Varoufakis Diem 25: A Marxist Critique...

http://inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol12/vol12_no1_Diem25_manifesto_democratizing_europe_or_for_eu_elites_domination.html

DIEM25: A Manifesto for democratizing Europe or for perpetuating the EU elites’ domination of the European peoples?

—Towards a democratic community of sovereign nations

TAKIS FOTOPOULOS

(19.02.2016) 

Abstract: In the midst of huge publicity, particularly by the mass media of the globalist “Left” (i.e. the Left that is fully integrated into the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization) such as The Guardian, Y. Varoufakis – one of the protagonists of the present economic, political and social Greek catastrophe – presented himself as the ‘saviour of Europa’, as he was described by another well-known member of the same “Left” in an article published (of all places!) in RT.[1] In this article I will try, first, to examine the democratic credentials of this manifesto and, second, to explore its aims and strategy. Then, I will try to answer some crucial questions concerning the timing of this manifesto and who supports it. I will conclude with a proposal for a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations, which, to my mind, represents a real option now vs. the pseudo-options offered by this so-called ‘manifesto’, which, indirectly has already been approved by the elites.[2]

1. The pseudo-‘democratic’ credentials of DIEM25

Varoufakis begins his ‘manifesto’ by stating that “for all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy…for rule by Europe’s peoples, government by the demos, is the shared nightmare of the European elites.”[3] Then he makes clear what he means by this when he describes in detail who these elites are, namely:

• The Brussels bureaucracy and its lobbyists,
• Its hit-squad inspectorates and the Troika,
• The powerful Eurogroup that has no standing in law or treaty,
• Bailed-out bankers, fund managers and resurgent oligarchies,
• Political parties appealing to liberalism, democracy, freedom and solidarity,
• Governments that fuel cruel inequality by implementing austerity,
• Media moguls who have turned fear-mongering into an art form,
• Corporations in cahoots with secretive public agencies investing in the same fear to promote secrecy and a culture of surveillance that bend public opinion to their will.

As is obvious from this list, the EU elites are defined in purely political terms and, particularly, in terms of their power to manipulate ‘public opinion’ through the lack of transparency and the framework of secrecy within which mostly unelected EU organs dominate their ‘subjects’, i.e. the European peoples. In other words, the defining characteristic of the members of these elites is their political power, through which they can manipulate the European peoples to serve their aims.

What is NOT mentioned at all is, who the elites exercising economic powerare and what their role is in manipulating the decision-making process of the EU. That is, there is not a single word about the Transnational Corporations (TNCs), particularly those of European origin like the European Round Table of Industrialists, which consists of the main Transnational Corporations (TNCs) running the EU.[4] Similarly, there is no mention of the various international economic institutions which are controlled by the Transnational Elite[5] (i.e. the elites that are based in the G7 countries), namely the EU, WTO, IMF and World Bank, and their role – behind the scenes – in determining the EU’s decisions (economic and political as well as cultural).

In fact, the Manifesto does everything possible to stress the supposedly purely political nature of the “democracy” (which it mostly identifies with human rights!), as when it points out that “the European Union was an exceptional achievement (...) proving that it was possible to create a shared framework of human rights across a continent that was, not long ago, home to murderous chauvinism, racism and barbarity”. Even when the Manifesto tries to allude to economic elites, again it does not put the blame on the vastly unequal distribution of economic power on which the EU elites thrive, but on the unequal distribution of political power which, supposedly, makes it possible for the economic elites to exercise their power:

“A confederacy of myopic politicians, economically naïve officials and financially incompetent ‘experts’ submit slavishly to the edicts of financial and industrial conglomerates, alienating Europeans and stirring up a dangerous anti-European backlash (...) At the heart of our disintegrating EU there lies a guilty deceit: A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as ‘apolitical’, ‘technical’, ‘procedural’ and ‘neutral’. Its purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment”.[6]

It is therefore absolutely clear that, according to the Manifesto, it is the inequality in the distribution of political power that is the cause of all evil in the EU. This is a conclusion which, at best, betrays a complete ignorance of what democracy is really all about and, at worst, attempts to deceive the victims of globalization in Europe as to the real causes of their present ordeal. Needless to add that Varoufakis, as the ex-Finance Minister of the Greek government, knows a few things about political deception, since this is a government of unprecedented political crooks – as they are referred to by most Greeks currently in open revolt against the government, making it difficult for Ministers and Syriza parliamentarians to go about on the streets and forcing them to resort to the special riot police units for their protection. Yet Varoufakis has no qualms about discussing political deception, as when he emphasizes that “the price of this deceit is not merely the end of democracy but also poor economic policies”, by which he means – as he explains further on – the austerity policies implemented by the EU elites “resulting in permanent recession in the weaker countries and low investment in the core countries” (a misconception that I will consider below) and “unprecedented inequality”. So, we learn that the present unprecedented inequality is not the inevitable result of the opening and liberalization of markets implied by globalization, but simply the outcome of the ‘guilty deceit’ he describes, supposedly due to the ‘non-democratic’ character of the EU apparatus.

However, as I have tried to show elsewhere,[7] if we define political democracy as the authority of the people (demos) in the political sphere ―a fact that implies political equality ― then economic democracy could be correspondingly defined as the authority of the demos in the economic sphere ― a fact that implies economic equality. Economic democracy therefore relates to every social system that institutionalizes the integration of society with the economy. This means that, ultimately, the demos controls the economic process, within an institutional framework ofdemotic ownership of the means of production. In a narrower sense, economic democracy also relates to every social system that institutionalizes the minimization of socio-economic differences, particularly those arising from the unequal distribution of private property and the consequent unequal distribution of income and wealth (as the old social-democratic parties used to preach). It is obvious that economic democracy refers both to the mode of production and to the distribution of the social product and wealth.

In this sense, the EU apparatus is not, and could never be, a democracy within an institutional framework that secures the unequal distribution of economic power, as the NWO of neoliberal globalization does. To put it simply, as long as a minority of people own and control the means of production and distribution, it is this minority (or elite) that will take all the important economic decisions, and not the political elite who crucially depend on the former for the funding of their expensive election campaigns, or for their promotion through the mass media which the economic elites also control and so on. Yet one of Varoufakis’s main supporters (and one of his political advisers when in government, presumably at the expense of the Greek people), James K Galbraith ― a well-known member of the globalist “Left” ― did not hesitate to compare how democratic the US Congress is in relation to the EU apparatus:

“what struck me in particular from the standpoint of a veteran of the congressional staff was the near-complete absence of procedural safeguards, of accountability, of record-keeping, of transparency, and also the practical absence of an independent and sceptical press. These are the elementary functional components of a working democracy, and their absence is an enormous obstacle to the progress of democracy in Europe, and are therefore, an excellent place to begin”.[8]

So, according to this criterion of democracy (transparency etc.), which is also the Manifesto’s main criterion, the model for EU democracy should be the absolute degradation of any concept of democracy which US institutions in fact represent — whereby Congressmen and the President himself are elected according to how much support they can muster from the economic elites (funding, mass media support etc)!

2. The aims of “authentic democracy” and the strategy of DIEM25

Having described this parody (or rather complete distortion) of the concept of democracy as “authentic” democracy, the Manifesto then proceeds to define, in chronological order, the aims of the DIEM25 movement.

A. IMMEDIATELY

The immediate aim is “full transparency in decision-making”, i.e. the publication of the minutes of EU institutions, the online uploading of important documents, the monitoring of lobbyists etc. Any comments here would obviously be superfluous, as it is clear that the reason such a petty aim is associated with ‘authentic’ democracy is clearly to distract people from the real conditions which must be met for political power to be distributed equally among all citizens.

B. WITHIN TWELVE MONTHS

The aim here is to address the ongoing economic crisis “utilizing existing institutions and within existing EU Treaties”. The proposed policies, according to the Manifesto, “will be aimed at re-deploying existing institutions (through a creative re-interpretation of existing treaties and charters) in order to stabilize the crises of public debt, banking, inadequate investment, and rising poverty”.

However, it can be shown that it is the EU institutions themselves that have created these crises, which therefore can never be ‘stabilized’ within the existing institutions and treaties. Thus it can be demonstrated that, since the present globalization developed under conditions of capitalist ownership and control of the means of production, it could only be neoliberal. It is the proliferation of multinationals (or Transnational Corporations -TNCs), from the mid-1970s onwards, which has led to the phenomenon of neoliberal globalization (no relation to the failed attempt at globalization in the early 20th century).[9] The vast expansion of the TNCs necessitated the opening and liberalization of markets for goods, services, capital and labor. The opening of capital markets was initially informally achieved by the TNCs “from below” (the Euro-dollar market, etc.) before being institutionalized, first in Britain and the US through Thatcherism and Reaganism correspondingly, and then through the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and of course the EU, worldwide. Needless to say that when the economic mechanisms (i.e. economic violence) have not been enough to integrate a country into the NWO, the TE ― i.e. the economic, political, media and academic elites based in the countries (mainly the “G7”) where the large TNCs are headquartered (not in the formal legal sense), ― has had no qualms about using brutal physical violence to incorporate them by force (e.g. Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, etc.).

However, the opening and liberalization of markets brought about a structural change in the capitalist economic model, which most Marxists (I refer to the remaining anti-systemic Marxists ― apart from some notable exceptions like Leslie Sklair ― and not the pseudo-Marxists of the globalist “Left”) have failed to understand. Hence, they cannot see the direct link between neoliberalism and the opening/liberalization of markets: it can be shown that the famous “four freedoms”, i.e. the opening and liberalization of markets (for capital, goods, services and labor) that were institutionalised first by the EU Maastricht Treaty and those following it, were the ultimate cause of all the present EU crises (debt crises, rising inequality and unemployment as well as the refugee crisis).[10] In other words, these Marxists cannot see that throughout the pre-globalization part of the post-war period from 1945-1975, the capitalist development model was based essentially on the internal market. This meant that the control of aggregate demand policies and especially fiscal policies (regarding taxation but also, more importantly, public spending ― including public investment, social spending and the welfare state), played a critical role in determining national income and employment levels. In contrast, in the globalization era that followed with the opening and liberalization of markets, the basis of growth shifted from the internal to the external market. This meant that competitiveness became the key criterion for the success of a capitalist market economy and, consequently, the multinationals now play a key role in the growth process through the investments that they essentially finance, as well as through the expansion of exports that can be brought about by the installation of affiliates in a country. The EU is, of course, the main expression of neoliberal globalization in the European space.

In this context, it is not the austerity policies imposed by some ‘baddies’ in the political and economic elites that are the cause of the present low growth economy, just because they do not wish to adopt Keynesian policies to expand incomes and demand[11]. The austerity policies are simply the symptom of globalization in the sense that, if competitiveness cannot improve through more investment based on research and development, then, in case such investment is lacking, the alternative “cheap” way to achieve the same result is through the suppression of domestic wages and prices, by means of austerity policies of some sort. In fact, today it is not only naïve economists belonging to the globalist “Left” who support Keynesian policies, presumably because they still live in a nation-state time capsule where such policies and all its ideological paraphernalia are promoted, but even Nobel laureates in economics. Of course in the latter case one cannot talk about naivety but, rather, deliberate disorientation. For instance, Paul Krugman, in a recent article in the Guardian[12] ― the flagship of the globalist “Left” ― systematically attempts to bypass the crucial issues of our era and particularly globalization and its neoliberal ideology, preferring to concentrate instead on the austerity ‘delusion’ or ‘obsession’ of policy makers, particularly in the UK ― conveniently ‘forgetting’ that these are also the EU’s policies, as well as those of the US since Reagan. In other words, he ignores the fact that these are the policies of the Transnational Elite imposed, one way or another, on every country integrated into the NWO.

C. WITHIN TWO YEARS

A Constitutional Assembly should be convened consisting of “representatives” from national assemblies (Parliaments), regional assemblies and municipal councils. The resulting Constitutional Assembly, according to the ‘Manifesto’, would be empowered to decide on a future democratic constitution that would replace all existing European Treaties within a decade. Here it is obvious that the author of the ‘Manifesto’ has no idea whatsoever about the meaning of classical democracy or the concept of demos which he so extensively uses, and yet he has no qualms about identifying representative “democracy” with classical democracy!

In fact, it was only during the sixteenth century that the idea of representation entered the political lexicon, although the sovereignty of Parliament was not established until the seventeenth century. In the same way that the king had once ‘represented’ society as a whole, it was now the turn of Parliament to play this role, although sovereignty itself was still supposed to belong to the people as a whole. The doctrine that prevailed in Europe after the French revolution was not just that the French people were sovereign and that their views were represented in the National Assembly, but that the French nation was sovereign and the National Assembly embodied the will of the nation. As it was observed,

“this was a turning point in continental European ideas since, before this, the political representative had been viewed in the continent as a delegate. According to the new theory promulgated by the French revolutionaries (...) the elected representative is viewed as an independent maker of national laws and policies, not as an agent for his constituents or for sectional interests”.[13]

Actually, one may say that the form of liberal ‘democracy’ that has dominated the West in the last two centuries is not even a representative ‘democracy’ but a representative government, that is, a government of the people by their representatives. Thus, as Bhikhu Parekh points out:

“Representatives were to be elected by the people, but once elected they were to remain free to manage public affairs as they saw fit. This highly effective way of insulating the government against the full impact of universal franchise lies at the heart of liberal democracy. Strictly speaking liberal democracy is not representative democracy but representativegovernment”.^[14]

The European conception of sovereignty was completely alien to the Athenian conception, where the separation of sovereignty from its exercise was unknown. All powers were exercised directly by the citizens themselves, or by delegates who were appointed by lot and for a short period of time. In fact, as Aristotle points out, the election by voting was considered oligarchic and was not allowed but in exceptional circumstances (usually in cases where special knowledge was required), and only appointment by lot was considered democratic.[15] Therefore, the type of ‘democracy’ that has been established since the sixteenth century in Europe has had very little in common with the classical (Athenian) democracy. The former presupposes the separation of the state from society and the exercise of sovereignty by a separate body of representatives, whereas the latter is based on the principle that sovereignty is exercised directly by the free citizens themselves. Athens, therefore, may hardly be characterised as a state in the normal sense of the word.

D. BY 2025: ENACTMENT OF THE DECISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY

Therefore, the ultimate aim of the process envisaged by DIEM25 is PURE DECEPTION, and Y. Varoufakis has shown in his career as a Finance Minister that he is a master of this. He claims that the Constitutional Assembly (or ‘We, the peoples of Europe’ as he calls it, copying the American Constitution) will bring about the ‘radical’ change envisaged by the Manifesto. Yet the American case is hardly a model for democracy, as A. Birch pointed out: “the American Founding Fathers Madison and Jefferson were sceptical of democracy, precisely because of its Greek connotation of direct rule. This is why they preferred to call the American system republican, because “the term was thought to be more appropriate to the balanced constitution that had been adopted in 1787 than the term democratic, with its connotations of lower-class dominance.”[16] As John Dunn aptly stressed while describing the aim of representative ‘democracy’:

“It is important to recognize that the modern state was constructed, painstakingly and purposefully, above all by Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, for the express purpose of denying that any given population, any people, had either the capacity or the right to act together for themselves, either independently of, or against their sovereign. The central point of the concept was to deny the very possibility that any demos (let alone one on the demographic scale of a European territorial monarchy) could be a genuine political agent, could act at all, let alone act with sufficiently continuous identity and practical coherence for it to be able to rule itself (...) the idea of the modern state was invented precisely to repudiate the possible coherence of democratic claims to rule, or even take genuinely political action (...) representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state.”[17]

Clearly then, what Varoufakis had in mind with his ‘Manifesto’ was simply to repeat the American Founding Fathers’ deception and create another ‘democratic’ monster, like his beloved American one, in Europe! Unsurprisingly, he tries to hide the fact that what he talks about has nothing to do with classical democracy, despite the misleading terminology he uses (demos etc). Thus, as he stresses, “we consider the model of national parties which form flimsy alliances at the level of the European Parliament to be obsolete”. He then goes on effectively to negate this statement by saying:

“While the fight for democracy-from-below (at the local, regional or national levels) is necessary, it is nevertheless insufficient if it is conducted without an internationalist strategy toward a pan-European coalition for democratizing Europe. European democrats must come together first, forge a common agenda, and then find ways of connecting it with local communities and at the regional and national level.”[18]

It is therefore obvious that his aim is purely to save the EU, rather than democracy, as he knows very well that the process he suggests could never lead to a democracy from below. Such a democracy could only start from the local level and then local demoi could federalise into democratic regions, nations and finally a democratic Europe. Not the other way around as he deceptively suggests, particularly when we are talking about a continent which, unlike the USA, consists of a multiplicity of peoples with different languages, culture and history. Varoufakis states that:

“our overarching aim to democratize the European Union is intertwined with an ambition to promote self-government (economic, political and social) at the local, municipal, regional and national levels; to throw open the corridors of power to the public; to embrace social and civic movements; and to emancipate all levels of government from bureaucratic and corporate power”[19]

What he actually has in mind here is to deceive people into thinking that they are fighting for a conversion of the EU into a democracy through some sort of decentralization of power to the local, municipal, regional and national levels (in fact the EU is also supposed to encourage such decentralization!), while of course the economic and political elites will continue to monopolize economic and political power, exactly as at present.

3. Why such a manifesto now? The rise of the neo-nationalist movement

One reasonable question arising with respect to the timing of the ‘Manifesto’ is why such a manifesto for the “democratization” of the EU should be necessary at this particular moment. Given that this is not really a manifesto for the democratization of Europe but, rather, an attempt to promote the EU, as we saw above, the motives behind this pseudo-manifesto are now clear. Particularly so if we consider that this is in fact the moment of truth for the EU, not just because of the refugee problem, but also because of the Eurozone crisis, the possibility of the UK exiting from the EU and so on. Yet all these crises are not ‘external’ to the EU crises, but have actually been created by the EU itself and its institutions.

The opening of the labor market within the EU and the removal of border controls through the Shengen agreement was one of the main causes of the refugee problem. However, a decisive role in this was also played by the EU elites, as part of the Transnational Elite, which destroyed the stable Ba’athist regimes in both Iraq and Syria, as well as the Libyan regime. The TE’s sole aim here was “regime change”, i.e. to integrate all these peoples who were resisting the NWO as they fought to maintain their national sovereignty.

Then, it was the institutions of the Eurozone itself which created the Eurozone crisis, the debt crisis and the massive rise in unemployment and poverty. As I have shown elsewhere,[20] these institutions were tailor-made to create a mechanism for the transfer of economic surplus from the less developed members of the Eurozone (eg. Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain) to the more advanced ones, particularly Germany.

Similarly, it is the resentment of the British people at the loss of their national sovereignty within the EU (despite the fact that the British elites are a constituent part of the Transnational Elite), which has led to a growing anti-EU movement in Britain that may well lead to a Brexit ― an event which could have catalytic implications for the EU itself. This is particularly because, as the British elites themselves recognize, the anti-EU movement in Britain is actually a movement against globalization (a fact that the Globalist “Left” ignores), which could also explain the rise of the nationalist UKIP party:

“The surge in support for UKIP is not simply a protest vote. The party has a constituency among those left behind by globalization (...) the globalization of the economy has produced losers as well as winners. As a rule the winners are among the better off and the losers among the least affluent.”[21]

The same process is being repeated almost everywhere in Europe today, inevitably leading many people (particularly the working class) to join the neo-nationalist Right. This is not of course because they have suddenly became “nationalists”, let alone “fascists” (as the globalist “Left” accuses them in order to ostracize them!), but simply because the present globalist “Left” does not wish to lead the struggle against globalization while, at the same time, the popular strata have realized that national and economic sovereignty are incompatible with globalization. This is a fact fully realized, for example, by the strong patriotic movement in Russia, which encompasses all those opposing the integration of the country into the NWO ― from nationalists to communists and from orthodox Christians to secularists ― while the Putin leadership is trying to accommodate both the very powerful globalist part of the elite (the oligarchs, mass media, social media etc.) and this patriotic movement.

But it is mainly Le Pen’s National Front party, more than any other neo-nationalist party in the West, that has realized that globalization and membership of the NWΟ’s institutions are incompatible with national sovereignty. As she recently stressed, (in a way that the “Left” stopped doing long ago!):

“Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate it [globalization].” (...) Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international finance” (...) Immigration “weighs down on wages,” while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum wage”.[22]

In fact, the French National Front is now the most important nationalist party in Europe and it may well be in power following the next Presidential elections in 2017, unless of course a united front consisting of all the globalist parties ― with support from the entire TE and particularly the Euro-elites and the mass media controlled by them ― prevents it from doing so. This is how Florian Philippot, the FN’s vice-president and chief strategist, aptly put forward the Front’s case in a FT interview:

“The people who always voted for the left, who believed in the left and who thought that it represented an improvement in salaries and pensions, social and economic progress, industrial policies (...) these people have realized that they were misled.”[23]

As the same FT report points out, to some observers of French politics the FN’s economic policies ― which include exiting the euro and putting up trade barriers to protect industry ― read like something copied from a 1930s political manifesto, while Christian Saint-Étienne, an economist for the newspaper Le Figaro, recently described this vision as “Peronist Marxism”. [24] In fact, in a more recent FT interview Marine Le Pen, the FN president, went one step further by calling for the nationalization of the banks, in addition to an exit from the Euro (which, she expects, would lead to its collapse, if not to the collapse of the EU itself which she welcomes), while also championing public services and presenting herself as the protector of workers and farmers in the face of “wild and anarchic globalization…which has brought more pain than happiness”.[25] By comparison, it never even occurred to SYRIZA and Y. Varoufakis to use such slogans before the elections - let alone after the second general election when it fully endorsed all the EU elites’ and the Troika’s policies which, before the first general election, it had promised to reverse! Needless to say that Le Pen’s foreign policy is also very different to that of the French establishment (and of course that of the EU elites), as she wants a radical overhaul of French foreign policy in which relations with the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would be restored and relations with the likes of Qatar and Turkey which, she alleges, support terrorism, would be reviewed. At the same time, Le Pen sees the US as a purveyor of dangerous policies and Russia as a more suitable friend.

On top of all this, G. Soros (who is behind every ‘color revolution’ on Earth with the myriad of NGOs etc which he funds ― it would not be surprising if we later learn that he is also funding the movement behind DM25) ― has written an article also published by the flagship of the globalist “left”, The Guardian (which has repeatedly promoted Varoufakis massively) entitled, “Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis”! [26]

4. The bankruptcy of the Globalist ‘Left’ and the ‘Manifesto’

It goes without saying that this neo-nationalist movement, which is usually an explicitly anti-EU movement as well, is presently engulfing almost every EU country. The unifying element among the neo-nationalists is their struggle for national and economic sovereignty, which they rightly see as disappearing in the era of globalization. Although sometimes their main immediate motive is the fight against immigration, it is clear that they are misguided in this as they usually do not realize that it is the opening up of all markets, including the labor markets particularly within economic unions like the EU, that is the direct cause of their own unemployment or low-wage employment. In other words, this is not a racist movement as such but a purely economic movement, although the Transnational and Zionist elites, with the help of the globalist “Left”, are trying hard to convert it into an Islamophobic movement ― as the Charlie Hebdo case clearly showed ― so that they can use it however they see fit in their support of the NWO. Inevitably, Islamophobic ― if not racist ― trends have also developed within some of these neo-nationalist movements. As we shall see in the last section of this article, this is one more reason why Popular Fronts for National and Social Liberation must be built in every country to fight not only the EU and the NWO ― which is of course the main enemy ― but also any racist trends developing within this new anti-globalization movement. This would also prevent the elites from using the historically well-tested practice of ‘divide and rule’ to create conflict between the victims of globalization.

This movement is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class that used to support the Left[27], whilst the latter has effectively embraced not just economic globalization but also political, ideological and cultural globalization and has therefore been fully integrated into the New World Order ― a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy. The process of the Left’s bankruptcy has been further enhanced by the fact that, faced with political collapse in the May 2014 Euro-parliamentary elections, it allied itself with the elites in condemning the neo-nationalist parties as fascist and neo-Nazi, while in extreme cases it has even consented to the use of blatantly fascist methods in order to suppress some of them (e.g. the Golden Dawn party in Greece).

However, today, following the successful emasculation of the antisystemic movement against globalization (mainly through the World Social Forum, thanks to the activities of the globalist “Left”),[28] it is up to the neo-nationalist movement to fight globalization in general and the EU in particular. It is therefore clear that the neo-nationalist parties which are, in fact, all under attack by the TE, constitute cases of movements that have simply filled the huge gap created by the globalist “Left”. Instead of placing itself in the front line among all those peoples fighting globalization and the phasing out of their economic and national sovereignty, this “Left” has indirectly promoted globalization, using arguments based on an anachronistic internationalism supposedly founded on Marxism.

As one might expect, most members of the Globalist “Left” have joined the new movement to ‘democratize’ Europe, “forgetting” that ‘Democracy’ was also the West’s propaganda excuse for destroying Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Today it seems that the Soros circus is aiming to use exactly the same excuse to destroy Europe, in the sense of securing the perpetuation of the EU elites’ domination of the European peoples.

The most prominent members of the globalist “Left” who have already joined this new ‘movement’ range from Julian Assange to Suzan George and Toni Negri, and from Hillary Wainwright of Red Pepper toCounterPunch and other globalist “Left” newspapers and journals all over the world. In this context, it is particularly interesting to refer to Slavoj Žižek’s commentary on the ‘Manifesto’ that was presented at the inaugural meeting of Varoufakis’s new movement in Berlin on February 2016. This commentary was greeted enthusiastically by Varoufakis’s globalist “Left” supporters. Zizek began by blatantly attempting to deceive the audience with respect to Syriza’s rise to power. He talked about a ‘defeat’ but he added, “I don't blame them, their situation was hopeless from the beginning”. Of course, he did not mention that the situation was hopeless only because SYRIZA took for granted what actually needed to be changed, if they were to realize their promises to reverse the austerity policies imposed by the Troika, to ‘tear up’ the Mamoranda along with them, to stop privatizations and so on. That is, SYRIZA took for granted Greece’s membership of the EU and the Eurozone and, accordingly, never prepared for a “Plan B” so that, as soon as the European Central Bank began cutting off liquidity (which led to capital controls that still continue to this day), they could have re-introduced the drachma. Varoufakis, who was Finance Minister at the time, said that he “had it in mind” and that he discussed it with close associates, but of course he never thought to resign when he discovered that his “plan” was not accepted. Instead, he resigned (or, more likely, was forced to resign) only after the ‘defeat’ ― as Zizek euphemestically called it – had become inevitable.

Zizek then launched a vitriolic attack on the rising neo-nationalist movement (as the entire globalist “Left” is currently doing, ‘inspired’ by Soros and other members of the TE):

“Sometimes even if you rationally know the situation is hopeless you have to experience it. The lesson was a very important one of the defeat of syriza, the lesson was the crucial step forward, the way to undermine global capitalism cannot be done at the level of nation states. There is a great temptation now all around Europe, a kind of neo-keynesian social democratic nationalist temptation, the idea is since we live in a global market, and this means international relations are dominated by the logic of capital, the only hope is to return to a stronger nation state, with all this implies a certain level of nationalism/populism and we establish again strong nation states which impose their own laws, regulate their own financial policy and so on and so on. That illusion has to be abandoned I claim. And this is why I think what DIEM is doing is strictly linked to the failure of syriza (...)”[29]

In fact, along the same lines the Manifesto itself stresses that, “Two dreadful options dominate: Retreat into the cocoon of our nation-states, or surrender to the Brussels democracy-free zone”. Yet this is a pseudo-dilemma or, more to the point, a highly deceptive description of the actual choices involved, as we shall see in the next section which will present a real third option, unlike the “Manifesto”. But before we do this, let us see the highly deceitful way in which Zizek attempted to justify the globalist “Left’s” approach which is, in fact, a celebration of the NWO.

In his commentary at the DIEM25 meeting, he stressed that “our only hope is to engage in very concrete very specific acts, we have to choose very well our concrete act, our concrete demand (...) that is the art to demand something relatively modest, but if you follow to the end this demand, everything will fall apart. You open up the path to general rearrangement of social relations.”

Of course, for anybody with an elementary knowledge of what is going on at present in Greece this can only be taken, at best, as a joke and, at worst, as a deliberate attempt to justify SYRIZA’s criminal policies. These simply aim to execute every single order that comes from the EU (perhaps with some minor modifications accepted in advance by the Troika to create the pretence of negotiations) in order to satisfy the Transnational Elites’ lenders as represented by the Troika. The aims currently pursued by the elites, according to the new Memorandum (perhaps the worst ever) signed by SYRIZA in July, include:

• the effective smashing of farmers’ incomes with heavy taxation and the destruction of their pension system (they are presently blocking all the main roads and the “Leftist” government is using the special riot units to ‘control’ them)
• the actual pauperization of pensioners of all kinds (demonstrations over this issue are occurring daily in Athens)
• the sell-out of all social wealth, starting with seaports and airports etc.

It is clear now to everybody that SYRIZA’s only aim is power for power’s sake. No wonder that Greece, a country with a very strong Left tradition historically, may soon see the destruction of its Left movement altogether (given in particular the fact that KKE ― the Greek Communist Party ―engages in strong rhetoric not matched by its actions), with most people turning to political apathy. In fact the abstention rate in the last election, following the signing of the new Memorandum by SYRIZA, was at an all-time high!

Of course Zizek’s stand on SYRIZA and the ‘Manifesto’ in general is far from unexpected. In advocating the need for a “big” socio-economic revolution within Arab countries (in contrast to his present position), he indirectly supported the campaigns for regime change in Libya and Syria. He also did this directly when he adopted the western propaganda that Libya and Syria were governed by “dictators” ― not bothering (despite his high qualifications) to examine the history of these regimes, which were backed by strong national liberation movements and had really achieved significant social changes. Then, he celebrated the Ukrainian “revolution” in Kiev[30], together with the likes of Victoria Nuland and John McCain,fully revealing to which camp he really belongs. No wonder that he never proposed any concrete alternatives to the present system, as a system, but instead just promoted changes guaranteeing the protection of human rights― as every good supporter of the ideology of globalization does ― or talked about communism as an abstract ideal without ever attempting to specify the preconditions for it, let alone any transitional strategy towards achieving it!

5. Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations[31]

It is clear that the social struggle in the era of neoliberal globalization can no longer be just a struggle for social liberation, as obsolete Marxists still believe today and some Trotskyites have always believed. This becomes obvious when one considers the fact that, as soon as a country (not belonging to the Transnational Elite, i.e. mainly the "G7") is integrated intothe NWO of neoliberal globalization, it loses every trace of economic and, consequently, national sovereignty, either because it has to obey the EU rules (in Europe) or the WTO and IMF rules (in the rest of the world), as well as the orders given by capitalist lenders, bankers and the TNC’s executives, of course. This is why the struggle for social liberation today is inconceivable unless it has already gone through national liberation. Theoccupying troops that are now destroying and ‘plundering’ countries likeGreece, Portugal, Spain, Argentina etc, as well as the weakest social stratain all countries, even the most economically advanced ones (with the full cooperation of small, local privileged elites which control the media, the political parties, the “Left” intelligentsia etc.), are not a regular army inuniform with lethal weapons of physical violence at their disposal. The occupying army today is an economic army in suits, possessing equallylethal instruments of economic violence, as well as the means (the mass media and social media, NGOs etc) to justify it.

So, at this crucial historical juncture that will determine whether we shall all become subservient to neoliberal globalization and the transnational elite (as the DIEM25 Manifesto implies through our subordination to the EU) or not, it is imperative that we create a Popular Front in each country which will include all the victims of globalization among the popular strata, regardless of their current political affiliations.

In Europe, in particular, where the popular strata are facing economic disaster, what is needed urgently is not an "antifascist" Front within the EU, as proposed by the ‘parliamentary juntas’ in power and the Euro-elites, also supported by the globalist “Left” (such as Diem25, Plan B in Europe, Die Linke, the Socialist Workers’ Party in the UK, SYRIZA in Greece and so on), which would, in fact, unite aggressors and victims. An ‘antifascist’ front would simply disorient the masses and make them incapable of facing the real fascism being imposed on them by the political and economic elites, which constitute the transnational and local elites. Instead, what is needed is a Popular Front that could attract the vast majority of the people who would fight for immediate unilateral withdrawal from the EU – which is managed by the European part of the transnational elite – as well as for economic self-reliance, thus breaking with globalization.

To my mind, it is only the creation of broad anti-EU Popular Fronts that could effect each country’s exit from the EU, with the aim of achieving economic self-reliance. Re-development based on self-reliance is the only way in which peoples breaking away from globalization and its institutions (like the EU) could rebuild their productive structures which have been dismantled by globalization. This could also, objectively lay the ground for future systemic change, decided upon democratically by the peoples themselves. To expect that the globalization process will itself create the objective and subjective conditions for a socialist transformation, as some ‘Paleolithic Marxists’ believe, or alternatively, that the creation of self-managed factories within the present globalized system will lead to a self-managed economy, as a variety of life-style “anarchists” suggest, is, in effect, to connive at the completion of the globalization process, as planned by the elites. Even worse, to expect that within the NWO institutions, like the EU, a ‘good’ EU and consequently a ‘good’ capitalist globalization will emerge at the end, as DIEM25, SYRIZA, Podemos and the like suggest, amounts to the pure disorientation of peoples which allows the plan for global governance to be fully implemented.

In other words, the fundamental aim of the social struggle today should be a complete break with the present NWO and the building of a new global democratic community, in which economic and national sovereignty have been restored, so that peoples could then fight for the ideal society, as they see it. The conditions of occupation we live under today mean that people resisting it have to make broad political alliances with everyone concerned who accepts the aims of a Popular Front for National and Social Liberation, particularly the basic aim of breaking with the NWO. Then, once the people of a particular country have broken with the NWO, they need to join with peoples from other countries who have already achieved their economic and national sovereignty and, together, form new economic unions of sovereign states to sort out, between them and on a bilateral or multilateral basis, the economic problems arising from trade and investment. Then and only then, the crucial issues of the form that a future society should take, and the strategy needed to achieve it, could be raised.

Therefore, the vital issue today, in the fight for the creation of a new democratic world order, is how we create this alternative pole of sovereign self-reliant nations, in full knowledge that the TE will use any kind of economic or physical violence at its disposal to abort any such effort, with all the huge means available to it. To my mind, under conditions of effective occupation, as many describe the present situation, this is impossible today without the creation of a Popular Front for National and Social Liberation (FNSL) in each country, allowing peoples to achieve their economic and national sovereignty as a precondition for social liberation.

The social subject of a mass popular front pursuing the aims I described above would be all the victims of neoliberal globalization: the unemployed and the partially employed, wage-earners on the very edge of survival (zero-hour contracts, occasional workers etc.), children without education who are ‘punished’ for being ‘unlucky’ enough to be born to non-“privileged” parents, as well as all those at the subsistence level (pensioners, the sick who lack medical insurance ― amounting to one third of the population today ― and others).

As far as the political subject is concerned, there are two possible options concerning the required Front for National and Social Liberation (FNSL): a front ‘from below’ or a front ‘from above’. The preferred option is of course the former, but in case this becomes unfeasible because the level of political consciousness of the victims of globalization and their will to fight is inadequate for this huge task, then the only other possibility is for existing political forces to take over the task of achieving sovereignty and self-reliance. A FNSL ‘from below’ could be organized from among local assemblies, committees, groups and initiatives consisting of the victims of globalization (namely, the vast majority of the world’s population) who ought to join as ordinary citizens, irrespective of party affiliations and ideologies or religious and other differences, as long as they share the ultimate aim of national and economic sovereignty. The intermediate target should be the exit from the international institutions of the NWO like the EU, so that the victims of globalization could escape the present process of economic catastrophe.

Then, once the people of a particular country have broken with this criminal “Order”, they should join with peoples from other countries, also fighting for the same aims, to form new political and economic unions of sovereign Nations and the corresponding democratically-organized international institutions together, within a new international community of self-reliant nations based on the principle of mutual aid rather than competitiveness ― the guiding principle behind the present criminal NWO. As long as the member countries share complementary production structures, the possibility of an involuntary transfer of economic surplus from some countries (usually the weaker ones, as is the case in the EU) to other countries in the Union can be ruled out. Therefore, a collective kind of self-reliance could be achieved within the economic area covered by such a union, which should be based on the sovereignty of each participating country.

In other words, a FNSL would function as a catalyst for fundamental political and economic change, which is the only kind of change that could get us out of the current mire, while also revealing the attempted deception by the globalist “Left”, according to which we could somehow emerge from this catastrophe even without leaving the EU —as DIEM 25 deceptively preaches.

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[1] Pepe Escobar, “It takes a Greek to save Europa”, RT (11/2/2016).

[2] It should be noted that the ‘Manifesto’s’ options were also approved, albeit indirectly, by George Soros, one of Varoufakis’s strongest supporters, who stressed at the same time that “Putin’s aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood Europe with Syrian refugees.” (G. Soros, “Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis”, The Guardian(11/2/2016).

[3] Y. Varoufakis, A Manifesto for democratising Europe (February 2016).

[4] See the official site of the European Round Table of Industrialists. See also the film by Friedrich Moser & Matthieu Lietaert, The Brus$€ls Business : Who Runs the European Union? (2012)

[5] Takis Fotopoulos, Τhe Transnational Elite and the NWO as “conspiracies” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2 (Winter-Summer 2014)

[6] Y. Varoufakis, A Manifesto for democratising Europe, op. cit.

[7] Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London/NY: Cassell/Continuum,1997), chs 5- 6.

[8] See unofficial transcript of DIEM25 speeches athttps://pad.riseup.net/p/DiEM25_Transcript

[9] See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, op. cit.

[10] See Takis Fotopoulos, The New World Order in Action: War and economic violence, from the Middle East through Greece to Ukraine (under publication by Progressive Press), Parts I & III.

[11] See Takis Fotopoulos, The New World Order in Action, op. cit. ch. 6.

[12] Paul Krugman, “The austerity delusion”, The Guardian (29/4/2015).

[13] Anthony H. Birch, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 58.

[14] Bhikhu Parekh, “The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy”, Political Studies, Volume 40, Issue Supplement s1, pages 160–175 (August 1992).

[15] According to Aristotle, “...I say that the appointment by lot is commonly held to be characteristic of democracy, whereas the process of election for that purpose is looked upon as oligarchic”; Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, 1294b, John Warrington, ed. (London: Heron Books)

[16] Anthony Birch, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, op. cit., p. 50.

[17] John Dunn, “Conclusion” in Democracy, the Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993, pp. 247-48.

[18]  Varoufakis, A Manifesto for democratising Europe, op. cit.

[19] ibid.

[20] Takis Fotopoulos, “The real causes of the catastrophic crisis in Greece and the 'Left',” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (Winter-Summer 2013)

[21] Editorial, “The People’s Revolt”, The Times (11/10/2014).

[22] “Globalization is barbarous, multinationals rule world” – Marine Le Pen, RT (10/1/2015).

[23] Adam Thomson, “France’s far-right National Front seeks voters from the left”, Financial Times (4/1/2015).

[24] ibid.

[25] Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Roula Khalaf, “Marine Le Pen lays out radical vision to govern France”, Financial Times (5/3/2015).

[26] G. Soros, “Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis”, The Guardian (11/2/2016).

[27] Francis Elliott et. al., “Working class prefers Ukip to Labour”, The Times(25/11/2014).

[28] Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalisation, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalisation ‘Movement’,” Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001)

[29] See unofficial transcript of DIEM25 speeches athttps://pad.riseup.net/p/DiEM25_Transcript. See also the video itself athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFNJYpwv39s

[30] See the “Open letter on the future of Ukraine”, signed by scores of Zizek-type globalization intellectuals, politicians et al, which declares their admiration for the Ukrainian ‘revolutionaries’: “They defended their democracy and their future 10 years ago, during the Orange Revolution, and they are standing up for those values again today “, euobserver (27/1/2014).

[31] This section is based on Part VI of the forthcoming book The New World Order in Action: War and economic violence, from the Middle East through Greece to Ukraine, op. cit.