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• 10 October 2007

"Padoa-Schioppa: "Le tasse? Bellissime

Un modo civile di contribuire ai servizi"

La repubblica 8.10.2007

Sounds good. Almost like the title of a book, which Attac Finland published some years ago. The title of the book was: "More Taxes!"

• 3 October 2007

The mirror of the mass media is misleading, as usual. It diverts our attention from the essential questions.

The Buddhist monks were the moral leaders of the uprising. But the monks failed to provide the needed political leadership.

A military junta can be defeated by non-violent means, if the people is well organized. But strong organization equals effective political leadership. Without that, the revolution will be crushed.

The Buddhist monks of Burma were very courageous, but they failed to estimate the reactions and moves of their adversary. They did right, but they did not do well enough.

Our political leaders are morally corrupt, and utterly so. Therefore, they are weak. Yet we must not underestimate their force and brutality. We must continue to analyze and assess what we are up to.

Naomi Klein provides some interesting new elements in her speech on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka3Pb_StJn4&mode=related&search=

• 28 September 2007

Should NIGD get involved in the "World Constituent Assembly 2020"-initiative? Through the silence of the early morning I can hear the friendly message of the Buddhist monks of Burma. It does not oblige me to wear a red shirt today, as so many SMSs and emails did yesterday. It just kindly asks me to be part of metta, their love and friendiness.

Is it possible to combine metta with social activism? It must be.

And even if I wore a red shirt today (the shirt I wear is actually green!), would anybody notice exept my companion? I live in the small world of a community in the countryside east of Borgå (Porvoo). We, who live here, still greet each other with "Hi!", or "Good day", when we meet on the village road. The anonymity and indifference of people to each other on the street of the city has not yet fully penetrated our minds. Unfortunately, we also continue our existence in rural idiocy, by which I mean the tendency to accept all the changes as destiny's will, something we cannot do anything about anyway, because it has already been decided by some big guys, up there...

The other day, a surprising multitude of villagers (considering that we are all in all about 300-400 people, children included) gathered at "Solbacka" (Sunny Hill), our local Maison du peuple, to discuss the so called "structural municipal reform". We were not actually so much expected to discuss the reform as to get informed about the referendum by the municipal manager of Pernå (Pernaja), the municipality to which our village belongs. One goal of the reform is that the existing ca 400 municipalities of Finland (416 municipalities were counted 1.1.2007; of these 16 are situated on the Åland Islands) merge into about 200 municipalities. In practice, this reduction in numbers will often (almost in every case?) mean that chunks of the countryside are merged with their neighbouring towns and cities. (Finland had 113 cities 1.1.2007. The truth is, however, that this figure includes a number of entities which are not cities at all, but prefer to call themselves cities, nevertheless...).

The choice of Pernaja is now whether to merge with one or the other of the two nearest cities, that is, Porvoo and Loviisa. In a month, we will have a local referendum on the issue, where we are supposed to vote for one of these alternatives.

The third alternative is to mark "Cannot decide" on the ballot.

- "Is this for the simple-minded?", asked one of the older villagers.

- "No, the "Cannot Decide" alternative on the ballot is required by the law", answered the municipal manager.

The ongoing "structural reform" of the municipalities in Finland is typical of all the other ongoing reforms. It comes from above. The big decisions are taken for granted and never discussed. For instance, the merger of cities with the countryside. Pernaja has been countryside since the Middle Ages. Now it is to become a city overnight. The national government offers Pernaja (and other merging municipalities) a carrot, i.e. a couple of millions of euros, if we give up our status of independent rural municipality, and choose to become a part of the city of Porvoo or Loviisa. The municipal mergers are actually a bit like business mergers, and the goal of the merger is indeed to promote our competitiveness, as is clearly stated in the draft agreements between Pernaja and Porvoo, and Pernaja and Loviisa.

The mergers are supposed to save money so that we will get better healthcare and education in the future! Well, that is bullshit. We all know the the public service will deteriorate and become outsourced and privatized. Yet we tend to think that the thing has already gone so far that we just have only two alternatives - Porvoo or Loviisa - unless we are simple-minded, of course.

What we have here is a local instance of what (some years ago, already) used to be called the golden straitjacket and which is the result of the international (transnational) financial laissez-faire in combination with the digitalization of information, and based on the military superpower of the USA. In short, the dictatorship of finance capital, and the application of the agreements of the WTO - by force, if necessary, as we can clearly see in Iraq.

How to liberate ourselves from this straitjacket? In our meeting at "Solbacka", I suggested yet another alternative: that all the municipalities of Itä-Uusimaa (the Eastern part of the province of Nyland-Uusimaa) merge together to form one bigger commune. It would still be small in comparison with the somewhat bigger capital, Helsinki, which had 560 905 inhabitants 1.1.2007, not to speak of larger entities like Nairobi or Rangoon, which has about 3,9 million inhabitants, and which is no longer (as I have only recently learned) the capital of Burma, because, in 2005, the present junta decided to move the capital to Naypyidaw, in order to tighten the military's straitjacket on the people.

Kai Nieminen, the poet and translator of Japanese literature, suggested that the decision be postponed to the next municipal elections (scheduled for 26 October 2008), and I supported him whole-heartedly, being, in truth, not too enthusiastic about my own proposal concerning the larger merger. My proposal was deemed by almost everybody as "unrealistic". Porvoo and the rest of the municipalities of Eastern Uusimaa are not yet ripe for that big merger, they said. - Well, with my proposal I also wanted to introduce the concept of Federalism, meaning "vertical division of powers" or "subsidiarity, as they say in the EU. My starting point was the provision in our Finnish constitution, which says that local government is separate from central government, and the municipal bodies are partly independent of the state. In accordance with this, I think that Pernaja should continue to have partial independence (relative autonomy) within the larger community of Itä-Uusimaa, which I am envisioning.

Realists hasten to tell me that the the transition to ever larger politico-administrative units will finally take away even the little independence (autonomy, sovereignity) which we had from before. They reason like Anacharsis: "Laws are like spiders' webs. They would hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in their meshes, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful." And hitherto, history has proven them right.

Yet...

- - -

Should NIGD get involved in the initiative of Telematics Freedom (and others) called "World Constituent Assembly 2020"?

I must say that I find the idea of a world constituent assembly to be somewhat mechanical. I would recommend the reading (or re-reading) of "Open Conspiracy" by H.G.Wells, a book from the 1920ies, which the author later re-baptized to "What To Do With Our Lives". Of course, this booklet by the famous author of science fiction does not contain all the right and relevant answers to the question of "world government" (a phrase which, by the way, occurs only once in the book, although it undoubtedly is its subject matter). No, far from it. But it can help to get rid of the illusion that world government could be, or will be, like national government.

In my opinion, we now need to fix the constitution of the European Union as a necessary step towards a "world constitution". I therefore propose that we try to re-actualize the draft treaty from 1984, which was approved my a majority in the European Parliament. Let the European Parliament become the constituent assembly of Europe in, say, 2020, if not earlier.

In the meantime, lets learn how to practice democracy locally. The constitutional reform must not be a dictate from above. It needs to be built from the base. And the process of the Social Forum is strategical. If it fails, it will have to be re-invented.

The other day, Walden Bello wrote:

"Late capitalism has an irreversible destructive logic. Instead of engaging in the impossible task of humanizing a failed globalist project, the urgent challenge facing us is managing the retreat from globalization so that it does not provoke the proliferation of runaway conflicts and destabilizing developments such as those that marked the end of the first wave of globalization in 1914."

But "globalism" could also mean the quest for the federation of mankind. If so, I feel more like being in favour of "globalism" than for advocating a retreat from it.

• 20 September 2007

To a mailing list of the European Attacs:

[...] thank you for your remarks on the crucial issue of the European weapons of mass destruction. I hesitate to comment further on this mailing list as long as the other list members remain silent.

But when I turn my head to the right, I see the title of a book on my book-shelf, which says: Never be silent!

One important turning-point came in 1977, when Jean Kanapa, and the majority of the members of the Parti communiste français with him, all of a sudden adopted the idea that France's nuclear weapons were necessary for the defense of the country. Thereafter, the "near totality of French society" has indeed accepted the French nukes.

What is the situation today? Does Attac France support the maintenance and the further development of the force de frappe?

That might be the wrong way to put the question. It is better to ask: Should Attac, as an international movement, ban the bomb? In my opinion: yes. Including, of course, the nukes of the French.

On this mailing list, which (as far as I can understand) is dedicated to the issue of the European constitutional treaty and to the elaboration of our vision of "another Europe", we may, in particular, discuss the legal aspect of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Many jurists are of the opinion that WMD should be criminalized. There is, for instance, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA). Perhaps Attac should make common cause with them?

Should a provision, or provisions on nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction be included in the text of the European constitutional treaty?

If "ban the bomb"-provisions were to be included in the text of the EU constitution, then the governments of France and Britain would of course have to agree to disarm the nuclear arsenals of their respective countries.

"Such a step would probably have a dramatic and beneficial effect to

reduce the inclination of other countries to join the club and to reduce

the addiction of the existing members to nuclear weapons", said the

chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Dr Hans Blix

(see http://www.forumoneurope.ie/index.asp?docID=1066&locID=1)

Dr Blix is right, I think. But the British government recently decided to build a new generation of Trident missiles. And neither Chirac nor Sarkozy have so far come out more in favour of French or European nuclear disarmament than Mitterrand.

In a period where the Russians, too, are building new bombs and nukes, we need to revive European Nuclear Disarmament, the movement of the 1980ies, which had as its goal to create a nuclear weapons free zone from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Guess who originally coined that phrase - it was the great general de Gaulle! But de Gaulle was wrong about the nukes; the force de frappe did not make France any safer. On the contrary. It became France's contribution to the nuclear proliferation and, by consequence, to the general unsafety.

de Gaulle, of course, was also an old-fashioned colonialist. Yet he actually had a vision of "another Europe", as you can understand from his slogan. Do we have one?

Greetings from the Western part of the taiga, somewhere in the middle between the North Atlantic and the Urals. [...]

• 15 September 2007

Michael Efler tells me that the draft constitution of 1984 has not yet figured in the discussions of Democracy International and the European Citizens' Initiative ECI. But it should be one of our common references. Because, the "Spinelli project" (as the 1984 draft used to be called) fills those basic requirements of a constitution, which are summarized on the new campaign website of the ECI. There are two important reasons why the movement for a democratic EU should refer to the treaty of 1984:

1. It is fair to do so, because the 1984 draft is a basic democratic law. Obviously, the text of the EU constitution cannot be precisely the same in the first decade of the twenty-first century as it was 1984, but here at least we have a good model from contemporary history.

2. It is politically wise to do so, because the movement for a just and democratic EU needs to apply the principle of hegemony. To understand what the principle of hegemony means in this case, remember that the building of the European Parliament is called Spinelli. The democratic Europeans must not leave Spinelli and Europe to the Neoliberals.

• 9 September 2007

Pain in the back region. Had to go horizontal after breakfast. This got me up on my feet again:

"One can cherish dialect without denigrating the standard language. In his Ansichten der Natur (Views of Nature, 1808), Alexander von Humboldt, a master of the standard language, several times praises the 'splendid power and flexibility of our native language'. As long as the dialects are able to resist the homogenising effects of culture, the federal structure in Germany is a political expression of a natural and historically-based diversity. Dialects keep federalism alive. Without the dialects German federalism would be nothing but an administrative orgy. The country will remain inaccessible to those who do not know its dialects. It is the regional languages that determine the reality of this country." (Martin Walser: "'German' Was not my Mother Tongue", in Standing Tall in Babel. Languages in Europe, Ons Erfdeel vzw, Rekkem 2007, p 88)

• 2 September 2007

Sunday. The centennary (of AS) is behind us. What festivities there might have been, I do not know. Hufvudstadsbladet published my article in Swedish and it is also to appear in Finnish in the Voima magazine. I have cabled out the English version ( Reconstitute the Spinelli Project ) via the mailing lists of Attac, NIGD and the European Social Forum, and submitted it to Open Democracy. No response at all sofar.

I had expected reactions - for or against. Either people are shocked or, much more likely, they have not noted and read the article. Sad to say, people just are not interested in the EU, or, if they are, it is because they are passionately opposed to... federation and federalism.

Attac and the Social Forum grew out of the protests against the financial globalisation, which has led to the present global dictatorship of the financial markets. True, it is a kind of dictatorship that differs from that of personal dictators. Nevertheless, the financial markets nowadays dictate the policies of the governments of the nations. And although it is generally understood that the structure of the world's finances is unsustainable, no serious attempt is being made to re-build it and to regulate these Leviatani impazziti e scatenati of today. The problem can no longer be tackled at the national level, by national governments. This is also widely admitted. However, the European Union, that is, a federal European state, would - in theory, at least - be capable of doing something. This was again illustrated by the recent measures of the ECB, which were intended to counter the emerging crisis. Of course, the ECB only acted as a financial fire brigade, by pumping out billions of euros instead of water. The problem is that nobody is lifting a finger to build a "crash-proof" society, that is, to eliminate the causes of the looming financial crash. On the contrary, the EU which the Neoliberals are trying to construct with their Constitution is supposed to allow an eternal "free and unrestricted movement of capital". That is precisely the opposite to what needs to be done.

The present generation of European Leftists, in their turn, prefer to think that they have been given the task to construct the EU ex novo. This seems to be the tendency of the Charter of Principles for Another Europe. It opposes Neoliberalism with a Leftist ideology, yes. It enumerates some more or less concrete measures that should be taken - such as, for instance, the cancellation of the external debt of poor countries. Yes, fine. But who is going to turn such progressive decisions into reality? The prime minister of Denmark? Gordon Brown? Sarkozy? Excuse me, but these Leftists are not political realists. They seem to have forgotten the lessons of Machiavelli. And of Spinelli, of course.

Besides, if it is not megalomania to build the European Union from scratch, then what is? And, of course, it is dangerous, too.

An overwhelming majority of the people I have met and spoken with at the Social Forums and other meetings of the social movements, have never heard about Altiero Spinelli and/or the European Constitution of 1984. The exceptions to this rule are: 1) the Italians, who often have a notion of Spinelli); 2) professors of political science; 3) persons who have worked in the European Parliament long enough to have actually met AS, or seen him in action.

• 17 July 2007

Dear Marica,

I have the feeling that you are laughing at me like Anacharsis laughed at Solon, the lawgiver. Over the years, Anacharsis has been proved right, of course. And you may also be right.

Yes, the laws and the constitutions are like networks. The weak and oppressed are networking for their human rights. But others, who are stronger, use networks as catching gear.

You wrote: "my view is that we should work towards a more democratic and socially cohesive E.U.. The nearer we are to this goal, the closer we get to a "people's" european constitution. So, to my mind, now that the prevalent forces in the EU have dropped the question of the Constitution, worrying about it by the Left is a matter of prioritization (what comes first)."

That is one traditional view on the European left, which believes that the EU is but the project of big capital. Another line of thought, however, regards the EU as a project of the peoples. That is the tradition from the Manifesto of Ventotene, written (1941) by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi. I hope Attac will continue in their footsteps.

I might hope in vain, though. Attac was not meant to become a state-building movement. Attac has not even been able to form a common opinion on the Tobin Tax. How could it present a common vision of the basic laws of society?

"It is really up to us now", you say. You are right. How could it be otherwise? Yet a question remains: what shall we make of our predecessors? Try to forget and start from scratch? Or try to learn from their experience, too? Hopefully, you will agree that it is wiser to answer yes to the latter question.

The experience of the young Spinelli: two world wars, two totalitarian societies. An analysis, which concluded: proletarians of all countries, unite! From that, another world was supposed to follow. But it did not.

"... The European federation did not present itself as an ideology nor was

it meant to lend a certain color to any existing power. It was the sane

proposal of creating a democratic European state (potere), in which

ideologies might develop, if people really needed them, but which was

rather indifferent to them all the same... It was, finally, and

foremostly, the possibility of democracy to re-establish its control over

those mad, unchained Leviathans which the European national states had

become, because the federal state would have hindered them from becoming

means of oppression, and would have been blocked by them to become one

itself" [This is my own ad hoc translation -- because Spinelli remains

untranslated into English.; the original is found in his autobiography

Come ho cercato di diventare saggio, (How I tried to become wise).]

And the experience of the older Spinelli, the Sino-Soviet dispute, for instance? And the Black Man's Burden, the new national states of Africa? Had anything changed? The Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union (1984) opened a window, but that window was immediately closed again.

"It is really up to us now."

- Mikael

• 14 July 2007

"Anacharsis came to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and said that he was

a stranger who had come to make ties of friendship and hospitality with

him. On Solon's replying that it was better to make one's friendships at

home, "Well then," said Anacharsis, "do thou, who art at home, make me thy

friend and guest." So Solon, admiring the man's ready wit, received him

graciously and kept him with him some time. This was when he was already

engaged in public affairs and compiling his laws. Anacharsis, accordingly,

on learning what Solon was about, laughed at him for thinking that he

could check the injustice and rapacity of the citizens by written laws,

which were just like spiders' webs; they would hold the weak and delicate

who might be caught in their meshes, but would be torn in pieces by the

rich and powerful. To this Solon is said to have answered that men keep

their agreements with each other when neither party profits by the

breaking of them, and he was adapting his laws to the citizens in such a

manner as to make it clear to all that the practice of justice was more

advantageous than the transgression of the laws. But the results justified

the conjecture of Anacharsis rather than the hopes of Solon. It was

Anacharsis, too, who said, after attending a session of the assembly, that

he was amazed to find that among the Greeks, the wise men pleaded causes,

but the fools decided them." -- From Plutarch, Lives (ed. Bernadotte Perrin) /

http://tinyurl.com/33bkwl

• 7 April 2007

The opening chapter of Moshe Lewin's book about the Soviet Century provides illuminating stuff about the unitarism^* and imperialism of Stalin versus the federalism of Lenin. Lewin has at his disposal sources which seem to have become public only in 1992, namely, "a rich collection of documents and articles by the editors" from the internal communication of the Bolshevik leaders during the last active period (1922) and subsequent agony (1923-24) of Lenin. According to Lewin, the thinking of Lenin about the (not yet existing) Soviet Union had successively evolved from a profound faith in the virtues of centralism into a "reconnaissance du caractère inévitable du fédéralisme"(p. 36).

^* This word is used in the French edition which I use: Le siècle soviétique, Fayard 2003.

• 29 March 2007

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones. - Machiavelli

• 19 March 2007

If you reveal everything, nobody will be interested. In order to get the attention of the public, you have to wake up its curiosity by, for instance, withholding some vital information.

• 18 March 2007

Wenn es nun schon ein schöner, seelenerhebender Anblick ist, ein Volk zu sehen, das im vollen Gefühl seiner Menschen- und Bürgerrechte seine Fesseln zerbricht, so muß – weil, was Neigung oder Achtung für das Gesetz wirkt, schöner und erhebender ist, als was Not und Bedürfnis erpreßt – der Anblick eines Fürsten ungleich schöner und erhebender sein, welcher selbst die Fesseln löst und Freiheit gewährt und dies Geschäft nicht als Frucht seiner wohltätigen Güte, sondern als Erfüllung seiner ersten, unerläßlichen Pflicht betrachtet. - Wilhelm von Humboldt

• 6 March 2007

"La France du général de Gaulle était plus socialiste que l' Angleterre de Tony Blair." - Said by the economist Liêm Hoang Ngoc in an interview about his book Vive l'Impôt.

• 1 March 2007

Spinelli could be against trade unions. I am referring to a passage in Diario europeo where he accuses trade unions of opposing innovation in the industrial production.

• 22 February 2007

Have translated parts of the 10 principles of the European Attacs into Finnish. Hope others will continue (Attacin 10 periaatetta). The contemporary critique of the financial and corporate-led globalization must become more stringent. Find elements of the necessary political theory in Spinelli's writings.

• 6 December 2006

Yes, but I'm afraid that we are too fixated to a certain idea of Europe that tends to leave out the rest of the world. And how about the nature of the European defense? There seem to be "federalists" who think that a defense can be based on weapons of mass destruction. But that is a racist and criminal kind of defense. Let the federalist ideas from Ventotene be born anew in a movement that takes the initiative to a de-nuclearisation of the Europe and NATO.

• 2 January 2006

La Fédération du Mali.

"What Altiero Spinelli said on the subject of European unity is valid for the creation of a world political order: the strength of an idea is revealed not by the fact that it imposes itself without friction at its first appearance, but from its capacity to be reborn out of defeat." (Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa)

• 3 December 2005

Why was the Spinelli Project shelved? Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister 1979; Ronald Reagan President of the USA 1981. Neoliberalism emerged as a dominant economical and political ideology. Spinelli's project - un potere democratico europeo - did not fit into the new mood of the rulers of the world.

• 20 November 2005

The distinction between innovators and immobilists, between those who have understood that the transnational institution (/il momento istituzionale-transnazionale/) must take command over the national content (il momento contenutistico-nazionale), and thus between those for whom the federation comes /after/ and those for whom it comes before the democratic, national reconstruction. (Angelino p. 45)

• 15 November 2005

"...La federazione europea non ci presentava come un'ideologia, non si proponeva di colorare in questo o quel modo un potere esistente. Era la sobria proposta di creare un potere democratico europeo, nel cui seno avrebbero ben potuto svilupparsi ideologie, se gli uomini ne avevano proprio bisogno, ma che era assai indifferente rispetto ad esse..." (Spinelli, Come ho tentato di diventare saggio, quoted in Angelino, p. 39).

• 14 November 2005

Reijo Kemppinen, in a publication http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:9GAMSbcfOh0J:www.eurooppa-tiedotus.fi/doc/fi/julkaisut/suomi.pdf+altiero+spinelli+site:fi&hl=sv&client=firefox-apublication on Finland in the EU, notes that the members of the first Europeran parliament drafted a constitutional treaty for the EU, on the initiative of Altiero Spinelli. However, "this treaty was to have no significance", Kemppinen adds ("jonka merkitys jäi olemattomaksi").

A different opinion is found at the site of the /British Management Data Foundation/ http://www.bmdf.co.uk/: "The Spinelli Treaty is arguably one of the most influential documents concerned with the development of the European Union" http://www.eurotreaties.com/eurotexts.html#spinellitext