The management of the structural crisis of finance capitalism in Europe entered a new phase, prepared by the events of the last months, and trigged by the outcome of political elections in the German Bundestag. But also the reset of the Letta 2.0 government in Italy bears the same signs. The clearest signal lays in the programmatic issue which stands right at the center of negotiations between the Union and the SPD for the formation of a Grosse Koalition Federal Government in Germany: the legal establishment on a national scale of a "minimum hourly wage ", set at € 8.50 for all kinds of labour. Agreement on this goal (a goal that stood at the centre of the electoral platforms of both Socialdemocrats and Linke), would confirm a trend that was already visible in the actions of Angela Merkel’s later period of government.
A new phase for crisis-management
None of the pillars of the austerity policies of the last four years is being put into question – let us keep this in mind. But a change in the choices concerning social and environmental issues is indeed under way. The new German executive branch is proposing actions which, in fact, might be defined "neo-neo-Keynesian" and "ecosustainable", and that share a general "Europeanist" feeling - from the relaunch of welfare measures in favor of the social reproduction of families and in support of the under- and un-employed mass (on the rise in Germany as well), to the goal of saying no to nuclear power through an ambitious plan of relaunching energy production based on renewable sources. All of this, while declaring the will to ease the grip on southern European countries, on the basis of a renewed option for continental integration.
The (in many ways grotesque) story of the crisis of the Italian Letta government should be interpreted in the same way: Berlusconi was condemned and lost some of his blackmailing powers on the government. The reconfirmation of the executive branch marks a leap in the government’s actions and strategic prospects. It brings into light the existence of a centrist hard core which is in favour of “wide agreements” and organizes itself around a long-term hypothesis, in tune with the point of view that seems to be dominating in today’s Europe.
This is not a conversion on the road to Damascus, but rather the attempt, on the part of the more discerning political and economic oligarchies of Germany and Europe, to respond more effectively to the structural characteristic of a crisis that, within the continental space where the destinies of Mediterranean countries cannot be severed from those of the Center and of the North, risks to switch from a great restructuring of the balance of social powers to an epoch-making decline.
The reasons of this renovation can be easily explained: even on German land, they are the answer to increasing internal and external difficulties. On one side, the attack against Welfare, started between 1998 and 2005 with the red-green reforms that liberalized the labour-market and disjointed the social protection measures, generated precarization and impoverishment, spreading to a part of the population that used to be protected. On the other side, the effect of “sacrifices” imposed over the past three years to the rest of Europe (with their recessive consequences), and the slowdown in the growth of emerging economies, reduced the market spaces for a German production-machine whose highly qualified manufacture is essentially oriented towards exportation. As a backdrop, we have the unsustainable proportions reached by the ecological crisis.
It has become clear, therefore, that the management of the crisis and the way it has been handled up to now is counterproductive, even from the point of view of the German and European capitalistic élites themselves. The austerity-recession-decline spiral in which those neoliberal policies operate is, moreover, producing a depressive effect on the capital-valorization process, menacing the very spirit of social peace which served, both on a continental and at a single Nation State level, to convey four years of “sacrifices”.
A “well-tempered neo-liberalism”
This is why the “blood and tears” season, represented in Italy by the technocratic Monti government, is giving way to a sort of well-tempered neo-liberism, where the ordoliberlism goes from being an ideological mystification of the “market social economy” associated with the tougher austerity politics, to a public discourse that supports the “compensative measures” plans. We’ll see how the emphasis will shift from the dominant narration of the “sacrifices” towards “competitiveness” (the Pact for Competitiveness will be, not by chance, the ambiguous central theme of the confrontation between the chiefs of government at the upcoming European Council summit in mid-December). They are aware that playing the card of “social cohesion” and redistributing scraps of richness that will give oxygen to the majority’s income is necessary from a strategic point of view, in order to relaunch the internal market and for trying to rebuild a European market based on consumptions.
In this framework, the relaunch of the official Europeanist rhetoric against the danger represented by “populisms” and by the extreme-right wings equally fits. The alarm, raised by Letta himself, of the possible existence of an “anti-Europe majority” in the Strasbourg Parliament that will be elected in May 2014, also in the light of the disturbing raise of consents to the Front National of Marie Le Pen in France, has to be understood - as suggested also by the analysis by Meltingpot.org - correspondingly to the revisitation of those politics which aim to control the borders and migrational fluxes that, starting from the tragedy of Lampedusa, involves all Europe.
In this case, the governments of the Union have no intention of dismantling the mechanisms of closure of the Fortress Europe, neither they mean to guarantee the right to asylum, nor to ensure the freedom of circulation inside their borders, but it’s out of question that a change is taking place, to introduce vitality and more flexibility in the internal labor market, reaching an increased opening for what concerns those “devices” that imply a differentiating and discriminating regulation of the migrant labor force.
Along the same lines, the narrative switch from “sacrifices” to “competitiveness” strengthens the structural nature of the deep redefinition of the social balance of power, to the detriment, ça va sans dire, of living labor, entailed by these years of crisis. More competitiveness brings on reforms to European and national laws, which have to foster job insecurity, relaunch the privatization of public services and commons, and that have to remove any restriction to the circulation of capitals along the continental and global financial markets.
The “well tempered neo-liberalism” of this new phase doesn’t contrast at all the fundamental structure of finance capitalism, nor the unequal, out of measure, polarization of wealths that the income-devices generated and keep producing. And it even less implies overcoming the post- and anti-democratic order of European governance. On the contrary, we are witnessing an ambitious attempt to stabilize the capitalistic management of the crisis on a continental scale, through a totally political arrangement of the “material European constitution”.
We will record, in the next months, starting from late October through the financial reviews of each national State and from the next round of renegotiation of the duties of Greece and the implementation of automatisms due to the Two and Six Pack, and to the Fiscal Compact, an acceleration of the financial, banking, economic and institutional integration dynamics.
The top-down constituent process, though, structured as it is around austerity measures, will now not simply rely on technocratic devices, but also on a political majority inside the government: the one represented by the “continental Grosse Koalition”, that is the actual political shape of the Troika governance. This confirms, if necessary, that the intergovernmental relation between the action of singular nation states (with different degrees of importance, obviously) - unhooked from the obligation to respond to the classical mechanisms of parliamentary representation - implements without contradictions the permanent decisional triangulation among the Central Bank of Frankfurt, the Commission of Brussels and the Council itself.
There is no conflict between the power of each national member state and the construction of the European neoliberal governance: this should be reminded to those, many of whom still belonging to the left wing, that still anachronistically believe that a turn back to monetary and political sovereignties, of the small national Countries, would represent a possible way out from the crisis. And it also demonstrates, by the way, that discussion and mobilization around the constitutional topic will reach nowhere, if it stays hooked to the political-spacial dimension defined by the glorious “Charters” of each Nation State, dating back from last century.
From Amsterdam to Agora99, from Brussels to Frankfurt: a challenge for the movements
These are the fundamental topics of the discussion undergoing all the social movements that, in Europe, attempt to express a level of analysis and of political proposal that matches up with the challenge imposed by the capitalistic governance in the crisis.
This discussion is developing throughout several occasions of debate: from past October 4th to October 6th, in Amsterdam, in occasion of the initiative organized by the Transnational Institute called the “European Strategy meeting”; to the first reunion of the “AlterSummit” (Brussels, 19th and 20th) after the meeting in Athens this June; moreover, on the following weekend (24th /27th ) in Berlin with the discussion of the “Citizens’Pact” promoted by the “European Alternatives” network. And, above all, we with the meeting Agorà99 in Rome, from the 1st to the 3rd of November, and the international Blockupy “Action conference” in Frankfurt, from the 22nd to the 24th .
A plurality of meetings, promoted by different networks and individuals, that are defining a progressive concurrence of topics, proposals and also of mobilizations, starting from a multiplicity of different struggles that, from South to North and from East to West, are everywhere in Europe.
Indeed, the homogeneity between the fields of battle is more and more clear: the permanent recombination of the resistance against neoliberal attacks to the social rights and the material conditions, with an everyday construction of social and concrete actions consisting in mutualism and cooperation, that already constitute an existing alternative.
Citizenship, commons and democracy in Europe
At this point, the real issue is that to try harder than in the recent past.
Nowadays, there are, maybe, the preliminary conditions, given by the capitalist initiative and by the widespread net of struggles, not only to wonder which could be the more efficient means to coordinate the social movements on a European scale but, and above all, to reach through common and spread actions the more ambitious construction, in the shape of a wide social coalition, of a “European movement”: a European movement for a European citizenship, European commons, a European democracy.
From the idea of the existence of the Troika Party, that today would be guiding the continental governance driven by a specific project, it follows that it is necessary to build a progressive, new and strong movements’ narrative, a new and shared meta-discourse that could live and feed on each single fight. This would be a discourse that cannot avoid the comparison with a “European-and-Mediterranean” perspective, matching up with the problems proposed by the metropolitan squares of Taksim and Gezi Park, and by the sea of the Island of Lampedusa. Being able, therefore, to force and break the constrained institutional geography of the European Union’s borders, recalling instead the topography of the struggles. And being also able to impose the issue of a European citizenship as a “insurgent citizenship in Europe”, a social dynamic that dismantles the normative devices of exclusion and inclusion, differentiating and discriminative, and affirms on the contrary an extensive and inclusive practice of citizenship, of destiny and residence.
A new meta-discourse that has to express a crucial part of a constituent process from below: inside and against the crisis and its capitalistic management, able to practice the issue of the political decision-making in Europe and on Europe, where the discussion about the commons becomes immediately a fight for a “European common-wealth”, for an absolute democratic government producing and managing the common and collective wealth. Therefore, this would be a straight attack against the Troika and deconstructing its institutions, and at the same time, a construction of new federative institutes of self-government.
Utopian ravings? Maybe. But nothing is sadder and unrealistic than the “well tempered neo-liberalism” of the continental Grosse Koalition.
The several proposals of shared action emerged until now can on the other side constitute, starting from the summit of the Council in December 19th and 20th in Brussels, through the week of action in connection with the election for the European Parliament in May 2014, to finally reach Frankfurt and the opening of the new Eurotower, billionaire headquarters of the ECB, so many occasions to build and to grow.
Finally, we believe that only a thought and a practice that match up this challenge could reverse the tendency, and defeat, together, the false alternative between the oligarchic Troika government and both old and new populisms and fascisms, that are raising in Europe.
Beppe Caccia e Gian Marco De Pieri
from the desk of Globalproject.info
October 2013