What sort of Europe?

"What are the alternatives for those of us who are socialists, democrats and internationalists who do want to cooperate closely with European neighbours?"

"In theory it would be possible to have a genuinely democratic United States of Europe, along the lines of the American model." This "would involve the complete abolition of the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Central Bank in Frankfurt" which "would be totally unacceptable to the European establishment."

"What the Left in Europe should be working for is a Commonwealth that brings in all the nations, east and west, committed to cooperate with each other and harmonize their policies, step by step, with the consent of each of the parliaments, rather like a mini UN, with an Assembly and Council of Ministers to oversee it, but with no power to impose on those countries that want to pursue policies that meet their own particular circumstances. This would need to be underpinned by the closest links between the trade unions and other progressive popular organizations across the continent."

Tony Benn, in "What Sort of Europe?", in "Free Radical. New Century Essays," 2003.

Tony Benn's idea of a "Commonwealth of Europe" is an excellent one and is explained further in his 1992 book "Common Sense". It is at present the option that I favour.
I think this is a very good perspective on the present problems we face with Europe.
Those advanced by the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 are even more relevant and appropriate.
Please see: https://diem25.org/ Democracy in Europe Movement

This type of thinking is an important contribution to the current debate for those of us on the left in England who recognized that the current EU is tyrannical and antidemocratic, and could not for such reasons bring ourselves to vote to remain in it.

I am well aware that Yanis Varoufakis himself quite ardently campaigned for a Remain vote in the UK Referendum. I disagreed with him on this particular point.  His view was that the European Union is an important project which the UK should - in spite of all the serious problems the EU undoubtedly has - persevere with. Yanis Varoufakis has also said that the EU is a democracy-free zone and is not sustainable in its present form. In the referendum, I thought that it was better to send a message that the EU's behaviour was simply not acceptable. So I have voted Leave with no great hopes for the consequences other than that the EU is made more democratic by my action. Unlike Nigel Farage, I have no particular desire to see the EU totally crumble.

I agreed with Farage's analysis of what the leaders of the EU have been up to and I found some of his speeches to the EU to be compelling exposés of its malfeasance. But I totally despise and reject in every way Farage's nationalism and the xenophobia and the anti-immigrant sentiment that he is linked to.
For example, UKIP was mainly an English movement - why then did it refer to itself as a UK movement? In rejecting the EU in its present form, I in no way endorse a nationalist Europe of any kind.

I am a libertarian socialist. I would not describe myself as a "Marxist" as Yanis Varoufakis does. I am not sure if I have the same views on economics as he does. But in my attempt to understand economics - if I don't already - he is one of the major thinkers that I would look to to explain it.

I hate racism and nationalism and am not in favour of any migration controls.
I resent being associated with racism, nationalism and anti-immigration views simply because I voted to leave the EU.

I believe that what the German-led EU did to Greece was effectively racist and the rhetoric expressed by northern Europeans and particularly by Germans with regard to the social destruction of Greece by the EU (things like "Greeks are lazy", "they deserved it as they don't pay their way") was effectively racist. I have seen so much evidence of this that I cannot believe that this problem is not acknowledged more often. Perhaps it is regarded as so acceptable that it passes without comment.

I don't believe that the satirical linking of contemporary Germany and the EU to the Nazis by some Greeks was entirely inappropriate. The EU is not nazi, but it is tyrannical and arguably racist.

I voted to leave the EU in solidarity with the Greek people and to send a message to the EU and particularly to the Germans that what they did to Greece was not acceptable.
I regard my vote for Brexit as anti-racist because of what the German-led EU did to the Greeks.
The destruction of the Greek public sector by the EU did involve people dying.

In "And The Weak Suffer What They Must?" by Yanis Varoufakis, he says in the opening pages that the European Union "lost its integrity" by "crushing Greece".
That was the major reason that I voted to leave the E.U.

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As an anarchist and libertarian, I saw my vote to leave the E.U. as striking blow against two illegitimate bases of power - both the U.K. and the E.U. The result has significantly chastened and weakened both the U.K. and the E.U., with both entities feeling the need to justify their existence and their powers. In this sense I am very pleased with the result of my principled vote.

Another thing that I would like to say about my left-wing vote to leave the E.U. is that I believe it is by no means unrepresentative. Seeing as most voters are not nationalists or UKIP voters and never were, the result must to some extent represent a lot of people who voted to leave the E.U. but who are otherwise moderate in their views.

I think a lot of people voted for Brexit for the basic reason that they felt, perceived or suspected that the E.U. meant that power was being taken away from them, whether this is true or not. In other words, for essentially democratic rather than nationalist perceptions and reasons.

Were a similar referendum held in almost any E.U. country, I suspect that the result would be close or similar to the result in the U.K. and for very similar reasons. The people who run the E.U. know this very well.

Democracy, freedom and self-government are not ideas that are restricted to the nineteenth-century. They are of course still relevant today in the twenty-first century. If those who support the E.U. ignore this, and impute all opposition to it to nationalism, xenophobia and racism, they will never really get to grips with why the E.U. may be unpopular.

The threat of Freudianism

"First, Krauss and Friedell, then Poppers, Jaspers, and Voegelin, and, most recently, I have argued that the psychoanalytic "movement" is a deterministic-historicistic theory of human behaviour and a collective-coercive practice of social control."

Thomas Szasz, in "Anti-Freud. Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry" , 1976.

Freudianism is potentially an enemy of an open society. The same applies to Marxism.

Zizek is to philosophy what Trump is to politics

Zizek is to philosophy what Trump is to politics.

Donald Trump is a disaster for politics.
His views and policies on the environment alone make him a disaster not just for the USA, but for the whole of humanity.
His aggressiveness and irrationality are an ordeal for humanity.
We must start building a political alternative to him and make sure he is not re-elected in the USA in 2020.
He is an incompetent fool.
He is supposedly popular but is not really. His success was achieved at the expense of radically discrediting others rather than because of anything to his own credit.

Slavoj Zizek is to philosophy what Donald Trump is to politics.
He is also an incompetent fool. He is also supposed to be a creditable and popular figure but is not really anything of the kind.

People on the right are very pleased about Zizek's views and supposed popularity, because they can point to his stupidity and ridiculousness, but also to his popularity on the left, as an easy way to discredit the left and alternative politics in general.

He is a convenient way to mock and discredit any kind of large scale opposition to the capitalist West, since he is ambiguous in his attitude towards Stalin and Stalinism. Any alternative to the capitalist West can be portrayed historically as impossible and incoherent given the disastrous errors of Stalinism, as well as its contemporary manifestation in thinkers like Zizek. Zizek's and others on the left's ambiguity about the Soviet episode allows for people on the right to say that the left is in totality an alternative that his been tried and failed. Zizek serves as the icing on the cake of capitalism's supposed victory over the left at the end of the Cold War.

Zizek's vagueness is also something that works to the advantage of the right, since they can point to the lack of rigour and coherence on the left. His simultaneous criticism of the left and adherence to the left further weakens the position of the left.

Whether his vagueness, incoherence and provocative comments are deliberately intended to discredit the left and alternative politics in general is not really relevant.

That they do so is enough for us to make sure that we reject and ignore Zizek as a thinker, and look for others to hold out the hope of something better than what we have now, and to keep the flame of a political alternative alive.

In a similar way, Zizek's status as a "famous philosopher" allows those who, for whatever reason, would rather people did not philosophize or take an interest in philosophy to discredit, dismiss and write off philosophy as the province and concern of insubstantial buffoons and peddlars of nonsense.
Zizek is undoubtedly an insubstantial buffoon and a peddlar of nonsense, and he does a disservice to the status of philosophy.

Some examples of Zizek's blatant folly include the following assertions:
It is acceptable to vote for Trump;
Trump is a centrist;
Macron is the same as Le Pen;
There is no such thing as nature.

Human beings are either male or female.

Human beings are either male of female. This is a fact of human life due to the biological characteristics of the human species.
There are negligibly few - if any - real exceptions to this reality in our own species or other animal species.
How have we come to the ridiculous situation where we are starting to deny this reality in our society and in our political culture?

Scotland to legislate for "third gender"

https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/scotland-set-create-legally-recognised-third-gender/


It is unfortunate that one of the intellectual origins of this kind of nonsense is possibly in the philosophy of existentialism - a philosophy which I have a lot of time for.

I believe that Simone De Beauvoir's statement that "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman" is, on a basic level, clearly mistaken.

I believe in human freedom, but there are some things that are incontrovertible realities. Biological sex is one of these incontrovertible realities.

Individual human rights are a good thing and ideals in which I thoroughly believe. But biological realities cannot be changed.

On the Centenary of the Russian Revolution

On the Centenary of the Russian Revolution.

It's a hundred years since the Russian Revolution. Should we celebrate or weep?
Should we be glad the revolution happened?

I believe that we would have to be blind to historical fact to not want to lament that the Russian Revolution happened.

As is so often pointed out the October Revolution was a coup d'e'tat by the Bolsheviks, and not really a revolution. Revolutionary changes followed without doubt, but what actually happened in political terms was essentially a coup d'e'tat rather than a revolution.

I think Lenin did lead to Stalin and history's judgement on the revolution has to be a harsh one.

As has been pointed out, we must learn lessons from what happened.

What we urgently need at the moment in 2017 is revolutionary changes in what we are doing to our planet. We don't need an authoritarian non-democratic revolution. But we do need revolutionary change. Revolution is not necessarily the one solution, as the slogan goes.

I am a fan of the political views of Karl Popper, who insisted that an open society was a requirement for allowing changes to society. The Russian Revolution did not lead to an open society and it was not really intended to lead to one.

We need change but we need democratic, from the bottom up change. We do not need change that is imposed and dictatorial.

Democratic, non-violent revolutions are possible.
And I think that a lesson of the Russian Revolution must be that we should try to achieve democratic, non-violent revolutions, if and when a revolution is something that is necessary.
The revolutions that overthrew the Soviet Empire between 1989 and 1991 were mainly revolutions of this kind.

There is more to be said of course and I will write more when I get the chance.