Kalimera.That's the only word I can say in Greek.
Thank you very much for the invitation to stay here with you. For me, as a Spaniard, it is very special to be here with my brothers and sisters of the South in Greece.
We are suffering with you. We are watching our future in you and we are learning a lot of lessons from your experience. So, for me it is very important to stay here with you and very special.
Now we are talking about the challenge and the situation [in Europe] and I would like to hold my interview and speech regarding these concepts: the future is already now and, second, we have to be brave and optimistic. I will explain why.
When I say that the future is right now, it is because we are always talking how the future can be worse, and worse. When we can take a look, an overview, of our situation, we find that the situation right now is bad enough and should not get any worse.
Now is the time to take action and react! We cannot wait anymore because people are suffering, people are dying, people are committing suicide. We are people so this is our problem and we have to solve this problem together.
First of all, when we are talking about crisis, I would like to share with you what kind of crisis we are talking about and why we arrived at this point in the situation. The current structure of the economy is based on the capitalist system of free markets. We have to analyze what is the aim of this system, what is the real meaning of this system. The purpose of this system is only to have growth and profits. Nothing else. There is no values, there is no humanity; it is just to have profts.
This situation creates a bubble in economics. Unemployment, inequal wealth distribution, climate change and climate crisis, hunger, crisis of consumption, crisis of identity and, at the end, the crisis of our great value and luxury, if I may say that in Greece, democracy. All these crises are linked. It is not casual nor by coincidence. All these crises have one common link; the link is what the system is looking for: growth. Growth without taking into consideration the consequences.
And we, the Greeks, the Spanish, the Italians, the Portuguese, but also the Africans, the Latinamericans, the Asians and Pacific Islanders, already know very well that these kind of profits, this kind of growth has other consequences, on the human side. When we take a look at these kind of profits and the competetive system, we can realize what is the indicator in order to talk about the development of the countries. The indicator in order to be a part of the luxury club of the IMF and World Bank is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). What are the GDP benchmarks to be considered a part of the top or not? It is only economic issues that determine the GDP. But an important point I wish to share with you, there is a positive correlation between the poor people, especially youth, their outcomes and inequality. Recent youth unemployment has increased inequality as measured by gini coefficient by an average of 4% in all advanced countries and by as much as 8% in countries like Spain, Greece, Italy and Ireland.
Yet, what does inequality mean? It is very important to understand. There is a link between inequality and GDP. For one point of inequality in our society, there is 0.6% growth is GDP. What does it mean? If our system creates inequality, the GDP is increasing. Thus, if you have higher GDP, you also have greater power in the higher structures.
There is an alternative to simply equating GDP to prosperity. [Joseph] Stiglitz, an innovative economist working for the World Bank, discuses the Happiness Index. I only want to mention this because it is important to know if governments are only working for profits and economics or for our happiness. What does happiness mean? It is not an idiotic concept; happiness means health, education, equality, gender equality, structured societies living together.
Take a look at what it means to be happy in our society because people are currently depressed and are killing themselves due to the economic crisis. I must also link the concept of happiness to the fact that the media is feeding us almost totally negative news. Why is it that when we watch the news or read the newspaper all of the information is negative? A study has concluded that citizens are always under the pressure of bad news. There is a small depression in the ambient. The direct consequence of the consumer system in which we live is that people will have to pay a higher price for the things they will need to reduce their doubts and depression. This is a vicious circle and it is not accidental that we are receiving pessimistic messages from our politicians and institutions.
It is important for us not to be pessimistic any longer. Why should we consider that we can be happy? There are solutions and we must work together. Now, when we are facing contradictions between the human values and values of the economic system, we are able to discover that the general crisis is the paradigm of humanity. If we take a look at what is working in our social relations, we see that what really works is confidence, to be close, to be humans, to be true, to have values and ideals and work for dignity. However, the supporters of the new neoliberal system tell us that this is very idealistic because we have to be pragmatic. They say we have to think with the head, not the heart. A person without a heart and a soul is a zombie. This system is a zombie. We are talking about an economy working for the people, and not the people working for the economy. The system lost the heart, the soul, the human dimension.
The human dimension used to be always with the leftists. What happened is that the leftists turned to the center to catch the votes of the pragmatic people because they are in the middle and do not have a concrete idea about values. This turn to the center has made the social democratic parties in Europe and the world, in general, become a part of the marketing in order to sell a message without values just to collect votes, to get power and dance with capital.
The left was born to fight against capital. Now, we are dancing with capital, but capital does not dance with anyone, it yearns to be free. We cannot maintain this and my proposal is to come back to the left and limit capital and its consequences.
There are different lines on which we can work, but there is some disaffection with the democratic institutions; it is not a coincidence or accidental. We have Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, 15M clambering for democracy, public education, dignity; they are taking the flag of the values from the left. However, they abstain from voting because the message that they spread is that the left and the right is the same. What are the concusions to be made and the consequences? For myself, as a Spaniard and you as Greeks, we understand what has happened as a result of this movement and social reaction: abstaining gives the power to the extreme right. Now, illegitamate governments, but with powers, are cutting the civil rights, the health system, public education, employment, so now we need money to cover the debts that they already made in the past. Now, we have to pay for the same services that used to be conver for citizens. Its a good deal for them, they are in power and we are disoriented and disorganized. We are working as slaves, without rights nor hope, just to pay off the debts. This is the face of the right. This is what happens when we loss the power and legitimacy in democratic institutions.
In conclusion, we need to develop a new system of education more deeply at the European level.
We need change the structure of education because from the very beginning we are reinforcing competition with grades and with competition between schools. We must change these values of competition to cooperation. In Finland, for instance, they are already doing this cost-efficiently and achieving a lot of success.
Secondly, we have to reform the political system. We have to demand that the political parties become political parties again, with concrete lines, values and proposals. And once in power, they have to be committed to implementing the policies for which they were voted into office.
The third point is reform of democracy. We need a more real democracy and one tool to achieve this is with the participatory budget. Also, this point must be linked with education, educating people as citizens. It is very important to build a strong democracy to give freedom and dignity to the people. We need to change the productive system and keep an overview over how enterprises conduct their work with a view of putting social profit. All of society must work for the common good. We need financial reform and fight for a tax on interbank transactions. We, the people, have to pay a tax to use the services of the banks, but they do not pay anything. If each of their transactions was charged even as little as 1%, global hunger would be eliminated in one day! They know this yet they do nothing. Also, we need to eliminate tax havens. We need to tax the rich because the wealth distribution must be balanced at the global level.
We have to think along other lines. For example, the basic income is an interesting option. We need to create regulation in order to have freedom of expression and information. Free media, no manipulation. We need to have committment to education, democracy, information and the dignity of labor and equality of rights.
Thank you very much.
(Published in IUSY´s official site)
(Από την επίσημη ιστοσελίδα της ΔΕΣΝ)
http://iusy.org/en/component/content/article/13-presidium/278-athens-speech-by-the-general-secretary
