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Remembering 2023: When Yannis Varoufakis came to Berlin

Report from the DiEM25 public meeting in on 7th October


02/01/2024

This is an article which was never published on theleftberlin.com because of other things which happened on the same day. After Israel started bombing Gaza into the stone age, we concentrated all our energies on reporting the slaughter and the clampdown on protest in Berlin. I have finally found the time to complete this report, which I think is worth reading not least because Varoufakis embodies a degree of hope on the Left, including the solidarity which he has shown to Gaza.

DiEM25 was set up by Yannis Varoufakis and others at the Volksbühne in Berlin in February 2016. Reporting the launch for Philosophy Football, I noted the following: “Promising a message of hope to ‘people who don’t believe in politics’, he spoke of a broad transnational movement aimed at democratising Europe before it disintegrates.”

6½ years on, watching Varoufakis and Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran speak in the Theater in Delphi in Berlin, the audience was encouraged to still feel hopeful, even though our side has suffered serious defeats in the intervening years. At the same time, Varoufakis and Temelkuran warned against being optimistic, saying instead that we should instead have hope and faith.

By chance, I attended this meeting directly after spending a couple of days with my father. My father is a man of great faith – he was a Methodist local preacher for a long time, and has been a member of the British Labour Party for over 60 years. He is an anti-racist who would love the world to be a better place. But even he is giving up on hope.

At tonight’s meeting, people who don’t believe in politics were largely absent. Both speakers acknowledged that they were speaking to a room of activists. While the launch meeting at the Volksbühne made serious efforts to try and address a potential new audience, tonight’s meeting was aimed at galvanising the already committed and preparing for DiEM25’s campaign in next year’s EU elections.

A blistering attack on capitalism

Both speakers spoke eloquently about the problems of modern capitalism – the wars, the attack on the environment, the tragic experience of refugees, hundreds of whom, Varoufakis said, had been murdered by the Greek coastguard. There was even a brief mention of the uprising in Gaza that same morning, although it wasn’t quite clear whether this was seen as a moment of hope or of tragedy.

Varoufakis did not hold back from naming names, saying – as he did 6½ years ago – that social democracy was no longer a progressive force. He blamed this largely on neoliberalism, saying that there was no longer any room for progressive reforms. The social democrats, the Greens, and even die LINKE were attempting to resuscitate capitalism, when capitalism was part of the problem.

Addressing the EU (the meeting’s title was “The EU is failing. What should we do?”), he compared the European Union to OPEC, arguing that just as OPEC acts against the interests of most people who live in oil producing countries, the EU is a cartel which has missed its last chance of reforming itself. Here, he went further than the DiEM25 founding conference, which invested quite a bit of hope in the possibilities of making the EU implement progressive politics.

Temelkuran was a little more circumspect. She wanted to hope in at least the possibilities of reform because how else will you be able to implement change? She also appealed for humanity to act with more compassion. Recounting a recent holiday near the Greek fires, she was appalled to have seen wind surfers blithely carrying on their fun as if nothing was happening.

Similar sentiments were expressed in one of the first contributions from the floor – a Norwegian Christian who wanted the state to prevent people to consuming too much, because “I can afford to buy new clothes every week, but poor people can’t”. This appeal to people to be nicer effectively excludes those who have been excluded by poverty, and sees change as being something that is bestowed on us by a benevolent state and nice rich people.

Strategies for Change

Whereas the meeting was strong in condemning the problems that we face, it was much weaker at explaining why the problems are there, and – most importantly – how they can be solved. Varoufakis rightly blamed capitalism for poverty, war, and environmental destruction, but when asked how we could get rid of capital, his answer was: “the biggest enemy of capitalism is capital itself”.

According to Varoufakis’s theory, capital is so illogical that it will end up collapsing. This is arguably a variation on Marx and Engels’ argument in the Comminist Manifesto: “The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association … What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”

There are two significant difference, though. Firstly, Marx and Engels continuously argued the primacy of class (the opening line of the Manifesto is “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”). The gravedigger cited by Marx and Engels is the organised working class. Varoufakis (and Temelkuran) were much more vague both about who is able to implement change and how.

Instead, Varoufakis posited the idea of DiEM25 as a surfer, waiting for the next wave. As far as I understand this strategy, all that we need to do is to carry on repeating the correct explanations for what is happening, and then, some time, people will be so sick of the disasters created by capitalism, they will come over to us (whoever “we” are).

What was entirely missing from the analysis was any explanation of why the Left should benefit from the implosion of capitalism. Recent experiences from France to the Netherlands (via Germany, where the AfD is currently polling at over 20%) shows that if the Left just sits back and waits for the next wave, the Fascist Right may actively try to profit from the resulting disorientation.

When did we have the chance to succeed?

To illustrate his point, Varoufakis listed five years in which we failed. In these years, he argued, there was an opportunity for our side to change society, but each time, we failed to meet the challenge. He didn’t add much more explanation, but the five years in which Varoufakis had most hope are 1929, 1945, 1968, 1981, and 2018.

Looking at this list, it is interesting to note that only one of these five years saw serious social upheaval (in Europe at least, which was the focus of this meeting). In 1929, the crash of the US stock markets fuelled the Great Depression, and caused more despair than hope. People felt unable to defend their own conditions, let alone fighting for a new society.

In 1945, we did see some significant reforms, like the formation of the NHS, which were granted by a ruling class which feared social protest. Young Tory MP Quinton Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) said in 1943: “If you don’t give the people social reform, they will give you social revolution.” And yet these protests by and large did not take place, and Britons failed to link up with the massive decolonial process in Britain’s former colonies.

1981 saw the third year of the Thatcher government in Britain, the second year of the Reagan government in the US and the election of the socialist Francois Mitterand in France. Each government would herald in neoliberal policies, and though they were met with riots and individual strikes, they were able to crush any opposition.

2018 is equally memorable for crisis rather than resistance. Again this was during a period when the Left did offer some beacons of hope – from the campaigns of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders to lead their party’s election campaign to the relative electoral success of Podemos and Varoufakis’s SYRIZA.

But when asked to explain these failures, Varoufakis put them down to individual acts of treachery and error. The leaders of SYRIZA and Podemos sabotaged their party’s radicalism. Bernie Sanders should have left the Democrats. This explains to a degree what happened, but not really why it happened, or how the Left can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Where does hope lie?

Which leaves us with 1968. These were indeed days of hope, with street fighting and mass demonstrations East and West. But the most significant event in 1968 was not the “night of the barricades” in Paris on May 10th, but the general strike the next day which involved 10 million workers – the largest general strike in history.

The French strike suggests an answer to one of the largest reasons for Varoufakis’s pessimism. His argument that social democracy is no longer able to deliver is mainly based on the fact that Jeff Bezos is able to skim 40% off each Amazon transaction, and that no-one is able to stand up to Bezos in the way that they could fight old-fashioned capitalism.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Yannis, but there has been a wave of strikes in Amazon recently, both in the USA and in the UK. And however the superstructure of capitalism may have changed in the past few decades, one thing remains the same. Workers produce everything from which capitalists make profit. So if our side stop working, their side – including Jeff Bezos – stop profiting from our labour.

In contrast, the solution offered by Temelkuran was some sort of social contract. Varoufakis rejected this, saying a social contract was no longer possible as this required people like Bezos being willing to negotiate with trade unions. But even in the past, the social contract was a pact not between bosses and unions but between bosses and union leaders who called on their members to accept wage restraints and attacks on their working conditions.

Varoufakis’s preferred solution of a Green New Deal has a similar weakness. Firstly, he overestimates the progressive nature of Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and ignores the fact that most gains were the result of militant trade union action. And he falls into the same trap as the social democrats whom he criticizes for wanting to negotiate with intransigent capital.

The Elephant in the Room

What is missing from Varoufakis’s analysis is any sort of agency from people who do not attend expensive meetings in old Berlin theatres. When a contributor attacked the speakers for their Eurocentrism, they conceded the point, saying that this was the title of the meeting, but they either ignored or did not understand the main point being made.

When the contributor asked why they hadn’t talked about uprisings in the Global South such as the recent one in Burkina Faso, Varoufakis’s answer was that the crisis in Africa is the result of political decisions taken in Europe and Washington, that any fight against the exploitation of Africa must also take place in the North. He argued: “There is a class war going on and internationalism is the only way”.

He is right, but internationalism does not consist of one way traffic. People in the Global South are not waiting for Europeans to stand up to big business – they are deposing their Western-imposed rulers, and fighting back in Gaza despite impossible odds. The first step towards building international resistance is to show solidarity with these struggles.

At the same time, we should continue to fight where we are. Speakers from the podium and the audience discussed whether the recent fight by Deutsche Wohnen & Co (DWE) to expropriate Berlin’s big landlords was a success or a failure. Seeing the fight as a total defeat seemed to fit the speakers’ pessimism, but they did have one valid point. Since the vote of the 59.1% was ignored, there has been insufficient discussion about why we lost and how we can win next time.

But this sort of thoughtful analysis was largely missing at this meeting. The idea that our side chooses a strategy, that we learn from past mistakes, that the role of the organised Left is not to wait for the right wave, but to do what it can to make the next wave as large as possible – none of this was seen as part of our purview.

It was inspiring to see so many people come together with the joint desire of a better world. We now need a much more serious discussion about how we can make this change, and how we can gain the necessary numbers to make sure that our next fight is successful.

Happy New Year from theleftberlin

Drawing by Hari Kumar


01/01/2024

Good Riddance to an Imperialist Gremlin

The German conservative politician Wolfgang Schäuble is dead. Good.


28/12/2023

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. A Latin saying reminds us to say nothing bad about the dead.

When news broke yesterday that Wolfgang Schäuble had died at 81, the entire German establishment had only good things to say about the conservative politician. Everyone, from the far-right AfD to the left-reformist LINKE, praised the great “democrat” and “statesman”

We Marxists enjoy Latin idioms (“Nihil humani a me alienum puto!”), but we have no problem saying bad things about the dead. Schäuble was one of the worst. As a leading member of the conservative CDU, he spent over 50 years in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, and filled countless government positions, most recently as the parliament’s president.

What stands out about Schäuble is his unabashed corruption. In the 1990s, he got at least one envelope with 100,000 German marks in cash (around 50,000 dollars or euros) from a weapons dealer. Schäuble lied about the affair at every step. He was eventually forced to resign, but the public prosecutor decided not to press charges.

Such a scandal would have ended a political career in almost any other country. Germany likes to think of itself as almost free of corruption. In reality, German politicians have turned corruption into a high art. For Schäuble, this was a tiny speed bump, and he was brought into Angela Merkel’s cabinet just five years later.

As finance minister starting in 2009, Schäuble gained notoriety as the main enforcer of brutal austerity dictates against crisis-ridden Greece. He forced the Greek government to drastically cut spending for hospitals and schools in order to pay off German banks. Schäuble ruled out of a monstrous Nazi building in central Berlin, while his agents in Athens ordered the privatization of state assets.

Schäuble was no less brutal towards working-class people at home. He helped turn Germany into a land of temporary contracts and low wages, while the heirs of Nazi billionaires pay almost no taxes. His legacy is the the Schwarze Null (Black Zero): a “debt brake” was introduced into the constitution, requiring balanced budgets and permanent austerity. Anyone who enters Germany’s crumbling schools and understaffed hospitals can see Schäuble’s life’s work.

The man’s entire lifetime was dedicated to strengthening the German bourgeoisie by attacking poor people at home and abroad. Before his stint at the finance ministry, Schäuble was interior minister, and he gave the police vast new powers of surveillance and repression.

Before that, Schäuble was the main architect of the reforms that bulldozed East Germany’s economy within just a few years. This shock therapy, combined with the work of West German secret services full of Nazis, has led to an enormous surge in right-wing politics in the former German Democratic Republic. When Schäuble is praised as a “democrat” today, it’s hard to think of anyone who did more to encourage fascist politics.

On the international Left, Schäuble’s death might not provoke the same joyous parties as the recent demise of Henry Kissinger or Elizabeth II — let’s take a moment to remember how much fun it was when Thatcher died!

Socialists in Germany, though, are happy that this imperialist gremlin is gone. Schäuble stood for the profound cynicism as the heart of capitalist “democracy”: he would repeat liberal phrases while dropping bombs, cutting wages, and grabbing for piles of cash. He was an imperialist down to his bones. Instead of praising him, like all German politicians are doing, we should say many bad things about the dead.

Oyoun must remain

Statement by the Jüdische Stimme

On 22 November 2023, the Berliner Tagesspiegel reported on the official termination of the “controversial cultural center in Neukölln, Oyoun”. In the Berlin Senate’s Committee for Culture, Senator for Culture Joe Chialo (CDU) confirmed that the Senate’s Department for Culture and Social Cohesion is actively committed to the implementation of the Berlin state’s concept for the prevention of antisemitism and the opposition to any form of antisemitism. It has now been decided ad hoc to terminate the funding for the cultural center because the de-colonial, queer-feminist and migrant-organised cultural center Oyoun rented its premises to the “Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East”, an association which the Senate regards as antisemitic. Oyoun has repeatedly been accused of antisemitism because it refused to cancel a Jewish event by a Jewish organisation, citing the Senate’s policy of antisemitism prevention. To underscore the bizarre logic of the cultural senator, Chialo (CDU) doubled down on his decision, stating: “When I say against any form, then I also mean any hidden form of antisemitism.”

The event in question had already been planned and announced months earlier as an anniversary celebration for the 20th anniversary of our association, Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East. However, in the shadow of the Hamas attacks, the kidnappings and the continuing bombardments of the civilian population in Gaza by the Israeli military, it was clear to the members of the Jewish Voice that there was nothing to celebrate on this 20th anniversary, rather it was upon us to mourn the many victims, hostages, the traumatized and the dead. Thus we decided to use these premises, which we had already rented, in oder to mourn together in solidarity with people of Jewish and of Palestinian origin, to provide comfort to one another and to position ourselves together in opposition to the crimes at that time being committed by the Israeli army.

The press office of the Berlin Senate seemed to have recognised that the accusations of antisemitism that had been leveled against the cultural center were bereft of any logic and were also not legally enforceable. Suddenly the official stance became that the funding for the Oyoun cultural center was expiring at the regular time and the decision not to fund the center was unrelated to the Jewish organisation’s event. However, the leadership of Oyoun commissioned a legal opinion which revealed that the four-year project funding for the center until 2025 had already been officially decided upon, before the controversy. Without this commitment for funding, cultural center’s organisers would not be able to plan events and projects for the following year 2024.

In this vein, we call on the Berlin Senate for Culture and Social Cohesion to officially apologize to the operators of Oyoun for this massive encroachment on artistic freedom and freedom of speech. This sudden announcement to close the de-colonial, queer-feminist cultural center run by People of Colour has nothing to do with the rule of law and must be clearly called out, named and criticised for what it is: state censorship against BPoC. We can observe a deliberate division between social minorities and people with experience of migration. By pitting BPoC employees of Oyoun against people of Jewish origin, the Berlin Senate of Culture reveals that its resolute stand against “all antisemitism” is characterized by considerable blindness and ignorance and obviously only applies to those who fit the prefabricated German template of the “Jew in solidarity with Israel”. The Berlin councillors are thus reproducing antisemitic stereotypes according to which there is only “the one Jew” and this Jewish figure is synonymous with Israel.

The Berlin Senate for Culture and Social Cohesion should be aware that the diverse, de-colonial, migrant and queer-feminist community in Berlin and Neukölln, in which a growing number of Jewish people now feel significantly safer than in the German majority society, will not allow itself to be divided and played off against each other. The fight against “all antisemitism” can only be credible if it respects the plurality of Jewish voices and protects them all from state interference. It can only be effective if it does not become blind to the fight against all racism – including anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.

The success of the appeal for donations that Oyoun launched after the funding freeze in order to defend itself against state repression and arbitrariness of the Berlin Senate, a call which has now generated 85,400 euros, should be read as a wake-up call by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Social Cohesion. Berlin’s de-colonial, queer, multi-ethnic community, which firmly includes people of Jewish origin in its ranks, will fight. The well-attended “Threads of Resilience” festival speaks volumes in this regard.

We, as the Jewish Voice, fight with people with migrant backgrounds and minorities who have been marginalised and confronted with racism for safe spaces, for dialogue, for freedom of art and freedom of expression. We stand firmly by the cultural center Oyoun, which courageously and resolutely opposed the unlawful censorship of the Berlin Senate and demonstrated to all Berliners what a resolute stand against “all antisemitism” should look like in practice.

Oyoun must remain – as it was originally intended!

 

This statement first appeared in German on the Jüdische Stimme website. Translation: Jüdische Stimme. Published with permission

Statement from Oyoun (Kultur NeuDenken gUG)

Regarding the preliminary assessment of the Administrative Court of Berlin


27/12/2023

(Berlin, December 27, 2023)

In a decision made in an expedited procedure on December 21, 2023, the Administrative Court of Berlin provided its preliminary assessment – not its final determination. This decision bears far-reaching implications for the cultural scene in Berlin and raises urgent questions regarding future public funding for culture and the handling of nonprofit cultural institutions.

Lawyer, Myrsini Laaser, comments:

“It is noteworthy that the judge admitted that many aspects also advocate for an assurance of funding. So, much indicates a binding statement, but on the other hand, there are aspects suggesting less binding commitment, and the judge then opted for the non-binding approach.”

Particularly surprising in the court’s decision is the establishment of the sum in dispute, which starkly contrasts with the pledged funding for the years 2024 and 2025, which
amounts to significantly higher sums. The preliminary assessment in the expedited procedure and the associated low valuation of the sum in dispute raise questions regarding
the appreciation of cultural work and the financial necessity acknowledged through the funding commitments of the Senate for Culture. In response, on December 21, 2023, Oyoun
filed a complaint against this assessment with the Higher Administrative Court. It is crucial to emphasize that the decision in the expedited procedure is not a final or legally binding determination but rather a preliminary assessment. This underscores the ongoing uncertainty and urgent challenges facing the cultural scene.

Oyoun only received a written rejection from the Senate for Culture regarding their funding for 2024 on December 22, 2023, after multiple inquiries, without any explanation except for an announced re-tendering of the venue. This approach and its mysterious background are not only viewed critically by Oyoun, as highlighted by comments from rbb on December 21:

“In early November, Culture Senator Joe Chialo (CDU) commented on the incidents and emphasized the intention to review Oyoun’s funding as a matter of principle. ‘It is my intention to swiftly reach a conclusion here and take action,’ he stated. Later, the Senate Department for Culture contradicted this representation: ‘Oyoun’s funding is expiring at the end of the year as per regular process. The statement by Oyoun suggesting that this is due to an event by the ‘Jewish Voice’ is not accurate,’ was the response to an inquiry by rbb|24.”

This apparent contradiction in the statements between the Culture Senator and the Senate Department raises concerning questions regarding transparency and consistency in the governmental decision-making processes in Berlin.

The unexpected and last-minute rejection of funding by the Culture Senate, without explanation, has plunged the Oyoun team into deep uncertainty. This situation forces
projects to be cancelled or revised and budgets to be slashed, thus endangering the necessary stability for cultural work. Additionally, due to the abrupt halt in funding and other factors such as the ongoing lawsuit, precarious residency status, and general uncertainties, all staff members, freelancers, fellows, apprentices, and interns are immediately threatened with unemployment, potentially even facing a forced waiting period with the job center. In addition to these burdens, today, on December 27, 2023, we were requested by the BIM and SenKGZ to vacate the premises by Saturday, December 31, 2023. This unexpected evacuation request exacerbates the uncertain situation and further jeopardizes the future of Oyoun and its employees.

The current approach of the Senate reveals concerning and alarming unpredictability, it raises questions about decision-making and adherence to its own principles. Among the key
funding principles of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture: artistic freedom, independence from the state, transparency.

In a city where the cultural and creative industries are immensely important and are now affected by sudden, unexplained, and potentially existential threats, the question arises: Who might be the next target of arbitrary defunding? Oyoun continues to hope for clarifying discussions that will lead to an understandable and fair resolution.