Antonio Negri and Raúl Sánchez Cedillo
The new left in Europe needs to be radical - and European
The Guardian: Comment is free
Friday 27 February
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/27/new-left-europe-greece-democratic-capitalism-nato
Greece is bravely laying a path towards a democratic Europe, one that is not
dominated by the interests of capitalism or Nato
“A spectre is haunting Europe” read a recent headline in the Italian newspaper
Il Manifesto, announcing the round of meetings between the Greek prime minister,
Alexis Tsipras, and his European counterparts. Just think of what would happen
if Podemos wins in Spain: the spectre would turn into a monster, propelled by
one of Europe’s largest economies. In a few weeks, campaigning will begin in
Spain and no doubt the European governments will redouble their efforts to
frighten Spanish citizens away from Podemos. But what can Podemos tell us about
Europe?
Since Syriza’s victory in Greece, Podemos’s position on Europe has been
supportive of Syriza while prudently reserving its judgment. After all,
Tsipras’s strategy could fail in the brief interval that remains until the
Spanish elections. But prudency is not the same as ambiguity. Nothing would be
more dangerous than an ambiguous position at this point, given the negotiations
under way between Greece and Europe on the viability of the policies implemented
by the troika until now. There are now two Europes and it is imperative to align
with one or the other. Podemos supporters know that victory is only possible by
joining a front already opened by Syriza, one that must expand throughout the
EU. The politics of debt and sovereignty, and the Atlantic question are all
issues that can only be tackled at a European level.
Syriza’s tactics and, in particular, its economic and financial policies already
signal a plan for transnational cooperation and an abandonment of the
anti-European rhetoric of “older” leftists. Of course, Syriza’s wager is
formulated in terms of defending national sovereignty (“against the troika”,
“against Merkel”), but in practice it implies an acceptance of a political
intervention within and against the EU. It points the way to a coalition of the
“Piigs” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) as a new left able to
overturn the status quo.
It is on the viability of such a coalition that a Podemos victory rides. Until
now we have seen a confrontation between a neoliberal Europe and a democratic
Europe attentive to the needs of workers, the impoverished middle classes, the
unemployed, the young and elderly, women, migrants and refugees – the excluded,
old and new. After the crisis of 2008, neoliberal Europe imposed itself
forcefully, leaving for the other only the marginal space of protest. But an
alternative space has started to appear in Greece. Now the task is to affirm it
and organise it.
The first difficulty is debt. The troika wants to make the European multitude
pay for this debt, and the ability to do so has been used as a yardstick of
democracy and Europeanism. This is insulting, not least because these debts were
incurred by those in power and have fattened the purses of the ruling classes –
through corruption, tax evasion and fiscal favours, but also exorbitant defence
budgets and misguided industrial policies. Against this enslaving condition, the
new left – through Syriza – is asking for a rescue deal that would allow for a
new solidarity based on fair fiscal and labour policies.
Podemos can add a huge impetus to this project for a deep transformation of
social relations, one that we can call anti-fascist because it revives the
spirit of the resistance. This could give rise to a democratic union based on
solidarity beyond and against the market, reducing or abolishing the debt, and
establishing progressive fiscal measures across the eurozone. The central tenets
of the welfare state – education, health, pensions and housing – but also
innovations such as provision for domestic and care work, and a universal basic
income must be evenly developed throughout Europe.
To win on these issues we must take the measure of the battlefield, and this
must extend to the whole of Europe. This brings us to the problem of
sovereignty, one that has given rise to countless misunderstandings. Concessions
on sovereignty have already been made, always in favour of financial powers. The
rise of nationalism in Europe is built on attacking these concessions. And yet
these positions have appeared uncomfortably close to Syriza, Podemos and other
forces of the new European left.
We must be clear on this point. None of the countries in the EU, much less those
in the eurozone, has full sovereignty any more. This is not necessarily a bad
thing given their history. We must acknowledge that sovereignty in the sense of
a power “in the last instance” now rests with the European Central Bank. We need
Frankfurt and a European currency if we don’t want to fall prey to global
finance and to policies dictated by the US or other continental giants asserting
themselves against Europe. But we must recover Frankfurt for democracy.
Frankfurt should be stormed by Europe to turn the European parliament into a
constituent assembly.
Asking for monetary and political control, while insisting on the dissolution of
the old monocratic sovereignties, leads to the issue of federalism, another
essential step towards this new Europe. This would be a federalism that drives
European nations to establish a constitutional dialogue and conceives of Europe
as an articulation of all its nations, populations and languages within a
unitary framework. The issue of sovereignty can only be raised in terms of a new
federalism if the EU is to stop being an instrument of domination to become a
democratic goal. This new left-European-democratic radicality is thus key: we
must do away with left nationalism, just as we must defeat the populist
transformation of national feelings into fascist ones. Only a Europeanist left,
transformed by the democratic radicalism of the movements against austerity, can
construct a democratic Europe.
And so we arrive at the Atlantic question, a question rarely discussed, as if it
were obvious that the process of European unification must develop under the
wing of the US. Europe was fuelled by the anti-fascist resistance to overcome
the wars that had destroyed and impoverished its populations; peace was then
seen as crucial for democracy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU lost
its role as a last front against the Soviet world. Hence the EU had to redirect
its aims towards the construction of common juridical structures and towards its
autonomy in a global environment.
But today the Mediterranean – deeply integrated in Europe by movements of
migration and crucial relations in energy policy and commercial exchange – is
traversed by war, fascisms and dictatorships extending all the way to the Middle
East and dangerously exposing Europe to armed movements that are of global
importance and leadership. Furthermore, on the eastern border of Europe, a
senseless war is developing between Russian-speaking populations fuelled by
global interests that go against those of the European population.
Here then, the real sovereignty of Europe – no longer the imagined sovereignty
of each country – is delegated to Nato and usurped by it. When Tsipras raises
the necessity of dealing with this problem, he goes to the root of our European
structures. We must respond to this problem without imagining that it can be
quickly resolved. War and peace cannot be considered secondary problems.
Tsipras has courageously laid out a constellation of problems that are crucial
for the construction of a Europe outside of the troika; they also allow us to
outline a Europe outside of Nato. Citizens all over the world are asking for a
democratic Europe that can play a key role in a new global reality, renewing a
longstanding democratic tradition in the light that Syriza and Podemos have lit,
one that offers hope for reform and a move beyond capitalism.
Translation by Kelly Mulvaney and Yaiza Hernández
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