Costas Lapavitsas, former MP of the Greek Parliament and author of The Left Case Against the EU, says the left needs to have honest debates about the EU and its limitations, which became evident in the political struggles associated with Brexit and Grexit
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Excellent interview. Eye-opening. Thanks.
To me this is wrong-headed.
As a revolutionary communist I cannot dispute the assertions that the EU is a mainly a means to implement neoliberalism, and that it provides an impoverished and essentially false kind of democracy which allows for a very small range of political debate in a manner that fundamentally excludes socialism.
At the same time, within the context of capitalism, the EU has been the guarantor of workers' rights, of women's rights, of gay rights, and of environmental protection. It has also has ensured freedom of movement. And it has prevented war, giving Europe the longest period of peace in its history.
Fascism is on the rise in Europe; and the Brexit phenomenon and other existing anti-EU movements are motivated mainly by ethnic nationalism and undisguised racial hatred. I am convinced that the EU, notwithstanding its limitations, is worth preserving; and I am absolutely certain that Britain's exit will worsen the conditions for its workers, its women, its racial minorities, and its gay and lesbian people.
this interview could have benefitted from an opposing argument to aid clarification of his argument, and also from some more pertinent questions regarding what his version of brexit might look like within the realms of possibility: No deal? staying in the customs union? keep freedom of movement?
There questions are essential to the argument raging inside the U.K. and his arguments didn't really touch on how the left might score a victory on behalf of social justice and workers rights if it manages to secure this victory. Furthermore there was one very glaring ommision which I think most of us on the left are grappling with, and that is the complete dominance of the press and "public relations" (Cambridge Analytica etc) over the destiny of the U.K. The vote to leave was their victory, based as it as on a hatred of EU regulation concerning environmental protection, food and agriculture, himan rights, workers rights and fiscal policy. They wanted to destroy the protections that actually help working people and the environment and used the usual scapegoat of immigration to achieve this. How on earth are the left going to override this prevailing ambition by going along with it? – not a hypothetical question btw as perhaps this could be achieved but somehow there would have to be a shift on all fronts, especially electoral reform and press reform.
Good guest!
Too many people still believe we have a Democracy because the TV tells them they do and they get to run along like good little Sheep to vote for one of the Masks on the same face every few years, all the while telling themselves things will get better.
Wish i could give this 1000 Thumbs Up.
@democracyatwrk "Democracy At Work" is the name of the solution for these problems.
Costas talks exactly the same as Yanis, just Yanis suggests giving EU the last chance.
You can have as many elections and referendums as you like, Greece still owes the ECB a shitload of money and it must be paid. Greek policy is to beg for charity and refuse to pay but the EU citizens whose savings baled them out want their pensions back.
There is no Grexit the only way Greece will leave the EU is if they are thrown to the Turks for not paying their debts.
Lapavitsas>Varoufakis
Great interview. Damning stuff but I think Costas is correct, the left does not provide an alternative unless it provides an alternative to capitalism, and furthermore, civilization itself cannot survive capitalism in the long term, which is now the short term!
Well, just because Marx and Lenin didn't call for supranational real democracy doesn't mean it wouldn't be better than national democracy controlled by international labor. Besides, what's going to happen when "labor" is automated, which it most certainly will be. We need democracy, period. We need it globally, period. What will nations be then? One!