Why the Spanish people must get out and vote
By Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder and Luis Martín, DiEM25 Political Coordinator
On Sunday, the people of Spain will go to the polling stations for the fourth time in four years. These repeated elections are a mere reflection of Europe’s never ending economic and social crisis and its oligarchy’s failure to respond to a crisis of its own making.
Despite being among the Eurozone troika’s most obedient prisoners, Spain’s political class have not managed to escape the crisis – which is now in the process of taking another nasty turn. With Germany in recession, Spain’s private debt-driven pseudo-growth is fizzling out, revealing the crisis’ permanence.
The same crisis was responsible for the toxic magnification of tensions in regions like Catalonia, the result being the political prisoners in a democratic European state and a EU claiming, inexcusably, that this is an internal Spanish affair.
The extreme right led by Vox continues to gain ground as the latest polls show that it might significantly increase its presence in the Spanish parliament, even ahead of Podemos.
The Left in Spain, having failed to articulate a progressive, internationalist European agenda, continues to fragment with the surge of Íñigo Errejón’s own party. Even the Spanish Greens have split.
Where do we go from here?
Spanish voters must see next Sunday’s election as an emergency and vote for whichever progressive force they choose. Above all else they must avoid abstention so as to shrink, to the fullest possible extent, Vox’s presence in parliament.
Then, on Monday morning, should the composition of the Spanish parliament allow for a progressive government, they need to come together and step up so as to address the urgent social and political challenges the people face, and play a leading role in the European drama that has turned a euro crisis into a catastrophe, both for the majority of working people and for our environment.
In a meeting in Athens last month, we as DiEM25 agreed to make Spain one of our priority countries for pursuing our Green New Deal for Europe. Thus, we are building our structures in Spain to better organise ourselves there. At the international level, our organisation is proud to now have two Spanish members in its coordinating body.
We are in the process of reaching out to Spanish social and political actors to strengthen our policy proposals and adapt them to the Spanish context; from migration and refugees to our Green New Deal for Europe.
We will seek to build on our position on the Catalonian crisis and will play a facilitating role to find a meaningful compromise with a pan-European approach.
And so our message to our fellow Europeans in Spain is: get out and vote on Sunday, come together on Monday morning and join us in the struggle to transform Spain and Europe.
Originally published in The New Statesman
Next Stop: Prague!
Our unique DiEM25 experiment in grassroots democracy has reached its next stage!
Our members have voted, and the selected proposals to be presented, discussed and amended in Prague are:
1) Growing our Support:
a) DiEMExplore
b) A European force for a world eco-social unity
c) Growing DiEM25 as a network
2) Running an Effective Movement:
a) Solidifying our Electoral Wings
b) Rethinking the DiEM25 Academy
c) Upgrading our digital collaboration infrastructure
3) Influencing and Winning:
a) Campaign for Democratic Relaunch of EU
b) Citizens’ Assemblies for Democracy in Europe
c) Workplace democracy is our way out from capitalism
In addition, the CC has released its own vision for DiEM25, which will be discussed and voted on by the Assembly participants. If passed in Prague, the CC will present a concrete implementation document in order to make that vision a reality, which will be put to an All-Member Vote. You may read “DiEM25 2.0: A vision for taking the world’s first transnational political movement to the centre of the European political stage” here.
After the Assembly’s deliberations are over (the Guidelines for which you can see here), we will call on DiEMers again to vote to verify the amended proposals of the Assembly. Then DiEM25 will move ahead with the movement-building efforts, campaigns and political actions needed to stand-up to the historic challenge of democratising Europe!
Next stop: Prague!
Srećko Horvat: If Europe loses Julian Assange, Europe will lose its soul [VIDEO]
On November 6 Srećko Horvat, DiEM25 co-founder, spoke in London at an event organised by the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign. The event included speeches by Vivienne Westwood, John Shipton [Julian Assange’s father], MIA, and many more!
You can watch Srećko’s speech below.
Video credit: letmelook.tv
DiEMers, you have until November 8 to make an important decision
In a pioneering experiment in grassroots democracy, DiEMers from every corner of Europe have produced over 30 proposals on how to best organise our movement in the years ahead.
Our members’ proposals are currently available in the Members Area:
Influencing and Winning
Growing our Support
Running an Effective Movement
And now DiEMers have until November 8 at midnight to review them and vote for those which you think should be discussed during our Assembly in Prague at the end of the month!
After the Assembly’s deliberations are over, we will call on DiEMers again to vote in the proposals that DiEM25 will implement to guide our movement-building efforts, campaigns and political actions.
Here’s a message from Coordinating Collective member Mame to you:
Carpe DiEM25!
P.S Elections to our National Collectives in France and Spain are on! Make sure you visit this page to learn about the people stepping up to help us guide our movement in these countries – and cast your vote!
Chile protests: resistance to a failed economic system
Over the last two weeks more than one million citizens have taken to the streets in what represents a challenge to an economic and political model that is failing to deliver.
There has been an accumulation of frustration and precarisation of the lives of people who live in uncertainty and fear of poverty. There are no social cushions to protect them from falling, so they struggle to pay for good quality education and have grim perspectives for their retirement. This is largely because the benefits of the privatised system go to companies providing these services. The case of Chile repeats itself everywhere across the World. But today Chile is courageously resisting the system.
A system that is failing to deliver everywhere in the World. A protest not of unity, as those in power desperately tried to portrait it in media, but of rejecting the claim that ̈there is no alternative [TINA].
We are angry and deeply concerned about the violence and brutality which citizens encountered. The struggle for a better life has already taken the lives of 20 people, more than 2,500 civilians have been injured by police forces, including children, and 4,000 more detained. Moreover, there are currently over 120 allegations of human rights violations under investigation, including possible homicides by police, as well as allegations of sexual abuse and torture. This, in addition to the hundreds of people whose eyesight has been permanently damaged by gunfire.
The evidence gathered by citizens and Chile’s Human Rights Commission is deeply worrying, with the country under a State of Emergency and military control, causing trauma to the survivors of the dictatorship. But it is also a defiance of a machinery of fear and repression that made the country suffer under Augusto Pinochet.
The moment that Chile lives today is a precious opportunity to change a system branded as the only alternative.
We demand:
To the government of Chile:
- An immediate cease of violence and repression and full accountability for widespread intimidation, armed violence, repression, and suspects of torture to detainees.
To the European Commission and European Parliament:
- To host a hearing on the widespread human rights violations in Chile,
To the Chilean people
- Our sincere condolences for the loss of your citizens.
- Our full solidarity and support to your struggles for a better life. We will amplify your message to the World.
- An encouragement to continue the path to self organisation, deliberation and collaborative construction of the alternative you want. All of our policies and methodologies, built as a collective, are at your disposal.
Interview: Yanis Varoufakis on Capitalism, Democracy and Europe
Yanis Varoufakis, MeRA25 MP and DiEM25 co-founder, interviewed for the Great Transition Initiative.
What inspired your career trajectory from academic economist to prominent supranational activist?
I went into politics because of the financial crisis of 2008. Had financial capitalism not imploded, I would have happily continued my quite obscure academic work at some university. The chain reaction of economic crises, financial bailouts, and the rise of what I call the Nationalist International that almost broke financial capitalism, and brought Greece severe hardship, had a profound impact on me.
In the early to mid-2000s, I was beginning to feel that a crash was approaching. I could see that global financial imbalances were growing exponentially and that our generation or the next would be hampered by a systemic crisis.
I left my cocoon writing about mathematical economics and moved from Sydney to Athens at the time Greece was becoming insolvent. I began writing about the current situation and appearing on TV, warning against covering up insolvency with bailouts. Through these appearances as well as writing about government’s role in averting the impending crisis, I drifted into politics.
The second transition, from government to activism, was much simpler. Restructuring Greece’s debt was my top priority as Minister of Finance. The moment the Prime Minister surrendered to the austerity demands of the European Commission and accepted another loan without debt restructuring, resignation became the easiest decision of my life. Once I resigned, I was back in the streets, theaters, and town hall meetings setting up the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). I saw activism as the best way to confront the political and banking establishment. Four years later, in July 2019, our Greek branch, entitled MeRA25, entered Parliament with nine MPs. The fight continues.
You are one of the sharpest critics of neoliberalism today. How would you define “neoliberalism”?
To begin, let me challenge the term “neoliberal.” The use of the term in relation to West-Soviet relations was just a cloak under which to hide libertarian industrial feudalism, but neoliberalism has as much to do with financialized capital post-1970s as it does with Cold War geopolitical relations. Similarly—and I know this is a controversial statement—there’s nothing neoliberal about the world we live in today. It is neither new in the sense of “neo” nor liberal in the sense of fostering democratic values. Look at what has been happening in Europe over the last decade. Gigantic bank bailouts are funded through taxation. There is nothing really “neoliberal” about the use of such vast subsidies from the public to finance capitalists.
Even under the government of Margaret Thatcher in the UK from 1979 to 1990, the height of so-called neoliberalism in the UK, the British state grew rapidly, becoming bigger, more powerful, and more authoritarian than ever. We witnessed a state that was weaponized on behalf of the City of London to the benefit of a very small segment of the population. I don’t think we should concede the term “neoliberalism” to the brutish establishment using state power to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots.
How has this “brutish establishment” become so dominant in shaping the global order?
The first two decades after World War II were the Golden Era of capitalism for a very simple reason: Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was projected onto the rest of the West under the Bretton Woods system. It was a remarkable, though imperfect, system, a kind of enlightenment without socialism. Structures to restrain financial capital were put into place. Banks could not do as they pleased; that’s why bankers hated the Bretton Woods system. Recall that Roosevelt banned bankers from attending the Bretton Woods conference and subjected them to reserve controls and rules against shifting money across international borders.
The result of the Bretton Woods system was a remarkable reduction in inequality concurrent with steady growth, low unemployment, and next to zero inflation. The system was predicated upon the US’s status as a surplus country, recycling wealth through Europe and Japan in a variety of ways. By the end of the 1960s, however, the Bretton Woods system proved unsustainable. The US began to incur trade deficits with Europe, Japan, and later China at the same time Wall Street, unrestrained by regulatory boundaries, attracted most of the profits from the rest of the world.
Unshackled financial institutions began creating what amounted to private money. Holding an inflow of $5 billion daily for a mere five minutes was enough to divvy it up into derivatives, opaque investment instruments that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. This and other forms of financial engineering produced huge volumes of private money, the value of which, as in the 1929 crash, eventually collapsed in domino-like fashion. Authorities in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Athens immediately transferred the resulting losses onto the shoulders of taxpayers, a form of socialism for bankers. I described this colossal mishandling of our financial system in my 2009 book The Global Minotaur, six years before I became the Greek Minister of Finance.
When I became Minister, I believed that a global crisis of capitalism was underway. Imagine, then, my walking into a meeting of the Eurogroup with all the European finance ministers in the room who knew I held this view. I was the red flag in the eyes of the establishment. In the same vein, the German ambassador to Greece and one of the most powerful (and most corrupt) Greek bankers had warned the future, democratically elected Prime Minster that my appointment as Finance Minister would cause them to close ATMs across the country and lead to collapse of the Greek banking system.
Given your experience inside and outside government, do you believe that there is a fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy?
Yes. Compare the character of a democratic election with a general meeting of shareholders of a private corporation. Both are elections, but in the democratic process, the one person-one vote rule applies, whereas in the corporate process, you have one share-one vote, essentially a wealth-based voting structure. My fellow economists, especially the true believers in free markets, love to portray the market as a voting mechanism. It is true that every time you buy a tub of yogurt, you are voting in favor of that brand. The same applies when you buy a Ford as opposed to a Volkswagen. The more money one has, the more votes one casts.
So, if you think of capitalism as a voting mechanism, it is anti-democratic in the sense that money determines power. The evolution of capitalism over the last few centuries is a history of the constant transfer of power to the wealthy, including the power to make decisions that affect the distribution of income.
Over time, power has been redistributed from the political sphere to the economic sphere. Until the early eighteenth century, there was no difference between these spheres. If you were the king or the baron, you also were rich. And if you were rich, you belonged to the nobility. With the rise of capitalism, a lowly merchant could become economically powerful. As the separation of the political and the economic evolved, power gradually transferred to the latter. What we now call democracy is not real democracy given the growing influence of economic power. To be sure, the voting franchise has been extended to all males (from only landowners), to women, and to blacks. A parallel democratization process has not occurred in the economic sphere, where power has become less inclusive and increasingly concentrated.
From the 1870s to the 1920s, democracy gradually became disempowered as the corporate world—a democracy-free zone—emerged. Since the end of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, power has migrated to finance. Goldman Sachs suddenly became more important than Ford, General Motors, or General Electric. Even corporations like Apple and Google are increasingly becoming financialized. Apple, for example, is sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is operating more like a financier than an iPhone producer.
This dynamic guarantees that when we vote, an act of celebrating democracy, we increasingly are participating in a sphere that has become totally disempowered. Capitalism is predicated on defeating democracy, even as the democratic cloak continues to legitimize the prevailing system.
Given this fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy, do you believe the European Union can be reformed? And if so, how?
We must aim for something much closer to a democratic federated Europe than what we have now. The tragedy is that the moment you start making such a case as the only antidote to disintegration, you serve the cause of nationalists, xenophobes, racists, and fascists. In ten years, either we’re going to have a democratic federated European Union, or the political monsters will be victorious.
How do we achieve a future democratic federation? The most urgent and difficult task is to go out into the streets of Athens, Rome, Berlin, Paris, and Lisbon and have a discussion with people about the crisis the EU faces. Many don’t want to hear about Europe’s future anymore. What used to be a very attractive vision of a unified Europe as a larger homeland for all its citizens has become toxic in the minds and the hearts of many Europeans. For them, the democratic European Union has become synonymous with an anti-humanist, even totalitarian, vision. We need to construct a new vision to counteract this kind of thinking.
You have been at the forefront of the recently formed Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). Tell us about DiEM25’s pan-European mission and strategy.
DiEM25 seeks to put forward proposals that stimulate cooperation that is truly democratic. This will take time and will require recreating European institutions and a political economy that includes a massive Green New Deal or similar strategy. We must spend immediately at least 500 billion Euros annually on green energy, green transport, and a green transition in industry and agriculture. We can do this by creatively harnessing the power of existing institutions. The European Investment Bank, for example, could issue bonds worth half a trillion Euros every year, with that money going toward good-quality green jobs and technologies. The European Central Bank, sitting on the sidelines, could be ready to buy these bonds if needed to keep inflation in check. At the same time, we must engage with a broad spectrum of groups to stabilize Europe and so to bring back hope. With that movement underway, we can then have a discussion about democratic governance of the EU.
I’m an old-fashioned lefty. I don’t believe in destroying institutions. I believe in taking them over and transforming them into true public servants.
What does DiEM25 offer beyond the proposals of parties like Die Linke in Germany, Podemos in Spain, or other Green or Left parties throughout Europe?
Most members of these groups are our friends and comrades. We share a humanist attitude towards life and capitalism. The reason we created DiEM25 is that the major crises in Europe require local and national action as well as pan-European, if not global, action. It makes no sense to prioritize the local and national over the transnational, or vice versa. We must operate simultaneously at all levels.
For example, the design of urban transportation systems must consider the planetary, or systemic, impacts of alternative choices. The problem with national political parties is that they are not very good at such systemic thinking. What we need in Europe is a pan-European movement, which is more than a confederacy of autonomously operating states that make promises to local and national electorates independently of one another and then get together in Brussels to discuss the promises that each has committed to. This model is doomed to fail.
When DiEM25 was inaugurated in February of 2016, we sought to bring together Podemos, Die Linke, and allies from the UK to develop a Green New Deal for Europe. We hoped to unify such movements around a common pan-European program. It didn’t work out that way. Why? Die Linke comprises two distinct groups: one faction believes that the European Union is beyond redemption and should be dismantled; the other believes that the EU is salvageable through democratic activism and social transformation, a view shared by DiEM. This division between supporters of “exit” and “remain” stood in the way of an alliance.
Another impediment to unity was that Podemos and others opposed a European voice in national and local policies and decision-making. What is Podemos going to say, for example, about the level and allocation of investment funds among member states? If a Podemos candidate is elected to the European Parliament, what financial policies will she support? We need clarity and unity on such issues—to have a voice not of a Greek, a German, or a Spaniard, but of a European internationalist. We will continue to struggle to create a unified, coherent agenda for all of Europe. Unity without cohesion is the curse of the left.
Let’s not forget that the historical call was not for workers of each nation to organize within their borders. It was for workers of the world to unite.
Are there lessons to be learned from previous episodes of leftist internationalism, such as the Internationals, for our current time of global mobilisation?
There are many lessons. Anybody who doesn’t learn from history is a dangerous fanatic. Lesson number one is that socialist nationalism is the worst antidote to national socialism. Remember what happened in World War I when the German Social Democrats were co-opted into a nationalist agenda and supported the war effort of Germany against the much of Europe. That kind of socialist nationalism will always be gobbled up by Nazism. Anyone who supports a left-wing agenda and at the same time supports a nationalist, populist workers agenda is going to be devoured by fascists. They will end up effectively blowing wind into the fascists’ sails, intentionally or not.
Lesson number two is that Internationals fail if they are just a confederacy of national parties. The moment agendas and organizations are nationally based, as was the case in postwar Communist parties, the international movement will inevitably fragment and collapse. This is why DiEM25 places all its energies into not becoming a confederacy of a Greek DiEM25, a German DiEM25, and an Italian DiEM25. This is not a theoretical matter, but a practical one: transnationality as opposed to confederacy is critical to building a new, progressive political enterprise. Studying the failures of earlier Internationals is fundamental in shaping this strategy.
To be clear, when we created DiEM25, we envisioned a movement, not a party. And it remains a movement, but we decided about a year ago to create our own “electoral wings” in each country. In Germany, DiEM25 created Democratie Europa (“Democracy in Europe”); in Denmark, Alternativet (“The Alternative”). In short, if you are a member of a DiEM25–created party, you also are a member of the larger movement. But you also can be a member of the larger movement without membership in a DiEM25-created party.
In a forthcoming book, you imagine “another world” in 2035 in which global financial capital is essentially demolished. What would this world look like? What would it take to get there?
I begin with the view that the present system is, simply stated, both awful and unsustainable. My story is told from the perspective of 2035, when my characters discover that, back in 2008, at the height of our crisis, the timeline split into two: one that you and I inhabit and another one that yielded a post-capitalist society. It is my narrative strategy for sketching out how post-capitalism could work and feel today had our response to the 2008 been different.
My forthcoming book, entitled Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, asks the following questions: Could the world be non-capitalist or post-capitalist? Could we see humanism in action? What would it look like? What would socialist corporations look like? How would they function? How would democracy function? What would happen to borders, migration, and defense? I try to create a vision of a liberal, socialist society that is not based on private property but does use money as a vehicle for exchange and markets as coordinating devices. I preserve money and markets because the alternative would be to fall to some fearsome hierarchical control, which, for me, is a nightmare scenario.
A deep transformation of values and institutions is essential to building a world of solidarity, well-being, and ecological resilience—what we call a Great Transition—is more urgent than ever. In a dark time, what basis for hope and advice can you offer fellow internationalists at this critical, historic moment?
We have the tools necessary in order to spend at least five percent of the global GDP on a Great Transition that saves the planet. Technically, we know how to create a new Bretton Woods, a progressive Green New Deal that diverts resources to saving the planet and creating quality green jobs across the globe.
To achieve such a future, we must offer a cautionary note regarding the role of borders. Some on the left are unfortunately moving toward the belief that migrants are a threat to domestic workers. That is a right-wing narrative that is factually untrue. We need to emancipate progressives from the notion that strong borders protect the working class. They do not. They are a scar on the face of the Earth, and they harm labor across the world.
Berlin's new system of rent controls – a model for other major European cities?
Housing costs are the largest monthly household expense for most Europeans today. Indeed, in most EU member states, housing costs are growing at a faster rate than wages.
The increase in homelessness across the continent shows the lack of a coherent policy response to this issue.
Investment in public housing in Europe was dramatically reduced between 2009 and 2012. In 2011, there were 38 million vacant apartments across Europe. In Germany alone, 2,14 million apartments were vacant in 2017. At the same time, homelessness increased in all European countries (except Finland) and reached record highs across the continent.
In addition, vacancy rates in Greece, Croatia, Portugal, Malta, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain and Italy account for around 30 percent of all apartments. This is partly due to the fact that many flats are used as holiday accommodation, driving up rents for local populations. The shortage can also be felt in German cities due to the permanent letting of apartments to tourists.
Lack of infrastructure in rural regions leads to rural exodus.
There are further tensions due to the declining number of jobs and the lack of digital infrastructure in rural areas. A lack of public transport, irregular rail services, closed train stations in smaller communities and a lack of schools and hospitals, all play a part in driving young, well-educated people to large cities.
Due to the exorbitant rise in housing prices and the social pressure from citizens’ initiatives such as “Deutsche Wohnen & Coenteignen” (the initiative to expropriate large corporate landlords in Berlin), signed by DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis during his European election campaign visit to Berlin, the Berlin Senate (consisting of Social democratic, Green and Left parties) has now introduced an unprecedented amendment to the law concerning Statutory Provisions on Rent Limitation (Regelungen des Gesetzes zur Neuregelung gesetzlicher Vorschriften zur Mietenbegrenzung” – Mietendeckel). This law is intended to freeze rents in Berlin for a period of five years. Excessive rents are to be capped.
Among other measures, the law provides above all for a combination of a rent freeze and rent caps.
This law will apply to 1,5 million apartments built before 2014. There will be an upper limit of EUR 9.80 per square meter. This exact value will depend on the year of construction and the facilities and equipment included. The law should not only slow down the fast increase in housing prices, it should also reduce rents to a more socially acceptable level.
Can the rent control model adopted today in Berlin serve as a model for other major European cities?
It is not only in many major German cities that people are following closely the developments of Berlin’s housing policy. Javier Buron, housing manager of the city administration of Barcelona, writes:
“In Barcelona, the current events in Berlin are followed with great interest. The prospect of a city with a reliable public system for measuring rental prices (rent index) and the political will and technical ability to initially limit market price increases (rent brake) and completely freeze rental prices for five years is of the greatest interest to Catalan activists, legislators, the media and public managers.
Barcelona already has a system similar to the rent index (“Index de preus de lloguer de la Generalitat de Catalunya”), but the local authorities are faced with a hesitant Ministry of State that does not intervene in the market and does not allow local authorities to do so. Even though the rental markets in Berlin and Barcelona are very different (less public stock), the performance of the new Berlin model is very relevant for the struggle for social and affordable rent in Barcelona.“
Meanwhile, as expected, the real estate industry has begun its criticism of the plans because rent controls will have a considerable effect on their profit margins. We see the current initiative as a first step towards securing affordable rents for all.
Housing is a human right, not a commodity.
The housing sector should not serve profit maximisation, but rather the common good. A non-profit housing sector is possible!
A reintroduction of non-profit status (“Wohnungsgemeinnützigkeit“) (abolished in the 1990s) must remain on the housing policy agenda. Land should be converted into leasehold rights while retaining private ownership so that building projects can be regulated in the public interest (examples: Vienna, Amsterdam). We need a municipal planning law, municipal land policy, municipal regulation of the housing stock, a new non-profit status for the housing companies, housing construction as infrastructure planning and local alliances for affordable building and housing.
Rent caps should only be the beginning. The path to a paradigm shift requires the transformation of private property into common property. These local measures must be part of a European perspective, as we have designed them in our DiEM25 Green New Deal for Europe.
The 5 year limitation period is not the only pitfall of the current solution. The expected legal disputes threaten to dilute the aim of the “rent cap”, if not substantially undermine it. On the occasion of the reform of the land tax, which has just taken place, the transformation into a land value tax was neglected, further aggravating the situation.
Whether rent levels fall as a result of the law or at least cease to rise further, it is a example for governments in other cities and a light on the horizon for the tenants of Europe!
Police brutality in Greece: student hit on the head by flash-bang grenade
On Thursday October 24, during a student demonstration in Athens outside the Greek Parliament, a first-year University student, T. Sakkaris, was hit on the head by a flash-bang grenade thrown by the police against the demonstrators. The student, who is a member of MeRA25, was severely wounded and subsequently hospitalised, having lost a lot of blood. Naturally the police gave their own version of events by claiming that no flash-bang grenade was ever used, only tear gas.
MeRA25 MP Sophia Sakorafa, who rushed to the spot, rebutted their claim and Mihalis Kritharides, MeRA25’s spokesperson, condemned police brutality and the law and order dogma that the right-wing government is implementing to counter popular resistance.
The issue at stake, that triggered a similar demonstration in Thessaloniki, is the students’ opposition to the recent law that abolishes university asylum and other neoliberal reforms. Central to them is the indirect abolition of the emblematic article 16 of the Greek Constitution, which establishes tertiary education as a public good.
MeRA25's success is the only sign and hope of resistance to TINA [There is No Alternative]
After the recent elections in Greece (July 2019) the overall shift to the Right registers the acceptance of TINA [the dogma that There Is No Alternative] by the majority of the Greek people.
SYRIZA’s fall from office is the result of its 5-year mutation from a leftist party, which represented the insurrections of 2011-12 with the popular mandate for Greece’s exit from austerity, into the implementing branch of TINA. In the elections the people voted for its “original” representative, i.e. the right-wing New Democracy (ND). For MeRA25:
1. ND is building a new parasitical model on the basis of the 4th memorandum signed by Tsipras, which reproduces that of Latvia, (increased migration, low wages, hedge-funds for non-performing loans, banks for laundering money from abroad and “filets” for the oligarchs).
2. ND’s fiscal policy repeats the same fatal combination of the big surpluses imposed by the Troika, i.e. austerity for the people and money for the lenders.
3. ND’s agenda “law and order” is designed to prevent the social outcry bound to erupt as a result of these destructive economic policies.
MeRA25’s success is the only sign and hope that social resistance to TINA is still possible, and so is the development of a strategy for and mass appeal against political subjection and economic enslavement to the vicious cycle of debt and austerity.
Three current destructive policies in Greece and challenges for both MeRA25 and DiEM25:
1. The abolition of elementary labour rights
In Parliament, ΜeRΑ25 is fighting against the relevant bill with concrete counter-proposals.
Proposal: A DiEM25 campaign against the destruction of labour rights and for the protection of jobs, reduced work hours, minimum wage and workplace democracy.2. Environmental destruction
In Parliament, ΜeRΑ25 is the only force with a complete environmental agenda and is systematically organising contacts with movements.
Proposal: Increasing and disseminating DiEM25’s Ecological Transition programme.3. Migrants and refugees
The Turkish government’s announcement of the suspension of the EU-Turkey deal and the invasion of Northern Syria are threatening to “flood” (in Erdogan’s language) the EU, and especially Greece, with refugees.Proposal: DiEM25 should organise a pan-European campaign that hinges on the abolition of the distinction between political and economic migrant/refugee, and call for peace.