(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
#ThisIsACoup
Directed by: Theopi Skarlatos
Producer / journalist: Paul Mason
Watch the movie / series for free here.
or theintercept.com/fieldofvision/
When Greece stood on the brink of collapse in 2015 – where they have also remained since, to a greater or lesser extent – it was with great cheer that the left-wing party Syriza, with Alexander Tsipras in the lead, came to power. They promised to put an end to the blackmail from the global financial elite and to boost the national economy. It did not go as planned, as we know, for the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank refused to quadruple, demanding that Greece have to lace the money bag further. This in turn led to cuts in public benefits, privatizations and even more frustration and unemployment.
Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis eventually quit – he was not popular among EU leaders – and Tsipras continued after being re-elected, despite Syriza not keeping his promises. The had nor any choice but to play on teams with the EU, led by European "President" Angela Merkel. The Treasury was almost empty, and the banks had closed ATMs and branches, which had led to huge losses – not only for the Greek state, but for millions of private savers with money on book. Greece was closer to total disaster than ever.
Retail Vision. documentary ThisIsACoup which has the website The Intercept in the back, tells the story of the miseries of the Greeks and Syrizas. Day by day, we follow the course of events, closely with people and heads of state. The film gives us a unique, albeit slightly one-sided look at the process. Why not dig a little further into prehistory – in why the Greeks ended up in the bottomless debt that led to this crisis? Why not consider the relationship between the international agencies that maintain this debt system?
We do not need to dig long to discover that the loans that Greece has received are rooted in an economic model that enslaves rather than relieves states and their citizens in a difficult situation. On the contrary, the financial elites have a strong interest in keeping the weakest in place, trapped in a relationship of dependence on those in power. This applies as much to individual citizens as to countries facing supranational institutions – such as the World Bank or the European Central Bank.
The moral dimension of guilt. Why at all lend money to someone under conditions like you know the debtor can not meet? Why allow Goldman Sachs to help Greece hide its existing debt in order to acquire more and even heavier debt? Yes: to catch the debtor in an addictive relationship. To own him. IN Debt: The First 5000 Years David Graber goes to the root of the notion of debt. For the idea that one must "pay what one owes" is not primarily a financial question, but one moral, he says. He reminds us of the origin of the term when he discusses German Debt, meaning both debt and sin. This moral notion, Graeber believes, distorts what things are about.
The questions the film raises, however, are not limited to the fate of the Greeks – because it is about how far a neoliberal world order pushes both states and citizens to maintain their hegemony. The first step in another world order is, Graeber believes, to cancel debts that are impossible to pay, and prevent more such contracts from being entered into.
Make it smaller. Paul Mason, producer of ThisIsACoup takes up the thread from Graeber in his new book Postcapitalism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). The major debt systems that have ruled the world so far are being replaced by a more local economy based on barter and short, economic cycles, he points out. Here Mason sees hope. Through phenomena such as Uber and Airbnb, we can see the contours of a sharing economy that connects to the centralized cycles of values that characterize neoliberalism, he claims.
If the state facilitates the small companies and makes it more difficult for the large, multinational groups, we could end up in an economy with obviously less inequality and injustice, he further claims. Apple, Wallmart and McDonalds should not be allowed to cut wages and avoid taxes, they should be required to hold courses in union work instead. Inequality will be smaller, naturally enough, but we will also be able to get to a place where making money will be subordinated to more clear things such as having a roof over your head and working for food on the table. We can even imagine, he suggests, that money as such will be less important.
Mason thinks right – but is not this too easy? Is there really any solution in the direction he is pointing out?
Cosmopolitan tradition. Maybe. Mason focuses on the small conditions and how the state can stem the destruction of financial capital internally – but he also joins a cosmopolitan tradition where the basic idea is that the individual citizen of the world should be able to enjoy the same rights. In this sense, he also strikes a blow for citizens' salaries, where the individual, regardless of local affiliation and income, is guaranteed a minimum income.
Again, there is an almost naive utopian element here, but the logic is just as obvious – because if the citizens of Greece were guaranteed a livelihood, they would not suffer from the debt schemes the state was caught in.
Idealization and concrete utopias. Mason idealizes another idea here, some will probably also think he does it a lot, but it is appropriate to locate the specific places in the culture where we can take these thoughts further – because maybe they can be expanded, experimented with and developed in new directions. These are the simple and intuitively correct solutions we must continue to work with.
Mason's idea is that if we decentralize the economy, conditions will be created for smaller networks of services and goods, and thus the accumulation of capital in supranational companies will be reduced and perhaps eventually disappear. If the state helps the citizens with such a model and prevents large amounts of capital from being moved out of the countries, it will be possible to find a way of life that is based on real needs, not on slavery for capital.
But then we must also stop looking at debt as a moral issue, as something you have to pay back if you have acquired it. The fact is, as both Graeber and Mason point out, that the sovereign debt of countries that Greece incurs is not primarily debt – but a new form of colonialism in which the rich keep the poor in captivity.
