Europe and the european social movement
Gustave Massiah
11-02-2017
We are living in a time of great upheavals and great uncertainty, a time of marked contradictions defining the limits of what is possible, one that proves that the future is not predetermined.
Three points should be made before discussing Europe.
Understanding Europe does not boil down to looking back at its past. The starting point has to be the challenges facing the world and the role that Europe might be able to play.
Europe does not just mean the European Union. What it has to contend with, above and beyond decisions concerning institutional structures, is that the meaning of politics, at local, national and global level, is being redefined; and it also has to consider the role of the major regions in the organisation of the world.
Our central concern is to build a European social movement. The emphasis on the viewpoint of social and citizens’ movements fits in with the approach of the alter-globalisation movement.
Contradictions and challenges
The financial upheavals of 2008 show that neo-liberalism has run out of steam and that financial capital is in a fragile state. Exit strategies, debt and austerity plans have exacerbated inequalities and mistrust of politics. Increasing awareness of the threats to our environment, borne out by global warming, biodiversity loss and global pollution, is confirming the realisation that capitalism and productivism have their limitations.
Since 2011, the emergence of near-rebel ‘occupy’ movements has reflected the peoples’ response to rule by the oligarchy. From 2013 onwards, neo-liberal arrogance started to regain the upper hand. The dominant policies of austerity and structural adjustment have been reaffirmed. The impact of destabilisation, wars, violent repression and the exploitation of terrorism to stoke public unease is making itself felt everywhere. Reactionary ideological movements and far-right populists are becoming increasingly active. Racism and extreme nationalism are fuelling protests against foreigners and migrants. These take specific forms, including libertarian neo-conservatism in the United States, the far Right and national socialism of various kinds in Europe, armed jihadist extremism, dictatorships and oil kingdoms, and extreme Hinduism. But in the medium term, there is still everything to play for
The situation does not boil down to the rise of right-wing attitudes; another salient feature is the continuing antagonisms. The structural crisis encompasses contradictions in five major categories: economic and social cotradictions, involving social inequalities and discrimination; environmental contradictions, involving the destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity loss, climate change and threats to the global ecosystem; geopolitical contradictions, involving decentralised wars and the trend towards a multipolar world; ideological contradictions, with the challenge to democracy and upsurges of xenophobia and racism; political contradictions, involving corruption stemming from the fusion of politics and finance, adding to distrust of politics and suppressing political autonomy.
European peoples and European integration in all its forms have to contend with challenges and social, environmental, democratic, ideological and geopolitical antagonisms.
Global upheavals
The response to the insurgencies of 2011 ushered in an era of counter-revolutions. It serves as a reminder that revolutionary periods are usually short and often followed by much longer violent counter-revolutions. Counter-revolutions, however, do not cancel out revolutions, and the new continues to progress and emerges in new forms.
From the late 1970s onwards, the Right and the far Right fought to gain cultural domination, against fundamental rights – particularly equality – and solidarity, to impose securitarian ideologies, and, especially after 1989, to discredit progressive projects. They have mounted assaults on work by spreading insecurity; they have undermined state-provided social services through commodification and privatisation and through widespread corruption of politicians; and they have sought to financialise the digital sector. The growing power of right-wing and far-right movements has met with some resistance. Peoples have not yielded, and clashes are becoming increasingly violent.
Because antagonisms and social tensions are heightening, confrontation is taking extreme forms. But the situation is also due to the anxieties caused by the advent of a new world. There are several upheavals taking place, along with unfinished revolutions whose outcome is uncertain. There is nothing to say that these will not be crushed, derailed or appropriated. Nevertheless, they are turning the world upside down; they are also symbols of hope and already leaving their mark on the future as well as the present. These are long-term revolutions whose effects will span several generations. Think of women’s rights, the rights of peoples, green ideas, digital technology, or the global population.
A strategy for the transforming Left
Strategic thinking is invariably built on the link between a pressing need and a developing alternative project. The pressing need, in this instance, is resistance to the dominant neo-liberal ideology. But if people are to resist, there has to be an alternative project.
That alternative project is beginning to emerge. The blueprint for social, environmental, and democratic transition puts forward new ideas and posits new ways of producing and consuming. The aim is to base the organisation of societies and the world on access to rights for all. This change is being fought for as of now, since creativity is born out of resistance and finds expression in specific emancipation practices which, from local to global level, point to what the alternatives could be.
The transition proposal is not opposed to the idea of revolution, but it is at odds with one version of revolution, the ‘moment of truth’; it views revolution as a long-term discontinuous process. It stresses that new forms of social relations are already emerging in today’s world, just as capitalist social relations emerged, in an inconsistent and piecemeal way, in the feudal world.
Capitalist globalisation has responded to expectation of change with regressive modernisation, neo-liberalism. But the Left cannot respond simply by saying ‘let‘s not change anything, for change will be worse’, even if that is very likely to be true. Nor can it respond with ‘the only way is to ...’, as it has to be credible if a people’s alliance is to be formed. Instead of regressive modernity, we need progressive modernisation. In 2009, the proposal for a ‘Green New Deal’ came to nothing and consequently opened the way to more radical responses.
When they can speak out, societies are more open and tolerant than the far Right and its media mouthpieces would have us believe. But this resistance is not made manifest and does not translate into support for a progressive project, and that fact suggests that there is no credible alternative project on offer. It is not so much that the ‘Right’ is winning as that the ‘Left’ is failing.
Relevance of major geocultural and geopolitical areas
In the crisis, the financial bourgeoisie is continuing to hold sway, and financialisation remains the dominant thinking. However, globalisation is changing, and its contradictions are growing. It is causing circumstances to vary depending on the specific part of the world in which they obtain, bringing about a kind of continental drift.
This trend has two implications for Europe in particular. It is altering the forms which politics takes by changing the relationship between the levels at which action is taken, from local to global. It is altering the geopolitical context by opening up the possibility of multipolar geopolitics.
Strategy requires that the links between levels of action be redefined. In the hierarchy of political action, the way in which the rungs are connected matters as much as their placing. This point is related to the new definition of politics. From the point of view of social and citizens’ movements, the following scheme might be considered appropriate: local level: neighbourhood democracy, local alternatives, public services, regions; national level: public policies, the State and (many aspects of) citizenship; major regions: cultural aspects and geopolitics; global level: international law, migration, climate and cultural domination.
Local and national situations take precedence over the regional and global levels. The State is an issue that arises directly at national level. States are in thrall to financial capital, but they have accepted that situation and even created it. How can states be freed from the yoke of financial capital when they are themselves stakeholders in the system? Would the process be easier if it is carried out at national level, within each state, rather than at international level or at the level of the major regions This question is posed by the failures of Europe and Latin America. This is a question prompted by the fact that financial capitalism and neo-liberalism are increasingly being rejected by nations and peoples.
Each case is different, as can be seen in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe. These different characteristics do not provide a sufficient basis to establish multipolarity in place of the bipolar world of the two cold war superpowers or the domination exercised by the United States. The failure of the emerging powers to establish BRICS or the G20 shows that the emergence of a multipolar world hinges on geopolitical developments and advances in international law and the international institutional system.
Has Europe made innovations in that direction and is it a model for the major geopolitical areas? Initially, and for some time afterwards, Europe did offer cause for hope. The emphasis on Europe as a peace project, the importance attached to international law, the European Convention on Human Rights, an initially progressive social policy and freedom of movement and establishment were steps in the right direction. Since 1980, however, the dominance of neo-liberalism has cancelled out the progress made and ushered in a regressive period. The emphasis on rights has been supplanted by free trade based on social, fiscal and environmental dumping and deterritorialisation. Europe has chosen to make the United States and Japan its main allies in a policy of recolonisation born out of the debt crisis and structural adjustment programmes. It has embarked on a race to the bottom as regards rights and brought about a massive upsurge in inequalities and discrimination. It has been involved in destabilisation and wars. Fortress Europe has set up scandalous migration policies in which it has come to arrangements with xenophobic, racist and ‘securitarian’ ideologies.
Europe ought to be open and show solidarity. That is what the world needs, and what Europeans need as well. Such a Europe is possible. But the change from the Europe of today to another Europe cannot be a seamless process: there has to be a break. How should this necessary break be approached? The first task should be to draw up a new project and determine the scope of the alliances required.
Unity of European social movements and the challenges facing them
For several years we have had to address ourselves to the need to build a European social movement and the difficulties of doing so. For a time, the European social forums provided the momentum required. Progress has been halted, however, not just because of the way in which the forums are organised, but also because of developments in the situation of and in Europe.
One question to ask is what is standing in the way of the unity of a European social movement which is geared towards social justice and seeks to combat inequalities, defend freedoms and rights, preserve the global ecosystem and the environment and promote Europe’s contribution to a more just world and to world peace.
The European crisis is part of the global crisis. Globalisation takes different forms in different parts of the world, and the same applies within Europe. In regional terms, Europe breaks down into northern Europe, southern Europe, eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Not forgetting Russia, which does not see its future in a European context. The bourgeoisie is responding in different ways in different European countries, resulting in a degree of rivalry. Social movements in Europe have to assess the strategy employed by the bourgeoisie in each case in order to determine their own respective strategies. Convergence within the European social movement does not come about spontaneously and hence is more difficult to achieve.
In northern European countries, first and foremost Germany, the strategy is to maintain their economic position within globalisation by strengthening their industry. In southern Europe, the strategy of reindustrialisation is more problematical. It has rentier capitalism, in which relations with the protecting State are complex. France lies somewhere those two extremes. The deterioration there is due to the bitter confrontation with the employers, who are refusing to make any concessions on wages. The bourgeoisie in eastern European countries is banking on a ‘low-cost’ industrialisation strategy to attract multinationals. They are contributing to Europe’s neo-liberal orientation and supporting free trade with its three kinds of dumping (social, environmental and fiscal). In the United Kingdom the strategy is still Atlanticist. Since the financial crisis, the problem has been to manage the reduction in the financial scale of the economy and the influence of the City.
The variety of situations makes it more difficult for social and citizens’ movements in Europe to work out a common strategic position. These movements face three main challenges: insecurity and precariousness, alliances and xenophobia and the European identity.
The first challenge relates to the essential but very difficult alliance which would enable workers in insecure employment to join forces with other workers. Unity between social strata requires us to address the issue of insecurity.
The second challenge relates to alliances between workers with a stable job, educated people in insecure employment and unemployed graduates, and racialised victims of discrimination in working-class districts. The question of alliances also concerns people with qualifications. The management and revitalisation of capitalisation rest on the alliance between skilled professionals and shareholders. An alternative project calls for social, ideological and cultural convergence between the working classes and qualified persons.
The main challenge is the rise of racist, xenophobic and securitarian ideologies. In Europe this is translating into a war, the war on migrants. These ideologies proliferate where there is fear and social, environmental and civic insecurity. They are driven by the symbolic dimension of the European crisis and by the disillusionment that is an extension of the geopolitical shift which is occurring at global level. This matter harks back to the question of European identity. How can people envisage their identity when they know that they will no longer be at the center of the world? How can anyone imagine a world without the center?
The challenge is to devise an alternative European project to break free of the mainstream European project and its dead ends and give political and cultural expression to the unity of the European social movement.
Gustave Massiah
Economist and urban planner
Member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum