through europe

(music: ‘Stress’ by Justice)

As a matter of fact, economy is the religion of the current era. It is through the economy that the inhabitants of today’s world are given the possibility to achieve a better life (once the afterlife has disappeared), to enter the Olympus of glamour, and to be today’s equivalent of a good believer: that is, a winner. Like every religion, the economy also has its churches, its priests and its wars.

The main religious war ended just twenty years ago, when the crusaders of Western Capitalism defeated the infidels of Soviet Marxism. A few years of jubilee followed, through the 1990s, when the gods of growth, credit and liquidity (the holy trinity of GDP) cast their benevolent gaze all over the chosen people of the West.  But then, inevitably, as soon as the golden age ended, a new wave of war took over.

(Italian version of this article)

Europe will be the product of your mind

Spring 2011 : the European Union is on the brink of the catastrophe, as Neoliberal dogmatism is imposing the diktat of the financial class upon the interests of society.
Let’s look back, before we try to understand what has to be done.

In the year 1933 in his Discours à la nation européenne, Julien Benda wrote the following words :

Vous ferez l’Europe par ce que vous direz, non par ce que vous serez. L’Europe sera un produit de votre esprit, de la volonté de votre esprit, non un produit de votre être. Et si vous me répondez que vous ne croyez pas à l’autonomie de l’esprit, que votre esprit ne peut être autre chose qu’un aspect de votre être, alors je vous déclare que vous ne ferez jamais l’Europe. Car il n’y a pas d’Être européen.

(Italian version)

In 1931 Mussolini asked the Italian academics to swear allegiance to the Fascist regime. Only a dozen of them – out of 1600 – refused to subdue. The best minds were already abroad: Piero Sraffa was teaching in Cambridge as an exile, and scholars like Enrico Fermi who were working on the most advanced frontiers of physics were already in the US.
Something similar is happening today in this country where twice in a century totalitarian barbarism has found its political shape. While Berlusconi government is destroying the public school and the University, the academic class is not less coward than it was in 1931.

Il cosiddetto referendum di Marchionne ovviamente non era un referendum. Non era nemmeno un ricatto, era piuttosto una tortura. Un ricatto è limpido: qualunque cosa tu scelga ti schiaccia. Un ricatto che si fa chiamare referendum schiaccia egualmente, ma ripete che in quanto soggetto libero la responsabilità è tua. “I compagni litigano, i compagni si bisticciano”, dicevano i lavoratori da Mirafiori nei giorni scorsi. Litigano e si bisticciano perché la Fiat per settimane ha trasferito su di loro la responsabilità della crisi. Fiat non stava chiedendo un voto. Fiat stava delineando il futuro come una tenaglia: sussistenza o dignità. Sussistenza o dignità – scegliete. Avete a disposizione una o l'altra.

La crisi che inizia simbolicamente il 23 settembre del 2008 con la caduta di Lehman Brothers si presenta come la seconda grande, come una specie di prova apocalittica: o riusciamo a superarla oppure ci affonda collettivamente nella miseria.  Ci si ripete con petulanza che i paesi che fanno le riforme necessaria supereranno il prossimo giro, e quelli che non le faranno rimarranno al margine della storia in una specie di strada senza uscita.