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

Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream

A certain drama has become familiar in United States (and some other advanced industrialized countries): the Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, and preying especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. Use their political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. The debts mount. The journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we let this happen again? The officials promise to fix things. Something is done about most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon. The crisis is about to break out involves student debt+how we finance higher education. Like housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down, some to a point even lower than where they began. This new crisis is emerging even before the last one has been resolved, and the two are becoming intertwined. In the decades after World War II, homeownership and higher education became signs of success in America. Before housing bubble burst in 2007, banks persuaded low- and moderate-income homeowners that they could turn their houses and apartments into piggy banks. They seduced them into taking out home-equity loans, and in the end, millions lost their homes. In other cases, the banks, mortgage brokers and real-estate agents pushed aspiring homeowners to borrow beyond their means. The wizards of finance, who prided themselves on risk management, sold toxic mortgages were designed to explode. They bundled the dubious loans into complex financial instruments and sold them to unsuspecting investors. Everyone recognizes education is the only way up, but as a college degree becomes increasingly essential to making one’s way in a 21st-century economy, education for those not to the manner born is increasingly unaffordable. Student debt for seniors graduating with loans now exceeds $26,000, about a 40% increase (not adjusted for inflation) in just seven years. But an “average” like this masks a huge variations. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, almost 13% of student-loan borrowers of all ages owe more than $50,000, and nearly 4% owe more than $100,000. These debts are beyond students’ ability to repay, (especially in our nearly jobless recovery); this is demonstrated by the fact delinquency and default rates are soaring. Some 17% of student-loan borrowers were 90 days or more behind in payments at end of 2012. When only those in repayment were counted, not including borrowers who were in loan deferment or forbearance, more than 30% were 90 days or more behind. For federal loans taken out in the 2009 fiscal year, three-year default rates exceeded 13% (…..)

Link: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/student-debt-and-the-crushing-of-the-american-dream/