Neue Debatte - Special Edition - Essay on Left Strategy Left Strategy - 04/2017 | Page 2

Reinhard Paulsen
E VERYTHING IS AT STAKE !
W HAT TO DO ?
TESTING THE BASICS OF DIEM25
DIEM25, the “Democracy in Europe Movement 2025”, was initiated in February 2016 by
a group around the former Greek finance minister and professor of economics Yanis
Varoufakis as an encouraging pan-European attempt for democracy. With initial enthu-
siasm for pan-Europeanism and Yanis Varoufakis’ upright standing against the odds as
Greek Finance Minister in 2015 many democrats and socialists joined in. Now, after
having thoroughly reflected on what we are doing, campaigning and heading for my
enthusiasm has turned into deep concern.
There have been too many movements,
campaigns or initiatives that started en-
thusiastically and soon turned out a flash
in the pan, normally because the basic line
turned out illusionary. They stagnated and
stayed independent, small, political
groups, or - and this is much more tragic –
they ended in terrible social dead ends. I
think of the Arab Spring, the Orange Revo-
lution of Ukraine and also of Syriza in
Greece.
So there was no way around for me to
work over the fundaments of DIEM25 pro-
foundly not to get bogged down politically
in the end. I am a sort of a veteran in so
cial conflicts (age 69) and possibly can help
by adding substance to our issues.
This article is an abstract of the longer test
report, which is now available as a pub-
lished book in German, a English version in
the making: “My dear Yanis … an Essay on
Left Strategy and a longer Open Letter to
Yanis Varoufakis”.
On States and Democracy
Yanis Varoufakis is a former finance minister of Greece
and the most influential initiator of the der pan-
European Movement Democracy in Europe Movement
2025. (Foto: Valerij Ledenev, flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The most often used political terms today
are “democracy”, “democratic” or “de-
mocratize”. We have to grasp this form of
government in history in terms of the
origin and central task of states, class
struggle and capitalism. I agree to Noam
Chomsky’s “You can’t have capitalist de-
mocracy!” Both are not compatible. There
is no greater lie than the central state-
ment of capitalist nation states: “All state
authority is derived from the people!” In
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