Last night, Poppi could not sleep. In
the evening she fed five German tourists and then, as she loves to
do, she stopped to talk with them. Poppi is the owner and lone cook
for one of the most traditional and beautiful taverns in the whole
Mediterranean Sea, at the foot of the old village of Campos, in the
heart of Ikaria, the Greek island where, according to the myth,
Icarus’ dreams found their tragic end.
Last night she honored her German
guests with meat and fish dishes cooked in her old kitchen, which
clearly does not obey standard European hygienic norms. At the end of
the dinner, she sat at their table, offered them some tsipouro
with masticha (an aromatic resin that has been used since time
immemorial to cure stomach ailments in the Aegean islands), and
stopped to talk with them. Poppi’s German guests tried to convince
her that there is only one thing the Greeks can do to emerge from the
crisis: reduce the cost of their labor force and lower the prices of
land and real estate. This will make them a fertile ground for
investments by Northern Europe’s strong economies and other wealthy
countries. “You have nothing else but your land and yourselves, you
practically produce nothing: put yourself at the service of others,
devaluing yourselves, so you too can enjoy the investments of those
who produce and hold the riches.” Poppi listened to them, respected
the rules of hospitality and did not offend them. But then she felt
very ill and was unable to sleep. I think that only if we can
understand fully why Poppi could not sleep, we can believe that we
might understand what is happening right now in Greece and Europe.
The issue on the table is not the
survival of Greece or the health of the Euro.
The true issue is the one synthesized,
maybe unconsciously, by Poppi’s well-sated, German guests. The
question we must ask is not whether Greece will be able to remain in
the Euro or if it will receive a discount on its debt. The question
is whether we want Europe to become or not the new global, political
subject capable of setting limits to the unlimited power that today
is in the hands of global financial capitalism.
If Europe and its governments limit
themselves to applying technical solutions to guarantee monetary
equilibria that do not disturb the markets, then the only outcome for
the Greeks (and soon thereafter for the Italians and the Spaniards,
and in general for all weak and marginal subjects, first and foremost
migrant ones) is to align themselves with the rules of
deterritorialized, globalized economy, which encourages one to move
quickly and virtually where it finds fertile grounds and where it can
maximize profits and hide its incomes. Europe could instead choose to
become something else: the first and, for now, only political subject
open to new paths in the relationship between economy and State in
the era of globalization, imposing on a large swath of land a
mechanism of containment of the concentration of wealth and starting
a new policy of redistribution and resistance to inequality. This
much is common knowledge: inequality in Europe and the world over
continues to grow constantly and exponentially. The middle class is
choked and squeezed toward the bottom, and the poor segment of the
population continues to expand and become poorer, while the richest
minority becomes richer and ever freer from state controls, thanks to
the ability of the global economy to occupy new territories and move
assets.
To come back to Greece and to
understand in monetary terms what we are talking about, Greek debt
hovers around 300 billion Euros, while the riches “hidden” in
off-shore paradises, is estimated to be around 7-8,000 billion Euros.
But obviously the two sets of data are not set next to each other and
many would say that it makes no sense to do so. Technically I know
well that the two sets of data have little to do with one another,
but politically they narrate what the social and historical horizons
might be that the Greek question poses for our age.
For this reason, after a long day spent
with Poppi and many young Greeks in that and in other taverns, I have
no doubt that at this time the stakes are exquisitely and deeply
political. Syriza is a political subject who places at the center of
his reflection and action the need to identify the instruments that
might help to reestablish social equality policies that the defeat of
social-democratic ideals and the growth of the global financial
economy have crushed. He is doing it by taking as his point of
departure a country where the suffering is greatest and where the
anger toward the old state system is most explosive. He is doing it
by focusing the enthusiasm of many younger people, who belong to a
generation that is personally affected by the consequences of the
alliance between global finance and national corruption. He is doing
it by creating a long wave of other movements and parties that,
crossing through Europe, could cause disturbances to the structures
of power that certainly would not be welcome to the current
establishment, which is firmly entrenched in the salons where the
alliance between finance and politics plays itself out. He is doing
it by saying clearly that politics must have as its priority the
safeguard of the health, wellbeing, and dignity of all citizens (at
the same time opening a discussion about who might qualify as
“citizens” in today’s global society). He is doing it not for
Greek debt, but taking as his point of departure Greek debt
and saying clearly: we are not the ones who caused the debt, but we
are ready to take responsibility for it, though we will not renounce
our priority of safeguarding everyone’s dignity.
What is probably not clear to other
Europeans is that 5 years ago, Europe asked the same people who
caused the debt through their ignorance and dishonesty to pay it back
by establishing policies based on social injustice which have undone
the life of thousands of people. Maybe few Europeans understand that,
in Greece, 5000 people have committed suicide in less than 5 years.
Maybe few can understand what it means that, in the same family,
one’s pension has been halved, the children are unemployed, and
one’s household bills have increased 30-40%. Maybe few other
Europeans can imagine what it means not to have medicines to cure a
mother’s or a child’s cancer.
These are conditions that have become
the norm for Greek citizens, thanks to the demands made by the
Euro-group and by the IMF to the governments of Nea Democratia and
Pasok in excahange for the aid necessary to pay back the debt;
governments that were made up of the same ruling classes that had
caused the debt by pretending to have non-existent riches and inuring
its citizens to a lifestyle and system of consumption that was well
above their means. Syriza has attacked and defeated not only those
ruling classes, but also the social policies that those ruling
classes applied following the guiding principles of European powers.
For this reason today Syriza’s government asks that those
principles be changed and that the question of the debt be a
secondary consideration vis-à-vis the need to restore dignity and
health to every citizen.
Those who now attack Syriza and Greece
accusing them of not wanting to pay back the debt as is technically
necessary, are those who don’t have and don’t want to have the
courage to open a new horizon to social justice. Those who raise the
alarm, claiming that Greece risks dragging Europe in the abyss, do so
because they want to isolate and politically defeat Syriza, and those
who, with Syriza, believe in the need for new European and global
social policies. Those who today spread panic and fear do so because
they hope that Greece might return to the same ruling class that
caused the debt and ruined thousands of families, while giving its
loyalty to the allegiance between finance and politics.
This is the
reason why today what is in play is not Greece’s choice to remain
in Europe, but Europe’s choice to understand Greece. These are the
reason why Poppi did not sleep last night. And these are the reasons
why we should have the courage to understand why it is so.
Happy referendum.
