Tag Archives: EU

The Evils of Inaction: Capitalism and the Migrant Crisis

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With thousands of refugees hoping to be granted asylum in Europe, the continent has responded to the crisis with much resentment. Only recently did anti-migration demonstrators bearing neofascist slogans take to the streets of Warsaw, completely dwarfing the pro-migration rally that had taken place the same day. Their opinions are undoubtedly shared by many across Europe, as we have seen, it’s not only ordinary citizens who are to blame; the use of tear gas and water cannons upon migrants at the Hungarian border shows outright hostility between governments and migrants, and the fact that Swedish opinion polls reveal a far-right, anti-immigration party to be the country’s most popular choice show that mob mentality isn’t just present on the streets.

In an attempt to at least respond to the event, the United Kingdom has agreed to accept a quota of 20,000 refugees. Even a relatively small contribution such as this one was met with disdain, with many fearing for the stability of the nation after such an influx. It’s evident that none of those talking of stability have ever lived in Syria.

One thing is clear: thousands are pouring to our wealthy, stable nations to escape war, poverty and discrimination, and it’s as if we’re doing everything we can to shut off the flow of people and put up our national boundaries. The refusal to accept quotas or the angst about allowing more citizens to one’s country may be justified by a belief that Europe can’t cope with the influx, or that we won’t be able to provide for these people, yet these ideas are almost laughable if you compare the provisional capabilities of France, Britain or Poland with those of the dishevelled states these migrants are flocking from. When we finally realised that we can’t ignore the issue, it’s as though we reluctantly did as little as possible to get around it. Take the UK, for example. I firmly believe it could provide for many more than 20,000.  Perhaps not without harming the grossly unequal hierarchy of wealth that dominates in Britain, but some sacrifice of wealth and resources is obviously needed. Unsurprisingly, the wealthy nations of the west are yet again unwilling to sacrifice theirs.

In this respect, the recent migrant crisis is part of a far larger problem, for it is well known, for example, that there is enough food in the world to feed everybody, yet some live in luxury while others starve. This reflects the economic disparity between nations of the first and third world, which remains a necessity for either’s existence, and will always be preserved by wealthy countries simply by their refusal to change it, and jeopardise their affluence. Thus, their refusal to act, to utilise the economy for purposes that contradict their interests, is an inherent evil of the international bourgeois.  Europe’s refusal to take more responsibility is only a new manifestation of the same old problem; the unwillingness of the wealthy to change the status quo. We can only hope that, when such change doesn’t come, there are enough voices out there to insist upon it.

Suffering in the First World: Greece and the European Crisis

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To all those out there who follow the Maoist (Third-Worldist) tendency; who uphold the belief that the developed world – Europe, Russia, North America, and certain parts of Australasia and East Asia – is a realm of the wealthy, free of any real oppression, this entry is for you.

Very recently, the European Union offered a hopeless, desperate Greece its latest proposal for a bailout deal, which, whilst potentially easing the crisis in which the country is currently submerged, would carry strict measures in the way of austerity. The referendum as to whether or not the country should accept called for a rejection, with the population (now largely irritated with the EU and the straining demands they imposed on Greece’s already-disastrous economy) probably feeling they’d been down that road before. Yesterday, however, Prime Minister Tsipras announced that Greece would accept the deal regardless, undoubtedly sparking tensions among civilians and party members alike. Whether he had any confidence in the decision or simply yielded to the demands from Brussels we’ll never know, but either way, one thing is profoundly clear: the country is truly in dire straits.

There are, however, those who claim claim otherwise; a significant number entertain the illusion that the developed world, of which Greece is a member, is, by nature, wealthy. They claim that, unlike those in great swathes of countries like India or Bangladesh, who do experience genuine hardship, the populations of Europe or America lead comparatively luxurious lives. In short, they believe that whilst developing nations do suffer exploitation and poverty, developed countries like Greece know nothing of the sort.

This belief is upheld largely, though not exclusively, by those who adhere to the philosophy of Maoism (Third-Worldism), this being a particular branch of Maoist communism which values the idea that capitalist exploitation no longer takes place within the confines of national borders, that the first world countries have effectively become bourgeois nations which thrive off the exploitation of other, poorer parts of the world. The theory enjoys significant popularity among the communist movement today, partly because it can explain why the working classes in the first world are now shrinking in numbers while the third world proletariat is not, and it is, to some degree, accurate. It is obvious, for example, that the first world does profit from the exploitation of the third, with a great deal of our clothes and gadgets now produced overseas, yet the fact that developed economies exploit undeveloped ones is not to say that these economies do not cause suffering at home; Just look at the poverty experienced by many in Russia, or even America, – the heartland of wealth and capital – in which 49 million people, or one in four children (according to the documentary ‘A Place at the Table’) don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

Today, Greece is our example, and the recent disaster in the country certainly demonstrates similar horrors to those listed above; I’ve heard stories of how many have been forced to leave their modernised lives and work the land to survive, whilst the unemployment record in the country reached a record of 28% in November 2013, (to put it into context, the proportion of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression was lower than 25%), and homelessness, once a foreign concept to the Greeks, rocketed. Sadly, the rise in what BBC News describes as the ‘New Homeless’ coincided with the particularly harsh winter of 2011-12, leaving many exposed to the freezing temperatures with little more than a blanket to conceal them from the cold.

Greek Unemployment, 2004 - 2015

Greek Unemployment, 2004 – 2015

There is, of course, the argument which states that such hardship is a result of a recession, as opposed to the capitalistic exploitation of the Greek people, and thus, whilst capitalism ruins many lives in India or China, it is not responsible for this particular disaster. Yet a similar situation undoubtedly exists among what the advocates of Maoism (Third-Worldism) cite as the revolutionary proletariat in these aforementioned countries, for not everybody in this part of the world lives under the shackles of first-worldist exploitation, but the poverty experienced by the majority of the population (including these people) is still reflective of the unequal distribution of wealth caused by the former, and thus, the economic system can be held responsible for their impoverishment. The same can be said for the Greek population, as the crisis which ruined these people is rooted directly in the capitalistic economies of Greece and Europe, so threfore capitalism is still the force which reduced them to poverty.

Additionally, I believe that whilst refuting Maoism (Third-Worldism) is important, the crisis also serves a more general purpose in reminding us of just how vulnerable we, the capitalist world, actually are. It would be easy to assume, from the bubble of ignorance provided by a comfortable western lifestyle, that this kind of thing doesn’t occur in our neck of the woods; that capitalism today cannot bring about such misery, yet it’s important not to let yourself fall into this trap, for such a crisis could happen to you too. If nothing else, treat the event as a news story, one informing the planet that misery and suffering do, and will continue to exist in the first world.

Tsipras Takes a Stand…

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Recently, as you probably know, the winner of the Greek election turned out to be the socialist party Syriza, or ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’. Even the name is enough to suggest the ideological positions party members are coming from, alongside the fact that their former communist leader, Alexis Tsipras named their child Orpheus Ernesto, a possible tribute to Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. Their economic stance, however, shall be far more influential in the months to come: an opposition to austerity. When first hearing of them, I thought that their political and economic views clashed somewhat, given the nature of the organisation which they have sparked tensions within, this being the European Union.

I think we can all agree that the EU was founded on broadly leftist principles. Themes of proletarian internationalism can be seen within it, for example. To demonstrate this, the political climate in the United Kingdom,  (whose situation shall likely be similar to that of other countries) is one under which the debate on EU membership has assumed ideological characteristics: the left support it, whilst significant movement on the right oppose it.

But the leader of the British Labour Party, Ed Milliband, according to the Telegraph newspaper, was once forced to deny that he was an ‘old-fashioned socialist’ highlighting the extent to which socialism in mainstream British politics has been watered-down. Tsipras, on the other hand, whilst perhaps not reflecting the characteristics seen in the KKE (Communist Party of Greece), would obviously uphold and practise far more radical views than Milliband, and yet what the Greek Prime Minister intends to bring to the scene of international politics was described by Andrew Smart, in an article published by the Idler Academy, as ‘two fingers to the tyranny of the cult of productivity.’

It’s this description that I’m interested in, as the conclusion I’ve come to is this: The European Union is no longer a leftist organisation. Whatever socialist principles it was founded upon have dried up with the current recession, and perhaps only the most moderate of Europe’s contempory left see anything in the union anymore. Jean-Claude Juncker does not strive for ‘international justice’ and ‘economic liberation for the proletariat’ or even any moderate imitations of true socialism: He wants to put an end to debt, and will happily wait for the countries of both Eastern and Western Europe, no matter how dismal or prosperous their economies, to pay. This will translate to bad news for their citizens. A slogan used by the Communist Party USA; ‘People and Nature before Profits’, in my opinion, outlines a programme which the EU should adopt.

euro banknotes

Tsipras is the first to take a significant stance, and I can only hope he’s not the only one. I’d like to see this as the point at which the parties of Europe are beginning to realise that whilst debt presents significant concern, the demands of the people must come first. In any case, one can determine not only from the conditions causing the election result in Greece, but also the hostile attitudes it caused within the EU, the true nature of the organisation. Based in Brussels, the European Union is currently an aloof bureaucracy centred on the elimination of debt at the cost of wellbeing, when it should learn to value the peoples’ urgent needs more, especially in cases such as Greece today.