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Perhaps Flassbeck’s harshest criticism of DiEM25’s radical pan-Europeanism is the charge that we are peddling left-wing TINA: “there is no alternative” to operating at the level of the EU. While DiEM25 advocates a democratic union, we certainly reject both the inevitability and the desirability of “ever closer union.” Today, the European establishment is working toward a political union that, we regard as an austerian iron cage. We have declared war on this conception of Europe.

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a DiEM25 signatory, recently quipped that socialist nationalism is not a good defense against the postmodern national socialism that the EU’s disintegration would bring. He’s right. Now more than ever, a pan-European humanist movement to democratize the EU is the left’s best bet.

we believe it is important to prepare for the collapse of EU under the weight of its leaders’ hubris. But that is not the same as making the EU’s disintegration our objective and inviting European progressives to join neo-fascists in campaigning for it.

Spain and Ireland who had not been profligate borrowers. They had been running budget surpluses before the crisis. This was entirely a story of reckless lenders in Germany and elsewhere making bad loans to the private sector in these countries. Yet, the austerity policies being imposed ensure that the people of Spain and Ireland suffer even if the pain is not quite bad as in Greece.

The time has come for the European Union to stop running economic policy based on silly myths. If German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders in the European Union cannot accept reality then Greece and southern Europe would be far better off breaking free of the euro and leave Germany to wallow in its 19th century economic fairy tales.

It could hardly be more obvious that this is not about money or fiscal sustainability, but about politics. This is a government that European authorities didn’t want, and they wish to show who is boss. And they really don’t want this government to succeed, which would encourage Spanish voters to opt for a democratic alternative — Podemos — later this year.

If carried too far, European officials’ actions could inadvertently force Greece out of the euro — a dangerous strategy for all concerned. They should stop undermining the economic recovery that Greece will need if it is to achieve fiscal sustainability. 

Such options range from Grexit to his preferred alternative of breaking the eurozone into several subgroups, each with its own currency.

Varoufakis and Galbraith would likely sympathize with his proposal and clearly regret that Greece lacked the political courage to forsake the system earlier, when it could have done so more easily. Yet even the radical step of breaking up the eurozone, Stiglitz makes clear, would probably help deficit countries only if Germany agreed to increase domestic spending, rein in speculation, and reduce deficits

As Varoufakis writes, “All talk of gradual moves toward political union and toward ‘more Europe’ are not first steps toward a European democratic federation but, rather, and ominously, a leap into an iron cage that prolongs the crisis and wrecks any prospect of a genuine federal European democracy.” Thus, one is forced to conclude that short of a catastrophic economic crisis, Europe can do little more than continue to muddle through in a self-induced state of austerity, thereby undermining its future prospects and global standing.

The epic tug-of-war between the internationalism of communist versus capitalist was not the only type of internationalism to emerge from the 20th century. A non-Western Euro-centric reflection recognizes the history of the movement for Pan-Africanism in the struggle for a united African continent under a socialist government. The original Organization of African Unity (OAU) – now the African Union (AU) – was a direct attempt toward that.

The spider web of financial connections in today’s global financial system is still not well understood. Estimating the potential psychology of investor responses is almost impossible.

Despite all this, arrogant German, Dutch, and other technocrats and bankers intent on retaining the old order of austerity and debt payments in Greece continue blindly to insist on more of the same, when it is clear that the Greek people and, hopefully its government, will refuse to continue with ‘business as usual’.

They scarcely existed five years ago but now they look like credible candidates to exercise power; and they may be able to relegate their countries’ socialist parties — which share responsibility for the general financial disaster since 2008 — to a supporting role, just as Britain’s Labour Party supplanted the Liberal Party, and France’s Socialist Party supplanted the Radical Party (3). Those changes were permanent.

In Athens, that nowhere is all too clear. But austerity’s cruelty, with social and health consequences extending to hunger, cold and increases in infectious diseases and suicides, does not necessarily mean a change of policy (4). Austerity’s architects are well paid to have nerves of steel.

Syriza has calculated precisely that free electricity, public transport, emergency food for the poorest and vaccines for children could be financed through more aggressive anti-corruption and anti-fraud measures. The outgoing conservative government admitted that these deprived the public coffers of at least €10bn a year.

These measures are not up for negotiation with other parties or the country’s creditors, Milios insists: “They are questions of national sovereignty; they won’t add anything to our deficit. We are therefore intending to implement this policy whatever the outcome of debt renegotiations.”

In these circumstances, the European conference on debt that Tsipras called for two years ago in this publication (6) could become a realistic prospect. Ireland’s finance minister backs the idea, and it has a historical precedent in the 1953 conference that cancelled Germany’s war debts, including what it owed to Greece. Syriza hopes the conference it is calling for will provide “the alternative solution which will bury austerity for good.”

Merkel has threatened Greece with expulsion from the euro if its government breaks the budgetary or financial disciplines to which Germany is so attached. The Greeks want both to loosen austerity policies and to remain in the single currency. Those wishes are shared by Syriza (8), because a small, exhausted country cannot fight on all fronts at once. “We’ve been the troika’s guinea pigs. We don’t want to become the guinea pigs for a euro exit,” says Valia Kaimaki, a journalist with links to Syriza. “Let a bigger country, such as Spain or France, go first.”

Moulopoulos believes that “without European support, it will not be possible to do anything at all.” That is why Syriza accords importance to support from forces beyond the radical left and the Greens, in particular the Socialists. Yet the Greeks have had experience of the surrenders made by social democracy since Andreas Papandreou forced his party to make a major shift towards neoliberalism 30 years ago. “If he had stayed on the left, there would have been no Syriza,” says Moulopoulos. “In Germany too, when Oskar Lafontaine resigned from the government [in 1999], he expressed regret that social democracy had become incapable of even the most insignificant reforms. Globalisation and neoliberalism with a human face completely destroyed it.”

Electoral victory for Syriza, or for Podemos in Spain, could demonstrate, contrary to what Hollande or Matteo Renzi in Italy say, the viability of a European politics that rejected austerity. That would challenge more than the German right.

Now the threat is much greater. “If we don’t change Europe, the far right will do it for us,” Tsipras has warned. It has become even more urgent to be bold.

The task for the left in Greece and Spain, on which much depends, is hard enough without adding onto their shoulders the heavy responsibility of defending Europe’s democratic destiny, and averting a “clash of civilisations”. But that is what is at stake.

The former staff of UNCTAD were so concerned about the earlier drafts that they alerted the public through a letter, pointing out the spuriousness of the OECD countries’ objections, and highlighting the importance of UNCTAD’s role: This is neither a cost-saving measure nor an attempt to “eliminate duplication” as some would claim. ... [W]e all fervently believe in the value of maintaining an independent research capability that serves to focus inter-governmental debates on how the workings of the global economy affect developing countries.

Lobbying was also a key strategy. Jubilee USA and other allies successfully lobbied the U.S. to improve language on debt sustainability, and several European groups were able to mitigate the EU’s position through appealing to the Norwegian and Finnish governments.

On the third day of negotiations “upstairs” where the tough issues were being handled, Ambassador Wasescha made a surprising announcement. He said the JUSCANZ and the EU were prepared to accept the main controversial Paragraphs 16 and 17, if the G77 would give up the paragraphs supporting Cuba and Palestine. Delegates were outraged. It is common knowledge that countries utilize leverage in negotiations, and horse-trading is the norm. But rarely in diplomatic group negotiations is such tit-for-tat so explicitly expressed.

Next, the Palestinian negotiator took the floor. “I would like to inform you that a few minutes ago, the Israeli representative and I came to agreement on the text on Palestine. After futile meetings with the Europeans and the JUSCANZ in Geneva for months, we have come to agreement on language in fifteen minutes. So you cannot use this issue to obtain something else you want,” he said. Shortly after, the Cuban negotiator made a similar announcement that an agreement had been reached between his delegation and the United States.

Raymond Aron explained the emergence and the nature of modern anti-Semitism by the coincidence of the Jewish emancipation from the ghetto and the social turbulence caused by modernization.

Claude Levi-Strauss said that there were only two ways of dealing with the presence of difference, one was anthropophagic and the other anthropoemic. The anthropophagic strategy consists of “devouring” and “digesting” the stranger, transforming thereby an alien substance body into a cell of one’s own organism. In short, in “assimilation”: renouncing whatever distinguishes you from the “genuine stuff”. If you want to be a French citizen you have to become a Frenchman in your behaviour, your language, the way you act, your ideas, preferences and values. The other strategy, anthropoemic, means exactly the opposite: rejecting – “vomiting”, incarcerating people in camps or ghettoes, or rounding them up, packing them back into a boat or into a plane and sending them back “where they came from”. None of the two strategies are truly “working” in our globalised world. Assimilation makes sense as long as people believe (or are powerless to contradict such a belief imposed by the dominant power on the rest of the world) in a clear hierarchy – superiority and inferiority - of cultures, and one direction of progressive evolution – from “inferior” to “superior”… In our multi-centred world however few people are daring, adventurous or arrogant enough to maintain that there is a cultural hierarchy and to enforce such an idea upon reality.

I think it is one of the merits of Europe that it does not promote one model Europeans are obliged to adopt. On the contrary - Europe thrives on the very diversity of its population, on diversity of ideals, customs, traditions, cultures… This is precisely the secret of the unique European creativity.

Similarly, Greece is the only country in the Eurozone where the economic recession triggered a political crisis, marked by governmental instability, electoral rise of the far right and mass MP defections. A unique feature of the Greek political system since the beginning of the recession in 2009 is the high number of MP defections who crossed the floor. In our study we found that the period between 2010-2012 approximately 75 MPs defected; since then this number has increased.  

Syriza participated in the parliament even before the crisis, even though as a party with minimal electoral support. Hence, power structures were already present, while it could also draw on experienced mainstream politicians.

Europe's radical left will have to go through a harsh winter before its 'Greek spring.' More importantly, punishing Syriza to prevent the rise of Podemos will add another catastrophic decision in the management of Europe's debt crisis. Instead the humanitarian crisis in Greece should be dealt on its own right taking into consideration Greece's particularities.