english edition transform! european journal for alternative thinking and political dialogue 2011 2011 09 Focus EuropeEuropeEurope ––– NoNoNo Future?Future?Future? Moschonas | Bischoff & Müller | Balabanidis | Fattori |Gauthier | Warschawski Drawing by Helmut Kurz-Goldenstein Impressum: transform! european journal for alternative thinking and political dialogue Edited by transform! Europe, Brussels Published with support by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Editors: Walter Baier (V.i.S.d.P.), Eric Canepa and Lutz Holzinger Illustrations by Helmut Kurz-Goldenstein transform! 11 Rue Michel-Ange, 1000 Brussels, Belgium Publisher: Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin GmbH, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin Tel.: 0049 30 29784533, Fax: 0049 30 29784536 e-mail: [email protected] Layout: typothese.at Printing: MediaService GmbH, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin Price: 15 Euro, Subscription: 25 Euro for 2 issues ISSN 1865-3480 Distributed by VSA-Verlag, St. Georgs Kirchhof 6, D 20099 Hamburg, e-mail: info@vsa-verlag Focus: Europe – No Future? transform! european journal for alternative thinking and political dialogue 09/2011 2 Content Editorial 4 Lutz Holzinger Essay The European Union and the Dilemmas of the Radical Left 8 Gerassimos Moschonas Europe: No Future? Europe in the Centre of the New Phase of the Big Crisis 23 Joachim Bischoff and Bernhard Müller The Crisis of Europe: Elements of a Political Strategy 32 Elisabeth Gauthier Austerity, Debt, Social Destruction in Europe: Stop! Coordinate Our Strengths – Democratic Alternatives 42 European Conference Organic Crisis of Financial-Market Capitalism: Scenarios, Conflicts, Competing Projects 46 Institute for Critical Social Analysis, Germany Crash as Cash Can – Crises, Bubbles, Speculators – 1929 and Today 56 Fritz Weber The Medium-Term Fiscal Strategy in Greece: Tracing Ruptures and Indicating Tendencies in the Memorandum Policies. 68 Giannis Balabanidis Reforms in the Czech Republic – Towards Social Darwinism 74 Ilona Sˇvihlíková Europe and the World on the Move The Peculiarities of the Greek Crisis: Democracy, Protest and Contention in Syntagma Square. 87 Giorgos Tsiridis May 15 and the Spanish Revolution 95 Armando Fernández Steinko Fluid Democracy: The Italian Water Revolution 99 Tommaso Fattori 3 The Constitution and the Crisis of Education: A Decisive Battle 111 Juan Pablo Cárdenas “The People Demand Social Justice!” – Social Protest in Israel 114 Michel Warschawski After the Revolution is Before the Revolution 120 Gabriele Habashi Will the Fire in the Israeli Embassy Spread to the Whole Region? 125 Gabriele Habashi On the Far Right* Right-Wing Populism in Europe 128 Walter Baier Understanding the Wilders Phenomenon 132 Arjan Vliegenthart and Hans van Heijningen From Meta-Politics to Mass Murder – A New Right-Wing Extremism 138 Mathias Wåg Right-Wing Populism in Germany Too? 144 Gerd Wiegel Country Reports The Turning Point In Italian Politics: The Victory Of The Centre-Left In The Milan Elections 151 Giorgio Riolo Danish Elections – New Government 157 Inger V. Johansen The LINKE after the Elections of 2011 162 Cornelia Hildebrandt France: The Left Front – The Challenge of a True Popular Dynamism 168 Dominique Crozat Persecution: The Austrian §278a as an Example 174 Lutz Holzinger Workers’ Self-management in Yugoslavia – An Ambivalent Experience 177 Boris Kanzleiter New Challenges Confronting the Progressive Governments of South America 182 Véronique Sandoval List of Contributers 188 *) As a sequel of Transform! #8 4 Editorial urope is going through an emotional roller coaster. The top EU politi- Ecians all have their hands full in trying to manage and improve their half- hearted bailout attempts for member-states that are beginning to careen out of control. In all of this we can’t fail to see that the states in question are in no way being given a hand – not to mention the layers of the populations hit by the austerity measures. The goal of this unprofessional crisis management was and is first and foremost to protect European banks from meltdowns and to keep the financial markets in a good mood. It is an irony of history that the EU states only ended up in a precarious sit- uation when after the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 and without regard for the losses, i.e. their own budget deficits, they began to bailout the banks – with the result that the latter are now getting back from financially shaky states via exorbitant interest for state loans what they lost in the crisis and had to or still must fork over, in order to be rescued by the states in question. The alleged triumph of having gotten off lightly and weathered the crisis has long since changed into a lament over the lasting problems of the Euro zone. Transform! 9 offers analyses that show the extent of the current economic and currency crisis and try to get to the bottom of their deeper implications. Beyond Europe, but still discernible in the old continent, there are a grow- ing number of citizens who do not give a damn for the traditional policy and the traditional parties. From New York to Cairo, from London to Greece, it is especially young people who are signifying that they are utterly disappointed 5 with conventional politics and aspire to direct-democracy solutions. In this the left to the left of social-democracy is in a dilemma in so far as there are no clear alternative concepts. At the moment the situation can be described sarcastically with an Austrian bonmot: “I don’t know where I’m heading; therefore I’ll get their quicker!” Or put another way: Things cannot go on the way they have been, but how things will proceed is now completely open. This exciting development is reflected in Transform! 9 by the section “Move- ments and Democracy”, in which the narrow confines of bourgeois democ- racy are addressed, which are being made even tighter via the hysteria over terrorism and are calculated to be turned when needed against activists call- ing for transformation. As long as no compelling progressive solutions are found to clean up the prevailing misery, the radical right will stay afloat in ever more European countries. A tragic example of this is the mass killing by a professed lone per- petrator in Norway. This catastrophe is unimaginable without the context of the development of the right and of the springing up of increasingly more radical right parties in our hemisphere. Transform! 9 grapples in detail with this theme as well. The repercussions of the crisis developments on the elections recently held in different European countries have varied. For the left the failure of neolib- eralism and unfettered capitalism entails no automatic success. Nevertheless, here and there encouraging results could be achieved. Some case examples are presented in Transform! 9 in the Country Chronicles section. We hope you enjoy this issue. Lutz Holzinger P.S.As illustrations for the current issue we have chosen works by the Aus- trian painter and draftsman Helmut Kurz-Goldenstein, a well-known anti- fascist. Here is more information about the artist: 6 Foto: Sepp Dreissinger Helmut Kurz-Goldenstein (1941 – 2004) lived and worked in Vienna. He was, along with Alfred Hrdlicka, one of the few figurative artists in Austria after 1945 and assimilated the traditions of an Honoré Daumier and George Grosz. At the centre of his work was the artistic confrontation with basic po- litical themes: right-wing radicalism, third world, fascism and racism, the economic policy of the then European Community, the Nicaraguan Revolu- tion, environmental destruction, etc. Kurz-Goldenstein was active in numerous artistic and culture-political ini- tiatives. Physically handicapped from birth, he worked together with other handicapped people from 1981 to 1985 in memory of the murder of “those deemed unworthy to live” by the Nazi regime on a 4 x 4 metre wood sculp- ture, which before it could be installed in front of Schloß Hartheim in Upper Austria, where circa 30,000 physically and mentally handicapped people were murdered, was destroyed by unidentified people. The author André Heller wrote: “He is still interested in the conditions that create consciousness. He is a tireless seeker of underlying causes and is not afraid to go to the core of things, knowing well that one usually returns from such expeditions covered in shame”.He was a “chronicler of evil and infamy, of attempted shams, of con artists of high and low birth, of hypocrits and bigots. His lack of respect for the powerful was nurtured by the respect and solidarity of the powerless”. 7 The Bollmanns are nice, good people (1972) 8 The European Union and the Essay Dilemmas of the Radical Left: Some Preliminary Thoughts1 Gerassimos Moschonas „... the task that arises is not merely to criticize the policy of the ruling classes [...] from the standpoint of the existing society itself, but also to contrast exist- ing society as its every move with the socialist ideal of society [..]“. Rosa Luxemburg, Social Democracy and Parliamentarism (1904) “The issue is one of securing a left majority and this is completely impossible if we limit ourselves to mumbling extremist slogans, ant-everything and anti- everyone, showing ourselves incapable of reaching an agreement with anyone under whatsoever the conditions.” J-L Mélenchon (Le Monde, January 28, 2010). The return of the vainquished After the collapse of real socialism, the left forces to the left of social democracy offer an image of a routed army. The implicit agreement with “History” that had lasted nearly a century, even if it had not expired, seemed since 1989 (the annus crucialis of contemporary communist history) to be al- most shattered. The deep wound provoked by the collapse of this extremely destructive (while also extremely innovative) system of power, spared noth- ing and no one – not even those parties that had not been identified with the vainquished version of communism.