‘Democracy in Europe could disappear’

In his latest book, Swiss sociologist and United Nations Human Rights Council advisor Jean Ziegler denounces the misdeeds of the “globalised financial oligarchs” and accuses European elites of not realising the extent to which they are exacerbating a growing threat to the rule of law and national cohesion.

Your book contains many references to Marx and to Marxist philosophers and sociologists. A quarter of a century after the fall of the Wall and the disappearance of regimes of Marxist inspiration, is there still a place for such an analysis?

Marx is still relevant, even if he was wrong about one thing: until the end, he was convinced material deprivation would last for a very long time. However, today we could sustain 12 billion human beings. Putting this error aside, Marx established the critical and analytical conscience of the capitalist mode of production. The analytical tools he provided for financial capitalism still apply and allow us to better understand how it functions.

My book is intended as a kind of weapon in the fight of the new global civil society. This civil society does indeed exist, and it is flourishing. Consider the World Social Forum, whose most recent instalment in 2013 drew 15,000 people to Tunis to discuss alternatives to global capitalism. It is a resistance army formed of groups fighting on a number of fronts: the International Peasants’ Movement against the expropriation of land; Attac against the absence of regulation of the financial markets; Greenpeace for environmental protection; Amnesty International for the respect of human rights; and Germany’s second-largest union, IG Metall, as well as Austrian unions, against the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The partisans of the TTIP – namely Washington and the European Commission – have presented the agreement as a revolution that will create hundreds of millions of jobs within a common transatlantic market.

Rubbish! If the TTIP passes, all European standards and accomplishments in social, environmental and health protection risk disappearing. Under what conditions will the jobs in question be created? Judging from what we have seen so far, there is no reason to be optimistic.

The “trade dialogue” started in 2005 between the 70 largest multinationals and the American Department of Commerce resulted in the TTIP project, which has been negotiated in total secrecy since 2013: not a sole national or European MP from any of the European countries concerned knows exactly what is the scope the mandate of those negotiating the TTIP for the EU.

Put simply, the multinationals want to be freed of any constraints to the maximisation of their profits, such as the terms of patents, which they want to extend.

In the domain of health, environmental and food protection, this means dissolving European norms. The central provision of the agreement would set up an arbitration court to settle disputes, with judges appointed by the parties, and without the possibility to appeal before a national court! If this agreement is signed, if the European Parliament approves it, if the 28 Parliaments of member states ratify it and if it enters into effect, multinational corporations would be able to file complaints against any sovereign state that makes a decision contrary to its interests or its wishes. In short, if the TTIP succeeds, it would give multinationals a stranglehold on national economic and financial policies.

In your book, you speak of the risk of nation states disappearing. Is this the case in Europe as well, where nation states have been established for a long time?

Yes, the jungle is expanding in Europe as well, threatening the rule of law and social accomplishments. In Spain, 18.2 per cent of children under the age of ten are constantly and severely malnourished. In England and in Berlin, there are examples of teachers’ unions organising food drives for children going hungry.

Democracy in Europe could disappear. It will be Armageddon for democrats if they do not wake up soon!

Who needs to sound the alarm bells?

It is the traditional role of the political left, but the left in Europe is lacking in ideas. It is no longer the case that socialist movements and their intellectuals will deliver workers the necessary means to analyse, perceive and understand the world. The integration of European workers in the strategy of the imperialist project killed the theory and practice of solidarity with subaltern classes of the third world. As such, the violence inflicted on workers today is perceived as “normal”, an inevitable and intrinsic part of capital.

And we can see the consequences. In Switzerland, the most recent popular vote confirmed it. These recent years, the Swiss voted freely and often in a very large majority against a series of social advances that were in their interests, such as the extension of the length of their vacations, a unique national health insurance plan, the increase of the basic pension, the limitation of salaries of bosses and even the establishment of a minimum wage.

For a generation in Europe, we have been witnessing a resurgence of the ideas of the far right, a normalisation of racism and xenophobia. It has come to the point that, for a majority of people, they are matters of “opinion”, as legitimate as any other. Across the continent, xenophobic political parties and movements are winning over a growing number of voters. In France, the National Front is becoming the leading party; in Italy, the Northern League dominates in three regions; the New Flemish Alliance dominates Antwerp and the north of Belgium, in Switzerland, the Swiss People’s Party dominates the federal Parliament and, in February, managed to pass an initiative against free movements between Switzerland and the EU. Far-right movements are thriving in the Netherlands, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Denmark and England, and they clearly hold power in Hungary.

Is there a way to counter this resurgence?

National conscience. The nation belongs to those who adhere to the social contract and who respect the laws of the Republic. They cannot be excluded, wherever they come from. The plurality of cultural backgrounds in a society, as well as those of individuals, constitutes the wealth of European nations, the mark of these great civilisations.

Interview by Gian Paolo Accardo, translation by Mike Woods