May 1st: As long as capitalism exists, every generation of workers is condemned to wage the same struggles again and again – for dignity, wages, conditions, hours
Today, May 1, we struggle not to forget the sacrifices of generations of workers to etch onto the world’s collective conscience the crucial principle that labour is not, and can never be, just another commodity. We struggle to remember past struggles so that the next struggles can be won in the name of humanism.
The 1st of May commemoration is not an exercise in remembrance alone: Today’s generation is struggling against the same monsters that crushed the workers in May 1886 in Chicago – and for the same reason: The struggle to limit working hours to 8 per day, to extract from employers a living wage, to secure decent conditions, to safeguard the workers’ dignity in an era where young people are forced to choose between Uberisation, endless internships, or a soul-destroying process of branding and re-branding themselves as ultra-flexible, all-hours wage slaves who live for the corporation and not for themselves.
The struggle continues. And this is, in itself, excellent news!
DiEM25's Labour, Employment and Social Protection Policy Paper now in development – Contribute!
The main problems affecting the lives of a very large number of Europeans are under-employment, precarity, lack of prospects, uncertainty about their future, and fear of unemployment, together with low purchasing power. In fact, almost a quarter of the population of the European Union is at risk of poverty. In this context, many Europeans express their distrust of the Union, or even straight out reject it. They have the feeling – often rightly so – that the social regressions implemented in the recent years come from political choices made at European level, notably the “flexibilisation” of the labour market. This resentment is skilfully exploited by the anti-European right and the extreme right, which have recently discovered a social sensitivity and have invested this domain abandoned by the so-called “government” left.
If we want to create a political dynamics strong enough to simultaneously oppose austerity policies and nationalist regressions, and if we want to be able to implement our strategy of constructive disobedience, it is essential that we can propose European citizens and workers an alternative programme that puts social justice and the reduction of inequality at the heart of our new project for Europe.
The Labour, Employment and Social Protection pillar of our Progressive Agenda for Europe aims to offer to European citizens an ambitious, concrete and credible alternative project as well as European social policies aimed at promoting social justice, reducing inequalities and protecting workers and the precariat. It will be an important tool for our campaigns.
The questionnaire is now available here.
Read it, comment it, and give us your contributions!
“European Spring”: The transnational list to present a progressive alternative in 2019 gathers pace
Following last month’s historic launch of a transnational list to take a common progressive agenda to European ballots in 2019, DiEM25 and its European political partners gathered in Lisbon to hold their second meeting on April 26.
Here’s what happened:
On April 25, representatives of the list’s provisional governing council took to the streets along with thousands to commemorate Portugal’s “Freedom Day”.
The council met on the following day at Lisbon’s Biblioteca de São Lázaro, where the following political forces joined as observers: Actúa, Barcelona en Comú, Die Linke, Nouvelle Donne, Parti communiste français (PCF), Party of the European Greens, Party of the European Left, and Transform!
The group covered a packed agenda during an 8-hour-long session, which included agreeing on a common name for the transnational electoral initiative, a common stance on its relation to other movements, parties and lists, as well as an Ethical Code all candidates will observe. A series of work-groups composed of members of each organisation will be formed in the following weeks to develop a common communications strategy, online presence and campaign schedule.
While all of the council’s agreements will be subjected to each organization’s internal democratic procedures, here are some of the key items the council convened during the meeting:
“European Spring”, a name proposed by DiEM25’s membership, received the council’s unanimous vote as the transnational list’s name.
The council also unanimously agreed on an Ethical Code the candidates to the 2019 electoral contest are bound to respect and promote.
Observers were also invited to take part on the discussions. Oliver Schröder, member of Die Linke and speaking on behalf of European Party of the Left President Gregor Gysi, commended the council’s transparency and courageous initiative.
Unity and coherence was the underlying theme during the council’s discussions. In light of the recent emergence of similar pan-European political projects, DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis stressed the need to have a discussion on actual policies: “Our worst enemy,” he said, “is not answering the question of what we are going to do to transform the European institutions.”
Generation-s’ Benoit Hamon underscored the importance of campaigning on positive values and a robust programme.
LIVRE’S Rui Tavares proposed a ‘shadow’ European Commission and to further democratise the election of the Spitzenkandidat:
As it was the case after the transnational list launch in Naples last month, this meeting’s conclusions will be made available online by all participating organisations shortly. Also, all decisions regarding the list’s programme will be tabled to all participating organisation’s members for consultation and eventual vote.
“This is what, once again, makes us a unique project,” Varoufakis underlined, “our transnational feedback, as all of our members will be able to comment on the programme – not along national lines, but as Europeans.”
“Today we had our second meeting and we are well on our way to establishing our programme! And anyone can contribute to it, they do not need to be members: participation and transparency is at the heart of our list!”, concluded Varoufakis.
The council’s next meeting will take place in Paris at the end of May 2018.
Media Coverage
Euronews: Greece’s former finance minister gives grim assessment of his country’s economic health
Diário de Noticias: “O Governo português nunca teria sido formado se não desencadeássemos a nossa luta”
Radio Renascenca: Varoufakis foi “special guest star” no desfile de Lisboa
Público: O Governo português tem “uma dívida de gratidão” para com os gregos
RTP: Yanis Varoufakis não poupa críticas a Centeno
Jornal de Negócios: Varoufakis: Fim anunciado do memorando na Grécia não vai terminar com políticas de austeridade
Expresso: Varoufakis: Centeno é um “instrumento do Eurogrupo” e das políticas de Schäuble
Jornal de Negócios: Varoufakis: Actual Governo em Portugal foi formado porque Alemanha já não podia esmagar esquerda portuguesa
Observador: O que mudou com Centeno no Eurogrupo? “Nada”, acusa Varoufakis
Noticias ao Minuto: “Situação na Grécia piora diariamente. Virar a página? É insulto ao povo”
País ao Minuto: “Precisamos de uma nova revolução para libertar a Europa”
TVI: Milhares de portugueses (e um grego) comemoram 25 de Abril nas ruas de Lisboa
SIC Noticias: “Os cidadãos europeus estão fartos de pensamentos ilusórios”
Diário de Noticias: Lista transnacional concorre às eleições europeias de 2019 sob a designação de Primavera Europeia
SAPO24: Lista transnacional concorre às eleições europeias de 2019 sob a designação de Primavera Europeia
Público: “Sempre pensei que a esquerda se distingue pelo internacionalismo”
Jornal de Leiria: Actual governo em Portugal foi formado porque Alemanha já não podia esmagar esquerda portuguesa–Yanis Varoufakis
You are all Northern Ireland now
At the Sheffield Festival for Debate DiEM25 workshop last week, Belfast DiEMer Philip Kelly kicks off a discussion about how to unite through and beyond Brexit for a new internationalism.
Thank you for inviting me to this wonderful DiEM25 event in Sheffield. Firstly let me explain my background and some of my own inconsistencies & contradictions: this will help you avoid an ultimately disappointing wait for some profound revelatory meaning from what I say.
I was born in Belfast. My parents came from the red white & blue side of the divide. But long before I was born they rejected their communal identities and embraced Marxism and became proud Irish Republicans. My teenage rebellion was merely to be more Marxist, more republican than my parents.
So after a lifetime of activity on the fringe, ineffectual left, when I decided to join a political party, which would a Marxist, Irish Republican chose? Well, I joined the UK Labour Party. I joined to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, as I believe a movement built around the politics of Corbyn can be transformative not just for you here in the UK, but for the people of Ireland & all of Europe.
So to DiEM. I became active in DiEM 25 very early, why? Because it is the correct response to a crisis that requires a transnational response, a realistic but radical alternative to the failing logic of a neo-liberalism which is consuming itself. For decades the so called “centrists” the liberal elite have been sleepwalking toward the abyss. Today the Far Right are positively goose-stepping us over the edge. Let me again reference Ireland. The popular TV show, Game of Thrones is filmed in Northern Ireland – a story of walls & threats from the “other” beyond the wall(I say this having never watched an episode). Game of Thrones used the ominous title WINTER IS COMING on many a billboard to promote the show. When we look at the political map of Europe, or the election of Trump or the coup in Brazil, then we can see that everywhere neoliberalism’s marriage of convenience to democracy is ending in divorce. Winter is coming.
Yesterday in Belfast, I visited a place called Writers Square, to reflect on another group of people who sensed Winter was coming to Europe, for in that square in Belfast there is a small monument dedicated to the memory of the volunteers who left Ireland to fight for democracy in Spain during the civil war. So on arrival in Sheffield today, the first thing I did was to take a sunny walk from the train station to Sheffield town hall and the Peace Garden and there I gazed at a stone plaque remembering those who left their home city here to take their stand, to take their place on the barricade against the rise of fascism.
Syriza was as Yanis has stated, the canary in the mine, elected to oppose austerity. Then a referendum to reaffirm the desire of Greek citizens to say enough is enough was ultimately crushed by brutal forces. So today, to combat this brutal inhuman force of globalisation we must rebuild a new sense of internationalism. To understand, like those volunteers who left many different cities that we are all part of one struggle. Today from the streets of Athens, to the Paris suburbs, to refugee squats in Rome, from Sheffield to Belfast, we all need to stand in unity against the coming winter.
I supported DiEM25 & campaigned for REMAIN, more specifically I debated against the LEXIT argument, I argued that the referendum was merely a choice between two visions of neoliberalism, that LEAVE was like trying to escape the darkness by closing your eyes. However, in or out, as progressives, our task remains monumental & the same, we must save Europe from disintegration. The EU is a battlefield: it is our Winter Palace.
So today, as an Irishman standing here in Sheffield it gives me no pleasure to say that you are all Northern Ireland (NI) now. The post BREXIT landscape sees two rival blocs with totally different, seemingly irreconcilable national aspirations. Welcome to my world.
The effect of BREXIT in NI is stark. NI remains a polarised and divided society. The city I left is still itself partitioned in many areas by the peace walls, walls actually built to keep two communities separate. They will soon have stood for nearly 50 years: the Berlin Wall lasted less than 30.
NI voted REMAIN, 56% REMAIN, every ‘border constituency’ voted REMAIN. BREXIT has helped bring the border back to the top of the political agenda and as a result, political discourse is polarising.
This is not helped by the fact that a Tory government, whose callousness is only matched by its ineptitude is kept in power by a grubby tax payer funded £1.2 billion deal with 10 Irish MPs (they won’t like me saying that) of the DUP.
This arrangement is helping undermine power sharing and the Good Friday Agreement in NI. So why does the Good Friday Agreement matter? The UK Withdrawal Bill has hit an impasse. An issue that was utterly absent from the mainstream referendum debate. Many BREXITEERS espoused TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR BORDERS. Now the government BREXIT process is derailed by trying to avoid or fudge a border that the English had long forgotten the UK had.
So David Davis & other great minds have the impossible task of untangling their own knotted mess of mutually incompatible demands, to leave the Customs Union & single market while having no hard border in Ireland & simultaneously refusing any “special arrangements” for NI. Who better than David Davis for such a task we may ask?
Senior Tories are now calling the Good Friday Agreement irrelevant & openly attacking it. Some say the Irish Government are stooges of Sinn Fein in trying to use the instability to advance the cause of Irish unity. Others accuse the EU of playing up the border as a means to derail BREXIT. None of these ill conceived notions grasp the reality of the situation & they make any possible mitigation seem even more remote.
The Good Friday Agreement is far from perfect but it represents the start of a long necessary process. Far from perfect, yes but in conflict to wait for a perfect peace can only mean unending conflict. BREXIT represents an existential threat to the entire concept of a shared NI. As such we must see our inter dependence.
So let me return to the comrade in the audience, whose question was – is DiEM Utopian? Yes. Because for too long the lobotomised politics of the “moderates” or “centrists” has had no vision, they have been the midwives of crisis. Yes we protest the current failure, but we are building, together a credible & radical alternative. Let me quote Che Guevara, “be realistic demand the impossible” for we should know that our enemies cannot lay claim to what is possible & they cannot own reality or the future. James Connolly, born in Scotland, who fought the cause of workers in the USA & who ultimately died, shot by a British firing squad after the Easter Rising, said “for our demands most moderate are, we only want the earth”.
Let us, democratically engaged citizens decide what is realistic & possible. The residents of Grenfell Tower formed a residents group & highlighted their safety concerns & many, having been ignored, died in an inferno. Were their demands unrealistic? Is it unrealistic that housing should be a human right, or education free & open to all? Is it unrealistic to have access to health care that is not undermined by relentless privatisation? Is it unrealistic to say that Foodbanks are not the sign of a caring society but an indictment of a failed system that sees only growth in obscene inequality?
Let me finish by saying this, urgency yes, but it is never too late. As Yanis has said “there is no final victory or final defeat.” I’m proud to share this barricade against the coming winter with people like you. Ken Loach, DiEM’s own, a crusading film maker and activist, directed the film ‘Land and Freedom’. It was a story about a volunteer who fights in the Spanish Civil War. The film ends with his letter home to his girlfriend and he says “had we succeeded here and we could have done we would have changed the world”. So let our realistic, moderate mission be that, together let’s fight to change the world.
Phil is former Chair of the Labour Party in NI, regular political contributor on BBC Ulster & cofounder of DiEM 25 Belfast DSC.
Straight talk on trade, international institutions, Greek austerity and inequality
We hear much talk today of how we need a “more balanced, principled discussion” on trade. Such a discussion would begin by acknowledging the historical significance of Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, Henry Carey, the ‘American System’ and the fact that every successful modern industrial society was actually protectionist until it no longer needed to be, including the UK which had Imperial Preference. US global strategy today is to dominate resources and finance – teaching how to do this and training caciques are major functions of this university, as I’ve known since Baby Somoza, as we called him, was my Quincy House-mate back in 1972.
Let’s not kid ourselves:
- Free Trade is the doctrine of the dominant
- The Gold Standard was the doctrine of the rich
- TPP was aimed at China/li>
- TTIP was economic NATO
- The NAFTA was a bailout pact
Let me turn to an area on which I claim the authority of having worked hand-in-glove for five months with the finance minister of the country in question, and that is the treatment here of the case of Greece. Dani Rodrik’s argument is that ‘structural reforms’ imposed on Greece will work in good time if implemented with zeal and persistence. Thus privatization will lead to the ‘rationalization of production…’ and so forth. Greece has wiped out trade unions – and now has a wholly deregulated labour market with no jobs to show for it – but don’t worry, “the bulk of the benefits come much later.” Let the beatings continue until morale improves!
How the logic of rationalization applies to public beaches is not clear. Or even to airports, when the Germans seized the profitable ones but left the unprofitable ones to the Greeks. In the public sector, 300,000 dismissals led to hospitals I was warned not to patronize, or “you’ll leave in a box.” The benefits… will come later?
The truth of Greece is that ‘structural reform’ is a sham. Austerity policy is an open-handed asset grab. It was not intended to bring recovery to Greece but to quell resistance elsewhere, a point directly acknowledged by the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, and reported by Yanis Varoufakis in his memoir. And the Greeks understood. Their refusal of terms was not emotional or irrational. I was in the vast crowds in Syntagma Square two nights before the July 2015 referendum and the mood was calm, brave and grimly determined.
You cannot understand European austerity as a matter of good reforms that haven’t yet borne fruit. Nor were they good-faith reforms that, unfortunately, did not work out. European austerity is a politics of power. It’s a banker protection racket. And the fact is, the strategy has now failed. First in Britain, and now in Italy, a consequential country mentioned here only in passing, just once, in a list. But the Italian pot has been simmering for years. And the voters in Italy, however much one may stereotype and disparage them, know exactly what they just did.
A final point concerns the long argument over rising inequality. Is it trade? Or is it technology? Or is it both, and in which combinations? This debate has been going on for a quarter century – I published my first book on it in 1998 – but the research has long been overtaken by evidence developed since then, which clearly shows a global macroeconomic pattern to the movement of inequality, driven by changing financial regimes, debt crises, the collapse of the East bloc, commodities busts, and in many countries by the movement of exchange rates, driven by financial speculation.
The notion that it takes a trade flow – a movement of quantities – to affect a matrix of relative wages is a debilitating textbook reflex of economists. A large relative-price shock, such as an exchange crisis, is much more efficient. Neither trade volumes nor technologies in use need to change. As an economist from Chicago put it, how many companies do you need for a competitive price? The answer is: one and the threat of entry. This is the same principle, writ large.
The above is an extract from the author’s remarks at a conference on ‘Rethinking Trade and Investment Law, Harvard Law School, April 14, 2018.
James Galbraith is Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, and member of DiEM25’s Advisory Panel.
Open Letter to Gregor Gysi (European Party of the Left), Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), Catarina Martins (Bloco) and Jean Luc Melenchon (FI)
OPEN LETTER
To: Gregor Gysi (European Party of the Left), Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), Catarina Martins (Bloco) and Jean Luc Melenchon (FI)
20th April 2018
Dear Gregor, Pablo, Catarina and Jean Luc,
We are writing to you with an invitation.
- On 10thMarch, and under the umbrella of DiEM25, we established in Napoli a progressive transnational movement to confront Europe’s Deep Establishment by the European Parliament elections in May 2019 – with a single, comprehensive Plan A, a strong Plan B, and even a Plan C; plus a single governing council that is about to meet for the second time this Thursday (26th April) in Lisbon
- On 12thApril Pablo, Catarina and Jean Luc met in Lisbon to announce an intention to create something similar
- Meanwhile, the European Party of the Left, chaired by Gregor, is the largest family of left-wing parties already represented in the European Parliament but lacking a coherent Plan A, B, C
Here is our idea and proposal: Join us in Lisbon next Thursday 26th April so that we can get together with a view to discuss and agree on:
- Common Plans A, B and C for our cities, regions, countries and for Europe as a whole
- A common transnational list of candidates for May 2019
- A common governing structure of this progressive paneuropean movement
If you cannot make it at such a short notice, please send a close associate of yours and then let’s plan to meet up in person at a later date.
Let’s, together, give the peoples of Europe the hope that requires an antidote to the toxic dogma that there is no alternative.
We are very much looking forward to your response.
In solidarity,
Yanis Varoufakis (MeRA25-DiEM25) and Luigi de Magistris (DemA)
Europe's pioneer transnational list council to gather in Lisbon
The historic Transnational List Council launched last month in Naples will meet again next week in Lisbon. Right on the anniversary of the country’s Carnation Revolution, the list’s co-founders, as well as observers representing various political forces from across Europe, will gather again to continue developing the pioneer effort to present a united political front in next year’s European Parliament Elections.
The second collective meeting among the founding members of Europe’s first transnational political list will take place on Thursday, April 26 at Lisbon’s Biblioteca de São Lázaro.
Among the various items on the meeting’s agenda, the Council will be deciding on a name for the common list, and will hold a political discussion on the list’s relation to other movements, parties, and 2019 lists with input from attending observers. In addition, the transnational list’s Provisional Governing Council will vote on an Ethical Code – Declaration of Standards, the list’s candidates to the European Parliamentary elections are bound to observe. The group will also continue discussing and developing the list’s political program based on the agreed pillars in the founding meeting in Naples.
Schedule
Preliminary Council Meeting
- When: Thursday, April 26 | 10am – 5pm.
- Where: Biblioteca de São Lázaro, Rua do Saco, 1, 1169-107 Lisboa (Freguesia da Arroios).
- Participants: Alternativet (Denmark), Bündnis – DiEM25 (Germany), DeMA (Italy), DiEM25, Génération-s (France), LIVRE (Portugal), Razem (Poland).
- Observers: Actúa, Barcelona en Comú, Die Linke, Nouvelle Donne, Party of the European Greens, Party of the European Left, and Transform!
Press Conference
- When: Thursday, April 26 | 6.30pm – 7pm.
- Where: Casa do Alentejo, R. das Portas de Santo Antão 58, 1150-043 Lisboa.
- Media Contacts: Pedro Nunes Rodrigues ([email protected]) | Luis Martín ([email protected]).
Public session of the Transnational List presentation
- When: Thursday, April 26 | 7pm – 8pm.
- Where: Casa do Alentejo, R. das Portas de Santo Antão 58, 1150-043 Lisboa.
Emmanuel Macron’s European challenge: and the crownless again shall be king?
More than six months after his speech on “the re-foundation of a sovereign, united and democratic Europe” at the Sorbonne University, French President Emmanuel Macron laid out once more his vision for the EU yesterday morning in Strasbourg, in front of the European Parliament, convened in a plenary session. This second speech was generally well received by the audience. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, greeted him by proclaiming that “the true France is back”, while the head of the liberal-democratic group ALDE, Guy Verhofstadt, urged him not to fall back, by paraphrasing a famous quote by Georges Danton: “Audacity, then again audacity, always audacity and Europe will be saved”. President Macron argued his case passionately and compellingly, thus presenting himself both as the head of a founding member of the Union and as a continental leader that aspire to play a major role in the next European Parliament election. However, which vision for Europe did he provide?
Macron’s Europe: democracy, sovereignty and identity
The French President started his 25-minute-long speech by warning his audience against the menace of a European civil war, triggered by the resurgence of national egoisms in the face of the challenges posed by the new century. He then continued by sharing two “strong convictions”, which should constitute, in his view, the common ground for the battle to be fought in the next European Parliament election: first, that European nations should stand by the very ideal of democracy, with all that it entails; second, that the demands for social and economic protection expressed by European citizens in various national election rounds can only be addressed by establishing a new “European sovereignty”. Democracy and sovereignty are thus the two keywords through which Macron’s speech should be read and understood. Furthermore, President Macron tightly connected those two concepts to a third one — the concept of identity — which he defined as a particular “model of democracy in action”.
But in what does such a “European democracy” consist?
The answer lies in a Freudian slip that Macron committed as he referred to the European Parliament as an institution devoted to “vivifying democracy in Europe, as Tocqueville called it”. The title of Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece is Democracy in America, whereas Democracy in Europe is that of an essay co-authored in 2012 by former Italian Prime minister and European commissioner for competition Mario Monti with former Member of the European Parliament — as well as Emmanuel Macron’s own Defence minister — Sylvie Goulard. This pamphlet offers an interesting “Tocquevillian take” on the question of the democratic deficit of European institutions. Notably, the two authors characterize such a deficit not as a crisis of European democracy, but as a crisis of democracy in Europe, in the sense that they locate the problem at the very root of the European political order: the sovereign authority of each nation state.
In Monti and Goulard’s view, the process of European integration constitutes precisely the solution to such a crisis, since it is part of the same “push towards equality” that Alexis de Tocqueville singled out as the driving force behind the demise of the “Ancien Régime” and the success of the bourgeois revolutions. True equality among European citizens requires the constitution of a European “democracy by the people” through their participation in the election of representatives, who then deliver a “democracy for the people” by improving the competitiveness of the European economic system. The “Tocquevillian” inspiration for Monti and Goulard’s analysis becomes apparent precisely in the way in which they conceive of the necessary conditions for the emergence of a European “democracy by the people”: by the constitution of a European “demos”, unified through a European democratic “ethos”.
In Democracy in America, Tocqueville contends that political institutions, legal systems and social customs are defined by a “social condition”, or a particular way of life. In the case of the “Anglo-Americans”, such a condition was “essentially democratic”, or egalitarian. In Tocqueville’s view, the “taste for free institutions” that characterized the young American Federation was, therefore, a direct consequence of an egalitarian ethos, which made “men independent of each other” and gave them “a habit and a taste for following, in their private actions, no other guide but their own will.”
It is precisely for this reason that, in his last speech, Emmanuel Macron identified the basis for a European sovereignty in the “authority of democracy”, or, more precisely, in the authority of that particularly vigorous and vibrant form of (liberal) democracy that constitutes, in his view, the true European ethos, and which consists of three key elements: “a passion for freedom”, “a taste for equality” and the respect for diversity.
However, he also stressed the conviction that such an ethos must translate into effective government in order to meet the daily life demands of European citizens. That is why a European democratic sovereignty must supplement that of nation states, instead of diluting it. More precisely, President Macron identified some major axes on which such a European sovereignty should focus: immigration, through the constitution of a European asylum system; the Europe-wide taxation of the GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) in order to garner autonomous fiscal resources for a common budget; the reform of the European monetary, banking and economic union, implying both solidarity and competitiveness through structural reforms; the integration of the European higher education system and the definition of a common intellectual property rights framework; a common European foreign and defence policy framework; common trade policies, both forward-looking and protective; climatic and energetic sovereignty, to be attained through a European carbon taxation system; sovereignty in the domain of nutrition and health, through the implementation of common quality standards for foods and drugs; digital sovereignty, through the protection of European citizens’ data; social sovereignty, through a common social rights platform.
But the question remains: How can such a plea for a democratic integration of European states be consistent with Emmanuel Macron’s often mocked “Bonapartist”, or even “neo-monarchical” style of presidency?
Re-enchanting authority: the return of the king?
As French historian — and former mentor to Emmanuel Macron — François Dosse argues, the style of the new French President must be understood in connection with the thought of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, to whom Macron served as an assistant in the last years of his life. In an interview he gave in 1998, Ricoeur describes the fundamental problem of the post-theological modern state, born with the French Revolution, as follows: since the bond that ties society together requires not only a horizontal dimension (“the will to live together”), but also a vertical one, i.e. that of authority, how can the latter spontaneously emerge from the former, in the absence of any external (religious) source of legitimation? Ricoeur’s answer consists in suggesting that the vertical bond constituted by political authority should be “re-enchanted”, yet not by a parallel authority, but through a “bottom-up” process. More precisely, by drawing on John Rawls’ concept of “overlapping consensus”, Ricoeur contends that different ideological and religious worldviews should accept to live in a “consensual-dissenting” relationship to one another, by trying to find a middle ground in the search for the meaning of social life, without renouncing to engage in a reasonable public debate to defend their own positions.
Manuel Macron’s self-styled “Jupiterian” approach to the presidency of France might be seen as an alternative “top-down” attempt to re-enchant authority by manufacturing an overlapping consensus of values and meanings. In such a view, the President, as an individual, should act as the catalyst of all social and political conflicts, in order to provide a “progressive” synthesis, where the adjective “progressive” must be understood in the neo-liberal sense of the word. That is why, in the name of facing the challenges of modernization, Emmanuel Macron has constantly tried to topple all established cleavages, starting with the traditional “left vs right” one and proceeding to newer ones: “sovereignty vs European integration”, “openness vs protection”, etc. Furthermore, such a vision of the role of the presidency in French society is coupled with a vision of the historical role of France within Europe, which is rooted in a tradition that dates back at least to the presidency of François Mitterrand.
From such a standpoint, France should take over the political leadership of the continent, in order to counterbalance the economic and industrial leadership of the German Federation. The stability of the European democratic order should thus be granted by a close “confrontational cooperation” between those two powers, which should also constitute the basis for a European patriotic sentiment. That is why Emmanuel Macron is determined both to challenge the German conservative leadership, considerably weakened by the results of the last federal elections, and to gain credibility, by implementing swift neoliberal reforms at home. In this sense, he can thus be said to aspire to be a “monarch”, i.e. to embody the full power of political authority in France and that of historical necessity in Europe.
And so we arrive at our final question: how should a movement like DiEM25 position itself with respect to this political project?
The king is dead, never again shall there be a king!
Emmanuel Macron’s leadership should be credited with the merit of rekindling the debate over the necessity of pushing for comprehensive reforms of the EU by ensuring the democratic participation of European citizens. Such a prospect is perfectly in line with DiEM25’s progressive manifesto.
However, there exist at least three fundamental points of divergence between our movement’s and President Macron’s project. First, whereas Macron’s plan intends to build a European sovereignty on the Westphalian model, DiEM25 is committed to the constitution of a European demos in which multiple sovereignties could be exercised in parallel, by breaking the false equivalence between sovereignty and power.
Second, DiEM25 is working towards the emergence of a democratic, progressive and pro-European consciousness in the whole continent, and not towards a multi-tiered union, with different levels of integration.
Third, and most importantly, contrary to President Macron’s understanding of the authority of democracy, DiEM25 is devoted to constituting a horizontal, spontaneous and rhizomatic form of political and social organization, the legitimation of which depends on the will of freely associating citizens and groups of citizens.
It is for those reasons that, while acknowledging any progress that could be made in the direction of a deeper European integration, DiEM25 shall always remind us that, as Shakespeare put it, “if we live, we live to tread on kings”.
Nicola Bertoldi is currently pursuing a PhD in history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris 1 and is an active member of DiEM25.
The ‘Europeanization’ of schooling: what is a European education?
By Paola Pietrandrea, Rossella Latempa and Francesca Lacaita
Whether we are specialist or not, we all know more or less where the education system of our countries stands. We are all aware that our school systems are coordinated, monitored and assessed according to some vague “European” standards or criteria.
In general we don’t object to that: we consider the Europeanization of our education systems as a guarantee of quality, of good functioning and also as a sign of that international cooperation, of European integration, which we increasingly need to fend off provincialism and nationalism.
Everything fine, then? No, not exactly. Unfortunately, things are more complicated than they appear. Let us see why.
The Europeanisation of education systems is a recent development. Theoretically, education should be the responsibility of member states: education in European countries has always been a national affair, functional to the consolidation of the identity and culture of a community. Each educational system has had its own history, linked to the evolution of its policy, geography, traditions, language and society.
As it happens, however, although education formally remains a national competence, since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, a new ‘orthodoxy’, based on the comparison of education systems, has been gradually introduced into the educational policies of the whole continent.
This new orthodoxy brings two problems.
First of all, it has been imposed as a matter of fact rather than a concerted policy. Some refer to “government without government” to characterize the process which, from the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 to the Rethinking Education Communication of 2012, up to the current ET2020 strategy, has always moved along the same line: education must be “reshaped” in terms of skills that generate employment (employability), productivity and competitiveness.
Secondly, it is evident that the new orthodoxy has been guided by extremely clear and powerful ideological assumptions. Education policies are often formulated on the urging and with the significant contribution of such international organization as the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) – which isn’t European only – the Council of Europe, and the EU. These organizations pursue education policies in accordance with their goals, which are for the most part in support of market economies and the principle of competition between societies and in all aspects of society.
This is true in particular for the OECD (which has the highest media profile, as it is the organisation that issues the PISA reports) and for the European Commission, albeit in a more ancillary role compared to the OECD. As for the Council of Europe, its remit is the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, but its power in implementation is not comparable to that of the EU or of “the markets”.
To sum up, today we can speak of a real European education space, built by different social actors: political decision-makers, technocrats, lobbies, academics, private agencies, associations. This international area of development and decision-making in the field of education and scientific research has to be placed in an even broader framework, as we have recently been reminded by the OECD report “Strategy for skills”: this place of decision is characterized by an inevitable reference to neo-liberal ideology.
Neo-liberal education and ‘gigantic laboratories’
In this perspective, education does not have as its objective the development of human beings and citizens of a community (whether national, European, global or intercultural) with an objective of emancipation, nor the autonomy of teaching from any other economic and political power as established in our Constitutions. In this perspective, education serves to improve human capital at the service of the economy and to make it internationally competitive. At best, in this perspective, education is functional to finding one’s place in existing structures thus avoiding discrepancies and inefficiencies.
As Rossella Latempa has shown, this ideological position underlying educational policies is imposed by the Ministries on schools through two powerful means: an economic blackmail and the spread of storytelling celebrating “pedagogical innovations”, often contemptuous of traditional approaches.
Let’s take the Italian example: the granting of European funding, which is supposed to be an entitlement and is in fact indispensable, has been subordinated since 2014 to the implementation in school of a series of extracurricular activities, the so-called PON projects. These PON projects are aimed at a limited number of students and they are to be carried out necessarily through what the Ministry calls “innovative approaches”. These innovative approaches are defined as “experiential dimensions [characterized by a] recomposition between the language of the school and that of socio-economic reality”. Teachers and trainers – it is clarified in the various actions – must structure “learning situations” aiming to solve concrete problems and “working methods useful for life and professional development”. In other words, an innovative approach is defined as an approach that orients education towards professional learning.
In this perspective, the dominant discourse in school is dotted with words inherited in an approximate and uncritical way from the pedagogical sciences. Methodological and didactic choices which are often functional to the dominant model and logic are often passed off as stable scientific acquisitions: metacognition, project based-learning, cooperative learning, learning by doing, flipped classroom, formal and informal learning, digital storytelling, brain-storming, outdoor training, enterprise theatre, e-learning”. In this perspective, highly ideology-driven concepts are presented as inescapable educational discourses in an overused narrative about the need for innovation for the “salvation” of our schooling.
To aggravate the manipulation of the dominant discourse, there is, at least in Italy, the self-celebratory, redundant and arrogant rhetoric of the Ministry.
In an independent evaluation report (2007-2013), which the Italian Ministry of Education entrusted to the private consultancy firm Deloitte Consulting srl, it is written, with the typical pomposity of those proud to have contributed to a turning point for the country, that the PON projects have paved the way for what “aims to be a substantial change in collective behaviour which we consider restrictive and harmful to a modern education system” and that they (the PON projects) “transformed the South into a gigantic territorial laboratory” where “innovation has been made”.
Although the programme’s contribution to the development of human capital in schools is still in the making, the report stresses the “driving force for change” and the need to sediment results, to give “a coherent direction […] and govern it”. With little prudence, in this document, they speak of “Schumpeterian creative destruction”, of “revolution of the scientific paradigm à la Khun” (!): in short, we are assisting in the profound deconstruction of ‘the School’ in terms of formation and organization. In clear terms, they recommend “less emphasis on discipline-specific content training” and new care in the construction of the right “cognitive maps” of the actors involved in the renewal process: that is, teachers.
The document defines them as “old-school professionals” still convinced “that not only educational certificates are useful, but are of value” who find themselves facing “a change in the same brain synapses that govern their routine behaviour”, to meet the training needs of “digital natives”.
The combination of financial blackmail and contemptuous rhetoric humiliates the institutional sovereignty of the school and humiliates the professional sovereignty of teachers. The perception that this dominant discourse comes from the European institutions creates, as we are used to seeing in every area, suspicion, irritation and annoyance with the restrictions imposed by the Eurocrats.
Quite interestingly, Rossella Latempa shows that the irritation and annoyance due to the restrictions imposed by the “Eurocrats” lead the professionals of Education to claim their sovereignty by referring to a (re)nationalisation of their institutions.
Multidimensional education and national sovereignty
It is now clear, though, that institutional sovereignty and national sovereignty are two separate things that do not coincide. If education cannot be separated from the former, the latter no longer makes sense today.
Indeed, as Rossella Latempa points out, a new and more ambitious European identity could be released precisely by reformulating the ideas of education, research and development in the sense of an ideal and subversive cultural potential.
Let us think for a moment about what European citizen we might want schools to help create. Thinking about what kind of education we want means thinking about what kind of European citizen we want in our future: a transnational citizen, not just an individual who lives in constant mobility. We want a European citizen who is not required to develop one work project after another, to continuously renew her or his skills in a process of continuous choices and decisions. We want a person, with her own wishes and fears: not just a problem solver, flexible and ready to represent Europe in the World Championship of progress and innovation.
If, as in the utopia that the DiEM25 movement is outlining, the Europe to be formed is to be a federal Europe, but also a Europe of states, regions and cities, a multidimensional and networked Europe, in which the memberships and identities of each one are necessarily multiple, why not imagine a multidimensional education, in which certain issues and methods remain European: those which serve to strengthen the awareness of a European citizenship; others focused nationally, others regionally and so on?
In this perspective, with respect for the various sovereignties – and first of all with respect for the freedom of teaching, which should be built into any plan, we repeat, starting with our Constitutions – we could redesign a school where the concept of innovation is not crushed by that of profit.
Education as a common good
Let us now stop and think about what model we want for education. Education, we believe, should be conceived as a European common good: a “collective enterprise”; a form of “citizenship”, a space for action and definition of political objectives that do not renounce the cultural, social and civic dimensions of education.
Thinking of education as a common good does not mean to imagine – as some ministerial and European documents seem to suggest – a “civic-centred” school, possibly open all year round, for projects meant to make up for structural and political shortcomings.
On the contrary, it means thinking of education as a good that the whole of society must be ready to feed and protect: in this way schools would play their part (and only their part) at the centre of a complex civic fabric, composed of libraries, cultural and sports centres, places dedicated to continuous education, or entirely dedicated to education and culture.
But thinking of education as a common good also means imagining that this good can be enjoyed by the whole community in a future designed with a long and ambitious gaze. We think that this design can be built by citizens who are culturally capable of influencing, acting and imagining alternatives.
That is why we propose that DiEM25 members and to anyone who cares about these issues discuss the school we want for Europe, in a perspective that is already transnational. Operationally, this means that we propose to create a transnational thematic DiEM spontaneous collective (DSC), in which at least the following issues are addressed:
1. An assessment of the current situation
- – Which reforms of the Educational system have been introduced into your country in recent years?
- – To what extent has the introduction of these measures been agreed with stakeholders, students, teachers, families?
- – To what extent is your country’s education system capable of removing the economic, social and personal obstacles to the full intellectual and cultural development of students?
- – Has any form of “education to work” (i.e. something more general than “practical training” in technical education) been introduced lately?
- – Do you think education has become more performance-driven and focused on competition by results?
- – Have you noticed a change in public perception of the role of teachers? More specifically, do you share the impression that teachers are increasingly being given the role of instructors and transmitters of knowledge rather than educators?
- – Do you think spaces for critical thought and practices are opening or closing in the education system of your country?
- – To what extent do industries “own” education?
2. Proposals for an education model as a common good
2a. What role for schools in the overall education system
- – Should schools be the only place where knowledge is formed and passed on?
- – If not, which other instances should be involved in the education system?
- – What should the specific character of the school system be?
- – Who should be responsible for adult education?
2b What interaction between school and pedagogical research
- – How can the interaction between school and pedagogical research be harmonised? Is the school system a test bench? A field of experimentation? A place of elaboration? A forum for discussion of educational proposals?
- – Which instruments would allow a more harmonious transition?
2c School and innovation
- – How can schools cope with the disruptive force of the technological revolution? What reflection is needed? How can this reflection be agreed on? How soon? With which instances? To do what?
3. Proposals for school governance
3a What is the role of different traditions in the creation of educational policies?
- – Do you think it is right to integrate and coordinate the different European education systems?
- – How can the European perspective be integrated with more local perspectives?
- – Do you think that one of the tasks of education is to develop European citizenship? And if so, how?
More in general,
- – What should be the timeframe for the implementation, verification and discussion of any school renovation?
- – How to avoid a key element of our society becoming a fertile ground for the launch of empty propaganda messages in the eternal election campaign we live in?
Anyone who wants to answer these questions, or propose others, anyone who wants to contribute to creating a transnational sphere of public discussion on education, can contact us at this address: [email protected]
Let’s keep in touch. Let’s keep this ball rolling. Let’s stick together. We need this.
Paola is a Linguist and a member of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective
Rossella is a physicist, secondary school teacher, and member of DiEM25
Francesca is an anglicist, secondary school teacher, and coordinator of DSC1Milan