Find here the announcement and programme of the conference.
First of all one will notice that the former Greek finance minister Varoufakis has disappeared from the agenda. The four figureheads remaining: Oskar Lafontaine (former German minister), Stefano Fassina (former Italian minister), Zoe Konstantopoulou (former Greek parliamentary president) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (leader of the French Left Party).
A reason for this further zigzag of Varoufakis’s might be his announcement of a plan C. Claiming that the return to national monetary sovereignty would result in a disaster, he actually recovers the failed plan A – as if nothing had happened: No lessen drawn from the humiliating capitulation inflicted on the Greek people by the troika, Varoufakis continues to float the falsified idea of a Euro regime turned social. For the credibility of the Plan B project his departure is certainly no loss.
The idea proposed by Lafontaine of dissolving the Euro zone in favour of a return to a regime of politically managed exchange rates is a serious and courageous thing of highest importance and urgency. Actually it is not only a necessary step in order to defend the interests of the popular classes. It might turn out also as the route of withdrawal for the ruling elites as their supranational ultra-liberal Euro regime starts to falter.
For the time being, however, the crash programme against the popular classes keeps accelerating. But the political hegemony on the periphery is wearing out rapidly: Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy — everywhere cracks are appearing and the implosion could come swiftly if political resistance manages not to back down like in Greece. There is also Hungary and Poland not willing to obey any more and eventually also in England only the City of London holds on to the EU.
Germany’s taskmaster Schäuble has already set the tune of forward defence: return to core Europe which he had been fighting for when establishing the single currency but failed as the illusion of convergence had to be maintained. So who will then belong to that core and who is going to decide on it? Berlin alone? In order to avoid national clashes and the ultimate destruction of the Franco-German axis Schäuble’s German block might have to be replaced by Lafontaine’s more consensual return to the currency snake also on Washington’s behest. It might turn out to become the softer version of saving the European elite’s historic co-operation against the popular masses.
To put it candid clear: we have to end the Euro regime as soon as possible and in this sense we will lend full support to the Plan B initiative. But to defend the democratic and social interests of the popular masses this is not enough. The very supranational European Union needs to be dismantled altogether, which has been built in order to destroy the gains of the popular masses acquired along the 60s and 70s. The Euro is only the highest expression, the coronation, of the EU.
Paraphrasing Brecht: “The womb he crawled from is still going strong.”
