Κώστας Β. Mποτόπουλος

“Metarithmisi” magazine, February 2009 issue

Any way you want to look at it, this will be a tough year both for Europe and the Socialists. The former needs to urgently find the strength to get out of the quagmire. The latter need to mobilise social forces in order to change today's balance of powers, which is to a large degree responsible for said quagmire. Times are hard for such turnabouts and the forthcoming European elections in June constitute a challenge as well as a trap. Crisis frightens - and fear is every politician's worst advisor.  Europe, instead of being the solution - like it could - passes off - when in the service of petty national and political interests - as a problem. For those of us who cherish Europe, and also Koestler, arrival may be, I am afraid, too close to departure. 

On our political side, though, there shines a light at the end of this gloomy tunnel. We Socialists have awareness of what is at stake as well as the means to achieve it. We have realised that it not enough for us to be vindicated by events (History, Mr. Fukuyama, is far from being over, to the contrary, it tends to become a platform for constant change) and that we have to “generate” events ourselves, the first of which is to dare speak of a different relationship between politics and finance, of a different perception of power and ultimately, of a different Europe. The Right traditionally threatens to usurp our ideas.  Guileful enough, Mr Sarkozy has already spoken before the European Parliament as a confident Keynesian Social-Democrat. Less foxy, but equally addicted to political survival, Mrs Merkel finally gave her assent to a generous “package” of measures (which she dared present as her own) against crisis; meanwhile Obama’s heavy transatlantic shadow is cast over the whole political spectrum allowing (with a little imagination) everyone to feel like his fellow and associate. Faced with the danger of letting politics and our political specificities become a shapeless amalgam (something that traditionally, yet now more than ever before, benefits the Right), we Socialists must deliberately and pluckily convince the public of our different approach and different solutions.