. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

from the blog of Bernard Leon (reprinted by permission of the author)

[Note for non-French readers: Mario Draghi is the President of the European Central Bank, while Emmanuel Macron is the French Economy Minister.]

Representatives of two young political parties Podemos (Spain) and Syriza (Greece) met Friday, March 27 at the Maison des Mines in Paris to discuss their feedback with activists of Nouvelle Donne who share with them the same desire for an alternative to the political parties, both of the right and of the left, who have lost their democratic identity throughout Europe.

The results of the second round of departmental elections in France reflect the comments of the anti-Mafia Judge Roberto Scarpinato, who wrote in 2008 in “The Return of the Prince” (Contre Allée Editions), “People everywhere perceive and experience in their own flesh the pressure of social suffering that is growing day by day . . . That’s why political power today has no social respect.” Eric Alt, on behalf of Nouvelle Donne, opened the evening to a young and attentive audience, by recalling the principles that were used by Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, to carry out their work.

– No more pessimism, which is always an excuse to do nothing.

– Show courage. Have no fear to call a spade a spade. To call Macron an oligarch. Keep in mind his statement earlier this year: “We need young people who want to be billionaires,” had he told Les Echos. To the dismay of some socialists.

– Show your pride and audacity. These two qualities were the basis for the great popular movement marches called the “Tides” in Spain, as well as the events of 18 March in Frankfurt on the occasion of the inauguration of the new headquarters of the ECB, a building that costs 1.3 billion euros, to protest against the austerity imposed by the EU institutions: the ECB, the IMF, and the Commission.

– Change the look of politics which shows a “Potemkin facade,” a true optical illusion that hides a vacuum inside.

– Show empathy for our fellow man. Rise up to the level of the people. Listen to what Rosanvallon calls “the parliament of the invisibles”.

A red thread connects the three parties, Spanish, Greek and French, but in a different temporality, that of the need to free ourselves individually and collectively from the powers that control us. This implies, and I quote again Roberto Scarpinato “a deconstruction process of cultural imposititions that permeate our lives from an early age.” This requires change and Podemos and Syriz should help us.

Let’s get started. Where do Syriza and Podemos come from? Where are they now? Where are they going and where are we going? What can we imagine today that can be possible tomorrow?

(click here for continuation of article)

(click here for the original French version)

Movements against governmental fiscal austerity, are they part of the global movement for a culture of peace?

Readers’ comments are invited on this question.

. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

An article by Alexandros Orphanides, In These Times (reprinted by permission)

Frances Fox Piven may be America’s foremost scholar in social movement politics. Her landmark book, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, published in 1977 and coauthored with her late husband Richard Cloward, provides an analysis of the role social movements can play in bringing about reforms through their disruptive power. Throughout her career, Piven has worked both in the lecture hall and with grassroots organizations to further the causes of social justice and to explore questions of how “power can be exerted from the lower reaches.”

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Photo by Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr

As a scholar, Piven’s work has focused on social movements in American history, but has often kept a global perspective. She has done extensive research on the Solidarity movement in Poland and the Zapatista movement in Mexico and has been a keen observer of recent developments in Europe, where mass mobilizations have been successful in shifting the political landscapes in Greece and Spain. Despite this, and in the context of an economic crisis, the margins of global capital have limited Syriza’s ability to effectively implement reforms in Greece. Piven sat down with In These Times to discuss Syriza and the potential for change.

When you first heard that Syriza stood poised to win the elections in Greece, what were your immediate thoughts?

I’ve followed the developments in Greece, especially since the development of Syriza, for several years now. And I’ve always been enthused by the fact that unlike a lot of American leftists, Syriza doesn’t say there are two different tracks—there are political parties and then there are movements. Instead, they work together. Although in an immediate sense, movements can make trouble for someone who is running for an election—because they are disorderly and noisy and disruptive. But if you step back a little, I think you see a dynamic in which movements can create space for a political party, especially a political party of the left.

Now everybody is waiting—breathlessly, I think—because a completely different set of dilemmas has emerged. And that dilemma has not so much to do with Syriza but with the ability of a nation-state, especially of a small nation-state, and its elected political rulers to determine its own economic policy in a very interconnected and global world, in which the centers of financial power are very ominous and powerful. And in which the nation-state, particularly in Europe, has lost power because of the growth of supranational structures like the Eurozone, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and so on.

I think that the effort by these institutions and the German banks to resist Syriza’s demands for a larger haircut, a larger reduction of the debt, will be greater because the model of Syriza is so promising: They have taken this strong political initiative, standing with the country’s social movements, but also allowing them autonomy.

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Movements against governmental fiscal austerity, are they part of the global movement for a culture of peace?

Readers’ comments are invited on this question.

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Once they were elected, Syriza had a few mandates. One was to renegotiate the debt, another was to release Greece from the conditions of austerity that had very high social costs, another was to keep Greece in the eurozone. Some felt those two were diametrically opposed, others thought they weren’t. Once the negotiations began, as you described, there was a lot of resistance from the Troika. Is there an escape from that paradigm?
Well, we don’t know. The idea that Greece has no room for maneuver, no room to fight back, is wrong. Some people would point to the success with which Argentina resisted the demands of the International Monetary Fund and foreign creditors in the early 2000s. Argentina won. And not only did it win, but the United States allowed it to win. So a lot of it depends on German national policy and U.S. national policy. Credit to Syriza, though, because it’s really striking out an unfamiliar path.

If in a system like Greece or Spain, a group of social movements win an election as a coalition and ascend to political power (if not economic power), can a nation-state almost become a social movement, at least in the context of the European Union? Can it disrupt institutionalized cooperation the way a social movement might?

I would be very surprised. I think that there’s a dynamic that characterizes political parties in an electoral system, a dynamic that characterizes movements, and a dynamic that characterizes actors that are already in positions of state power. And these dynamics are different, but they’re occasionally complementary.

Anybody who is running for an election wants to win enough votes to take the seat for which she or he is campaigning. To do that, they tend to be conciliatory; they don’t want to make any enemies. They want to win just enough to get over the electoral barrier. They tend to be consensual, they tend to not want to make trouble. They want to keep everyone that voted for them last time and add the few more that they need to get over the hump.

Movements are very different. They are dynamic. How they grow, how they succeed is very different. Protest movements in particular do two things. They identify issues that politicians want to ignore, because the politicians want to paste together a coalition that can win. Movement leaders, on the other hand, want to identify the issues that can mobilize people. They don’t care about voting, because we don’t know a movement exists by the number of votes it can get—we know by how many people it can pull into the streets. So movement leaders are attracted to contentious issues that make trouble for the parties.

And movements often have a capacity for disruption, for withdrawing cooperation, for bringing things to a halt, for various kinds of strike actions. Parties don’t do that. But when movements do that, it adds to their communicative strength. And it can also create a lot of trouble in electoral politics. It can divide voter coalitions that previously stuck together.

After all, we wouldn’t have Syriza if the old Greek left parties had stuck together. Movements do that, and then Syriza can move into that space. But once they move into that space, they now become a party. And the movements will still be there if Syriza leaves them alone, which I hope it will. But Syriza won’t have that capacity or inclination to create division that its movement allies did earlier.

I think governments are a little like parties, but they also have huge latitude for secret and double dealing. Because so much of governance is hidden. What movements do is not hidden particularly, only occasionally. What emergent political parties do—at least the important parties—is not hidden, because their campaigning is important. But states are very significantly hidden and they can do all sorts of things. So imagining a state as an insurgency is hard to imagine.

Greece’s current finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has been hinting at and sometimes outright saying is that there is the danger of the rise of xenophobic and fascist contingencies and movements in Europe, that are born out of similar conditions that the Left has been empowered by. Do you think that is a real concern, if leftist movements in countries like Greece or Spain fail?

Yes, but I think Syriza will fail if it isn’t able to deliver. That argument should not be used to push for the softest policy by Syriza, because if it turns into PASOK [Greece’s democratic socialist party and previously one of the its two largest parties], it will have failed.

Moving to the American context: are social movements a viable way to win elections in the U.S.? Can they build alternative parties that can compete, or are there too many systematic differences? Are elections not an option for poor people?

They are an option for poor people, but they’re an option that comes alive through the activity of protest movements which involve the poor. And they’re not long-lasting options. Movements can create the space for an insurgent political party or an insurgent electoral coalition; if that coalition wins and takes power, it no longer has the same sort of vulnerability to the divisions created by movements.

The movements which Syriza also represents helped to destroy PASOK, but once Syriza is an established party with a firm majority, it will tend to turn away from the movements. That isn’t a criticism of Syriza, it’s an examination of the political dynamics over time.
I’m glad Syriza won. I want it to be as clever as possible and get the best deal possible from these institutions. And then I want it grow. And then I want a new movement to threaten it.

. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

an article by Barthélémy Gaillard, Europe1 (abridged)

Anti-austerity parties are flourishing in Europe. After the victory of Syriza in Greece and the popular success of Podemos in Spain, it is the turn of the Irish anti-austerity Alliance (AAA). . .

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It must be said that the Irish radical left has found fertile ground in the economic policy of the current Prime Minister Enda Kenny in recent years. It is a strong and effective policy that has enabled the country to quickly get out of the circle of austerity. But at what price? This policy has aroused in the Irish population a protest sentiment crystallized in particular around payments for water. Traditionally, water was free, but now it must be purchased as one of the demands by the troika following the Irish bailout. There were immediate consequences throughout the country. There were 120,000 people who took to the streets in November to reflect a generalized dissatisfaction. “It is not only water, but what happened over the last five years,” a protester told Le Monde.

Politically, the first fruits of this resurgence of the radical left were felt during a by-election when 57% of voters voted for candidates who supported free water. It was a rejection of the government majority and its economic policy. This provided an ideal context for the AAA, repeating the same message carried by its young leader Paul Murphy: “The 99% of ordinary people” see the economic recovery as benefiting the 1% of the rich while the rest of the population continues to bleed ”

Like its Mediterranean counterparts, AAA has a charismatic young leader. While Podemos and Syriza have Pablo Iglesias (37) and Alexis Tsipras (41), the Irish Paul Murphy is even younger (32). This young politician won a surprise victory in legislative Dublin, in the style of a traditional left candidate. As Podemos relied on the dynamics of the Indignados in Spain, the AAA was born of a popular protest movement (against the water billing in Ireland), which the young leader applauds: “For the first time, the Irish people became aware of their strength, people organized themselves in their neighborhoods without being manipulated.” Murphy was himself involved in the struggle against the end of free water. He was arrested by police Monday, February 9, according to an article in the Irish Times, in solidarity with the protesters.

However, AAA says it does not want to imitate Syriza or Podemos and will have to find its own model. They have an additional challenge in the political landscape compared to their Greek and Spanish alter egos: Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish independence, highly installed, is already taking an anti-austerity position. And they are doing well in the polls. AAA is challenged to find its place on the Irish political spectrum and to find its identity within the European radical left. And they need to move quickly as the next general election will be held in just over a year, in April 2016.

(Click here for the original French version of this article)

Movements against governmental fiscal austerity, are they part of the global movement for a culture of peace?

Readers’ comments are invited on this question.

. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

An article by Victor Grossman, Counterpunch

I defied my advanced age last week to board a  special train, with a thousand mostly young people, and join in the big “Blockupy” demonstration in Frankfurt/Main, Germany’s big banking city. The trip,  though not the usual 4 ½ but seven hours, retained till well into the night a spirit of happy anticipation.

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Photo from left-flank.org

Hardly one year old, Podemos is already vying for the top spot in Spanish polls. This precocious The occasion was the opening of a giant new European Central Bank building, over four years and $1.4 billion in the making, one more modernistic banking skyscraper to reshape the city’s skyline, with two adjacent towers reaching up 201 meters (660 ft.). Our aim was to protest and disrupt the ceremonies, the role of the bank and the entire policy of the European Union of forcing austerity policies on its members and especially trying to compel Greece’s new Syriza government to further bankrupt itself by paying excessive foreign  bank debts and thus abandoning its goal of relieving the misery of countless jobless, hungry citizens, their loss of even basic medical care and often enough of any livelihood whatsoever.

Our slow train’s midnight arrival caused my little group to miss the early hours of protest the next day, March 18th – which had in part been violent hours. The Blockupy organizers, from a wide variety of organizations, had planned to prevent normal ceremonies by means of non-violent actions, sitting or standing to blockade the entranceways to the bank, with street theater and waves of umbrellas with painted slogans.

About 6000 people did just that – and certainly spoiled the ceremonial show. Hardly more than a handful of prominent guests had been invited, with police escort, to slip past the demonstrators for a very subdued event – and only six journalists, not even one from Frankfurt’s main newspapers (to their great indignation). This was a big success – for Blockupy.

But, even earlier, about a thousand demonstrators, apparently from the masked “black bloc”, had come hunting for greater trouble. Ten thousand police, detachments from all over Germany, having prepared for months for an expected remmi-demmi (the German word sounds wilder and apter than hubbub or tumult), confronted them with water cannon and tear gas. Who started things off is in dispute, but the free-for-all battle erupted into hails of plaster stones and other hard objects, burning cars and emptied, burnt out dumpsters, clouds of various chemicals, many injuries on both sides, countless arrests and huge pillars of smoke darkening the sky.

Since our slow train from Berlin had arrived after midnight, my small group slept to long and didn’t get to the fenced-off area near the skyscraper until nearly 9 AM. The police units and water cannon vehicles, some resembling tanks, seemed now at rest. Our march though a downtown area moved along peacefully, with many at the windows in this largely Turkish neighborhood answering our waves with V signs.

All of a sudden, who knows why, we were halted by a tight police cordon. After a menacingly close face-off they came at us in a brief attack (and I nearly got knocked over by tough, visored, protectively-covered cops). Thanks perhaps to constant, clear appeals for calm by the loud-speaker voices on our side, the attack ended and the police withdrew – to great cheers.

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Movements against governmental fiscal austerity, are they part of the global movement for a culture of peace?

Readers’ comments are invited on this question.

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After that I saw nothing but great enthusiasm – and determination. In the afternoon, on Frankfurt’s historic Roemer square where German kings and Holy Roman Emperors were once elected, we heard speeches by representatives of organizations backing the Blockupy movement – and it is indeed a movement, three years old, inspired by Occupy in the USA. One spoke for the Greek Syriza Party; the Canadian Naomi Klein, in dramatic words, made it trans-Atlantic. Then the big parade started off. And it was big, seeming almost endless, with over 20,000 people, some from Spain, Italy and Greece but mostly from German peace groups, anti-imperialist and leftist groups of various persuasions, the Attac organization, which has long demanded taxes on financial speculation, and large numbers from the co-sponsoring Linke (Left) party. Also, quite significantly, the Hesse state section of Germany’s often stand-offish union federation, the DGB, whose originally separate parade then merged symbolically with the main group.

Countless signs aimed at the main proponents of European austerity, Angela Merkel and her foxy, arrogant and merciless Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Others denounced the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, Muslimophobic actions of PEGIDA and openly neo-Nazi or hooligan groups, stating instead, “We welcome asylum seekers”. Many were witty, like: “Not Austerity but Oysters“ (both words are spelled very similarly in German) and “Caviar for Everybody”. The so-called “Troika” group was often lambasted. Its members, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (now with a new skyscraper), had attained notoriety by dictating to the former Greek government what austerity measures it must adopt. Currently, with a new name, it was trying to compel the Syriza government to buckle under in the same way, and many signs read “Hands off Greece”. One longer text said: “Stop Troika Austerity – It’s All for the Banks and the Top 1 Percent”.  Others attacked the banks on ecology issues, opposing the planned transatlantic version of NAFTA, gene-altered vegetables, antibiotics-stuffed meat (and on a few signs, meat at all).

Some slogans which reacted to the stern, unbending resolution of European leaders like Merkel never to let any member country ever move even inches towards socialism or any truly progressive policies, for fear that this could become infectious – in Spain, Portugal, even Italy or Ireland. Not a few signs called for just such socialist solutions to systemic downfall.

The masked “black bloc” marched along , too, though in a leaflet I was given, after a page full of super-rrrrevolutionary clichés, they ended with the  call: “Let Us Cease Protesting, Let Us Begin Destroying”. Who knows, their morning attacks (and a few in the evening after most people had left) would not be the first ones involving masked agents provocateurs from the powers-that-be? But perhaps they were not necessary for these plate-glass-smashing lovers of such remmi-demmis. Some of the sponsoring groups apologized for their actions, others answered that there seemed to be more anger over two hours of damage done here than over years of  evictions, hungry children and suicides in Greece – or drone killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. Most agreed, however, that these methods – and groups – should be  kept out of further actions if at all possible.

Of course the media rejoiced in the battle scenes and featured that cloud over Frankfurt, playing down the message of a truly great event. But its message was clear. The Merkel government had led the European Union in pressuring Greece, disregarding the terrible hardships there. For some years most of the media, led as always by the mass newspaper, BILD, had denounced the Greek people as lazy, pampered, neglectful of repaying their debts at the cost of German taxpayers. This pure chauvinism had been far too successful, in part because the unions had hardly opposed it and the left was not strong enough to have much influence in the matter. This Blockupy demonstration was an attempt to break through the fog – and point out that crushing the Greek people was one step towards crushing working people elsewhere, also in Germany, and that they needed not  disdain or worse but rather solidarity from Germans.

Blockupy was an attempt to gather disparate groups, despite their differences, into a solid force, not only on the question of Greece but against the highway robbery tactics of the powerful private German banks as well. Perhaps, hopefully, it might be the germ of a stronger, combined movement in relatively docile Germany against two menacing dangers. One was the PEGIDA movement and its allies, like the growing new party Alternate for Germany (AfD), which was steering dissatisfaction, distrust of politicians and worries about an uncertain economic future away from those really responsible forces but instead against the poorest, most disadvantaged group in Germany (and elsewhere), the immigrants and asylum-seekers, mostly Muslim, from the Near East or Africa. And too many from the governing parties had begun to dilute their abhorrence of this nasty bunch.

The other danger, also constantly stirred up by most of the media, was the “Hate Russia, Hate Putin” campaign, which could only increase the terrible danger of war over the Ukraine. Germany was leading the attacks against Greece. But in the question of Russia and the Ukraine it was still teetering between US pressure to build up NATO armaments and test them in insane maneuvers right along the Russian border and in the Black Sea, a policy with powerful supporters in Germany and other EU members or, instead, saner attempts, supported by other business interests, to help cool the scene and try to make the Minsk peace efforts succeed. Most Germans wanted urgently to maintain peace, but their voices were not easily audible. To alter this imbalance and help avoid the worst required giant efforts by many in  Germany, most importantly the LINKE party – not only with its 64 members in the Bundestag but far more importantly in the streets – as in Frankfurt. Would the Blockupy movement fade away – or grow to meet these needs, joining sister groups on a European level? The answer could be very crucial!

. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .

an article by Ryan Rappa and Irene Pañeda Fernández, Huffington Post (Reprinted under terms of fair use)

With Greece’s newly elected ruling party, Syriza, bringing international attention to the damage wrought by Troika-imposed austerity, similarly situated parties have been gaining traction all over Europe. Most significant at the moment: the ascension of Podemos in Spain.

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Hardly one year old, Podemos is already vying for the top spot in Spanish polls. This precocious party vows to throw Spain’s weight behind the tug-of-war Greece is already having with the European Union, further testing the limits of Eurozone coherence.

In short, the EU is facing a moment of truth. Its response to Podemos could validate or vitiate it for years to come.

Podemos’ Past and Present

Podemos, like Syriza, rose out of widespread frustration with fiscal austerity, endemic corruption, and the failure of longstanding political parties to do anything about it. After 2008, faced with upwards of 20 percent unemployment and not-all-that-much public debt, so-called debtor states like Spain were sold the pernicious fiction that they had to cut government spending in order to rein in debt and restore economic growth. Spain’s creditors, especially the “Troika” (the EC, ECB, and IMF), insisted on this austerity, and Spain’s leadership complied, only to see the employment and debt situation deteriorate further.

Ideologically rooted in the 2011 “15-M” anti-austerity movement (a forerunner of Occupy Wall Street), Podemos presented its first party platform in January 2014. Since then, Podemos has won seats in the European Parliament, Spanish regional legislatures, and is a serious contender in Spain’s upcoming general election.

In domestic politics, Podemos promises to increase democratic accountability and transparency – and its ideas are generally sound. They include keeping an up-to-date online account of government finances, imposing term limits and earnings caps on elected officials, and providing for recall elections, initiable by any citizen with enough signatures on a petition.

If elected at the national level, it will be interesting to see how Podemos follows through on these pledges. It has already faltered on the beta version of its first promise, providing up-to-date records of its own party finances.

As for economic policy, Podemos has mixed a few solid proposals with several unkeepable promises. Pablo Iglesias, the de facto leader of Podemos, now finds himself backpedaling on many of these, into vague middle-ground he used to lambaste opponents for occupying.
But who can blame him? It’s not his ideas per se that are (or were) untenable; it’s the ideas in relation to the prevailing institutional setup in Europe. Spain, like Greece, is caught between a rock and a hard place.

The (Il)logic of Europe

It would make sense to let Spain restructure or cancel some of its debt, and put an end to austerity, just as it would make sense to have tighter fiscal union for the long-term viability of the Eurozone. Austerity has clearly failed to relieve economic hardship, and even to meaningfully reduce indebtedness.

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Movements against governmental fiscal austerity, are they part of the global movement for a culture of peace?

Readers’ comments are invited on this question.

(continuation of article from left side of page:)

However, the powers that be (Germany, France) have strong incentives to cede only the bare minimum of fiscal sovereignty necessary to keep the Eurozone intact. Simply put, Germans (and other relatively well-off Europeans) have mixed feelings about subsidizing other countries’ debts, and they’re going to explore every possible way to maintain the Euro while minimizing fiscal union, suffering southerners be damned. This means — Mr. Iglesias is quickly realizing — that Podemos can’t hope to fund all of its initial proposals (improved health benefits, education, pensions, salaries, etc.) without defaulting on some of Spain’s debt, or leaving the Eurozone — both of which are pyrrhic scenarios.

The best Spain can hope for, in all likelihood, is a Greece-like compromise. And this isn’t necessarily so bad, all things considered. If Podemos comes to power, the EU will probably give Spain more pecuniary wiggle room, in exchange for a clear plan detailing how Spain will still make good on its debts.

EU decision-makers, trying to balance their short-term political survival against Europe’s longer-term wellbeing, should concede enough to ensure that Spain (not to mention the entire Eurozone) can maintain positive growth and inflation. This is the only way to take control of debt and salvage the Euro in the long run. Podemos will certainly push things in this direction, Germans be damned.

On the other hand, if decision-makers bow to parochial interests and short-termism, Spain and Europe will suffer for it. Continued austerity, at the unnecessary expense of growth, threatens to undermine the entire European project. Anti-EU movements in France, Italy, and Britain are gaining traction like never before.

What Podemos Can Do

Europe’s vicissitudes notwithstanding, an empowered Podemos could go ahead with its other, relatively affordable economic reforms (which could, in turn, help fund the rest of its program). These include raising taxes on the wealthiest Spaniards, cracking down on tax evasion, and restoring competitiveness to Spanish industry.

Plans for the latter include shaking up oligopolies, electricity being perhaps the most stagnant. Currently, over 80 percent of Spain’s electricity is generated and sold by just five companies. These five make double the profits of their European counterparts, and the average electricity bill in Spain has nearly doubled over the last ten years, making Spain’s electricity the most expensive on the continent. The potential savings for consumers in this and other sectors are enormous, and could easily translate into more productive forms of spending throughout the economy.

What allowed this oligopoly to form, in part, is Spain’s sclerotic and considerably corrupt two-party system — which Podemos is also poised to shake up. Since the advent of Podemos, a number of other parties and grassroots movements have come to the fore, auguring increased accountability throughout Spanish politics (whatever the outcome of upcoming elections).

Finally, even if Pablo Iglesias never makes it to La Moncloa (Spain’s White House), Podemos and the other descendants of “15-M” should keep railing against the status quo. Whatever the results of this autumn’s general election, they will be a force in Spanish politics, drawing the entire political spectrum toward their policy goals. The draw might be slight, but it could still be significant. There’s a thin line between a unified Europe and a fragmented, dysfunctional one.