What Does Europe Want? The Union and its Discontents. Slavoj Žižek

      WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT?

      WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT?

      The Union and its Discontents

      SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

      SREĆKO HORVAT

      First published in 2013 by

      Istros Books

      London, United Kingdom

      www.istrosbooks.com

      © Slavoj Žižek, 2013

      © Srećko Horvat, 2013

      Artwork & Design © Milos Miljkovich, 2013

      Graphic Designer/Web Developer – [email protected]

      Typeset by Octavo-Smith Ltd

      The right of Srećko Horvat and Slavoj Žižek to be identified as the authors of their respective works has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

      ISBN: 978-1908236166 (print edition)

       ISBN: 9781908236845 (eBook)

      Printed in England by

      CMP (UK), Poole, Dorset

      www.cmp-uk.com

      This edition has been made possible through the financial support granted by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.

CONTENTS

      Foreword Alexis TsiprasThe Destruction of Greece as a Model for All of Europe. Is this the Future that Europe Deserves?

       1. S. Žižek Breaking Our Eggs without the Omelette, from Cyprus to Greece.

       2. S. Horvat Danke Deutschland!

       3. S. Žižek When the Blind Are Leading the Blind, Democracy Is the Victim

       4. S. Horvat Why the EU Needs Croatia More than Croatia Needs the EU

       5. S. Žižek What Does Europe Want?

       6. S. Horvat Are the Nazis Living on the Moon?

       7. S. Žižek The Return of the Christian-conservative Revolution

       8. S. Horvat In the Land of Blood and Money: Angelina Jolie and the Balkans

       9. S. Žižek The Turkish March

       10. S. Horvat: War and Peace in Europe: ‘Bei den Sorglosen’

       11. S. Žižek Save Us from the Saviours: Europe and the Greeks

       12. S. Horvat: ‘I’m Not Racist, but … The Blacks are Coming!’

       13. S. Žižek Shoplifters of the World Unite

       14. S. Horvat Do Markets Have Feelings?

       15. S. Žižek The Courage to Cancel the Debt

       16. S. Horvat The Easiest Way to the Gulag Is to Joke About the Gulag

       17. S. Žižek We Need a Margaret Thatcher of the Left

       18. A. Tsipras Europe Will Be Either Democratic and Social or It Will No Longer Exist (interview)

       19. S. Žižek and A. Tsipras ‘The Role of the European Left’ (debate)

       Notes

       Alexis Tsipras

      FOREWORD: THE DESTRUCTION OF GREECE AS A MODEL FOR ALL OF EUROPE.

      IS THIS THE FUTURE THAT EUROPE DESERVES?

      From the middle of the 1990s until almost the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Greece tended towards economic growth. The main characteristics of that growth were the very large and non-taxed profits enjoyed by the rich, along with over-indebtedness and the rising unemployment among the poor. Public money was stolen in numerous ways, and the economy was limited mainly to the consumption of imported goods from rich European countries. Rating agencies considered this model of ‘cheap money, cheap labour’ the model of dynamic emerging economies.

      The Vicious Cycle of Depression

      Everything, however, changed after the 2008 crisis. The cost of the bank losses that were created by uncontrolled speculation were transfered to national governments, which were in turn transferred to society at large. The flawed model of Greek development collapsed and the country was deprived of the opportunity to borrow, causing it to become dependent on the IMF and the European bank. And all this was accompanied by an extremely severe austerity programme.

      This programme, which the Greek government adopted without proper debate, consists of two parts: ‘stabilisation’ and ‘reform’. The conditions of the programme are presented as positive, in order to cover up the huge social destruction it has caused. In Greece, the part of the programme named ‘stabilisation’ leads to indirect, destructive taxation, large cuts in public spending and the destruction of the welfare state, especially in the areas of health, education and social security, as well as the privatisation of basic social goods, such as water and energy. The programme which forms part of the ‘reform’ deals with the simplification of redundancy procedure, the elimination of collective agreements and the creation of ‘special economic zones’. This is accompanied by many other regulations designed to facilitate the investment of powerful and colonialist economic forces, without the inconvenience of, say, having to go all the way to South Sudan. These are just some of the conditions that are in the ‘Memorandum’, the contract that was signed by Greece with the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank.

      These measures are naturally supposed to lead Greece out of the crisis. The strict ‘stabilisation’ programme should lead to budget surpluses, allowing the country to stop borrowing, while at the same time enabling it to pay off the debt. On the other hand, the ‘reforms’ are aimed at regaining market confidence, encouraging them to invest after witnessing the destroyed welfare state and the desperate, insecure and low-paid workers in the labour market. This would lead to new ‘development’; something which does not exist anywhere except in ‘holy books’ and the perverted minds of global neoliberalism.

      It was assumed that the programme would be very effective and fast, and that Greece would soon be ‘reborn’ and back on the path of growth. But three years after the signing of the ‘Memorandum’, the situation is becoming worse. The economy is sinking further, and the taxes are obviously not collected, for the simple reason that the Greek citizens are unable to pay them. The reduction of spending has now reached the core of social integrity, creating the conditions of a humanitarian crisis. In other words, we are now talking about people who are reduced to eating rubbish and sleeping on the pavements, about pensioners who can not afford to buy bread, of households without electricity, of patients who are unable to afford medicine and treatment. And all this within the eurozone.

      Investors, of course, do not come, given that the current bankruptcy option remains open. And of course, the authors of the ‘Memorandum’ after each tragic failure, react by imposing