, coined the term for a type of localised reporting that engaged communities in conversation about subjects to which they were “reliable witnesses”.
The proper integration of such a concept may have given the extensive body of writing and activism from Grenfell residents and locals the platform it needed. With a growing number of media publications moving to online-only formats, a more representative form of journalism, that moves beyond its current professional location and into the hands of participants in local democracy, should not just be a utopian notion. The government’s decision to ignore the Cairncross Review’s suggestion of an Institute for Public Interest News, however, likely means that public dissatisfaction with national newspapers will continue to grow, as will the influence of alternative media.
As a movement, DiEM25’s participatory initiatives in press, copywriting and ‘television’ offer a way through which Europeans can highlight their matters of concern.Their copywriting platform offers a space through which members can publish articles about the local and regional issues that DiEMers have a stake in. Furthermore, as a part of DiEM25 TV, the DiEMTV goes local! initiative is a grassroots project that brings together DiEMers from all over Europe to create television shows for audiences online, on topics such as economic democracy and migration. The newly launched Progressive International movement, which aims to ‘unite progressive forces’ also has a WIRE that translates articles, stories and essays from its members and partner publications.
If you would like to participate in DiEMTV goes local! you can attend a workshop with project leader Myriam Zekagh on Wednesday 24th June! [Register HERE].
Photo by anissa on Twitter.
What if the European common debt were an opportunity for workers to seize?
We should certainly be wary of celebrating the proposal for a recovery fund, i.e. the first debt ever endorsed by the EU as an entity, made by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for the revival of Europe taken up by the Von der Leyen Commission too quickly. Indeed, it could be nothing more than a simple test, or a demonstration of solidarity limited to a beautiful idea smashing against the rejection of the rest of the Northern “frugal four” — Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. However, it would be just as obtuse not to seize the fantastic political opportunity that the two leaders have given those of us who know that social progress requires international solidarity.
The European Union is a political space where, for the moment, only the financial elites are winning by gradually strangling the workers and the populations of Europe through austerity.
This gradual reduction in public spending and pressure on wages is imposed through the governments of all countries, united within the Commission. Sometimes big governments twist the arms of small ones, but in the end they all find solutions to satisfy shareholders and bankers in all countries, at least in the short term. This situation can only lead to the self-destruction of the union.
Let us be clear, we utterly disagree with the nationalists, on the Right as well as on the “Left”, who say that it is time to undo this union, to find ourselves behind national borders, counting suitcases of worthless national banknotes in order to buy a piece of bread, and locked up face to face with the national capitalists. The world is interconnected, as the health crisis has proved once more: there is no national solution to anything, not even and especially not to a pandemic. Only international solidarity will be able to coordinate the development of treatments or of a vaccine. Nationalism just means poverty, and then the graveyard.
The EU is not an impassable horizon, especially not within the existing balance of powers, but the Macron-Merkel proposal forces a wedge into this situation that has been blocked for years. It would be absurd not to take the opportunity to demonstrate clearly and directly what international solidarity means in a federation such as this one.
Federation?
Yes, federation, precisely if this proposal were adopted and implemented, regardless of its volume or of the earmarking of the money extracted from this common debt. Let us put it simply: the creation of a common public debt is the true foundation of a political federation. The collective commitment to repay a common debt according not to what one has received, but according what one can contribute is the internal operating principle of each individual state. Rich regions repay more national debt than poor regions that have received more public expenditure from the national government. The Paris and Lyon regions pay significantly more in taxes and therefore contribute more to the repayment of France’s debt than they receive in public spending, and the opposite is true for the other regions.
This is what makes France a country, a united ensemble: a budget, therefore in fact a common debt, which is repaid not according to what one receives but according to what one can pay, according to what one produces locally. And without the internal market that France constitutes, the Paris and Lyon regions would gain nothing, so it is logical that they repay more of what France’s public debt allows to be produced at national level. Replace Paris and Lyon regions with Germany and the Netherlands… Yes, a common debt which is repaid not according to what one has borrowed individually as a region or country, but according to what one can contribute to the common budget, that is what makes a country or a federation.
The fact that this logic has not been explained, either by the opponents of the Macron-Merkel proposal or by those who support it, is proof of its immense political importance. The European left, aware of what is at stake at the moment, must take such a statement on board. Of course, the sum of 500 billion is relatively small compared to the efforts of the United States or even of Great Britain, which is now leaving. But that is not the political issue: even if this plan was only one of 50 billion, the very definition of the project is indeed historic; it is fundamental because it is truly federal. To miss that would be like ignoring Cugnot’s steam engine on the pretext that it doesn’t go fast enough or far enough. Even if Macron-Merkel had simply attempted a political coup, without believing for a second in its feasibility, the political function of the true European left must be precisely to say: “Oh yes? We dare you!”
We must seize this logic of collective solidarity, explain it a hundred times, a thousand times, until all European citizens have heard it and are able to position themselves in relation to it.
Are we still locked into a union where rich governments play poor governments off against each other to strangle workers and populations, or are we finally beginning to move towards a federation of solidarity where the rich contribute their fair share? It goes without saying that the wealthy already benefit from a huge, homogenous internal market unified under a single currency. The wealthy European countries are exporters who mainly export to the rest of the EU. They are wealthy because the poor buy their products — and because fifteen years ago they crushed their own workers, making them extremely competitive in an area with a single currency. That Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark paid a little more to repay a common debt would be perfectly fair compared with the fact that Spain and Italy are buying cars and financial products from them.
Nationalists and pessimists will tell us that a federal debt is not a panacea, that the money given to the States will go first and foremost to the large national groups linked to the governments. Of course, because the federation is no more than a political space and politics never end. We could reply that it is precisely around the distribution of these sums that politics could finally begin, at their real, European level, demonstrating that the nation-states are only sub-regions of one of the regions of the world, which is a union still in the process of being built.
This federation in the making is no more intrinsically left-wing or right-wing than a nation-state. It represents a political stake that the left must seize by all the means at its disposal. Trade unions, political organisations and social movements must understand that it is at this level that their future is at stake. Demagogues on the right and on the left make them believe that it is at the level of their nation-states that things can be decided, when they are powerless or powerful only because they rely on others.
Workers must now intervene at the real political level where decisions affecting them are made.
The Macron-Merkel agreement certainly did not act to rescue Spanish or Italian workers ruined by the current crisis, but probably to answer the call of German bosses who are worried about the economic repercussions of a collapse of the continent which they see first and foremost as their enlarged internal market. But what does it matter which cunning of reason is pushing them to suggest to really found a federation through the creation of a common debt, if this federation is precisely the vehicle that workers will be able to divert towards socialism?
We must recognise a political opportunity when we see one: We dare you, let’s go!
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.