Eurovänstern is stuck in a dream

Eurovänstern is stuck in a dream

Mikael Nyberg responds Petter Larsson: It is possible to talk about a different Europe

This is a kulturartikel which is a part of Aftonbladet's opinionsjournalistik.

DEBATE. Jonas Sjöstedt argued recently, the threat from the right wing as a reason to delete the requirement for a Swedish withdrawal from the EU. The party should instead, " he explains to Expressen, a challenge to the liberal market forces from the inside. It is an idea that has been conceived before in the european left. It usually end badly.

in the Autumn of 2004, the leaders of the EUROPEAN union negotiated a new constitution. \\nI of France, the people would get their say in a referendum.

\\none of the yes-sägarna was vänsterradikalen Antonio Negri. A few years earlier he thought to have discovered how the ”Empire”, a limitless nätverkskapitalism, freed humanity from the perspective of the nation state repression and imperialist stormaktspolitik. Now remained only for the ”multitude”, the global milling crowds, to take the final steps into the realm of freedom.

IN the EU-constitution he saw an opening for the course of history. The constitution was certainly neoliberal, but it was insignificant, he thought. Now, Europe would avoid ”the cursed nation-state” and creating ”a new political space” for myllrets resistance.

the Multitude did not listen. It rejected both in France and the Netherlands. EU leaders at once sat down to put themselves over the democratic knocked out. They put in the paragraphs and gave us the Lisbon treaty. The continental eurovänstern thanked and received. Now, could the rows of the radicals dream -on about the new Europe.

\\nJag thinking of Antonio Negri when I read Petter Larsson's objections to Magnus Marsdals opposition to the EU.

In Sweden, was the promise that the EU would protect us against the global capital, one of the yes page's strongest arguments in the referendum of 1994, and the longer the trade union and political representatives sat with at the tables in Brussels, the more nationally limited has the resistance outside the glasfasaderna come to appear. The brown movements growth reinforces the reflex to seek the salvation of ”more Europe, not less”.

There is a quest in the blue. The lack of connection with the actual experiences of unionsbygget.

I have been in the EU parliament, and heard the sharp and knowledgeable EU-criticism be delivered. I also know success in the details. But it is nothing other than -braking in a development that continues to pave the way.

\\nUtan desire to break away, we are stuck in the groove, explains the economist Costas Lapavitsas in his newly published book, The Left Case Against the EU. He knows what he is talking about. He is Greek, he sat in parliament in Athens as the representative of Syriza as the party sacrificed everything for the euro.

the Greeks did not lack opportunities to challenge the liberal market forces. National rules regulated most of the lending to the country. German and French banks were thus at the mercy of the Greek legislator's good will. But the government in Athens did not make use of this remnant of national self-determination. They solved out the private creditors with the help of loans from the International monetary fund and the EUROPEAN union. The Financial Times commented: It is who to turn to lånehajen of the mafia to pay again a handlån from my grandmother.

Syrizaledaren Alexis Tsipras and his finance minister Yanis Varoufakis envisioned that the moral arguments and ingenious technical solutions would clear the country off the hook.

the EUROPEAN commission and the European central bank was relentless.

\\nGrekerna said no to the dictates of a referendum, but the representatives of the governments of the new Europe did not change the posture. Then we must defend the right of the people itself decide, considered Lapavitsas and teachers of mathematics within Syriza. This required preparation in order to release the country from the monetary union and a war against the violent reaction from domestic and foreign vested interests as was to be expected.

the Leadership of Syriza did neither the one nor the other. It surrendered unconditionally.

Greece is a protectorate, subject to the foreign trustee. When the northern european banks and the funds receive their capital secured-pressed creditors down the country in a misery as severe as the 1930s depression in the united states. Output fell by a quarter, unemployment rose to 27 per cent, salaries and pensions were quarried down to the minimum, and valuable state assets to be dumped to the foreign speculators. Soon, ten years after the collapse continues the destruction. The investment is 70 per cent lower than in the past, and up to 400 000 greeks, most of them young and educated, have emigrated.

\\nUtgången was given when Alexis Tsipras chose the euro and the dream of the new Europe. ”Syrizaregeringen could not find any effective countermeasures against the European central bank policy, since none was available within the monetary union framework,” writes Lapavitsas.

the EU is no salvation out of the national stupidity. The union is a ”neoliberal machine” dominated by the German industrikoncernerna in association with finanskapitalen in the union's core, an alliance in which Germany and, to some extent, France games room for their statsintressen. Would the high representatives of the governments of this stormaktskartell give a small country in the periphery of the space for a policy to the benefit of workers, small business owners and fattigpensionärer? The naive idea led out in the disaster.

\\nDepressionen was followed by the refugee crisis then a little over a million asylum seekers, a fraction of a percent of the EU's population, triggering a political uproar. Petter Larsson keeps the dark forces in Central europe responsible. How it looks with the willingness to welcome refugees in a country such as France? What are the practical expression of liberal humanism in the union's core taken out?

EU leaders, the solemn opponent of all racism and xenophobia, in broad agreement transformed the Mediterranean sea into a death sea, internerat tens of thousands of strangers for the foreseeable future in camps on the Greek islands and outsourced the reception of refugees to outlaws, profiteers and the war in Libya. Lapavitsas concludes: ”The political and moral inability to take care of a limited number of desperate people reveals better than the miles of academic writings the EU's true condition.”

His book is not just about Greece. It is a lesson for political activists in all EU member states. Eurovänstern can't break out of the machinery. It is stuck in his dream and live well doing it.

Only in the lost illusions will internationalism anywhere. Beyond the industrial groups and finanskapitalens union, it is possible to talk about a different Europe.