Share title="Share this page on Facebook!" target="_blank" > Share on facebook title="Send this page to Twitter!" target="_blank" > Send this page to twitter title="Digg this page!" target="_blank" > Send this page to Digg! Add me to CPD email list Add to CPD Contacts

Dear Friend of CPD,

          Below you will find two articles by Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece's Syriza government, who resigned from his position in July 2015 because he could not accept terms of the bailout agreement that were being insisted on by Greece's creditors. Fearing the punitive consequences of refusing to sign the accord, the Greek government, under the leadership of Syriza's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, went on to sign the agreement, which mandated a broad spectrum of harsh austerity measures, ranging from lower pensions, increased taxes, and major privatizations, to reduced budgets for public health and other social services. In February 2016 Varoufakis launched the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), whose website is here.  

            In the time since the Greek government signed the bailout agreement, there has been intense debate not only within Greece but also across the global left -- with some arguing that the Tsipras government had no choice but to accept the terms and do their best to execute them as equitably as possible, others contending that the Greek government should have left the Eurozone (i.e. initiated a "Grexit") and refused the terms, and a third group, including Varoufakis, who favored refusing to sign the bailout agreement and defying its onerous terms, but putting the European governments and financial institutions in the position where they would have to take responsibility for imposing a Grexit if they couldn't live with Greece's defiance. This debate has obvious implications for the future -- for Greece itself, should the bailout-imposed "reforms" become politically untenable, and for other countries faced with a similar ultimatum from regional and international financial institutions and governments.

         In the articles below, Varoufakis argues the case for his view, with links to articles by critics who favor Greece initiating a Grexit. We've sent you these articles not because of Varoufakis's particular plan for democratizing Europe, but because we believe his argument in favor of defiance of externally imposed austerity while not initiating Grexit or its analogue in other countries (such as Brexit in Great Britain) will advance the debate. For an article promoting the view that Greece had no alternative to accepting the bailout agreement in July 2015, see "Syriza's Dilemma" by Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch who argue, "Those who — like ourselves — believe that leaving the eurozone will eventually be necessary must acknowledge that this cannot be done immediately. A base for leaving must be developed, and this means taking the time to prepare for exit. The continuing support for Tsipras [written in July 2015-eds.] suggests that there is time to deal with creating the necessary transformations within the state, and the creative plans that both maintain confidence in the government and allow people to organically learn why they need to move beyond the limits of integration within a neoliberal Europe." The Gindin-Panitch article appeared in Jacobin and can be found here.

In peace and solidarity,
Joanne Tom
Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison
Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy
New York, NY, USA

EUROPE'S LEFT AFTER BREXIT

by Yanis Varoufakis
Posted on September 8, 2016 by yanisv
https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/09/08/europes-left-after-brexit/

In reply to Tariq Ali, Stathis Kouvelakis, Vicente Navarro and Stefano Fassina on DiEM25’s plan for resisting within the European Union

Europe scared of the ballot box 2.jpg

Preface: This article (published in edited form in Jacobin, Neues Deutschland, Il Manifesto,  Mediapart and elsewhere) addresses left-wing critics of DiEM25 claiming 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). 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 as questions raised often within 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, progressive conservatives even.[1]  

In the space of thirteen 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 Progressive Agenda for Europe.

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. Three are the 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 into 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 Right 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

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 a 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 at them in the eye and say:
“Bring it on! The only thing that we are truly scared off 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) dismember 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:

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’.

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. 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 ‘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 program 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.

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 the 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 Left, 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:

“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 DiEM25 will be rolling out, in consultation with local, regional and national actors, over the next eighteen months. Putting together our European Agenda, 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:

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 Way Forward

The EU is at an advanced stage of disintegration. There are two prospects.

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:

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’, 26th June 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.

*******************

JOINING FORCES: IN REPLY TO STEFANO FASSINA

by Yanis Varoufakis
Posted on September 14, 2016

https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/09/14/joining-forces-in-reply-to-stefano-fassina/yanisvaroufakis.eu

screen-shot-2016-09-13-at-20-48-46

Stefano Fassina points out that in my article ‘Europe’s Left After Brexit’ I did not discuss his preferred option for Eurozone member-states: Stay in the EU but leave the euro. Of course the reason my article did not discuss that position is that it was focusing on Brexit and addressing Lexiteers like Tariq Ali and Stathis Kouvelakis who are arguing, from a left-wing position, for leaving the EU altogether – i.e. Brexit-like moves. But I am more than happy to comment on Stefano’s preferred option (In the EU, Out of the Euro) here.

An ‘amicable divorce’ for the Eurozone?

Stefano invokes Joe Stiglitz who, in his recent book on the euro, recommends an ‘amicable divorce’ that would lead to the creation of at least two new currencies (one for the deficit and one for the surplus countries). Since I have recently discussed this with Joe Stiglitz it is perhaps useful to share the gist of our discussion with Stefano and our readers.

In my email to Joe, I expressed scepticism that an ‘amicable divorce’ is at all possible. The moment it becomes public that a ‘divorce’ is under discussion, a wall of money will leave the banks of the countries destined for devaluation, heading for Frankfurt. At that point, the banks of the deficit member-states will collapse (as they run out of ECB-acceptable collateral) and the member-states will impose stringent currency and capital controls – complete with officials at airports checking suitcases and/or harsh limits in cash withdrawals. This would spell the end not only of monetary union but also of (the already injured) Schengen Treaty.

Meanwhile, as bank deposits are being redenominated, huge assets belonging to the Bundesbank and the central banks of other surplus countries (e.g. the Netherlands), which are the liabilities of the deficit countries, will disappear, causing an uproar of indignation in Germany and the Netherlands. Under such circumstances, and given the already advanced stage of the EU’s disintegration, it is almost certain that the dissolution of the Eurozone will be anything but amicable.

Joe Stiglitz responded to me thus: “You are absolutely right that the moment any country contemplated leaving, capital controls would have to be imposed… The rush out will occur presumably before–when a party advocating a referendum looks like it might win.  So the hard decisions about imposing capital controls are likely to be faced ironically by a pro-Euro government.  If it delays, by the time the election occurs, the country may be in shambles.  The picture ahead for Europe is not a pretty one.”

In conclusion, it is a fantasy to think that the EU can oversee an amicable disintegration of the Eurozone. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the EU surviving a Eurozone breakdown.

Is DiEM25’s strategy of Constructive Disobedience a mere bluff for a Eurozone country?

Stefano Fassina writes: “While the strategy of “wilful disobedience”… can be effective in an EU country still controlling its currency and its national central bank, it’s unfortunately a bluff for a euro zone country under severe economic, social and financial stress, as the Greek case made dramatically clear.”

What the crushing of the Athens Spring made clear was not that I had been bluffing. It demonstrates simply that the defeat of a stressed government is inescapable if it is divided. Speaking as the finance minister of that period, I can assure the reader, and Stefano, that I was not bluffing. A bluff means that you are pretending to have a card, or preferences, that you lack – or that you will do something which you do not intend to do. When I was saying that I was not willing to sign the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement, I meant every word. Why? Because I had ranked potential outcomes in the following order: (1) A viable agreement with the troika; (2) Being expelled from the Eurozone; (3) Signing the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement. While option 1 was by far the preferred one, and Grexit was hugely costly both for Greece and for rest of Europe, the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement was the worst outcome possible for everyone. In short, no bluff was involved when I proclaimed that I would not sign any agreement not based on (i) substantial debt relief, (ii) a primary surplus target of no more than 1.5%, and (iii) deep reforms that tackled the oligarchs (instead of the weakest of the citizens).

If my government had been united in this, our original, assessment, we would not have backed down and, as a result, either the troika would have relented or we would have had to create our own euro-denominated liquidity (that would, naturally, have an exchange rate with paper euros – as is, in fact the case today, under the ECB-imposed capital controls). At that point, Brussels-Frankfurt-Berlin would have had to make their choice: Step back from the brink or push us out of the euro by violating many of the EU’s own rules. I have little doubt that they would have opted for the former (as Grexit would have cost the Eurozone around a trillion euros). But I would have remained unperturbed if they did not.

Stefano asks correctly: “What national government could negotiate relevant violations of the rules without a workable alternative on the table?” This is why, well before I took office, I had begun working on two plans: First, a Deterrence Plan by which to give pause to the ECB before it shut our banks down. Secondly, a Plan X to be activated when and if the troika chose to expel us from the Eurozone. However, it must be said that the idea that these plans could become operational before the rupture is just as much of a fantasy as that of an amicable disintegration of the Eurozone – see above. Put simply, any attempt to make these plans operational would trigger instant exit from the Eurozone – an exit that would happen well before they had become operational. Which means that the short-term cost of a rupture is bound to be large. Nevertheless, this was a cost that the majority of the people of Greece had instructed us to disregard in the pursuit of emancipation from debt bondage.

False consciousness

Stefano has a good point when reminding us that the euro is not simply the darling of large business but has broad support from many quarters: German trades unions that have been co-opted in the country’s mercantilist model, well meaning middle class people from both North and South etc. This is so, for reasons that I have laid down in my recent book “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” But this is, it seems to me, an excellent reason to avoid turning the disintegration of the Eurozone into our objective (given that an ‘amicable divorce’ is an impossibility – and Europeans understand it to be so) and, rather, set our sights on a strategy of proposing sensible policies which convince even those who remain loyal to the idea of the euro that they are a good idea. Then, if the troika decides in its usual authoritarian and violent manner to threaten the democratically elected government with bank closures and liquidity squeezes, then even those who were in favour of the euro will come out on the streets to defend their government. Is this not what happened in Greece on the 5th of July 2015?

Conclusion

Stefano Fassina concludes by calling for unity amongst Europe’s progressives: “My point is to join forces,” he wrote. This is DiEM25’s raison d’ être – joining forces from across national borders and political party lines.

Like Stefano I too think that the Eurozone is disintegrating, probably in a manner that will also bring about the EU’s effective demise. However, my difference with Stefano is that I see no reason why we must adopt the Eurozone’s disintegration as our objective. Indeed, I see such an adoption as a major political error. Our joint task, as DiEM25 suggests, is to design a Progressive Agenda for Europe, one that points to:

To this end, a DiEM25 committee of experts has already begun work to produce comprehensive policies both at the national and the pan-European levels. At the same time DiEM25’s members will conduct similar work at the grassroots level. The issues covered include currencies, the banking system, public debt, investment and fighting poverty. The remit is to produce a European New Deal Policy Framework to be tabled by the beginning of February 2017 so that it can be debated, in a special two-day event, in Paris on the last week of that month, just before the French Presidential election campaign commences officially.

There is little time to lose. Europe is disintegrating without a plan either to stem its disintegration or to manage it. DiEM25 invites all European progressives to join in the massive undertaking of developing this plan – the European New Deal Policy Framework within the context of a broader Progressive Agenda for Europe.