Greek PM Alexis Tsipras & Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos at parliamentary session in May, 2016, ahead of Eurogroup meeting which might unlock bailout funds. Press Association/Yorgos Karahalis. All rights reserved.This article
addresses left-wing critics of DiEM25 who claim that DiEM25 is pursuing the
wrong objective (to democratise the EU) by means of a faulty strategy (focusing
at the European rather than at the national level).
But this response,
while addressed to left-wing supporters of Lexit (the strategy of calling for
referenda in favour of leaving the EU, Brexit-style), is pertinent also to the
other political traditions that DiEM25 seeks to unite in the struggle to
democratise Europe; i.e. authentic liberals, ecologists, feminists, members of
pirate parties, activists unwilling to be embedded in existing parties, and
even progressive conservatives.[1]
Three options
In the space of eleven
months two referenda shook up not only the European Union but also Europe’s left:
the Greek OXI in July 2015 and Brexit in June 2016. Exasperated by the EU’s
mixture of authoritarianism and economic failure, a segment of Europe’s left is
now calling for a “break with the EU”,[2] a
stance that has come to be associated with the term Lexit.[3] DiEM25,
the transnational Democracy in Europe Movement, rejects the Lexit logic and offers
an alternative agenda for Europe’s progressives.
Undoubtedly, the Left has
a duty to confront, with all its energy and imagination, the EU’s practice of de-politicising
political decision making. [4] The
question is not whether the Left must clash with the EU’s establishment and current
practices. The question is in what context, and within which overarching
political narrative, this confrontation should take place. There are three
options on offer.
Option 1: Euro-reformism, ‘more democracy’, ‘more Europe’
One (fast receding) option
is the standard variety of euro-reformism, practised typically by social
democrats who argue for ‘more democracy’, ‘more Europe’, ‘reformed EU
institutions’ etc. It is an option founded on a fallacy: The EU is not
suffering from a democratic deficit that can be fixed with a ‘little more
democracy’ and a few reforms here and there. As I argued in a recent book,[5]
the EU was constructed intentionally as a democracy-free zone designed to keep
the demos out of decision-making and to defer to a cartel of Europe’s big
business and the financial sector. To say that the EU suffers from a democratic
deficit is like an astronaut on the moon complaining that she is surrounded by
an oxygen deficit…
The EU’s institutions
are incapable of being reformed through the standard process of
inter-governmental deliberations and gradual treaty changes. For this reason,
calls for ‘more Europe’ are misguided since, under the present EU regime and
institutions, ‘more Europe’ and gradualist reforms will result in the
formalisation and legalisation of Europe’s Austerity Union along the lines of
what I have described as the Schäuble Plan. This will, in turn, deepen the crisis
afflicting Europe’s weakest citizens, enhance the appeal of the xenophobic rightwing and, in any case, speed up the EU’s disintegration. If this is right, and
I believe it is, then democrats have no alternative than to spearhead a head-on
clash with the EU’s establishment. Which brings us to the second and the third
options.
Option 2: Lexit – leaving the EU
The second option is,
of course, the Lexit route. Tariq Ali has eloquently made the case, amongst
others. [6]
Stathis Kouvelakis, post-Brexit, sums up the
position thus:
“So, we have to play the referendum game, while blocking the forces of the
xenophobic and nationalist Right from winning hegemony and diverting the
popular revolt.” In short, to beat the xenophobic right’s misanthropy we have
to join their call for referenda that will take our nation-states out of the
EU.
This (Lexit) option
raises concerns regarding its realism and probity. Is its agenda feasible? In
other words, is it a realistic prospect that, by (in Kouvelakis’ words) calling
for referenda to leave the EU, the left can block “the forces of the xenophobic
and nationalist Right from winning hegemony and diverting the popular revolt”? And,
is such a campaign consistent with the left’s fundamental principles? DiEM25
believes that the answer to both questions is negative and, for this reason,
opposes the Lexit option. Let me explain these two answers before briefly
discussing DiEM25’s alternative proposal (the third option below).
The left used to be
good at separating static from dynamic analyses. Since Marx, drawing upon
Hegel, prioritised process over outcomes, the left learned how to take into
account the direction of change, not just the various states of the world. In
the case of the EU, this is crucial. For example, the position we should have
taken before the common market, or the Eurozone, were created cannot be the
same once these institutions were in place. It was, therefore, perfectly
consistent
- to oppose
Greece’s entry into the common market and/or into the Eurozone, and - to oppose a
referendum for Greece to exit the common market and/or the euro.
Even more
significantly, it makes a huge difference whether our starting point is a
borderless Europe (in which European workers exercise free movement) or a
Europe like that of the early 1950s where nation-states controlled borders and
could create at will a new category of Italian or Greek proletarians called
gastarbeiters.
This last point
highlights the dangers of Lexit. Given that the EU has established free
movement, Lexit involves acquiescence to (if not actual support for) its ending
and for the re-establishment of national border controls, complete with barbed
wire and armed guards. Granted that, if we were to re-run history, the left
should demand common minimum wages in exchange for its support for the Single
Market, do supporters of Lexit truly believe that, today, the left can win the
battle for hegemony against the xenophobic right by endorsing the latter’s call
for building new fences and ending free movement? Similarly, do they truly
believe that the left will win the discursive and policy war against the fossil
fuel industry by supporting the re-nationalisation of environmental policy?
Under the Lexit banner, in my estimation, the left is heading for monumental
defeats on both fronts.
Option 3: DiEM25’s proposal for disobedience within the EU
And so we come to the
third option, the one proposed by DiEM25. It rejects both the euro-reformist
calls for ‘more democracy’ and ‘more Europe’ as well as Lexit’s support for
referenda to abolish the EU level altogether and return full control to
nation-states. Instead, DiEM25 proposes a pan-European movement of civil and
governmental disobedience with which to bring on a surge of democratic
opposition to the way European elites do business at the local, national and EU
levels.
At DiEM25 we do not
believe that the EU will be reformed through the usual channels of EU policy
making, and certainly not by bending the existing ‘rules’ on budget deficits by
half or one per cent of national income (as the governments of France, Italy,
Spain and Portugal are doing). Vicente Navarro recently wrote that “parliaments still have
power, including the power to question austerity policies”. This is correct, as
the first five months of the Syriza government demonstrated. But Navarro is,
regretfully, wrong when using as an example the new Portuguese
government which, he claims, “stopped the application of the austerity policies
imposed by the European Commission”. I only wish that were true. Before being
given the mandate to form a government by the troika-friendly right-wing
President, the parties of the Portuguese left had to sign up to the previous
governments’ “commitments to the Eurogroup” – that is, they capitulated to the
troika’s existing program on Day One and confined themselves to delaying, for a
year or so, the introduction of fresh austerity measures.[7]
In short, yes, national parliaments and
governments have power – the power to do what our Syriza government did during
the Athens Spring, before capitulating on the night of the OXI referendum. But
with the European Central Bank on the ready to start a bank run in retaliation,
even to close down its banking system, a progressive national government can
only use this power if it is prepared for rupture with the EU troika. This is
where we, at DiEM25, agree with the
Lexit camp: a clash with the EU establishment is inescapable.
Where we disagree
with Lexit proponents is in their assumption that this clash can take only one
form: a campaign to leave the EU. We reject this assumption wholeheartedly and
counter-propose a clash with the European establishment based on a campaign of
wilfully disobeying the unenforceable EU ‘rules’ at the municipal, regional and
national levels while making no move whatsoever to leave the EU.
Undoubtedly, the EU
institutions will threaten us (i.e. rebel governments and finance ministers
adopting DiEM25’s agenda) with expulsion, with bank runs, bank ‘holidays’ etc.,
just as they threatened the Greek government (and me personally) with Grexit in
2015. At that point it is crucial not to succumb to the fear of ‘exit’ but to
look them in the eye and say:
“Bring it on! The only thing that we are truly scared
of is your sole offering: the perpetuation of the debt-deflationary spiral that
drives masses of Europeans into hopelessness and places them under the spell of
bigotry.”
If we do not blink,
then either they will blink (in which case the EU will be transformed) or the
EU will be torn asunder by its own Establishment. If the Establishment (the
Commission, the European Central Bank, Berlin and Paris) dismembers the EU to
punish progressive governments that refused to abide by their inane policies,
this will galvanise progressive politics across Europe in a manner that Lexit
could never do.
Consider the profound
difference between the following two situations:
(A)
The EU
establishment threatening progressive Europeanist governments with ‘exit’ when they
refuse to obey its authoritarian incompetence, and
(B)
Progressive
national parties or governments campaigning alongside the xenophobic right for
‘exit’.
It is the difference
between:
(A) Clashing against the EU establishment in a
manner that preserves the spirit of internationalism, demands pan-European
action, and sets us fully apart from the xenophobic right, and
(B) Walking hand-in-hand with nationalisms that
will, inescapably, reinforce the xenophobic right while allowing the EU to portray
the left as populists insufficiently distinguishable from Nigel Farage, Marine
Le Pen etc.
Naturally, part of the
DiEM25 agenda must involve developing strategies that will allow our cities,
regions and nation-states to rebel against a EU establishment that retaliates
with threats of ‘exit’, or ‘expulsion’. Another part of the same agenda must
include plans to deal with the EU’s collapse or disintegration if its Establishment
is foolish enough to activate these threats against disobedient national
governments. But this is profoundly different to initiating the EU’s
disintegration as the Left’s own objective.
In short, DiEM25,
refuses to endorse ‘exit’ as an end-in-itself, or even to deploy it as a
threat. But we shall not be deterred from governmental disobedience when
faced with the threat of ‘expulsion’ or forced ‘exit’.
Eurogroup meeting, May 2016.Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Press Association. All rights reserved.
Internationalism, the EU and the nation-state
The Left’s traditional
internationalism is a key ingredient of DiEM25, along with other constituent
democratic traditions from a variety of political projects (including
progressive liberalism, feminist and ecological movements, the ‘pirate’ parties
etc.). DiEM25’s position on the EU reflects precisely this type of
internationalism. I hope my comrades on the left will permit me to remind them
that when Marx and Engels were adopting their ‘proletarians of the world unite’
slogan they were not rejecting the importance of national culture or of the
nation-state. They were rejecting the idea of a ‘national interest’ and of the
view that struggles must prioritise the realm of the nation-state.
DiEM25 proposes a
rebellion to deliver authentic democracy at the levels of local government, national
governments and the EU. We do not prioritise the EU over the
national level, just like we do not prioritise the national over the regional
or the municipal level. Alas, several European leftists insist on a reverse
prioritisation: that of the national over the EU level. Stefano Fassina, for example, in a reply to an article in la
Reppublica by Lorenzo Marsili and myself, takes us, and DiEM25 to task by arguing
(quoting Ralf Dahrendorf) that democracy at the EU level “is not possible… because
a ‘European people’, a European demos for a European democracy, doesn’t exist….”
“Among the idealists and the euro-fanatics”, Fassina continues “some still
think that the European Union can transform itself into a kind of nation-state,
only bigger: the United States of Europe.”
This leftwing
objection to DiEM25’s call for a pan-European movement is interesting and
puzzling. In effect, it argues that democracy is impossible on a supranational
scale because a demos must be characterised by national and cultural homogeneity. This leftwing objection to DiEM25’s call for a pan-European movement is interesting and puzzling. In effect, it argues that democracy is impossible on a supranational scale because a demos must be characterised by national and cultural homogeneity.I can just imagine Marx’s rage at hearing this! Just as I can imagine the
puzzlement of leftwing internationalists who dreamt of, and struggled for, a
transnational republic from the Atlantic to as far to the East as possible.
The left, lest we forget,
traditionally opposed the bourgeois belief in a one-to-one relationship between
a nation and a sovereign parliament. The left counter-argued that identity is
something we create through political struggle (class struggle, the struggle
against patriarchy, the struggle for smashing gender and sexual stereotypes,
emancipation from Empire etc.). DiEM25, therefore, by calling for a
pan-European campaign of disobedience with the transnational elites, in order
to create the European demos that will bring about Europe’s democracy,
is in tune with the left’s traditional approach – the very approach that is
under fire from Fassina and others who argue for the return to a
one-nation-one-parliament-one-sovereignty politics, with internationalism being
reduced to “co-operation” between Europe’s nation-states.
To support his
prioritisation of the national level, Fassina evokes Antonio Gramsci and his
advocacy of the “category of the ‘national-popular’ to give popular roots and
hegemonic capacity to that Italian Communist Party, which in its symbol had the
red flag with a hammer and sickle resting on the flag of Italy”. Gramsci’s
point was, indeed, that, to achieve progress at the international level it was
necessary to create a progressive movement at the level of the town and of the
nation. It was not, however Gramsci’s intention, to prioritise the national
over the transnational level and to argue that transnational democratic
institutions are either infeasible or undesirable.
In the same Gramscian
spirit, DiEM25 insists that our European rebellion should happen everywhere, in
towns, regions, nation-state capitals and in Brussels, without prioritising any
level over any other. Only through this pan-European network of rebel cities, rebel
prefectures and rebel governments can a progressive movement become hegemonic
in Italy, in Greece, in England, indeed anywhere.
Finally, one may cheekily
ask: “Why stop at the EU level? As internationalists, why don’t you campaign
for worldwide democracy?” Our answer is that we do campaign for
democracy everywhere and from an internationalist point of view. Indeed, DiEM25
is building strong links with Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ in the
United States and is even signing up members in Latin America, Australia, even
Asia. But, given that history has, for better or for worse, delivered a
borderless EU, with common policies on the environment and a variety of other
realms, the (by definition internationalist) left must defend this
absence of borders, the existing EU commons of climate change policy, even the
Erasmus programme that gives young Europeans the opportunity to mingle in a
borderless educational system. Turning against these splendid artefacts of an
otherwise regressive EU is not consistent with what the left ought to be about.
Britain's PM Theresa May and Pres. European Council Donald Tusk talk BREXIT in London, Sept.8,2016. Kirsty Wigglesworth/Press Association. All rights reserved.
DiEM25’s progressive agenda for Europe
Progressives have a
duty to lead the fight for re-politicising political decision-making and
democratising this reclaimed political realm. Donald Trump in the United
States, right-wing Brexiters in Britain, Le Pen in France etc. rose up as a result of an economic crisis that was brought on by the crisis of
financialisation and of liberal democracies that can no longer function as
liberal democracies in the era of financialisation’s crisis. The question for
Europe’s leftwing, for progressive liberals, greens etc. is, now, whether this
struggle, this project, should take the form of a campaign to leave the EU (e.g.
Lexit) or, as DiEM25 suggests, of a campaign of civil, civic and governmental
disobedience within but in confrontation with the EU.
DiEM25 rejects the
euro-loyalists’ campaign to reform the EU by working within the framework of
the EU’s establishment where change is either glacial or in the wrong
direction. We also reject Lexit’s rationale of turning the EU’s disintegration
into our objective. DiEM25 was formed to create a genuine alternative: a borderless
surge of unifying politics across Europe (EU and non-EU countries alike) based
on an alliance of democrats across various political traditions (including the left but not confined to it) and at all levels of political engagement (towns,
cities, regions and states).
To recap, to those who
berate DiEM25 and its call for a pan-European democratic movement as utopian,
our answer is that a transnational, pan-European democracy remains a legitimate,
realistic long-term goal, one that is in concert with the left’s time honoured
internationalism. But this objective must be accompanied by pragmatism and a
precise plan for immediate action:
- – Oppose any talk of ‘more Europe’ now, when
‘more Europe’, under the present circumstances, translates into the iron cage
of institutionalised austerity envisaged by the EU’s establishment. - – Present Europeans with a blueprint (a
comprehensive set of policies and actions) of how we plan to re-deploy Europe’s
existing institutions in order to stem the economic crisis, reverse inequality
and reinvigorate hope. - – And ensure that the same blueprint makes
provisions for keeping internationalism alive in the event that the EU
establishment’s incompetent authoritarianism causes the EU’s disintegration.
“The EU will be democratised.
Or it will disintegrate!”
This was, and remains,
DiEM25’s guiding pronouncement. We cannot predict which of the two
(democratisation or disintegration) will occur. So, we struggle for the former
while preparing for the latter. And we do this by working towards a Progressive
Agenda for Europe that is put together both at the grassroots level and with
the help of progressive experts. Its purpose? To defeat the worst enemy of
democracy in Europe: euro-TINA, the reactionary dogma that there can be no
genuinely progressive alternative to current policies within a united Europe.
DiEM25’s antidote to euro-TINA
is, indeed, the Progressive Agenda for Europe which we will be rolling out, in
consultation with local, regional and national actors, over the next eighteen
months. Putting together our Progressive Agenda for Europe, throughout the
continent and its surrounding isles, is our way of demonstrating to defeated,
disheartened and disillusioned Europeans that, astonishingly, there is
an alternative.
DiEM25’s Progressive
Agenda for Europe will be pragmatic, radical and comprehensive. It will comprise
policies that can be implemented immediately to stabilise Europe’s social economy,
while:
- – affording more sovereignty to city
councils, prefectures and national parliaments, - – proposing institutional interventions and
designs that will reduce the human cost in case the euro collapses and the EU
fragments, and - – setting up a democratic Constitution Assembly
process that enables Europeans to generate a European identity with which to
bolster their reinvigorated national cultures, parliaments and local
authorities.
DiEM25’s Progressive
Agenda for Europe aims at a unifying campaign with which a European Progressive
International can counter the Nationalist International that is now going from
strength to strength.
Conclusion
The EU is at an
advanced stage of disintegration. There are two prospects.
- – The EU is not past the point of no
return (yet) and can, still, be democratised, stabilised, rationalised and
humanised - – The EU is beyond the point of no return
and incapable of being democratised. Therefore, its disintegration is certain, as
is the clear and present danger of Europe’s descent into a postmodern version
of the deflationary 1930s[8]
DiEM25 believes that dropping
the campaign to democratise the EU would be a major error for progressives in
either case. If is still possible
to fashion a democratic EU (a prospect that is wearing thin by the minute), it
would be a pity not to try. But, even if we are convinced that the existing EU
is beyond democratisation, and thus salvation, to abandon the struggle to
democratise the EU (and to turn ‘exit’ and ‘disintegration’ into an end-in-itself)
will play into the hands of the only political force capable of benefitting
from such an agenda: the intransigent, xenophobic right.[9]
So, what should
progressives do? DiEM25’s answer is:
- – Campaign vigorously along internationalist,
cross-border, lines all over Europe for a democratic Union – even if we do not
believe that the EU can, or ought to, survive in its current form - – Expose the EU Establishment’s authoritarian
incompetence - – Coordinate civil, civic and governmental
disobedience across Europe - – Illustrate through DiEM25’s own transnational
structure how a pan-European democracy can work at all levels and in all
jurisdictions - – Propose a comprehensive Progressive Agenda for
Europe which includes sensible, modest, convincing proposals for ‘fixing’ the
EU (the euro even) and for managing
progressively the EU’s and the euro’s disintegration if and when the
Establishment brings it on.
Notes
[1] In the words of its
Manifesto, DiEM25 appeals to European democrats that “…come
from every part of the continent and are united by different cultures,
languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours,
gender identities, faiths and conceptions of the good society”.
[2] See Stathis Kouvelakis’ article entitled ‘The EU Cannot Be Reformed’, June 26, 2016
[3] i.e. a left-wing call, and support, for referenda
proposing exit from the EU
[4] I stand convinced that many other European
democrats, greens and liberals, who do not think of themselves as on the left,
also have a duty to confront the EU’s authoritarian incompetence.
[5] And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity
and the Threat of Global Stability, London: Bodley Head and NY: Nation Books, 2016
[6] See here for a debate between us on Brexit and here for another speech he gave in favour of the Lexit
agenda more generally.
[7] There is a second qualm I have with
Navarro’s article on a matter unrelated to Lexit: Vicente misunderstood my
Universal Basic Income proposal. It is not envisaged as a substitute for the
standard social security/welfare system. The UBI I favour will be funded not
from taxation but by transferring equity over all capital to a social trust (e.g. 10% of all shares of all listed
companies) from which UBI payments will be drawn. But this is best left for
another discussion.
[8] The EU’s and the euro’s break-up will most
certainly cause the creation of at least two Europes. One will begin at the
river Rhine and expand eastward (north of the Alps) to the Baltics and the
Ukraine, based on a revived version of the Deutsche Mark whose unstoppable
appreciation will generates deflation and mass unemployment. The other,
Latin-Catholic Europe (with or without the addition of Greece), will revolve
around depreciating currencies that spearhead acute stagflation (a combination
of high inflation and high unemployment). In this bleak economic environment,
EU and non-EU countries (like Britain, Norway etc.) will become cesspools of
right-wing bigotry. It is the post-modern 1930s that I am referring to.
[9] Speaking from experience, right-wing nationalists in
Northern Europe would be mightily helped in bolstering their campaign if I were
to call upon my fellow Greeks to vote in favour of Grexit. Similarly, with
other Spanish, Italian, Portuguese left-wingers calling upon their compatriots
to exit the EU. In contrast, DiEM25’s call for a pan-European, internationalist
campaign of civic and governmental disobedience within and against the current
EU denies them access to disaffected Europeans.
This piece has been published in several media outlets and languages across Europe since September 5, 2016: Jacobin (US), Público (Spain), Neues Deutschland (Germany), France’s Liberation and Italy’s Il Manifesto.