Debt, crisis and retreat?

Among Europe’s anarcho-syndicalists, you can hear murmurs of revolution — the advent of a European revolution. The debt crisis of Greece is actually a fast spreading European debt crisis. The paper economy capital formation, produced in the last 10 years, has made Greece the first big victim. The anarcho-syndicalists will tell you that it’s response will be continental.

Is the European Union project then coming to an end? Is it the end of the European attempt to overcome the tragic history of the continent through the so-called virtues of the social economy of the market? Can the European economy, after 30 years of the European Union, fall of the Berlin Wall, the Balkan violence, and the neoliberal treaties of Maastricht, Schengen, Amsterdam, and Lisbon, hold the ground for the European Commissioners, the Bank, and the paper economy? Every phoney Euro advanced to the debt-wrecked country is matched by every shipwreck in the Mediterranean, by every migrant who dies heading toward the European shores.

Is this then a new abduction of Europa? This time it is not the divine violence of Zeus — but the technocratic violence inflicted by financial ransomers. Leveraging financial reforms, they are trying to push back issues of democracy, social rights, and justice, resulting from the struggles of the subalterns, both in the metropolitan space and in the former colonies. 

Yet the anarcho-syndicalists cannot but think only of a European revolution led by critical intellectuals, and the collective actions produced by social mobilisations in different registers across Europe. They cannot disregard the obvious: that this projected uprising is a product of a phoney cosmopolitanism, called Europe; that this is a matter of reinventing the European space and identity. In other words, Greece will have to suffer till the continent comes to its rescue. Greece cannot choose its path.

But beyond the dreams of the continental anarchists, the Greek crisis requires serious analyses of the political and financial elites, governance of the continent, financial dictatorship and democratic resistance. The crisis requires us to re-examine the interlinking of debt and democracy, and the significance of the continuous popular assembly at the Syntagma in Athens. The question is: if the European Union is beyond reform, why should its overthrow be necessarily reactionary nationalist?

Following the victory of the popular Left Democratic Party Syriza in Greece, the Europeanists are finally obliged to understand the meaning, nature, and destiny of the European Union. And that definition would stand for aggression against societies of the continent, against predation of social resources. The European Union is destined for systemic collapse. 

The Europe of the Troika wants to make the peoples of the indebted countries pay the debt, and the ability to pay this debt becomes the measure of democracy and Europeanism. These debts have fattened the ruling classes, through corruption, tax evasion, fiscal favour, arms expenditure, and industrial policies that do not benefit the labouring masses. 

The present Greek government has stepped back from negotiations with the Troika, because the only democratic control of the European currency they could have was insolvency. Insolvency is something that belongs to the movement. Syriza is trying to be a substitute of the movement — a trigger of a movement. It is trying to use insolvency as a means for survival. After exhausting negotiations which trashed the vote of Greek citizens, the Greek government has been forced to renounce a large part of the much needed reforms, particularly the restitution of social resources.

This month of negotiation marked by contempt for the will of Greek people helps us understand what the European Union really is. The Union is not an undefined form that can be shaped by democratic action. It is an intergovernmental commission whose only function  is to enforce regulation for reducing resources meant for society and transforming life. This reality of financial dictatorship is unequivocally stated. Therefore, after the blackmail obliged the Greek government to retreat, exit from Euro now appears to be a plausible option. 

Regardless of what the anarcho-syndicalists think, the slogan of national sovereignty has still not lost its relevance. Europe. National solution may happen as an effect of relentless financial strangling. There are two possibilities: nationalists could declare the end of the Union; or a European conference could debate the issues of restructuring and lessening the debt, loosening migration and labour mobility control. Greece -- rightly -- has already complained of being left alone. Europe is unable or unwilling to express solidarity with the Greek people, except holding the occasional big demonstration. This is not the Spanish Civil War for which cultured Europeans came forward; there is no La Pasionaria. There is no Antonio Gramsci. The Italian Left is dead. French culture and society is lost in self-indulgence. The Germans — like last century’s Americans — do not understand the roots of anti-German hatred in some parts of the continent. And German conformism is truly frightening.

Perhaps, the longer the Union survives, the more impoverished will be the European society — and harsher the nationalist reaction. 

Given the myth of European unification, we should note that the Syriza’s political success took place within a national context. The relations of force changed precisely so that the radical Left political movement could access the state’s levers of power. Syriza’s insistence on national sovereignty, in a democratic, popular, non-chauvinist sense, made this possible. More than anything else, this shows the national is a terrain of struggle that democratic forces cannot leave to the Right. 

If the Syriza had thought they could break with austerity and debt burden within the existing European framework, they were surely dreaming. The power of international finance belies such hope. No international finance helped China to grow or India to escape poverty. The nation must become minimally self-sufficient and assert its dignity. Failure of the Syriza experiment will be the entire world’s loss. It will mean defeat at the hands of global capital. Millions of Europeans count on Greece. 

Last year, early March, I was attending an assembly of the anarcho-syndicalists, where else but in Spain, the natural home of the anarchists. Braving the cold, anarchists of the continent assembled in Madrid for three nights. They talked of war, debt, crisis, and revolution. They refused to accept my argument that the national question was still not over in Europe. European finance had created internal colonialism. To make Europe democratic, the struggle must start in one’s own country, by re-moulding the State. 

Is this story too distant? What about the debt and the crises many states in India face today? What about reforms and austerity measures the central government foists on states? What about the enormous debt servicing that states are burdened with? The story of finance is the same everywhere.

The author is Director, Calcutta Research Group