Re: <nettime> Crisis 2.0 - the political turn

[sebastian@rolux.org]

Needless to say that the same Joschka Fischer, on December 29 in a column
for the Austrian "Standard" titled "Greek Fever, European Disease" [1]
(which may be a rehashed version of the text you're quoting from), wrote
the following:


"The Euro crisis appears to be over. [...] [But] in many EU member
states, the patience regarding the austerity measures is dwindling, and
disaster looms in the political arena.

Greece could once more become the trigger. There is a high risk that in
the upcoming elections, the left-socialists of the Syriza party will be
voted into power. Syriza would either have to commit a gigantic election
fraud, or renegotiate the Greek payments with the Troika (EU, ECB, IWF)
[...]."


Of course Joschka Fischer knows the meaning of the term "election fraud",
and that nobody expects Syriza to actually rig the vote. He should have
said "broken promises", but that must be hard for the man who personifies
the first and last Social Democrat and Green German government, whose
pacifist and social ambitions led to Germany's military involvement in
the break-up of Yugoslavia and the dismantling of the German welfare
state. He didn't even dare to abandon Nuclear Power, it needed Angela
Merkel for that.

Merkel is less of a fraud then Fischer, and her famous and often repeated
dictum "There is no alternative!" clearly states that in our Democracies
there cannot be any choice. Fischer claims something else: that Democracy
itself has become a liability, and that free and fair elections are a
risk that the Europeans can no longer take.

Only a Freudian would still find traces of reality in Fischer's
statements, since what shines through in his choice of words, "high risk"
and "fraud", is the very crime that caused the current crisis, a gigantic
scandal that men like Fischer cannot acknowledge other than
subconsciously.

A Bayesian would probably bet against the future of Democracy in Europe
by now. Especially given the fact there is such a strong prior.

But what's to be done as a Marxist, in the broadest possible sense?
Critique, for sure (the "full recognition of the quagmire"). But a
revolution in Europe (or at least a "real political turn")? Not
everything that is hard to imagine can be ruled out, especially if you're
able to influence the outcome yourself. But my feeling is that our era's
reasoning has long become Bayesian, and that it has become harder to
insist on demanding the impossible.

[1]
http://derstandard.at/2000009873949/Griechisches-Fieber-europaeische-Krankheit

> On Jan 11, 2015, at 8:13 AM, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just before Christmas, Joschka Fischer - a man who incarnates the
institutionalization of 1968 - published an article on the Project
Syndicate website entitled "Europe's Make-or-Break Year." At stake, for
him, was the failed recovery, the divisive policy of austerity, the rise of
economic nationalism. The banks, in short.  "When the turmoil comes," he
wrote, "it is likely to be triggered -- as with the euro crisis -- by
Greece." How ironic. The former leftist who took Germany to war in Kosovo
in the 1990s did not say a word about the military situation.

<...>


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