Posts Tagged ‘Yanis Varoufakis’
Varoufakis and DiEM25: No to the Left Against Brexit.
DiEM25: No to the Left Against Brexit!
Yanis Varoufakis condemns ‘toxic’ campaign for a second EU referendum.
The Sovereigntist and ‘progressive’ Pro-Brexit Morning Star reports.
FORMER Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis condemned the “toxic” public campaign for a second referendum on British membership of the European Union today.
The economist, who served under the left-wing Syriza government in 2015 when it confronted the EU over enforced austerity politics, accused anti-Brexit campaigners of dumping left politics.
In an interview for Jacobin magazine, he said he had campaigned on the Remain side during the 2016 referendum, but he explained: “I think that we should respect the outcome of the people’s vote.
“I really despise the way that [second referendum campaigners] talk about a ‘People’s Vote’ as if the first one was the wrong people’s vote.
“This kind of toxic language does not suit progressive politics.”
Mr Varoufakis said he backed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s calls for a fresh general election and added that the “silver lining” to Britain leaving the EU was that a Labour government could nationalise industry “more easily.”
Is his interview to the ‘progressive’ Jacobin magazine the former firebrand, speaking “as progressives” he rejected the Left Against Brexit call for a Second referendum, said,
.. let’s not re-run the referendum debate: I think that we should respect the outcome of the people’s vote. I really despise the way that they [campaigners for another referendum] talk about [the need for] a “People’s Vote” as if the first one was the wrong people’s vote. This kind of toxic language does not suit progressive politics.
To me what is now essential is for Britain — and this is possibly something Jeremy and I don’t agree on — to maintain freedom of movement. The Left should always fight to keep borders away and not to create new borders among people. So, for me a “Norway plus” solution would be ideal for Britain and even if that doesn’t happen, our New Deal for Europe, proposed by DieM 25, details how even after a hard Brexit [the UK breaking from all EU-related structures] British institutions and European institutions could coordinate in such a way as to simulate a European Union in which Britain is an integral and progressive part.
DiEM25 members now have the option of choosing between two versions of the “Progressive” acceptance of Brexit.
For DiEM25 to support this important initiative, its members must be consulted and the call must be made compatible with DiEM25’s long standing position in favour of a Norway Plus agreement, as per our all-member vote in the autumn of 2016. The two versions that members are now being asked to endorse differ in the following main way:
Andrea Pisauro’s Call to Take a BREAK FROM BREXIT to give democracy the time it deserves.pdf
Option 2.
Yanis Varoufakis’ Call to TAKE A BREAK FROM BREXIT for a general election.pdf
As an alliance with the ambition to reshape European politics, in (you guessed it) a “Progressive” direction DiEM25 is busy building a Europe-wide front for the 2018 elections to the European Parliament.
DiRM25’s latest catch is the French ‘party’ Nouvelle Donne.
Led by Pierre Larrouturou this new hand of old cards originated in a centre-left current in the French Parti Socialiste, expressing its admriation for the ‘progressive’ US left under the name of the Collectif Roosevelt,. It managed to score 11.5% of the internal congress vote in 2012.
Nouvelle Donne has laid (optimistic) claims to 11,000 members.
In the European elections of 2014 it won 2,90% of the vote. They backed, after failing to secure support for their own candidate, the sovereigntist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017. Standing 20 candidates in the Parliamentary elections that followed some are said to have won more than 1% of the ballots cast!
The ideology of Nouvelle Donne, is inspired by the American New Deal, progressisme, l’écologie politique, humanisme, participatory democracy, and, some say, an element of democratic socialism.
They are also kind to flowers and animals (I just made that bit up.
It has had two elected figures: David Derrouet, Mayor of the small town, Fleury-Mérogis until 2017, and Fabienne Grébert,a regional councillor in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
Onwards and upwards DiRM25!
Sanders and Varoufakis to launch ‘Progressive International’ “Green, Radical Left and……..Liberal”?
Nobody could accuse them of lacking ambition!
Sanders and Varoufakis to Launch Progressive International
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is teaming up with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to formally launch a new “Progressives International” in Vermont on Nov. 30, Varoufakis said in Rome on Friday.
Varoufakis, who made the announcement during a Friday press conference in Rome, told BuzzFeed News they were also inviting incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to join the new movement. (López Obrador spokesperson Jesús Ramírez told BuzzFeed News he had received no “formal invitation” to “join a “progressive international” front.)
Varoufakis described the initiative in part as an attempt to counter the work that Steve Bannon, who also made an appearance in Rome last month, has been doing to help nationalists forge a united front in elections for the European Union’s parliament next spring. Varoufakis also accused immigration critics like Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of being part of an extremist alliance.
“The financiers are internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists — like Trump, Bannon, Seehofer, Salvini — they are internationalists,” Varoufakis said. “They bind together. The only people who are failing are progressives.
Sanders and Varoufakis Announce Alliance to Craft ‘Common Blueprint for an International New Deal’
The pair hopes to promote a “progressive, ecological, feminist, humanist, rational program” for not only Europe, but the entire world
After arguing in a pair of Guardian op-eds last month that a worldwide progressive movement is needed to counter the unifying rightwing “that sprang out of the cesspool of financialized capitalism,” former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced in Rome on Friday that he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plan to officially launch “Progressives International” in the senator’s state on Nov. 30.
Varoufakis told BuzzFeed News that the movement aims to challenge an emerging extremist alliance of nationalist political figures—from immigration critics such as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer to President Donald Trump’s ex-White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who is working to garner voter support for rightwing parties ahead of the May 2019 European Parliament elections.
“The financiers are internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists—like Trump, Bannon, Seehofer, Salvini—they are internationalists,” Varoufakis said. “They bind together. The only people who are failing are progressives.”
As Sanders wrote in the Guardian, “At a time of massive global wealth and income inequality, oligarchy, rising authoritarianism, and militarism, we need a Progressive International movement to counter these threats.” Warning that “the fate of the world is at stake,” the senator called for “an international progressive agenda that brings working people together around a vision of shared prosperity, security, and dignity for all people.”
Varoufakis, denouncing the global “brotherhood” of financiers and “xenophobic rightwing zealots” who foment divisiveness to control wealth and politics, said in the Guardian that those who join the movement “need to do more than campaign together,” and proposed the formation of “a common council that draws out a common blueprint for an International New Deal, a progressive New Bretton Woods.”
In addition to the forthcoming progressive alliance—which incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, will reportedly be invited to join—Varoufakis is leading the campaign efforts of European Spring, a new progressive political party, for the upcoming European Parliament elections.
As a European Democratic Socialist – and leftist – it is hard to know what the term “progressive” means.
In our Continent, the word still has associations with the old Communist Parties and their fellow travellers, often called ‘progressives’. Or, to put it simply, progressive was used to embrace a broad swathe of potential allies. For very obvious reasons this usage is not just out of fashion today, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
More recently. the right-wing of Labour (Progress) , and Emmanuel Macron, are fond of calling themselves ‘progressives’ .
Both of these usages would put off many left-wingers for a start!
The word reeks.
Yet, apparently in the US ‘progressive’ is linked to the most liberal wing of the Democrat Party.
I believe that in its origins in US political thought progressive refers to a broad stream of thinkers, from Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, to advanced liberals like John Dewey and, more recently Barack Obama.
If it has any meaning the word appears to signify, “support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform””, which does not get us very fa.Not when just about privatising fiddle in the UK is called a “reform” for the better.
Still, ‘reform’ could, at a pinch, be extended with more hopeful connotations, to the left, including Sander’s wing of the Democrats.
The Democratic Socialists of America use the word, “the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly democratic socialist presence in American communities and politics.”
The European Spring alliance promoted by the Greek former Finance Minister certainly is “progressive” in this sense.That is, if one talks up ‘movement’enough to include self-important commissions and top-heavy public events.
This ‘alliance’ was built originally by DiEM25:
DiEM25 is a pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats.
We believe that the European Union is disintegrating. Europeans are losing their faith in the possibility of European solutions to European problems. At the same time as faith in the EU is waning, we see a rise of misanthropy, xenophobia and toxic nationalism.
If this development is not stopped, we fear a return to the 1930s. That is why we have come together despite our diverse political traditions – Green, radical left, liberal – in order to repair the EU. The EU needs to become a realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity for all Europeans. We must act quickly, before the EU disintegrates.
But how many on the left, who identify with the various strands of democratic socialism, would wish to be in an alliance with liberals? Or indeed, for all the fact that there is larger constituency who identify with the US Sanders left, or are at least encourage by the fact that it exists, at all, how many would wish to drop their allegiances to parties like the British Labour Party, and the very long list of European left parties, to join up with a movement headed by these two individuals on the strength of a few articles in the Guardian?
Assuming that they have read them…..a brief trawl in the French language reveals no trace of this ‘international’ to begin with.
The European Spring Alliance, of “democrats of all political persuasions” does not seem to have much of a basis either.
Their support, such as they are, include (indeed is limited to) for France Nouvelle Donne.
We are informed the party was named after the US ‘new Deal’ (which is not how I would translate a term normally referring to a ‘new fact*), an experience far from the forefront of the French Left’s collective memory.
Nouvelle Donne is a classic French political ‘club’, around Pierre Larrouturou. He and his friends have spent a couple of decades on the fringes of the Parti Socialiste (unsuccessfully bidding for influence as a ‘current’) and the French Greens, to mention only a few. It has had two elected figures, David Derouet, who was the Mayor of Fleury-Mérogis until 2017 and Fabienne Grébert, a regional councillor in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
Two days ago we learnt that Hamon has called his own list of “citizen candidates” outside of the old party machines. He is now negotiating with the centre-left intellectual Raphaël Glucksmann in the tradition of Michel Rocard (he is also the son of the New Philosopher André Glucksman).
Le mouvement Générations fondé par Benoît Hamon a lancé lundi un appel à candidatures citoyennes pour une liste aux élections européennes située “en dehors des vieux appareils partisans”, une initiative compatible avec la création de “Place publique” par Raphaël Glucksmann
Européennes : Générations de Benoît Hamon lance un appel à candidatures citoyennes
Génération-s may maintain links with The European Spring (though it is unlikely the presence of Nouvelle Donne is welcome).
Facing at least 5 (f not more) other left-wing or green lists in next year’s European elections, very few people give Hamon’s group and allies much of chance of winning seats.
Experienced commentators (that is, my good self) predict Hamon is going nowhere.
The forces that could be brought together by this new international could include the European Spring. This, at least according to Wikipedia involves such strange bedfellows as the substantial Czech Pirate Party the Danish Green splinter party, Alternativet and a Spanish initiative Actúa which seems largely a discussion and networking group (“un espacio de reflexión, debate cívico e intervención política”) outside the main force of the left, Podemos. Not to mention others…. I’d lay a hefty wager they are not part of the central core of the European left….
Any residual sympathy one might have for this lot evaporates at the sight of this list of supporters behind DiEM25:
- Julian Assange (Australia)
- Noam Chomsky (United States)
- Ada Colau (Spain)
- Brian Eno (United Kingdom)
- Julien Bayou (France)
- Jean-Michel Jarre (France)
- James K. Galbraith (United States)
- Susan George (United States/France)
- Boris Groys (Germany)
- Ken Loach (United Kingdom)
- Toni Negri (Italy)
- Saskia Sassen (United States/Netherlands)
- Mikuláš Peksa (Czech Republic)
- Slavoj Žižek (Slovenia)
Nor is this just a matter of a few signatures:
The more I find out about this, the less I like it:
Our efforts as a legal team demanding respect for the basic rights of DiEM25 Advisory Panel member Julian Assange have achieved a small victory.
Jeremy Corbyn backs ‘a social Europe for everybody’ and consults DiEM25 Movement’s Varoufakis
Corbyn: Labour leader backs ‘a social Europe for everybody.
This is really really good news!
26 February, 2016 KOOS COUVÉE. Islington Tribune.
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn has dismissed claims he is a Eurosceptic at heart, making the case for a “social Europe”.
Speaking exclusively to the Tribune, the Islington North MP acknowledged his historically lukewarm personal feelings towards the European Union, but said: “Labour Party policy is to try and get the best deal out of Europe for this country and a social Europe for everybody.”
However, Mr Corbyn expressed concern about the EU’s “democratic deficit”, the economic strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB) and its power over austerity-stricken countries like Greece.
The Labour leader spoke before Prime Minister David Cameron announced his renegotiation deal in Brussels on Friday, which included restrictions on in-work benefits for EU migrants and protection for the City of London from regulations that could put British-based banks at a disadvantage.
Dismissing Mr Cameron’s renegotiation as “a lot of smoke and mirrors”, Mr Corbyn said: “The real issue David Cameron is concerned about is a dispute within the Conservative Party.
“It’s essentially a lot of smoke and mirrors which hasn’t actually achieved a great deal. And on the question of temporarily curtailing in-work benefits, I think there’s an equality issue about that. I believe if people are in work they should be getting the same conditions.”
The central point is this:
“Labour would instead be making the case for a “social Europe”, Mr Corbyn said.
“The case I’ve put forward is one for workers’ rights, and for Britain and Europe being more similar, because British workers have far lower levels of rights at work.
“Secondly, I would want to challenge the Fourth Railway package [opening up rail services to private companies] over the privatisation issue. I’m concerned with the way in which the railways are run in Europe and I believe they should be publicly owned.”
He added: “The other point is the right of countries to keep or take into public ownership certain services, and the question of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [a proposed trade agreement between the EU and the US], which is not part of the renegotiations.”
“Most trade unions in Britain, but not all, want to remain in the EU from the point of view of trade and the jobs that go with it, and that’s the view of the party which I’m putting forward.”
The story continues,
Three weeks ago, Mr Corbyn met Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, leader of the leftist party Syriza, to discuss EU reform and the European anti-austerity movement.
Asked how close he is to Mr Tsipras politically, the Labour leader said: “We both want to see an economic strategy around anti-austerity, and we’re both very concerned about the activities and power of the European Central Bank, although Britain is not in the Eurozone and isn’t likely to be.”
Mr Corbyn also revealed that Yanis Varoufakis, the former Syriza MP and Greek finance minister who resigned during the negotiation on an EU bailout package for the debt-stricken country last year, has met Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and will advise Labour in “some capacity”.
Mr Corbyn said: “Varoufakis is interesting, because he has obviously been through all the negotiations [with ECB, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund].
“I think the way Greece has been treated is terrible and we should reach out to them.
“I realise we’re not in the Eurozone but it’s a question of understanding how we challenge the notion that you can cut your way to prosperity when in reality you have to grow your way to prosperity.
“So all of our emphasis and work and campaigning is about an expanding economy and investing in an expanding economy.”
CNBC adds,
The leader of the U.K.’s left-wing Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, revealed to his local London paper that Varoufakis had met with shadow chancellor John McDonnell and would advise the party “in some capacity.”
Varoufakis’ view on the referendum:
Comrade Varoufakis has also just answered the anti-EU UK left on the issue of Greece: Is Greece not another compelling reason to vote for Brexit on 23rd June?
Last July the European Union completed a brutal coup d’état against the freshly elected Greek government, imposing upon it another huge, unsustainable ‘bailout’ loan that would, with mathematical precision, prolong Greece’s six-year-long Great Depression.
If there was ever any doubt that the EU’s institutions are deeply contemptuous of democratic process, and unabashed about their readiness to ride roughshod over rationality and over the will of a sovereign European people, the events of July 2015 dispelled it.
In this light, it is natural and right to ask two questions in the run up to the 23rd June UK referendum:
- Was the treatment of Greece last summer not another piece of decisive evidence that the EU is governed in an authoritarian, irrational and anti-democratic manner?
- Should voters across the UK (especially after the way Greece was treated last summer) not vote in favour of LEAVE as an important step in reclaiming their Parliament’s sovereignty and their democracy?
My answer to the first question is a decisive YES and to the second an unequivocal NO!
…
Those of us who detest the EU’s way of doing things have a moral and political duty to (a) jettison the illusion that Brexit will have positive consequences and (b) stick together (across national borders) to fight shoulder-to-shoulder in order to democratise the EU through an almighty confrontation with its current, inane, authoritarian rulers.
For a different spin on the last part of the story….
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is advising the Labour party on the economy, Jeremy Corbyn has revealed.
The controversial ex-minister, who was forced to resign after his country plunged into a debt crisis, has met with shadow chancellor John McDonnell, the Labour party leader said.
The news came as Paul Mason, the former Channel 4 journalist and strident anti-austerity campaigner, announced he has joined Labour’s economic lecture tour.
The journalist and film-maker revealed his departure from the state broadcaster as part of a plan to “work for a while outside the impartiality framework” dictated by the channel.
In an interview in the Islington Tribune newspaper Mr Corbyn spoke of being interested in Mr Varoufakis because of his experience in Europe.
He said: “I think the way Greece has been treated is terrible and we should reach out to them.
Reports the Telegraph.
Tendance Coatesy 