CL

Let me say that I don’t accept this criticism. I don’t accept any part of it, and it’s not because I’m stubborn. Much of this criticism still simply doesn’t get what is happening in Europe. Sorry to be so brutal and upfront but it’s the reality.

From the very first moment, back in 2010, when I spoke about Grexit, I said that there could be two types of exit, progressive and conservative. Exit could certainly happen in a conservative way, they could even roll the tanks out. But I have always said that this has nothing to do with the Left, whose aim must be to achieve progressive exit.

A key point in this respect is that the monetary union and the currency are a focal point of class conflict in Greece and in a lot of other European countries. Class politics is integral to the euro debate.

The Left should aim to change the currency not because it has a fetish about money, but because it appreciates that money is the pinnacle of a set of institutions representing class and, the case of the euro, national domination. To change the currency there would have to be class struggle that would alter these institutions and implement social change.

This is at core an argument about the rebirth of the Left in Europe and the re-founding of socialism for the 21st century. That has always been the project for me.

Changing the currency in Greece and altering the monetary arrangements of Europe would require so many things to be changed that it would offer the chance of profound social transformation in favour of labor and against capital.

To be more specific, to change the currency, it would be necessary to have a debt write-off. But a debt write-off is a class question par excellence as well as bringing to the fore the question of dominant and subordinate countries in Europe.

To change the currency, it would also be necessary to lift austerity. But lifting austerity means attacking finance capital and reversing financialization in a most decisive way. It also means altering the direction of fiscal policy to serve the interests of the working people by reducing unemployment. These are class issues again.

To change the currency, it would further be necessary to nationalize the banks and put them under proper public administration, while implementing a debt write-off for household and business debts. This is again a class issue.

To change the currency, not least, would require a development program for Greece that would redirect development away from the problematic path of financialization and would restrengthen agricultural and industrial production. That again is a matter of class struggle that ought to be resolved in the interests of labor.

To change the currency, finally, it would be necessary to transform the state to allow intervention in the economy in the interests of labor, while strengthening democratic rights.

More broadly, for a progressive change of the currency, it would be necessary to create a new set of relations among European powers that would move beyond the confines of the essentially diseased European Union.

Europe needs new monetary relations that are not based on competition among nations but nor do they reproduce the diseased practices of the monetary union. That would provide a fresh basis for economic and social solidarity in Europe.