I write this lines on July 15, 2015. The the Eurogroup has turned Greece into a German Protectorate and extended the madness of their austerity measures for Greece after terrorizing and financially water-boarding them for the last 6 month.
How will this end? Will it lead to destruction of SYRIZA? Will this lead to a Grexit? Or will we have a few more years of austerity that at least buys us some time to change the rest of Europe? We do not know yet. In my article from yesterday I argued that there are some positive sides to the whole issue. I want to re-iterate on this again with a focus on what does this mean for the europeanist left. The part of the left that finds the process of European integration something that is after a throughout criticism of all the problems and shortcomings of the EU as it is and as it was constructed something that is good for our fight against the capitalist system.
And I consider myself part of this europeanist left. (e.g. here a link to an article (in German) that I wrote some 10 years ago). As Marxist we believe that the conditions for a fights against the capitalist systems are much better on an international level. E.g. see:
The bourgeoisie is already carrying out considerable centralisation. The proletariat, far from suffering any disadvantage from this, will as a result rather be in a position to unite, to feel itself as a class, to acquire a proper political point of view within the democracy, and finally to conquer the bourgeoisie. The democratic proletariat not only needs the kind of centralisation begun by the bourgeoisie but will have to extend it very much further. — Karl Marx, The Civil War in Switzerland
The question for us on the left always has to be: what will be helpful in our struggle for
against the capitalist system. I would argue that it is a lost case to hope that we could fight this in the framework of small nation states. Marx argued this some 150 years ago and it is even more true today.
So after the fateful night of 12th of July: Does that change our position? I would argue that we would now even need more European integration and that contrary to what one would initially expect, that this is even a popular position!
After the 12th of July it there are not many pro-European forces left. The conservative have destroyed Europe with the acquiescence of most social democrats. Still there are many people out there who liked the idea of a united Europe. Erasmus, no boarders, ? Yes there are many people who liked the idea. And those people now have no one to turn to. Certainly not conservatives and certainly not the social democrats (with a few exceptions - mainly among trade-unions).
So the European Left and (to a larger degree) the Greens are the only European forces left on the playing field!
So it would be extremely stupid to give up this position. Those who are striving for more nationalism will in most cases turn to the right anyway. The stalinist "left" like KKE are now discredited because they even asked their followers to cast an invalid vote on the OXI-referendum.
Many people are extremely worried about the dominance of Germany in the EU where both the conservatives and the social democrats showed their ugliest sides. The only way to reduce this dominance and to counter the nationalist forces altogether is by a tighter integration of the European Union. We need democratic control of the ECB and the Euro that the we need to strengthen the European Parliament (where topics are discussed from a European point of view) against the council (where indirectly elected ministers discuss topics from a nationalistic point of view).
If we want to avoid cases where madman like Schäuble can terrorize a country like they did with Greek we need this kind of more federal European Union.
Many people see this need now but they would not have any political party to turn to if we would give up our pro-European and internationalist positions now.
Franz Schäfer (Mond). July 15, 2015.
