By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Greece remains, undoubtedly, one of the main points in
earth where our global future is “prepared”. This country of South-Eastern
Europe bears an enormous historical and spiritual heritage and, at the same
time, it is located at the crossroads of the Slavic, Middle Eastern and Western
worlds. It has been selected as the object of a “great experiment” by world
Finance and European elites, at its service, on how to “reconstruct”, in a
fundamental way, the political and social regime prevailing in Europe after the
2nd World War (if not during the two to three last centuries of
European history).

An international conference was held in Greece on the
20th and 21st of June in order to debate Greek/European
crisis, the possible alternatives to the system of “euroliberalism” and ways to
stop the course towards war with Russia. Tens of intellectuals, politicians and
activists, from various European countries, including Russia, have participated
to the conference – including some critical economists from USA. 

 The event was organized by a group of radical intellectuals,
who are opposed to the complete domination of financial capital and its neo-liberal
project on European politics and institutions. In the same time they are
opposed to the rebirth of imperial projects with the help of arms, be it in
Ukraine or in the Middle East. It was supported by the World Forum of
Alternatives, presided by Samir Amin, the Lyssarides Foundation of Cyprus, the
Greek Institute for Governance INERPOST, run by ex-socialist minister Gerasimos
Arsenis, the Institute for Globalization and Social Movements, presided by
Boris Kagarlitski and the “agora-dialogue.com” website.  

The conference was held near the town of Delphi which used
to be the center of the ancient Greek world. It was during the ascendance of
this world and in its very context that appeared Protagoras, the student of
Democritus and the mentor of Pericles, to profess that “Man is the measure of
all things” (and not “money is the measure of all things”, as goes the moto of
the Empire of Finance, attacking now European nations and what remains of their
civilization).

Those days there is a lot of talk and conferences held
in Europe and US where you can hear much  against austerity policies (a term misplaced
as we will try to show), denunciations of the new cold and hot wars or wishes
for peace in Europe and in the world. Why a need for one more, an observer
could ask.  

We need a strategy, not just denunciations

A number of considerations pushed the organizers to hold
this conference in Greece before the (predictable) summer crisis. One of the
main ideas behind the initiative was the realization that it is not enough to
denounce “austerity” or war. We need also begin developing political strategies
and necessary tools and networks to fight against them. This is of course a
process that needs to evolve in interaction with the development of an
alternative vision. Without such a strategy and such a vision, which hardly
exist in European left, even if it will be able to have partial victories
against neoliberals and/or neoconservatives, it runs the risk of seeing them turn
into defeats.

In reality we are already in an environment of a long hybrid world war, launched by the
most extremist and politically coherent wing of international finance and the
most extremist geopolitical forces of the US military-industrial complex,
around neoconservatives. But we are not thinking and acting accordingly. We
don’t really believe we are there and we don’t want to be there. When the
crisis will come, it gets us unprepared (one important lesson to keep also from
the SYRIZA debacle of this summer)

The forces concentrated around neoliberals and
neoconservatives believe that now, after the collapse of USSR and the decay of Europeans
political elites (be them socialdemocratic or Gaullist, like in France) and also
of the nationalist regimes of the Third World, they have a unique, historic
opportunity to change, in a radical way all social and international relations
on the planet and shape its future. They want to do it anyway but also they
believe they have to do it now. They don’t want to look passively to the
ascendance of alternate centers of world economy which can become a threat to
their domination.

They are using the Greek crisis, EU “integration”
progress, Ukraine, the Middle Eastern crisis, in such a way as to launch their
global “revisionist” project. 

A new totalitarianism

Another factor in work here is that, for the first time in human history, the
extraordinary advances of information technologies, of neurosciences, of social
sciences mainly directed to war, of new mathematical tools like the chaos
theory have created the objective,
material and intellectual means and
tools for a new global totalitarianism, for the realization of the black
utopias (dystopias) of Zamyatin, Orwell or Huxley, which will make Hitler look
like an alchemist compared to modern chemists. Assange and Snowden give a much
better glimpse on the real and invisible world governing us that many of our economic,
political and social analyses.   

But the victims of such policies lack the necessary
will and also the necessary strategy and counter-vision to answer in a
systematic way to the “war” launched against societies and nations, by the
proponents of this new totalitarian power. They are reacting here or there,
usually when it is already too late. They
often prefer to conserve what they dispose and to accommodate the dominating
forces, making the economy of the efforts and the risks associated with any
serious attempt to stop them.

The French experience

This is for example what happened with the enormous
victory against “euroliberalism” which was the French referendum in 2005 and
the social revolts that followed it. Neither the critical intellectuals behind
the great No of the French people, who were able to provide us with some of the
deepest critiques of European “construction”, were able, neither the supposedly
leftist forces calling for a No vote (from the left wing of the Socialists to
the Trotskyite LCR) wanted to develop a credible alternative to what they had already
persuaded the French people to reject. Sarkozy was able to manipulate the
situation and now even Le Pen is posting as the main candidate to express social
dissatisfaction in France.

The Greek experience

Another, even more tragic example is the Greek one. The
leaders of SYRIZA refused to develop any comprehensive economic program and
also any coherent international strategy to address the very serious problem
the country was facing. Instead, they trusted blindly forces from USA and
obscure financial circles to help them cope with Merkel. Those forces were
finally able to manipulate them in a very successful way. Not only they put
them in the path of defeat and capitulation but they transformed them into
instruments of their own policies, with devastating political results for the
Greek people and for the European and international left. They were able not
only to defeat (at least for the time being) the Greek revolt, they were able
to organize even elections for Greeks in which they were called to choose themselves
the “executioner” they prefer.

“Greece is not bluffing”, assured James Galbraith
(advisor to Varoufakis) the participants to the Delphi conference, many of them
(including ministers and high ranking cadres of SYRIZA) were already skeptical
about aspects of the policy and tactics followed by the Greek Left. But, soon
afterwards, it was proven that, indeed, “Tsipras was bluffing”.

In order to develop strategies and tools we need to
know well what is exactly happening. Speaker after speaker at Delphi analyzed
in detail the depth and the extent of the enormous economic, social,
demographic and, also, psychological-moral disaster we have witnessed in Greece
during the last five years, as a result of the “bail-out” program. This
disaster is comparable to what happened during the last phase of the Weimar
Republic or in USA during the Great Depression. You will not find anything even
remotely comparable to that in all post-War history of capitalist Europe. Participants
in Delphi were rather informed people. But even they were astonished to hear for
instance Professor Kasimatis, the top Greek expert in constitutional law,
analyze in detail the legal terms of the clearly neocolonial Loan Agreements imposed
to Greece by its “partners” in EU, the ECB and the IMF. These terms are not
only a massive violation of the provisions of the Greek constitution, of the
European treaties and of international law. They are in reality the blueprint of a new totalitarianism.

Now if we assemble these elements we have a clear
picture of what is really happening in Greece, which is the first step to
understanding why it is happening. This is an absolutely necessary process, if
we want to stop projecting our own preferences and preconceptions into reality.

Is it really possible to describe such a huge
catastrophe as just a crisis, as a mistake, as a simple “extremity” of the
system? Even to speak of austerity is an euphemism, you don’t say “austerity”
for a program that denies the material preconditions for the reproduction of a
given social formation and, by that, of a nation and its state.

By analyzing the objective data on Greece (GDB,
unemployment, investments, social statistics and evolution of the debt) we can
substantiate the claim that the program imposed by the “Creditors” (acting as a
Kafka tribunal) is clearly an effort to
destroy a nation-state and devoid its institutions of any real content. If this will succeed in Greece, it can be
generalized gradually in all Europe.

We believe they are doing this because only by doing
it they can advance their very radical agenda of “regime change”, that is to
transform western “democracy” into a sheer formality and to abolish completely
the most elementary social rights like the right to a decent living and
pension, to health care, education etc., which constitute one of the
fundamental achievements in the history of human civilization. They abolished them
in the ex-“socialist” world, now they want to abolish them in Western Europe,
beginning with Greece. If anybody has a better explanation for what is
happening let him advance it.

I tried to expose such ideas to Alexis Tsipras some
years ago. He looked to me in great disbelief. He could not believe that we
live in a “so bad world” that could wish the destruction of Greece. As for
Yanis Varoufakis, I remember him telling me, some years ago, that he does not
believe in conspiracies. This is another way to state that we are living
essentially in a more or less good world with more or less good guys governing
us. He was also to discover, the hard way, that his fellow Ministers of
Economics were not interested to his economic arguments. They were executing
orders of the Finance.

Now, after the disaster, Varoufakis along with
Lafontaine, Melanchon and some others they have stated the necessity to develop
alternative strategies (an idea we clearly stated also in what became known as
the “Mikis-Glezos appeal to save Greece and the peoples of Europe” of October
2011, but without any practical results). Better late than ever. We hope their
efforts along with those of many others they will soon begin to bear results.

“Nation”, “euro” and other “difficult” questions

A second consideration behind the Delphi conference was
that we need, in order to develop alternative strategies, to address seriously
some very difficult questions like ethnicity, nation and nationalism, the
problem of what kind of European integration we should fight for, the question
of protectionism and of the articulation between the nationally developed
political struggles and a European alternative. The question of the euro is a
very important one and not one which can easily be answered.

It is clear, at least to some of the Delphi conference
participants, that euro and the Maastricht treaty are not simple tools of a currency Union between states or for
imposing a neoliberal economic policy in all Europe or a way to transfer
permanently resources from Southern to Northern Europe. It is all that but it
is even something else and more fundamental.

It is a way to take sovereignty from nation-states and
transfer it to the representatives of international
finance, acting through the rules
established by Maastricht, through the domination of neoliberal dogmas in
economic practice, but also through their enormous, “targeted” capacity of influence
in both “markets” and politics. The great majority of political, intellectual
and media elites in Europe are now controlled by international (and not
necessarily European) Finance. They say the euro was a mistake, because it is a
currency without state. But there is a state behind it, simply it is a “state”
of a new form, the state, the power of Finance, hidden in the rhetoric of
“European integration”.

Maastricht is the cornerstone of a gigantic and deep project
of regime change from a system, at least in theory based on the principle of
popular and national sovereignty, established in Europe after the English and
French Revolutions, towards a system based on the Domination of Money,
enshrined in the “principles” of permanent anti-inflationary policy (that is also
a way to saveguard the value of money), of “independence” of ECB (which
translates into its dependence from … Goldman Sachs and other international
banks!) and to the “no bail out” principle, which paved the way for the attack
against Greece, the first effort to control completely a European nation-state,
keeping intact only the form of its democratic institutions (at least for the
time being).

Then one solution seems quite logical. Just leave the Euro
club. Such an option should not be excluded, but it is a great lack of responsibility
to believe such an exit will be an easy promenade. A lot of problems are put
that we are not able to treat properly in the limited space we dispose, but
which became also partially clear during the Cypriot and Greek experiences.

The two main of them are first the weakening of the
nation-state, both objectively and subjectively, during a long period of time,
which preceded and made possible the open attacks against it, beginning with
Greece in 2010, and, second, the difficulty to defend a given nation (which is albeit
necessary) against the enormous pressure of World Finance (the “markets”, the
“globalization”), based only on the limited capacities and possibilities of any
single European nation-state.

The question of the currency is an essential one and
anybody who wants to develop an alternative needs to address it in one way or
another. This is a technical economic question, but the technical-economic
character of this question must not hide the huge political challenges behind
it. The introduction of a national currency can be a necessary step for any
country wishing to resist the European neoliberal order. But the introduction
of a national currency will not be sufficient to face the problem Europeans
nations are facing as a result of the enormous economic, political and media
power of international finance, under which they will have to operate. The
introduction of a national means of payment can have a progressive meaning only
as deriving from a comprehensive strategy to face globalization.   

Neoliberalism and neoconservatism

A third idea, which we tried to expose, I think quite
successfully in Delphi, was the organic unity between the neoliberal and the
neoconservative project, the one being the transposition of the other when you
go from the field of economy into geopolitics and vice-versa. They are but two
faces of a gigantic world revisionist project and they should be treated as
such. You cannot fight the one without fighting the other.

If the efforts to deny to western European popular
classes their most elementary political and social rights succeed, then a war
of some sort against Russia will be greatly facilitated. The opposite is also
true. An atmosphere of external war, with Russia or with Islam, will greatly
facilitate social and political regression in Western Europe.

It is not by chance that, from the time of the 1st
World War to the military campaigns of our days against Yugoslavia or against Libya
for instance, the position towards external war has become also a sort of dividing
line inside “European socialism” and all currents of European Left.

The Russian factor

The forth idea developed in Delphi was that Russia in
an integral part of Europe. Western Europeans should treat Russia as they treat
any other European country and Russia should also feel and behave as a European
country with all its rights and obligations and without any complexes. In the
conference itself Russians have participated as an integral part of this
European dialogue. Shergei Glaziev, the famous researcher on Kondratieff long
economic circles and also an adviser to the President of Russia, has attracted great
interest from participants with his intervention, as he developed his idea that
Greece has no future inside the EU, but it could have a rather bright one in
the context of Eurasian integration. He had to intervene by skype, as he is
sanctioned by EU.

This idea of Russia being an integral part of Europe is
cardinal if we don’t want to forbid forever, to the continent, the means of its
independence.

Nation and internationalism

A fifth, also very important idea, is that Germany and
European elites have a regional strategy, Finance and neoconservatives have a
world strategy. But forces resisting them have only national political and
strategic tools. You can have partial victories in this war based on a national
level, but this war cannot be won on this level. We have to begin an osmosis of
people from different European nations. We should develop our alternative to
euroliberalism in a language understood by all Europeans. This was also one of
the reasons the organizers invited people from nearly all European regions to
participate. There were unfortunately some omissions, out of limits in the
means available and the very short time constraints in which the preparation of
the conference. We believe this will be corrected in the future of our debate.

The Delphi conference could not of course “solve” all
problems raised above. It was an effort to put them as clearly as possible and
we believe to put the right questions represents at least half of the answer. Many
participants expressed their will to go on with launching a kind of Delphi
Initiative. We hope it will become possible in close cooperation with all other
forces and personalities interested in the same goals.

Athens, September 2015

(*) This article was published in the Russian review
Katehon (No.1, 2015)

www.konstantakopoulos.gr