- Ramon Franquesa,
Plataforma Emancipem-nos del Euro, Catalunya-Spain
Sovereignty implies the
possibility to decide on all matters affecting them, by the sovereign subject.
Popular sovereignty therefore implies the ability to hear and decide by
citizenship. The concept of Popular Sovereignty means that the State and the
government that represents it, is created and sustained by the consent of its
people.
In the past, tyrannies prevented the public
could access the government of their states, but it seems that today we are
moving to a new subtraction of popular sovereignty, based on void the
operational exercise of the state, particularly in the field economic. Thus
ordoliberalism, which will not be denied the right to vote majorities their
governments, which now arises is that these governments can not address certain
aspects of social life, especially in the economic area.
Europe has been the
cradle and the scene of great revolutions since 1789, by which the people has
conquered effective social control spaces on many areas, including economic. In
particular the twentieth century Europe met, the conquest of the 8-hour day, the
Russian Revolution and after World War II, the development of public protection
that guaranteed a set of economic, social and labor rights, well above other
places of the world.
But the construction of
the EU has ended up being a perverse process, which has served to reverse these
social conquests. The EU is justified to avoid a repetition of the
confrontation between peoples, but has ended up being the cause of a level of
social breakdown and nationalist confrontation, which brings us back to the worst
moments of the last European history.
The first trap of this
process was the creation of a single market without structural policies and
fiscal harmonization, or social rights. Conceived as something beneficial for
consumers, has finally become a hurricane for employment and the poorest and
most backward productive forms of Europe. This polarization between regions and
social classes increased. A later this freedom of movement of capital was
added. The liberalization of goods and capital, without a common framework for
labor rights and tax duties, and carried the seed of a race to the bottom among
workers, which could erode the social progress achieved. But would the loss of
monetary sovereignty to the late 90s, which caused a qualitative leap of
imbalances.
When the crisis of 2007
the effects were revealed as clearly negative, then the official discourse step
to blaming the victims (and not the executioners of this process). racism
between states and within states increased. While financial across Europe were
rescued generously of their speculative ventures and avoided going to jail for
looting failed savings and investments, the southern states were under the
control of the Troika and black men. The Germans their media would tell them it
was laziness of the Greeks what had caused his misfortune (hiding half working
many more hours). Among the Catalan liberal government, he blames the other
Spanish disaster of his health, hiding that this caused mostly by a wild
privatization, which has benefited large multinational health and alternative
members of the Nationalist government.
To prevent a response of citizens to their
clamorous failure, European institutions, while recognizing their subjects the
right to vote, they ensured that the European Parliament does not have powers
(or budget) to solve the most pressing issues of citizenship. In the speeches
bloomed panegyrics to the concept of European citizenship, but in practice
created an institutional framework that deprive ordinary people essential
economic powers: the right to control the currency, the possibility of an
effective fiscal policy, capacity governments that choose to develop economic
and social policies favorable to the majority, etc.
A clear example of the unwillingness of
transparency, the ban was to make a collection of signatures aimed to bring a
popular legislative initiative to the European Parliament on TTIP negotiating
with the US.
The imposition of the
euro, is a matter of particular importance in the removal of sovereignty. With
the possibility of promoting policies invigorate economic activity was closed,
control of the currency was derived from the fully competent parliaments of the
states, to ECB outside any democratic control. An independent ECB of national
parliaments and the European Parliament, but highly linked to private financial
powers. By the way, without any modesty they would contribute most of their
managers (who had been career officers, specialists from the public university
or research, trade union cadres, etc.).
The introduction of the euro, in a process
that started with the Treaty of Maastricht, marked the end of the regulatory
role of central banks and the privatization of control of monetary policy. But
their ability to gangrene spread at the productive fabric of the countries of
southern Europe not manifest itself until almost 10 years later. For several
years, there was a huge influx of speculative capital into southern Europe,
which caused rising prices and declining productive investment. Although wages
were frozen, the level of consumption was not affected in the short term,
because it was easy access to credit for time. That banking and financial
decontrol, would cause an expansion of speculative activities, which would
drying possibilities employment-generating investment and material wealth.
When the crisis of 2007
all jump into the air, people began to crudely feel the consequences of the
trap had placed them. It was then that people (and many so-called experts who
merely act parrot the official line), warned that the loss of ability of states
to regulate the economy, at no time was accompanied by any attempt to Community
institutions assume that role. On the contrary, those institutions explicitly
renounced to take responsibility for addressing the problems that the model
could cause: unemployment, radicalization of economic cycles, regression of
income distribution …
That was evident not
only that business cycles still exist under capitalism, but states losing the
capacity for monetary issue, had lost a public instrument to balance income and
expenditure, an instrument to curb the speculative economy and an instrument
for regain competitiveness without wage employment or sacrifices.
The cycles had not
disappeared and the recession took possession of the situation with a hardness
greater than that of 1929. Then it was revealed that the European monetary
system, by subtracting the monetary emission control and service of public
institutions, involved the loss of a fundamental mechanism of protection of
domestic production and put the state at the foot of the financiers. If the
sovereign monetary issue is the banks that are in a weak position (power see
devalued by inflation, the credits received), with the serious euro the state
that remain at the mercy of the price of borrowing money. This governments of
those States, the institutions that citizens could choose and control, remained
in the hands of financial power.
Through this mechanism,
financial power get them to be representatives of the theoretically sovereign
people, who they saw forced to impose terrible sacrifices its people.
Of course this would
cause great political and legitimacy conflicts to those governments.
If we return to the
issue of popular sovereignty and mean by it the ability of citizens to decide
on all matters affecting social life, it is easy to see that one of the
problems of its exercise, is the huge field that it may affect.
Indeed, since social
life involves potential decisions on many aspects, a way to hijack sovereignty
in practice, in its deepest sense, it is to introduce noise and hide potential
major decisions, under thousands of options banal questions. That is, disorient
citizens on the priorities of the problems faced, the smaller dimensioning, to
hide those who have the greatest impact on social life.
If we share the
appreciation that the central axis of social conflict is the distribution of
wealth, it is easy to deduce that the greater tensions in the exercise of
sovereignty should lie around this issue.
But those who benefit
from a privileged position at the expense of hurting majorities, try to avoid
the class struggle, particularly in the exercise of sovereignty in ways that
can harm them. They are aware that the vast majority. if they have the right
information, they require the exercise of its sovereignty. To avoid this they
will seek mechanisms to try to obstruct the exercise, in various ways, to avoid
a citizens’ rebellion.
A route can be drugging
society with sex, gossip, football, reality shows or video games: getting young
unemployed hunt Pokemons instead of bankers. But if the recession hits hard it
may stop working. The Romans who were very wise recommended “panem et circuses”
but the circus alone does not seem to work, because people think and have needs
that can not always forget.
Another way is to try to
show that there is no alternative, relying on the use of economic, social or
biological science. In recent history we have seen how the ruling classes have
been covered on racism in genetics or the economy, to try to prove that there
was no alternative. In the past the justification for this absence of
alternative had an ideological or religious nature (God has created a world of
rich and poor, etc.), today however the alleged lack of alternative is based on
economic brainy character disquisitions, who repeatedly history shows no
empirical validity, but academia and hegemonic media persist in defending as
absolute truths.
Another resource for
power is the repression of citizens. A permanent state of alarm is created,
inventing or driving if an external enemy, which inevitably resorts to
terrorism to justify state terror against its own people is necessary. So, the
answer is repressed, social networks and media are controlled. Freedom of
expression is limited. You will get to imprison or kidnap those who leak
information, while the data on tax havens and privileged undergoes silence.
Also they prohibit or limit labor struggles unpatriotic. It uses the lockout,
blacklisting, arrests of trade unionists and students. Suspiciously, nowhere
cuts have been applied to the army or police. Nothing new under the sun,
Europeans have already seen that movie before the first and second world wars
in the twentieth century.
But they also have
another resource: try to disguise economic contradictions, enhancing conflicts
of different nature. To hide the most pressing problems for people, a good
method is to highlight other conflicts in order to provoke the subjective level
disorientation of priorities.
From the economic point
of view should be clear that the first problem that citizenship is to ensure
conditions of material subsistence. Primum vivere is the most basic. Of course,
this does not justify people give to decide on other less peremptory aspects,
such as the religion they profess or priority between languages they use in
their daily lives. But it should be obvious that in order to exercise
sovereignty in matters of this nature, it is a precondition to exercise their
decision, have ensured food, clothing, housing or health.
Conversely, the better
the conditions of material life of a people, the better their quality of life,
the easier it is to find ways of living and accommodation between cultures,
beliefs and nationalities, the easier it is to resolve the contradictions in
social life are given within the people, inside the great social majorities.
But the system is not at
all to resolve social contradictions and conflicts within the people, but the
divide et imperia. They encourage any conflict. Nothing new under the sun. In
recent decades we have seen in the Third World as alternately funded all kinds
of religious or nationalist faction from the lobbies of power, sometimes
against emancipatory movements, sometimes simply to sell weapons and
appropriating resources of devastated countries by the war. The CIA, NATO,
large banks often supported and financed both warring groups, or groups that
will later be cataloged irreconcilable enemies and absolute evil incarnate.
Those who think that
Europe is out of this escalation is deceiving. When the system breaks down and
threaten to empower the people, the economic powers not renounce stimulate
conflicts in the cultural field, in areas such as religion or nationalism. It
is no coincidence that problems that the people of Europe believed overcome by
the development of history, now reappearing with extraordinary virulence,
precisely at this time.
Of course, we must make
clear that perverse that job, does not imply the illegitimacy of those
feelings. On the contrary, national or religious minorities are subjected to
unfair, provocative assaults of marginalization or treatment, which feeds the
confusion and conflict within the popular classes.
The crisis has led to a
growing malaise within our societies. Today our citizenship is subject to a
terrible psychological pressure: accept that we live worse than our ancestors.
And people seek explanations for this and many unfortunately, are in conflict
of cultural identities. And this, despite the objective explanation of his
discomfort is simple and obvious: we live worse because it has kidnapped the
ability to control the richest. And this oligarchy has been able through the
use of the media they own, to introduce into the agenda of the daily life of a
part of citizenship other priorities. They have managed to alter the perception
of reality of large sectors of the popular classes.
In the Spanish case, the
loss of living standards and rights, has favored the increase of secessionism,
particularly in Catalonia. But it has not been the only factor. The cuts of the
Constitutional Court over the Statute of Catalonia which had been endorsed by
popular vote and the Spanish parliament, contempt for the Catalan language and
culture from the state government, which is perceived not as an asset but as a
problem and that seeks to appeal to Spanish patriotism against separatism, to
legitimize itself in times of turbulence, they have been factors that have
stimulated certainly secessionism.
But what has been the
decisive engine of this social breakdown? The people of Catalonia, and their
industrial sectors are devastated by globalization, but has suffered severe
recession with cuts in their living standards. Between 2008 and 2011 there was
a growing social reaction: It was in Catalonia where the Platform of People
Affected by Mortgages that just laying siege to evictions, where a strong
student response to rising enrollments arises, where his teachers made huge
demonstrations were born which they placed the government on the ropes, failing
in his attempt to oppose parents to teachers, also in Barcelona on May 11th in
solidarity with Madrid, a process of occupation of squares against the system
would begin… All this culminated in an autonomous mobilization, which
overflowed the old political forces of the left, which surrounded the
Parliament of Catalonia and forced its president to go by helicopter on June
15th, 2011.
It is at this point that
the conservative Nationalist Party, which had supported the payment of the
debt, which had repeatedly supported the Ordoliberals measures of the state
parties (popular or socialist) raises the independence option, as formulated out
of the crisis.
For a part of the
population of Catalonia (especially professionals, people in rural areas, but
also young people), this would be an attractive option. It was necessary to
fight in the street, the enemy was hundreds of kilometers, and now the police
would protect demonstrations rather than beat. Certainly was more attractive
resolve that conflict through a referendum, which did not continue in the hard
struggle developed rapidly from 2008 to 2011. A sector of local entrepreneurs,
including Catalan media companies (which in the past glorified the dictatorship
that prohibited the use of Catalan) were placed at the service of the project.
In a few months, the pace independence 10% to almost 50% and became the axis of
Catalan politics. Of course, it was used by the popular party, to ask the sick
citizenship of their corruptions and cuts, it was essential to give support to
save the Spanish homeland.
Catalonia today we open
a process of secession that divides in half our population. The feeds separatism
claim the right to decide and popular sovereignty. But the paradox is found in
the conservative nationalist party that leads the current process, it has
imposed its partners to question the EU resign or stay in the euro.
independence of Spain, by advertising for a better country, but renouncing
citizenship restore monetary, fiscal and decide on economic policy sovereignty.
Is rhetorical appeal to a limited sovereignty to the flags that will not solve
the real problems, which are at the base of discomfort.
How to intervene in such
a complicated situation? Of course there are no easy solutions in the context
of real social life, because feelings are deeply accented in people. However,
it is possible to act from a perspective of inclusion, seeking creation of
popular unity, overcoming cultural conflicts, placing strongly to the fore
economic class conflict and seeking inclusive formulas that allow a common and
harmonious coexistence, that is fully respectful of the cultures of each
person.
To advance some
proposals in this direction we could say:
1. Explaining what are
the real causes of the malaise objectively, ie the dictatorship of finance
capital through the implementation of the European Commission and gadgets as
its monetary system or TTIP.
2. Raising regain
popular sovereignty in these areas, with argued and articulated proposals.
Especially in the economic sphere: break with the euro system, non-payment of
the debt, oppose TTIP-CETA-TISA, etc
3. Articulating
complicities in the European framework to propose formulas for cooperation
among peoples, in a direction opposite to competition, to address the
aggressions of the great financial powers and the states and multilateral
organizations that protect them.
4. Promoting from the
recognition of the right to decide on all (including the borders that every
human group is granted) and from the recognition of popular sovereignty,
coexistence and co-management proposals to control from society, excluded from
the social majority today, management of economic policy.
If it comes between
remain equal or vote independence, today the people of Catalonia is divided in
half. But instead there is a majority position in favor of a federal
constitutional process, if possible. Neither the Spanish nationalists, nor the
Catalan nationalists support that may be an option. Some prohibit any kind of
referendum, others in their informal referendums leave only choose among all
equal or independence. But it is still possible to build a large majority for a
constitutional output, together with the rest of the Spanish people.
The last elections gave
the best result to the forces of a new type (En Comú Podem) that surpassed long
nationalists of all kinds and again allowed to place in the foreground the
economic contradiction, class conflict.
Moreover social
movements continue to maintain their pulse and patient perseverance in the
defense of schools, hospitals, pensions, unemployed, against evictions, etc.
showing that the struggle is the way, there are no shortcuts that allow us an
easy and glamorous exit to dispossession are suffering. Our separation is not
between those who speak Catalan or Castilian preferably, but among those
suffering cuts and those who benefit from them. The people of common (ECP) and
CUP-CC shared daily struggle and repression. It is harder, because it forces
continue fighting in the streets, to stay in front of the media system (in the
hands of two nationalisms), to fight plutocrats who live in our territory and
speak like us, but are not ours. It is harder, but it is the only effective way
to regain sovereignty and emancipate.
If a state allows an
illegitimate foreign debt, which reached 100% of GDP, its people are not
sovereign. That state becomes an executioner of his people, to extract an
eternal and unpayable income, which tend to increase the weight of the interest
generated. The euro has become sovereign states of old, colonial governments in
a metropolis resident financial parquets and private banks that control the
ECB. Changing borders and create new states to submit to the European Monetary
System diktat, is not to achieve any sovereignty. Slavery is to keep most
different forms.
Any exercise of
sovereignty that meets the primum vivere is obliged to question the debt and
the monetary system, that causes and maintains. To perform this exercise of
sovereignty and survival a high social support and complicity with the citizens
of the neighboring nations will be necessary. In the case of Catalonia,
including other nations that make up Spain. Therefore, if we want to break that
cage in which we have locked in the Spanish case it is necessary to reach
formulas of cooperation and solidarity among peoples and nations first; and
also with neighboring peoples who shared prison sentence within the EU and its
monetary system.
September 16, 2016
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario