Death, Social democracy, Greece and the Euro
Irish, English, Scots and Welsh people are so reluctant to talk about death they often fail to tell their families what they want to happen to them when they die, or so a recent survey has found. 60% of people have not written a will, including a quarter of over-65 year olds. And of those who have made a will, 81 % have not written down any preferences for their own death, such as whether they want to be buried or cremated or if they want their organs to be donated or not. The study was carried out by the Dying Matters Coalition, and published today, Monday March 15th, to mark the start of an awareness week to encourage people to talk about death with relatives and friends before it is too late.
Dying Matters Coalition …the name of the group and the results of this remarkable study got me thinking.
Ideas and movements die too. The cemeteries of political parties are overflowing with monuments of organisations that were able, not so long ago, to evoke passions, lead massive crowds….but have since fallen to disarray. Who remembers today the visionary radical parties of Europe – one of the most powerful centre-left forces of the 19th century? The winds of history seem to have blown that movement away. What has happened to stalinist communism that was able to galvanise and lead millions of workers and peasants to the dream of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Where are those dreams buried? What has happened to anarchism?
Modern social democracy, methinks, is gradually dying too….sliding towards the same end. Be it because of splits and internal ‘treachery’ or because of structural contradictions, this grand movement is gradually at a self-destructing mode at the very moment when its worst enemy, ultra-liberal capitalism is also at a point of suffocating crisis.
Why? Because, without doubt, social-democracy has been incapable of proposing and putting into action any solutions able to generate popular enthusiasm. One step forward with three steps back, no theory, always at a point of crisis and internal fighting, no vision for the future and, most important of all, no identity. This was an ideology that was going to bring revolution. This was an ideology that represented the interests of the working class and the poor. It ended up representing certain sections of the secure middle classes.
Last year’s European elections showed clearly the almost total disintegration of European social democratic parties. Whether in power or in opposition, their popular support went to pieces. And since the elections, social democracy has not been able to come up with any realistic proposal of how to counteract the huge economic crisis of financial capitalism. If a glaring example is required, let us consider the fact that both Gordon Brown and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero have supported José Manuel Durao Barroso’s candidature for the Presidency of the European Commission…the same ultra right winger who along with George Bush, Tony Blair and José Maria Aznar, in March 2003, decided to rubbestamp the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Which brings me to the various plans being discussed at the moment re : Greece’s bailout. Probably Spain and Portugal’s bailout tomorrow and other European states the day after.
First of all, let us clarify, once and for all, that this is not a process designed to “save a country” or designed to “save an economy”. It is a desperate effort to save the destruction of a monetary structure, and through it, the destruction of the ideological foundations of European construction.
The decision to create a single European currency, the main element of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, was, in my opinion, an illogical leap into the unknown, In fact, it imposed the same monetary policy onto economies, as diverse and unequal as those of Greece and Germany.
This decision had one objective: to serve the interests of particular national sections of the ruling class, structurally and longer term, and thus attack the interest of other national sectors. This is exactly what happened in Greece…. agriculture was decimated, Greek industrial capital left the country and invested in property abroad, and a section of the middle class got richer and richer through the huge expansion of European imports directed to consumption. Indirectly, this helped Germany with its manufacturing base geared to exports.
Following Maastricht a strong € replaced a strong DM.
The creation and imposition of a single currency could have had some significance and logic in a relatively homogeneous economic zone, such as the case of the $ in the US. There the Federal Budget, disposing of a massive financial transfer ability internal to the zone, coupled with the co-ordination ability of the Central Federal Reserve and Bank, create a radically different environment. All helped by the fact that every State speaks the same language and there is significant internal labour and capital mobility.
None of these conditions were or are present in the European Union. Its budget, for example, is equivalent to just about 1% of the cumulative GDP of the member states. Labour mobility in the zone is very limited. EU policies, be they at the financial or monetary level, are not structured as to combat inequality of economic development….on the contrary, with the arrival in 2004 and 2006 of relatively underdeveloped new members, it encourages unequal development, delocalisation and social dumping.
Any harmonisation that has taken place is through a race to the bottom. Finally, any ability of the member states to intervene and regulate financial matters has been weakened and taken away by the Treaty of Lisbon.- not to a supernational body but the magical hand of the capitalist market. Under the blessing of the ultra-liberal Commission and the ECB.
While the ECB has poured € billions to “save the banks”, internal EU regulations do not allow the bailout of one of the 27 members. While the very same banks conspire in betting against the €, regulations do not permit the lending of money to a member of the Eurozone. Greece today is prisoner of an overvalued Single Currency of which the only beneficiary is Germany. And, I’m afraid, it will soon be the case of another member in difficulty. The UK and Swedish governments have already argued in Brussels that bringing in the IMF is the only logical solution for Greece.
In summary, as the result of this horrific situation unfolds, the absurdity of the very foundations of the Eyropean project appears in a glaring light. The 27 governments, many of them social-democratic, having adopted all these regulations under the guise of neo-libralism, are now constrained to violate them in order to save the EU from itself! Those of us who had argued for a second NO to the Lisbon Treaty see, unfortunately, our worst predictions becoming reality. While the jobs promised by the FF/FG/Lab/Green cabal have been shown to be nothing but empty dangerous rhetoric, the dole queues lengthen and the minimum wage is under attack. As Europe prepares its own Army and Intelligence Services, here in Ireland, as in Greece, more cuts on welfare provisions and Public Sector pay are on the cards. My main fear is that this huge chasm between the European dogmas and reality will soon become an abyss.
If this is an Awareness Week for Death, it is high time we all looked at the signs and talked to friends and relatives about death. Before it is too late.
Discussion
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Comment by: Roger Cole
Mar 16th 2010 at 13:03
Good to see an excellent article on the EU. The creation of the euro was on one level as Michael says’ “an illogical step into the unknown” as was the massive expansion of the EU to include virtually all of Eastern Europe in one go. On another level the creation of the euro was seen as a crucial part of the process of creating a centralised militarised neo-liberal superstate by the EU elite. The core problem however is that apart from the elite, which included the leadership of all the EU Social Democratic parties, there is no European Demos. People see themselves as Irish or British, or German etc. So that when the crisis of capitalism hits the way is open to purely right wing populist parties in the different states of the EU to build support such as the BNP in Britain or Wilders in Holland to gain support. This can be countered to a degree by the some parties like De Linke in Germany or Parti de Gauche in France that do not support the emerging EU Empire. In Ireland this tendency was manifested by the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, now renamed, Feachtas-Campaign for a Social Europe. However the Labour Party including the vast majority of those who see themselves as being on the left of the party, including Labour Youth and most of the Irish trade unions totally bought into supporting the Empire. They have therefore envisage no alternative but to collaborate with the Irish political elite is ensuring massive cuts in the wages and working conditions of their own members and to support the militarisation of the EU-it intends to soon create a EU Military Headquarters and an EU version of the CIA. Indeed the trade union movement has also made virtually no effort to even campaign against the use of Shannon Airport by the US in its imperial wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
The first major crack in this consensus was the decision of the Dutch Labour Party to cause the collapse of the Dutch government on the demand that the 2,000 Dutch soldiers be withdrawn from Afghanistan. To date neither Eamon Gilmore, Leader of the Labour Party or Jack O’Connor leader of the ICTU have called for the withdrawal of the 7 Irish soldiers from Afghanistan.
Not being a reader of the ILR I have no idea if the issue of the militarisation of the EU and the participation of the vast majority of EU states in the AF/PAK war and virtual total support for Israel in their war on the people of Palestine is ever mentioned but if they do read this response to Michael’s article I recommend to try the PANA site: http://www.pana.ie
The reality is the neo-liberalist militarist ideology to which the mainstream Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Movement and its intellectuals in groups like TASC give their allegiance is being destroyed by itself under the weight of its own contradictions. They and their ideology are looking into the dusbin into which they are headed. If the political groups that have come together in the Campaign for a Social Europe can build on what they have achieved so far, they, rather than some future Irish right wing nationalist will provide a new progressive political alternative with real and substantial political support. Those of us who are involved in FCSC intend to continue to build that alternative and 33% of the vote is a good base from which to build.
Comment by: Keith
Feb 9th 2012 at 07:02
Henrik,I might as well ask you too:Who’s the prepor owner of the Golan Heights, and on what grounds?