<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Orsan Senalp</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 9:11 PM<br>Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: <nettime> The hope of the democratic monster, between Syriza and Podemos<br>To: <a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a><br><br><br><div dir="auto"><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>Resent-From:</b> <a href="mailto:nettime@kein.org" target="_blank">nettime@kein.org</a><br><b>From:</b> nettime's avid reader <<a href="mailto:nettime@kein.org" target="_blank">nettime@kein.org</a>><br><b>Date:</b> 23 Feb 2015 18:52:15 GMT+2<br><b>Resent-To:</b> Nettime <<a href="mailto:nettime-l@kein.org" target="_blank">nettime-l@kein.org</a>><br><b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:nettime-l@mx.kein.org" target="_blank">nettime-l@mx.kein.org</a><br><b>Subject:</b> <b><nettime> The hope of the democratic monster, between Syriza and Podemos</b><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span></span><br><span>The hope of the democratic monster, between Syriza and Podemos</span><br><span>Antonio Negri / Raúl Sánchez Cedillo</span><br><span>Translated from Spanish by Kelly Mulvaney</span><br><span></span><br><span><a href="http://transversal.at/blog/The-hope-of-the-democratic-m" target="_blank">http://transversal.at/blog/The-hope-of-the-democratic-m</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>“A spectre is haunting Europe”. The Italian newspaper Il Manifesto</span><br><span>used this headline a few days ago for its homepage, commenting on the</span><br><span>visits of Tsipras and Varoufakis to European governments. A real</span><br><span>nightmare for the ordoliberal Germans, a Geisterfahrer, to be precise,</span><br><span>a suicidal conductor looking to collide with the European bus, as Der</span><br><span>Spiegel described on its front page. Imagine what could happen with</span><br><span>the victory of Podemos in Spain: what a magnificent spectre would then</span><br><span>be seen lurking about, a real monster created by the exploited and the</span><br><span>productive forces of the fourth European economy! In just a few weeks,</span><br><span>election rounds will begin in Spain, and the mantra of the European</span><br><span>governments will be repeated, with double the force, in an attempt to</span><br><span>frighten Spanish citizens. Let us prepare ourselves. With the</span><br><span>certainty that the arrogance of the bad omens of this propaganda will</span><br><span>be defeated. But in the meantime, let us prepare ourselves: What could</span><br><span>Podemos say about Europe?</span><br><span></span><br><span>Conscious of the temporal and political acceleration that the victory</span><br><span>of Syriza has imposed, the discourse of Podemos on Europe is, on the</span><br><span>one hand, informed by a sincere solidarity and high regard for the</span><br><span>victory of the democrats in Greece, while it consists, on the other</span><br><span>hand, in prudent judgment – Tsipras’ line could fail in the brief</span><br><span>interval that separates it from the Spanish elections. But prudency is</span><br><span>not the same as ambiguity. Indeed, it is obvious that nothing would be</span><br><span>more dangerous than an ambiguous position, not only with respect to</span><br><span>the negotiation that has been started between Greece and Europe, but</span><br><span>above all with respect to the policies promoted until now by the</span><br><span>Europe of the Troika. Any ambiguity on this point must be eliminated</span><br><span>– and so it has been in practice, if we are to judge based on what we</span><br><span>have seen in recent months: two Europes exist and it is necessary to</span><br><span>position oneself in one or the other. The knowing population is aware</span><br><span>that to win in Europe is possible only in light of a front already</span><br><span>opened by Syriza that now has to expand in Europe. The politics of</span><br><span>debt, issues related to sovereignty and the Atlantic question can only</span><br><span>be considered in the European space.</span><br><span></span><br><span>It was expected that there would be great attentiveness – and so we</span><br><span>begin to test it – to the tactical proposals and the politics of the</span><br><span>economic-financial team of Syriza. Irrespective of value judgments</span><br><span>about the proposals, they signaled a plan for transnational</span><br><span>cooperation and an abandonment of the anti-European demagoguery of the</span><br><span>“old” leftists, a demagoguery that, in any case, has never been strong</span><br><span>in Podemos. Of course, Syriza’s bet is formulated in terms of</span><br><span>defending national sovereignty (“against the Troika”, “against</span><br><span>Merkel”, etc.), but in practice it implies a fairly evident acceptance</span><br><span>of a political intervention within and against the Union as it is</span><br><span>currently directed. In this sense, the primary option now is that of a</span><br><span>coalition of the PIIGS and the forces of a new left to overturn the</span><br><span>status quo of the Union. At the same time, this appears to be the only</span><br><span>option available to Podemos for winning the elections.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Let us try to consider things in more depth. Until now the</span><br><span>confrontation in Europe has taken shape between a neo-Bismarckian</span><br><span>Europe, neoliberal and fundamentally conservative, and a democratic</span><br><span>Europe, constituent and fundamentally attentive to the needs of</span><br><span>workers, impoverished middle classes and precarious or unemployed</span><br><span>youth, women, immigrants and refugees – the excluded, old and new. An</span><br><span>alternative so to speak, because departing from the crisis of 2008,</span><br><span>the Bismarckian Europe imposed itself forcefully, leaving for the</span><br><span>other Europe a marginal space, of protest and at times even cries of</span><br><span>despair. Nevertheless, when the situation appeared to remain strictly</span><br><span>closed for the claims of justice and the revolts against misery, the</span><br><span>alternative presented itself – starting in Greece. Now the task is to</span><br><span>affirm it and organize it precisely in the areas where a reactionary</span><br><span>initiative has imposed itself – where the attempt has been made to</span><br><span>drown Hercules from popular rescue.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The first question, the first difficulty, is that of debt. The Europe</span><br><span>of the Troika wants to make the European multitudes pay the debt, and</span><br><span>the ability to pay this debt becomes the yardstick of democracy and</span><br><span>the degree of Europeanism. But all those who are moving in a</span><br><span>democratic front think, on the contrary, that this yardstick is</span><br><span>insulting because the debts charged to the people today were in fact</span><br><span>incurred by those who governed over the years. These debts have</span><br><span>fattened the ruling classes, not only through corruption, tax evasion</span><br><span>or fiscal favors, insane arms expenditures and industrial policies</span><br><span>that do not benefit labor, but moreover by subjecting it to the logic</span><br><span>of financial rent and imposing precarity and suffocating uncertainty</span><br><span>on forms of life. Each man, each woman, each worker has had to plead</span><br><span>guilty of a debt, of a financial gravamen for which they were not</span><br><span>responsible. The moment has arrived to say aloud that it was not the</span><br><span>citizens, but the masters of power, the men of the neoliberal project,</span><br><span>the politics of the “center”, of the “grand coalitions” – more extreme</span><br><span>and exclusive each time – it has been they who have created a debt</span><br><span>from which they have appropriated for themselves and for which they</span><br><span>are demanding an undue refund. Against this servile condition for the</span><br><span>people (not only for the people of the South of Europe, but also those</span><br><span>of Central Europe and all of Eastern Europe) the new left, through</span><br><span>Syriza, is asking for rescue – a European conference on debt, that is,</span><br><span>a constituent venue for a new system of solidarity, for the</span><br><span>establishment of new criteria of measurement and fiscal cooperation</span><br><span>and for labor policies. Podemos can bring huge support to this</span><br><span>project. We all know that behind these topics lies a project of deep</span><br><span>transformation of social relations. One more time, of Europe and in</span><br><span>Europe a project of liberty, of equality, of solidarity – a project</span><br><span>that we can call antifascist, because it repeats the passion and the</span><br><span>force of the struggles of the Resistance. The alliance between Podemos</span><br><span>and Syriza, and the impulse to merge into this alliance addressed to</span><br><span>all of the new European lefts, can construct a model – a model for a</span><br><span>democratic Union, based on solidarity beyond and against the market.</span><br><span>Departing from this foundation, the only fiscal policy that can be</span><br><span>made is one of reducing or abolishing the debt that has been</span><br><span>consolidated until now and establishing and standardizing, for the</span><br><span>future, progressive fiscal criteria in the whole Eurozone. The central</span><br><span>themes of the welfare state – education, medical assistance, pension</span><br><span>systems and housing policies, but also domestic labor and care work –</span><br><span>can be developed uniformly at the European level, accompanying the</span><br><span>great innovation of a decent basic income, generalized and uniform.</span><br><span>All of this opens a constituent battle in those places where new</span><br><span>rights of solidarity can be recognized, where the common becomes a</span><br><span>central element of social-economic organization.</span><br><span></span><br><span>But to win on these issues requires indicating the field of struggle:</span><br><span>this only can be the European space in its totality. Which brings us</span><br><span>to the central topic, around which many misunderstandings have</span><br><span>accumulated: the cession of sovereignty. There have already been</span><br><span>transfers of sovereignty, and these have always been made in favor of</span><br><span>the neo-Bismarckian powers of financial capitalism. Demagogically</span><br><span>attacking these cessions of sovereignty, nationalist rights are being</span><br><span>born and developing dangerously in Europe. And yet it is strange how</span><br><span>these positions can sometimes be made out (or that they are regarded</span><br><span>with favor) amongst members of Syriza, Podemos and other forces of the</span><br><span>“new Europe” that is forming. We must be clear on this point: each of</span><br><span>the countries that has entered the Union, and even more so those that</span><br><span>have entered the Euro, no longer have full sovereignty. And this is</span><br><span>good, for it was behind national sovereignty that each and every one</span><br><span>of the tragedies of modernity unfurled. If we want to continue</span><br><span>speaking of sovereignty in a modern (and classical) sense, that is to</span><br><span>say, of a power “in the last instance”, we must be clear that this is</span><br><span>increasingly identified with Frankfurt, with the tower of the ECB. Our</span><br><span>situation is characterized by the reign of a dangerous duplicity. We</span><br><span>must recognize this: we need Frankfurt, a European currency, if we do</span><br><span>not want to fall prey to the powers of global finance, to the politics</span><br><span>of the United States or other continental giants that are asserting</span><br><span>themselves against Europe; but we must also recover Frankfurt for</span><br><span>democracy, to impose on it the reasoning of the people – and Frankfurt</span><br><span>should be stormed by Europe: first by the movements and then,</span><br><span>gradually, by the majority of the European democracies and by a</span><br><span>European Parliament transformed into a constituent assembly. With</span><br><span>globalization the centrality of a monetary governance of continental</span><br><span>zones was imposed everywhere – and Europe is one of these continental</span><br><span>zones. It is impossible to imagine a political battle more essential</span><br><span>than that leading towards democratic control of the European currency.</span><br><span>This is the storming of the Bastille today.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Moreover, it is clear that merely raising the issue of control over</span><br><span>the monetary and political vertex of Europe, and insisting on the</span><br><span>dissolution of the old monocratic sovereignties could open up, in a</span><br><span>productive manner, the topic of federalism, which is another essential</span><br><span>step in the construction of a new Europe. Federalism: not only one</span><br><span>that wants the European nations to recompose themselves in a</span><br><span>constituent dialogue, but also, and above all, an articulation of all</span><br><span>the nations, of all the populations and languages that want to feel</span><br><span>culturally and politically autonomous, within a unitary framework,</span><br><span>that is to say, a federal one. It is not only the PIIGS who want this;</span><br><span>there are Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque Country and all the other</span><br><span>regions that demand autonomy and an effective ability to decide on</span><br><span>their social and political constitution. Federalism will be a key to</span><br><span>the construction of Europe. The issue of sovereignty can only be</span><br><span>raised and used in terms of plurality, subscribing to the dynamics</span><br><span>that articulate a forthright federalism for the years to come.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Here we see once again that only the left – the new left that departs</span><br><span>from the democratic radicality of the emerging movements of struggle</span><br><span>and organizes itself along emancipatory lines (Syriza and Podemos) –</span><br><span>can impose the European Union not as an instrument of dominion but as</span><br><span>a democratic goal. Left-Europe-democratic radicality: this dispositive</span><br><span>is becoming increasingly important for defining the defense of</span><br><span>working-class interests and for emancipation of the population from</span><br><span>poverty. There is a long and dirty tradition of left-sovereigntists</span><br><span>that must be ended, just as we must defeat the populist experiences</span><br><span>that use national sentiments and transform them into fascist</span><br><span>(nationalist, identitarian, isolationist) impulses. Only a europeanist</span><br><span>left, deeply transformed by the democratic radicality of the emergent</span><br><span>movements against austerity, can construct a democratic Europe.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Here, another problem emerges, which we can call the “Atlantic</span><br><span>question” – it is a problem often evaded or excluded from debate, as</span><br><span>if it were obvious that the process of European unification must</span><br><span>necessarily develop under the watchful protection of the United States</span><br><span>of America. Europe was promoted within the antifascist Resistance in</span><br><span>order to overcome the wars that until the middle of the century had</span><br><span>destroyed it and impoverished and humiliated its populations. Against</span><br><span>this condition, the first elements of a European discourse were</span><br><span>construed during the post-war era in Europe and during the transición</span><br><span>in Spain, with the knowledge that peace signified the possibility of</span><br><span>democracy, whereas war has always signified fascism and militarism.</span><br><span>After the fall of the Berlin Wall, European unity also lost its</span><br><span>characteristic as a last front against the Soviet world and Russian</span><br><span>expansionism. In this way, the goal of a European Union has</span><br><span>re-centered and re-organized itself around a framework of</span><br><span>civilization, own juridical structures and autonomy in a global</span><br><span>environment.</span><br><span></span><br><span>But now Europe is surrounded by wars. The entire Mediterranean, deeply</span><br><span>integrated not only to the south, but also to all of Europe by</span><br><span>movements of migration and critical relationships of energy policy and</span><br><span>commercial exchange, is crossed by a single line of war, by fascisms</span><br><span>and dictatorships. It is a line that extends all the way to the Middle</span><br><span>East and makes Europe an actor dangerously exposed to armed movements</span><br><span>that are of global importance and have global leadership. Furthermore,</span><br><span>on the Eastern border of Europe a senseless war is developing between</span><br><span>Russian-speaking populations, with responsibilities that should be</span><br><span>referred to questions of global control that contradict the interests</span><br><span>of European populations. From this perspective, the sovereignty of</span><br><span>Europe – no longer the imagined sovereignty of each country, but the</span><br><span>real sovereignty of a Union that is constructing itself – is projected</span><br><span>onto NATO and usurped by it. This is the true cession of sovereignty</span><br><span>borne by the European populations! When Tsipras poses, in a symbolic</span><br><span>manner, the necessity of dealing with this problem, he touches on a</span><br><span>fundamental seam of the European structures. In so doing he introduces</span><br><span>a problem to which we should respond, without putting ourselves under</span><br><span>the illusion that it could be resolved immediately, but also without</span><br><span>negating its existence and its central impact. What we refer to is the</span><br><span>relationship of the Union with peace or war, with a peace not only</span><br><span>inside Europe, but also at its borders. Moreover, it is immediately</span><br><span>clear that the Atlantic question is not a problem concerning only</span><br><span>peace and war: it is an issue of peace and war tracing back to the</span><br><span>system of control and/or of command over the productive and financial</span><br><span>structures of Europe itself.</span><br><span></span><br><span>In order to not be hypocritical, to speak clearly and to give further</span><br><span>impetus to the processes of constructing a political force of the</span><br><span>European left, we will again put some questions on the table that</span><br><span>cannot be left unasked. What does Podemos say or do about immigration,</span><br><span>about refugees? But also – repeating ourselves and making our question</span><br><span>more precise – about NATO, about the regional conflicts underway in</span><br><span>the limes of the Union? If these topics are considered “misfires” in</span><br><span>the electoral realm, is it necessary to avoid them and/or to respond</span><br><span>with rhetorical exercises to get by? No, not at all: it is very</span><br><span>difficult to adopt the slogan “first we take power, then we discuss</span><br><span>the program” in this domain. The topics of peace and war cannot be</span><br><span>considered secondary. To take positions on them means to unambiguously</span><br><span>clarify the fundamental orientation of the group leading Podemos not</span><br><span>only with respect to questions of peace and war, but also on issues</span><br><span>that refer to reform and a constituent project that affects all of</span><br><span>Europe. The courage and seriousness with which Tsipras has laid out</span><br><span>the whole context of topics that are now important for the</span><br><span>construction of a Europe outside of the Troika are the same that can</span><br><span>allow us to also outline a dispositive “outside of NATO”. The</span><br><span>movements and governments of a new left know that they have to take on</span><br><span>these issues as central. Without ambiguities and conscious that the</span><br><span>same global conjuncture can now contribute to their solution. In fact,</span><br><span>what the citizens of the world are asking for at this point is a</span><br><span>democratic Europe in an ensemble of the new global reality, because</span><br><span>Europe is seen as a reality that can renew a democratic tradition with</span><br><span>a long trajectory, taking advantage of the light that Syriza and</span><br><span>Podemos have lit, as hope for reform and moving beyond capitalism.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The European movements want to be included in the continental</span><br><span>political initiative that the Podemos-Syriza axis can create/is</span><br><span>creating in the European space. This initiative constitutes in</span><br><span>particular a point of attraction for the new lefts and the new</span><br><span>democratic radicality in formation in the south of the Union. The</span><br><span>rhythm as much as the degree of articulation of this process will</span><br><span>depend on the current course of the government of Syriza and on the</span><br><span>electoral success of Podemos. We all can (podemos) organize a</span><br><span>constituent rupture in the European space</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span># distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission</span><br><span># <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,</span><br><span># collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets</span><br><span># more info: <a href="http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l" target="_blank">http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l</a></span><br><span># archive: <a href="http://www.nettime.org" target="_blank">http://www.nettime.org</a> contact: <a href="mailto:nettime@kein.org" target="_blank">nettime@kein.org</a></span></div></blockquote></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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<br></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan" target="_blank">http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan</a> </div><div><br></div>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br><br>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br></div></div>
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