De la Apatía a la Transformación

¿De verdad puede decirse que 2013 equivale a 1789, como afirma el diario francés Le Point? ¿O se trata de atraer atención pública con una metáfora intencionadamente equívoca? Vivimos “tiempos revolucionarios”, aunque sin revolución y sin sujeto revolucionario. Aquello que en otro momento se llamó con la mejor conciencia “revolución” ha entrado a formar parte del estado de cosas, por así decirlo. La decadencia del lenguaje, de las coordenadas políticas y de los “conceptos clave” lo evidencian de forma meridiana. Tómese el ejemplo que se quiera; el nacionalismo, que en el mundo interdependiente no hace más que agravar todos los problemas; la distinción entre nacionales y extranjeros; delimitación entre naturaleza y sociedad; la familia; el centro y la periferia; Unión Europea … en todas partes encontramos fórmulas lingüísticas vacías de sentido, coordinadas rotas, instituciones hueras. El prefijo “pos” es la palabra clave de nuestra época: posmodernidad, posdemocracia, constelación posnacional. “Pos” es el bastón de ciego de los intelectuales: pequeña palabra para un gran desconcierto que lo preside todo. El fantasma de la “pos-gran-nación” recorre Francia y Europa. La narración del papel especial de Francia en Europa y en el mundo pierde su sentido histórico. Hacia dentro, el orgullo de Francia se basaba en el “modelo social” de Estado centralista fuerte. La industria de la energía nuclear, organizada y controlada por el Estado, fungía como museo del futuro en el que podían admirarse los logros civilizatorios del Estado moderno. En el terreno de la política exterior, el poder global de Francia se asentaba en la posición excepcional del país en la Unión Europea (UE) y en el motor franco-alemán de la europeización. La capacidad de convicción de estos tres proyectos se desvanece. Modelo social se erosiona porque el régimen neoliberal del mercado mundial lo domina todo. La catástrofe de Fukushima ha quebrado el orgullo nuclear de los franceses. Y ni siquiera hace falta volver a repetirlo: la UE se encuentra en una crisis profunda. Más aún: la idea asuntos europeos pueden ser arreglados en una alianza con Alemania dominada por Francia no solo es minada por la mala ejecutoria económica de Francia, sino sobre todo por el hecho, que ya no es posible ocultar, de que la política se diseña en Berlín y Merkiavelli lleva la voz cantante en Europa, aunque se niegue a adoptar la responsabilidad por el bien común europeo. No cabe duda de que el primer año del presidente francés, François Hollande, ha sido decepcionante. Si se propuso rechazar la histérica política de austeridad y hacer pasar por caja a los ricos, ha fracasado en ambas cosas, al menos de momento. El Gobierno se apresta a emprender los drásticos recortes presupuestarios. Y el impuesto a los ricos se ha convertido en una farsa después de que los tribunales lo rechazaran y “el caso Cahuzac” transmitiera un mensaje devastador sobre la doble moral de los gobernantes. En cualquier caso, parece de todo punto exagerado, inadecuado el afán de comentaristas, que se alimenta de una mezcla desconcierto y desesperación, por decapitar a Hollande en la guillotina de la letra impresa (…..)

Link: http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/05/09/opinion/1368101541_586232.html

“Mommy Merkel”: How the Chancellor Paralyzed German Politics

(…..) General public, too, has remained calm, just as Merkel likes it, and no one seems to be able to come up with much reason to protest against her. There is no particular enthusiasm for Merkel, but rather paralyzed consent. People sit at home and read “Landlust”, a magazine that has achieved enormous success by telling stories about rural living and domestic bliss. The country Merkel has created must remind her a bit of her first home, the GDR, which was Biedermeier in the form of a country. Of course, Federal Republic of Germany is much freer than the GDR was. But this freedom, which is first and foremost the freedom to express disagreement, currently goes largely unutilized. It is interesting that the most significant novel to come out of the Merkel era is a book about the GDR, Uwe Tellkamp’s “Der Turm” (“The Tower”). Tellkamp describes a morbid, bourgeois world in the eastern city of Dresden in which politics per force play very little role and, ultimately, it is the city’s beautiful buildings, crumbling, but all the homier for it, that set the mood. Add in Leipzig School movement, which continues to set the tone for German painting, “The Lives of Others” as Germany’s most prominent recent contribution to filmmaking, and GDR proves astonishingly influential in Germany’s art scene today. Politically, however, GDR no longer has anything to say to us. It was an error of history, now irrelevant. Even Sahra Wagenknecht, German politician from the far-left Left Party, whose communist ideas seem to be buoyed by capitalism’s crises, says she wouldn’t return to GDR’s political system. Interest in East Germany may also be explained by the widespread notion that things would be much more relaxing in absence of politics. In that sense, Merkel is working to build a “tower” for everyone, a sheltered place of calm, a homey home, and Germans as a whole don’t seem opposed to the idea. This general quiet also has to do with the fact Merkel and her ministers have so far managed to spare the country from unpleasant consequences of the financial crisis. Unlike in Southern Europe, where enormous numbers of people are now unemployed, in Germany, the economy is growing and incomes are rising. This is commendable, but it also has something of a chauvinistic approach to it. The re-nationalization of politics is one of Angela Merkel Era’s truly significant changes. The chancellor does not fundamentally reject solidarity with Germany’s European partners, but she does set limits. There won’t be eurobonds under Merkel. Merkel’s policies could even be described as expansionary. She would like for other countries to adopt Germany’s standards of stability and efficiency, allowing Europe as a whole to become more competitive. That way, Merkel figures, Germany as a major power in Europe would be able to preserve its influence in world. It’s been a long time since German politician dared to have so much national ambition. And this attitude is well received by the general public. For many Germans, “Mommy” Merkel is the defender of their homeland against the world (…..)

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/how-chancellor-angela-merkel-has-paralyzed-german-politics-a-900330.html

Britons obsess about immigration, Germans focus on education

Every German politician I have spoken to this week watches the chaos in David Cameron’s government over Europe with something close to horror. This is a very dangerous game, says one. It’s like the US Republicans with the Tea Party, says another. There will be a terrible awakening, says a third. The three, all members of the Bundestag, will be opponents in September’s German general election, but they see Conservative implosion over Europe through the same lens. “The current situation in UK is not positive at all,” Michael Fuchs of the CDU, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre right party, told me this week. “You have a very large deficit. Your industry is almost nothing. Your economy is too dependent on the City of London. You need to realise it won’t get better if you leave Europe. It will get worse.” And that, mark you, is the verdict from a German MP who likes Britain and sits for what is still supposedly Conservatives’ sister party. But you hear the same verdict from a German Liberal, from a German Social Democrat, or from a German Green. That convergence in Berlin doesn’t mean, of itself, all these German politicians are always right, German political class can and does deceive itself, just like ours. But German distress at Britain’s psychodrama over Europe is palpable. On this, maybe the Germans can see us as we are, better than, in our current hysteria, we can see ourselves. Political visitors can deceive themselves too, of course. Eighty years ago some went to Soviet Russia and returned saying they had seen the future and it worked. I’ve lost count of the British politicians of all parties who have crossed the Atlantic and left their critical faculties behind at Heathrow. Even so, it is hard to spend time in Germany, not feel that this is still, for all its faults, a better, more balanced place than Britain. Particularly in a week like this, to travel from London to Berlin feels like leaving the madhouse and arriving in a world inhabited by rational beings once more. This is not, repeat, not, to embrace every German government policy or everything about German way. Germany is changing, not always for the better. Inequality is rising there too, especially since inancial crisis. In particular, it is not to endorse Merkel’s rigid austerity policies for the eurozone, though one understands why she will not bend with only four months to polling day. If she is re-elected, as even opponents expect, Angela Merkel may have to loosen the bonds. Being a consummate pragmatist, she may do so. A lot depends on the coalition she eventually forms. But it is to say, without donning rose-tinted glasses, that Germany continues to get a lot of big things right that Britain continues to get very wrong indeed. Germany has a balanced economy. Britain, still hooked on the financial services drug, does not. Germany has a strong manufacturing sector. Ours is less than half the size. German economic strength is based on the middle-sized company. And ours is constantly undermined by MERGERMANIA. Companies prosper on industrial co-determination. Ours pigheadedly regard any limit on a management autonomy as regulation and red tape. Germany’s housing market is under strain, especially in Berlin and Hamburg. Britain’s is broken. Germany’s current account is in the black and they have a balanced budget. Britain’s is deep in the red, and now we are borrowing more (…..)

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/15/britons-obsess-about-immigration-germans-education

Anti-Euro Party a Growing Challenge for Merkel

The Germany’s center-right has long been in a luxurious position. Whereas the conservatives across Europe have been struggling in recent years with the rise of right-wing populist parties eating into their base, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats have had little to worry about. Though German left is splintered among three, or even four, parties, the right is a monolith. There is the CDU, its Bavarian wing known as the Christian Social Union, and its favorite coalition partner, Free Democrats (FDP). But this election year is different. With the birth of the anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Merkel is facing competition from within her own clientele. Furthermore, though her preferred strategy has been that of maintaining complete silence about the AfD so as not to lend it credibility, there are many in Merkel’s party who disagree with that approach. And they are increasingly giving voice to their displeasure. “To imagine that nobody will talk about the AfD if we avoid talking about them would be a fatal conclusion to draw,” says Wolfgang Bosbach, a senior CDU member and chair of Internal Affairs Committee in German parliament. The party has to confront the critics of the euro “with well founded arguments.” Bosbach was quoted in Monday edition of SPIEGEL in an article that also included details from a paper written by CDU leaders from a trio of German states protesting against party’s strategy in dealing with the AfD. The authors of the paper urged the CDU to “take the new party seriously” and to engage it in a debate on the issues. Angie Merkel was furious. In a Monday party meeting, she complained bitterly about critique reported on by SPIEGEL and took the authors of the paper to task. “We are both older than 18,” she snapped at one of the renegade party members, according to meeting participants. Her touchiness is understandable. For months, CDU and the FDP have sought to ignore Alternative for Germany in the hopes that it would simply disappear as so many anti-euro movements have in the past. Instead, though, the party has quickly grown. Earlier this month, it surpassed 10.000 member mark, just seven weeks after its official founding, and it has attracted widespread interest among German electorate. More worrisome, significant elements within Merkel’s CDU have grown uncomfortable with the massive bailouts of heavily indebted euro-zone member states, with several conservative lawmakers either abstaining or voting no on aid packages in the German parliament last year. While no parliamentarians have yet abandoned the CDU, the Alternative for Germany has proven adept at attracting lower-ranking CDU and FDP members. Just last week, a state lawmaker with FDP in Hesse named Jochen Paulus switched parties. Many see AfD as a political home representing what German conservatives used to stand for, before Merkel moved the CDU to the center in recent years. And before euro crisis forced Berlin to embark on expensive path of saving the common European currency. While most Germans remain favorable toward the euro, a significant number are not and many of them are political conservatives (…..)

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/anti-euro-party-alternative-for-germany-a-growing-problem-for-merkel-a-899803.html

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar

Yes, Étienne Balibar is right: we need “immediately, to contemplate a restructuring of the Union for the purpose of building another Europe”. We should be grateful to him both for the emphasis on “immediate” and for the emphasis on “restructuring”. There is a (HUGE) need to act now in Europe, this action cannot take for granted the existence of political forces that need to be mobilized, social coalitions capable of supporting such a mobilization, intellectual energies to be activated, the institutional channels and frameworks to be addressed. What is needed on each of these levels is founding campaign, capable of transforming the existing forces and institutions, creating new ones, channeling social struggles and a “indignation” towards “purpose of building another Europe”, one capable of producing new political languages and cultural imaginaries. A founding or constituent campaign, as I say: which is not same thing as a campaign for “constituent assembly” in Europe, for which all conditions are so far absent. What I have in mind is a decade-long project, capable of radically reinventing at the same time the European space, its place in a tumultuously changing world, its institutions, and its citizenship on the basis of a new conjunction of freedom and equality. Should I add that such a reinvention must at the same time include a reinvention of the left in Europe? If the left has a future in this part of the world, I am convinced that this future needs to be constructed on the continental scale. We should be aware of global dimension of challenges which currently confront us here in Europe. We can be sure shattering of old spatial hierarchies and the emergence of new geographies of capitalist development and accumulation figure prominently among tendencies underlying the global economic crisis. New regionalisms and new patterns of multilateralism are taking shape in many parts of the world, a kind of “continental drift” (to use the geological image employed by Russell Banks in his famous 1985 novel of the same title) is redrawing the world. Within these processes, Europe is becoming more and more provincialized, although not necessarily in sense suggested by Dipesh Chakrabarty in his important book of 2000. This is not a bad thing in itself. Quite the opposite: but to glean the political opportunities inherent in this provincialization of Europe we need political action and government on continental scale. We need a political Europe. Without this we can only look forward to some islands of wealth and richness within a sea of poverty and destitution, something we are already starting to experience in the south of our continent. Moreover it is only on such a continental scale it is possible to imagine construction of a favourable force relationship with financial capital, whose predominance within contemporary capitalism is at the root of the crisis in political mediation (in democracy, if you prefer to put this way) that is so apparent in Europe nowadays. This is not the place to fully explore implications of this kind of “geopolitical” gaze on the European question (which must for instance lead to discussion of a new basis for relations between Europe and the US). But it is important to keep in mind the relevance of the topics briefly evoked here for any critical investigation of current European predicament. In remainder of this short response, however, I want to focus on something else. Speaking of a founding campaign means taking into account the necessity of a rupture, in order to pave the way to “another Europe” (…..)

Link: http://www.opendemocracy.net/sandro-mezzadra/as-europe-is-provincialized-reply-to-etienne-balibar

¿¿ El retorno de la historia ??

(…..) El retorno de la historia. Una mayor coacción y un mayor poder alemán llevan a una percepción nueva de la dominación alemana. Así, una forma de entender el regreso de la historia en Europa es que la memoria colectiva anterior a 1945 alimentaba tanto el discurso sobre Europa como su instrumentalización. El ejemplo más drástico, pero no el único, es la existencia de una actitud hostil entre Alemania y Grecia desde que empezó la crisis en 2010. Los periódicos griegos han comparado a Angela Merkel con Hitler y algunos vuelven a reclamar reparaciones de guerra. Por tanto, la historia ha regresado a las mentes de los europeos. Puede tratarse de un fenómeno temporal. O, por el contrario, puede ser solo el comienzo. Existen pruebas preocupantes de que dichas percepciones tienen una base real. En especial, lo que debería preocupar a los proeuropeos es el debate entre los analistas solventes sobre una posible aparición del “imperio” alemán, un término más fuerte aún que “hegemonía” y que sugiere falta de consentimiento. Lo que George Soros y otros tienen en mente cuando utilizan el término “imperio” en relación Alemania es una especie de imperialismo económico, porque cada vez más se asemeja a un sistema de relaciones económicas donde núcleo del imperio explota a la periferia. “Esta no es una unión monetaria”, escribió Martin Wolf en mayo 2012 en Financial Times. “Se parece mucho más a un imperio”. Incluso división entre los países acreedores y deudores puede llegar a ser permanente. Ya hubo una notable fuga de capitales desde la periferia, ahora hay un éxodo de jóvenes desde países endeudados con una gran tasa de desempleo como Grecia y España, hacia países acreedores como Alemania. En la primera mitad de 2012, la inmigración en Alemania aumentó 15%, casi medio millón de personas. El peligro está en que, como escribe Soros, “los recursos humanos y financieros sean atraídos hacia el centro, periferia se quede deprimida”. De nuevo, esto difiere bastante de la UE que conocíamos. Algunos proeuropeos ven la fuga de cerebros como un ejemplo del principio europeo de libre movimiento, y por ende, un avance producido por la crisis. Pero una Europa con una línea divisoria entre centro y la periferia no es exactamente lo que los padres fundadores de la UE, o los creadores de moneda única, tenían en mente. La Unión debería ser diferente, más social que Estados Unidos. Junto a estos fenómenos, puede que también esté cambiando la estructura relacional de la UE en respuesta al poder alemán. A medida que la Unión ha aumentado de seis Estados miembros a 27, la estructura de su red se ha hecho más compleja. Pero, en los últimos tres años, la creación de políticas dentro de la UE ha sido en su mayoría bilateral, centrada en Alemania. En 2012 ministro Asuntos Exteriores alemán, Guido Westerwelle, convocó a grupo de 11 ministros de Asuntos Exteriores afines para exponer su visión de la integración futura. Asimismo, el proceso de creación de políticas centrado en Alemania muestra semejanzas con las estrategias que Estados-nación suelen adoptar para enfrentarse a poderes hegemónicos. Como ningún otro Estado tiene suficiente fuerza para resistir a Alemania, a veces forman coaliciones contra ella, como hicieron Francia, Italia y España en el Consejo Europeo de junio 2012. En definitiva, podemos estar presenciando el resurgimiento de contrapesos dentro de Europa. Tal vez se trate de un cambio de una estructura relacional de red a otra de tipo radial, vista como característica del imperio y a veces hasta como un elemento constituyente de imperio, como afirman Daniel H. Nexon y Thomas Wright (…..)

Link: http://www.politicaexterior.com/articulo?id=5163

A Social Europe Must Be A Political Europe

(…..) This historic framework is important to keep it in mind when one discusses how to confront the present existential threat. A shift from top-down to bottom-up, yes, but how, what does it even mean? Take, for example, Beppe Grillo’s campaign for a total destruction of the ancien régime and dawn of a new, benevolent, populist order in Italy. History is full of warnings against this apocalyptic scenario. The Bottom-up brings spontaneity, which is important, but the fury and rage, frustration and despair which are floating all over Europe, the spectre that haunts the continent, needs organization + canalization towards concrete political goals aiming for more equality. Social protest must be given a political target; a target that can respond to the protest. Protest needs a voice, and the voice needs a listener who can act. Currently, European Union has none. The Commission and the Council are stuck in their legacies of opaque conclaves: no radical re-foundation can be expected to stem from there. More of the same will not break down the dictatorship of the financial markets. The Commission and the Council are de-legitimized in the eyes of too many European citizens, their recent U-turn from ritual invocations of the markets to a new language describing them as Europe’s most dangerous enemy, which has to be fought with bazookas and firewalls, is simply too big a conversion to impress. New desperate language is an expression of a paralysis rather than of the ability to act. When the leaders return from their overnight weekend meetings contemplating how to appease the markets, and then proceed to describe the situation as alternativlos, without alternatives, one can almost hear Carl Schmitt echoing from a dark past. They have overstretched the legal framework of the EU, which makes the situation dangerous, and themselves helpless. This is why new impulse must come from European Parliament, but through political rather than institutional reform. EP must be the forum to think about a more social Europe. The disembedding of the market forces, to use Karl Polanyi’s strong metaphor, must be met with their political reembedding, and the architecture of this new regulation must be designed through political contention and debate in the EP. There is no other forum for this necessary step towards a new Europe. It is scandalous failure of European left that it has neglected to identify and define European solidarity. The left has been stuck in its national happiness and hubris, and is now harvesting growing nationalism, which can only be confronted through concerted European action. This action must overcome mere anti-nationalism, and outline the credible contours of a new regulative order for social Europe. Such an agenda requires new European parties in true sense of the word, European election lists, constituencies and election campaigns of a new kind, where the issue of a social Europe and European solidarity are given a prominent place. To do this, EP must first stand for itself and demand a new place in the architecture of the EU. The current situation is scandalous: when Deutsche Bank director Ackermann advised the Council on bank crisis in a meeting, as always closed to the public, the Speaker of European Parliament was refused entry. The failure of the European left cannot be blamed on some inherent systemic logic. It is a failure of human agency. Only human agency, a push towards a more social conception of the economy, can save Europe. The markets are man-made, not self-playing pianos or inevitable historical facts. It is clear social reform through a stronger EP requires economic reform. A social Europe must be built on a strong, efficient economy. Plans for economic efficiency in a social Europe must necessarily confront the myth of Germany as only model to follow. The discussion on German economic efficiency has totally missed the critical question of the price of this efficiency; declining labour standards, rock-bottom wages, general employment insecurity through outsourcing. The Hartz concept cannot be a model for Europe. Economic efficiency must be defined in other ways (…..)

Link: http://www.opendemocracy.net/bo-str%C3%A5th/social-europe-must-be-political-europe

Britain can prosper by understanding how Germany succeeds

(…..) What Labour should take from Germans is a governing ideology that understands the human nature as based on self-interest broadly conceived, an ideology in which well-being of others is a condition of our own flourishing, and in which the preservation of quality through practices of democratically organised, non-pecuniary institutions is necessary as fiscal discipline and upholding of individual rights. The prevailing paradigms cannot explain why the economy with highest level of workforce participation in its governance, the greatest degree of regulation of labourmarket entry through vocational enforcement and the most severe constraints on capital in its banking system should be most competitive in Europe, as well as its most efficient. However, an explanation of the comparative superiority of German economy should be central to Labour’s new economic offer. We are all in this together in ways George Osborne cannot begin to understand. Such a political position requires the following: a reassertion of the value of labour and the representation of workforce in corporate governance; a renewed role for vocational institutions in reproducing skill; selforganised universities run by academics on the basis of the internal goods of knowledge rather than the external goods of money or policy objectives; self-governing cities with the power to shape destiny of their citizens; the endowment of regional banks that can resist the domination of the “Big Six” in internal investment and enable access to capital in the regions where there is no nourishment to be found. A Renewal of solidarity in social security and welfare is required, that establishes solidarity, subsidiarity, status as guiding principles. Politics of mutual sacrifice is the necessary complement to that of mutual benefit. That is meaning of reciprocity. The domination of internal investment by the banks that had to be bailed out following the crash of autumn 2008 must be challenged by creation of new financial institutions and the renewal of old ones. These should be funded by using 5% of bailout money to endow new Banks of England. This would challenge the centralisation of capital, offer an alternative to payday lenders, offer tangible investment to local businesses. Jon Cruddas, in his “earning and belonging” speech in February this year, told the story of how the Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, which was rooted in north-east of England, survived depressions, growing through each, could not survive its demutualisation as Northern Rock in 1997. In maximising returns, the asset was lost, a trusted local institution was destroyed. The overwhelming lesson of the German economy is a balance of interests in corporate governance between capital and labour is as necessary as a more relational and localised banking system. Accountability is too important to be left to accountants. The only group with the expertise and an interest that could hold elites accountable and have an interest in the flourishing of the business is the workforce. This is double-edged: on the one hand, capital must negotiate with labour and share information about firms and their environments. On the other hand, workforce must commit itself to good standards of work and to the well-being of funders and consumers. The common good is a demanding category (…..)

Link: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/05/britain-can-prosper-understanding-how-germany-succeeds

Putin Strives to Become Russia’s Über-Patriot

(…..) And yet the man who appeared in Rostov-on-Don was no longer the Putin who entered the Kremlin for the third time on May 7, 2012. Rather, Putin this year has radically changed course and changed his leadership style. To find out who this new Putin is, and what he wants, it helps to meet 3 men: Gennady Gudkov, the sidelined former KGB man who joined the opposition, Dmitry Badovski, Kremlin ideologue and Alexander Prokhanov, a Stalinist whom Putin brought back to the political stage. “Putin has finally seen the signs of the times,” says Prokhanov, 75. “For years, he talked about need for giving the country a jolt, but nothing happened. Now, that is apparently changing and I will use my modest powers to help him achieve this.” Prokhanov is a prolific author of considerable renown and he has been compared to Dostoyevsky. Over period of 40 years, he has written some 50 books: novels, short stories, works of non-fiction and volumes of poems. He worked as a correspondent in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, resisted Gorbachev and his perestroika, later on, antagonized former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s oligarchs and the nouveau riche elite. Prokhanov describes himself as a left-wing patriot, an “orthodox socialist,” someone who is fighting for the reestablishment of old Russian state. He says that the Russian people are by nature Stalinist: “They will always place greater importance on the state than on the small happiness of the individual,” he argues. For a long time, Prokhanov and his ideas were banished to the political wilderness, but more recently he has been invited every few days to take part in talk shows on the quasi-state-owned television networks. But why does someone like Putin need the support of a Stalinist who talks about a new Russian empire he says is currently emerging? Someone who never tires of warning of “geopolitical disaster” is encroaching upon Russia’s borders, and whose newspaper Zavtra is notoriously anti-Semitic? Prokhanov receives his visitors in the shabby offices of his small newspaper in Moscow. But one shouldn’t gauge his political influence by these surroundings. The rooms are located on the premises of the general staff of the armed forces and he maintains close friends among the generals. He recently received two North Korean embassy staff members and the photo showing Prokhanov next to Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad is only a few weeks old. Putin is a “very dynamic” politician, says Prokhanov: “He began his career in the entourage of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who tried to use him as a puppet after Yeltsin left office,” he contends. “But Putin was not the man people thought he was.” He says Putin got rid of Berezovsky, seized control of his media empire, stopped former Soviet republics from seceding from the Russian Federation and enticed Europe to become dependent on Gazprom. It was “powerful geopolitical operation,” says Prokhanov, who adds that in 2008 Putin regrettably strictly adhered to constitution, which forbids presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms. Instead of continuing in the office, he chose Dmitry Medvedev to serve as a nominal head of state. “That was a huge mistake,” Prokhanov notes, “because he wasted four valuable years and weakened himself in the process” (…..)

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/putin-uses-patriotism-to-strengthen-hold-on-russia-a-898170.html

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up

Red alert, yet again. The old French-German ‘couple’, the engine or the brakes on Europe-making, depending on one’s views, is about to autodestruct. Should we tell a few home truths to our German neighbours, who might become our masters, or start cleaning up our own backyard and accept the compromises that may escape the worst? Much Better, I believe, to understand what is happening by considering the European ensemble as a whole, all of whose components will either sink or save themselves simultaneously. The Europe-making has stalled on budgetary constraint. It has become discredited in the eyes of the public. But that doesn’t rule out a unique political system staggering on, one which is neither national nor federal, but an amalgam of the negative effects of both and one which henceforth will mandate everything. This has become all the clearer in the light of recent developments in Italy and France. (source: Etienne Balibar – Open Democracy – 06/05/2013)

Italy repays this with a seemingly irreversible ungovernability, the tally of the Berlusconi years and of ‘revolution from above’ which, on the orders of Brussels and Frankfurt, brought into government a team of technocrats closely allied to global finance. In absence of an alternative on the left, a defaulting Italian political class tries to save itself by evolving from parliamentarianism towards a presidential system. But this attempt occurs by means of a fictional national unity that is totally devoid of a popular base: its success is anything but certain. France, supposedly shielded from instability thanks to the institutions of the Fifth Republic, is also sensing its decline. Elected on the promise of reversing development of social insecurity, President Hollande remains powerless, unable, or unwilling, to clash with financial capitalism that controls his every move. His attempts to find a counter-balance by federating ‘Latin Europe’ or rallying neighbours to fight terrorism in Africa having failed, he can only oscillate between unpopularity and market sanctions at risk of combining both. Ungovernability on one side, immobility on the other, is what we call a systemic crisis.

Mind you, this crisis has national origins. But, they in turn arise from the European conditions, and have consequences for Europe as a whole, which, inevitably, will exacerbate the crisis if no overarching solution is found. It is not only the ‘periphery’ that is being affected today, it is two founding nations of the community; the most powerful after Germany. Since the establishment of federal institutions has failed, given that no state actually wanted them, policies are still decided according to power relations between member states. Paralysis is unavoidable, if not total break-up. And the peoples who turn their back on the Union will be its first victims. It is important to understand the root causes of this situation if one wishes to discover an exit route. I will underline two crucial causes. First can be boiled down to a single word: rampant inequalities. First and foremost social inequalities, affecting every country (even Germany) but spread in equally unequal fashion between countries and regions, inequality within inequality, one could say, this being further, and dramatically, worsened by the crisis subjecting certain Mediterranean countries to a brutality that isn’t so very different from war. This fragmentation of society is the opposite of the proclaimed aims of the Union. It is unlikely that the representative systems will hold out against this much longer, and absurd to think one can restructure the community’s policy without tackling the issue through some means of recovery of public welfare. Which brings us to second cause: the resurgence of nationalisms which afflict both Europe’s ‘dominant’ and ‘dominated’ powers. It may well be that the European project had underestimated the resilience of nationalism, not only on account of cultural factors or of the trace left by the great tragedies of twentieth century, but due to the fact social securities and solidarities were built first and foremost around notion of a national cohesion. Yet, it is certain that a drift towards a monetary union in the service of a purely competitive economic order has unleashed within Europe a ‘dog eat dog’ war in which the stronger will crush the weaker before being exposed to the shock of a globalization in which everyone is reduced to status of a mere pawn.

Confronted by such developments, there is no simple solution since what is needed is the coming together of opinions that are currently hostile together with the overthrow of tendencies that have become sacrosanct. All the more reason to immediately contemplate a restructuring of the Union for the purpose of building another Europe. The latter, as Mr. Ulrich Beck correctly underlines in his latest book, can only come ‘from the bottom up’, or from an unhampered evolution of citizens’ initiatives ranging from debates to protests and even sustained revolt, in the face of the fall-out from this crisis. But this is on one condition, that this protest won’t itself drift into a state of majoritarian nationalist victimhood and that it proves able to suggest alternatives that make sense to the majority of the citizens across the continent. To be sure, the emergence of a historical leadership would be necessary, together with a political proposal audible for each and every one in their respective idioms. Some have mentioned a European New Deal. Obviously, it won’t be coming from Ms Merkel. I would however argue that it ought to come from Germany, or find itself relayed thereby, not because Germany is ‘the centre of all things’ but because the first task is to persuade the German populace to Exchange (relative) benefits they accrue from their imagined economic superiority for a common interest in longer term. That raises a whole series of ‘ifs’, each one of which is difficult, and overall success highly improbable. And that is why I want to insist on their necessity.