Portside

It’s possible that the EU cannot be reformed, but popular resistance could provide an alternative to disintegration

We must include migrants and refugees in the people, politically and institutionally in the sense of full social and political rights but also ideologically in the terms of how we define the “us vs. them” in our societies. We need to redefine the people –or even the “nation”– as the unity in struggle of all the subaltern classes. This is an answer to “identity politics” than chauvinism in the name of “secularism," and an answer to neo-liberal cosmopolitanism.

“Left-wing populism” makes clear that boundaries that create and represent identities do not run between people of different geographical origin, but among those at the bottom and at the top of society. This is a useful and appropriate populism. It has nothing to do with right-wing populism: the Others on the other side of the fence are not foreigners, but the richest 10 percent of society.

The left has been in disarray since 1991 - it never fully recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite widespread opposition to Stalinism and -authoritarianism. In the past two decades, we have witnessed a major spasm of global capitalism that has triggered a long deflationary period across the United States and Europe. Just as the Great Depression did in the 1930s, this has created a breeding ground for xenophobia, racism and scapegoating.

In the past year two referenda shook up both the European Union and Europe's Left: the Greek OXI in July 2015 and Brexit in June 2016. Exasperated by the EU's mixture of authoritarianism and economic failure, a segment of Europe's Left is calling for a 'break with the EU',[2] a stance that has come to be associated with the term Lexit.[3] DiEM25, the transnational Democracy in Europe Movement, rejects that logic and offers an alternative Progressive Agenda for Europe.

On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.

Great Britain’s citizens haven’t been losing control over their fate to the EU. They’ve been losing it because their own country’s leaders – as well as those of most other Western democracies – are increasingly in thrall to corporate and financial interests.

Neoliberal policies and practices dominate the European Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, European Court of Justice and a compliant media legitimises the whole conquest. This has left the EU constitution as the only one in the world that enshrines neoliberal economics into its text. Therefore the EU is not – and never can be – either socialist or a democracy.

Can the EU still unite a continent shattered by world wars, or is it little more than a vehicle for austerity capitalism? Soon British voters will vote on Brexit - leaving the EU. Given the absence of a strong, continent-wide left, however, reversing the current economic rules of the EU may be a country-by-country battle. It's already underway - and for all of the economic power of the EU, the organization is vulnerable to charges that Brussels has sidelined democracy.

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis revealed for the first time how days after he resigned, the Troika effectively abolished a unit he had set up to combat tax evasion. European Commission (EC) President Jean-Claude Junker led the efforts to prevent Greece from collecting taxes. Junker was Minister of Finance and later Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1989 to 2013. Varoufakis called Luxembourg the largest tax haven in the world.