 I think, well, we all fascinated, I imagine, everyone here by what's going on in Europe. So I'm going to treat this actually as a conversation. What I'm going to do is ask her a couple of questions. But from the very beginning, please feel free to come in or ask anything you want, say anything you want. Because we do think that we're a small group. It's better to have a conversation rather than have a monologue or even a dialogue. So we're planning this as quite casual. And I'm just going to begin with the question that I think many of us actually have, which is that when you read the papers, we all know about the crisis. Maybe we can talk a little bit more about the Eurozone crisis later. But there is a broad narrative about the crisis that comes out certainly in the Indian press, which is of German taxpayers refusing to keep putting the bill for all these lazy southerners. Basically, that's the broad perception. And therefore, imposing very severe austerity, which the countries of peripheral Europe are now, or the people in these countries, are less and less able to manage. And therefore, the rise of protests. So there is this image of, shall we say, the big bad wolf of Germany in the shape of this rather motherly Angela Merkel, but nonetheless coming bearing down on the rest of Southern Europe. And also a perception that if anything, the German public is completely with her in imposing the austerity, and even worse actually thinks that they should not be asked to give anything more. So I'm going to first ask you, Christina, how true is this perception that the German public is behind Merkel in this? Well, I would say from the perspective of those who are active against the austerity imposing government in Germany at the moment, this is a very true perspective. So we kind of adopted this notion of, we're doing politics in the heart and belly of the beast, like normally the left American activists were talking about themselves. So I think there is some truth to that. And the perception of the crisis in Germany and on the everyday level is a little bit complicated. I think there are a lot of people who feel that they got through the crisis alright, and they don't want to mess with that. So it's like, okay, we kind of got away and we're looking to Spain, to Greece and to all these grievances that people are enduring there, they feel like, okay, they got it worse or they got it bad and we have to stick to our, well, trail and try to get away with it. And so there's this tendency of blocking ideas of solidarity, ideas of being linked to the fate of these other people. And on the other hand, I think the perception of the crisis has very much to do with the fact that there has been a very strong low wage strategy being imposed in Germany from the, starting with the social democrats at the late 90s, and which basically came into effect in the early 2000 years. And they implemented the biggest low wage markets in the western industrial countries in this not very big country Germany and impose the work fair regime. And so there was significant change in what people have as wages, what level of stress they face in everyday life, how they get along. And it was very hard for that to be part of an open discussion or a public discussion. So a lot of people felt that this is the way it has to be. And so I think as a consequence for the discussion on the crisis, for many people, half the feeling, well crisis is their everyday feeling. So it's nothing new. And the other side is that we've been giving like for 10 years, there's been no wage raise. There's actually been a lowering of the wages of about 30% in an average view on that. And so we've been giving all this time and we're not willing to give anymore. And so by the press hinting them on the notion that this is just because the Greeks want more and more and you have to give and give, people refuse this feeling of being willing to give and just shift the targets from who is making them pay away from the government, from their everyday experiences and their work life towards the outside enemy of Greek and all these lazy people there. So I think that is a very strong notion in the everyday life although there are attempts to organize protests. You know, one of the fascinating things from the outside is that say in 2008, 2009, the enemy was finance. And everybody knew the enemy was finance, governments, the real sector, investors, and people of course. And everywhere you went, even in Europe, there was this feeling that finance has to be reined. Now we are in a worse situation. We are going to enter a deeper financial crisis. And in fact, those who had caused the earlier crisis are not only scot-free, but they got bailouts and were able to give themselves larger bonuses, et cetera. But the enemy is no longer finance. The enemy is other people in different countries. How did this happen so quickly, I mean? I wonder too. Well, I think we had this rather, for German perspective, rather large demonstrations in 2009 and 2010, which were under the banner of we won't pay for your crisis. And this was immediately understood as being against banks, capital, the leading politicians. And then with this European crisis spreading and this idea of austerity and of overspending being at the core of this crisis, I think it's partly because the whole thing was depicted in how it was depicted in the media as well, but this, maybe, or it is just because people had the feeling that there's nothing they can do about the finance system. I don't know, it was a very successful ideological shift that was produced very much by the government and by accompanying discussions to locate the crisis away from capital, away from the banking system at the periphery of Europe and blaming them for that. And actually there's, I think if we would organize today with this, we won't pay for your crisis slogan. I think people would understand it the other way around, like being hinted against the, because that's kind of, yeah, against, we won't pay for the Greeks. And sometimes there's even an everyday level of experience of these things, like, for example, those people who have a little bit of money in the banks and they kind of have this very modest way of investing. The bank will advise you what to do and then you go there and they say, yeah, well, you might want to shift this money here because of Greek defaults, you might lose your interest here. So there's a very, very everyday experience of, okay, I have a lot of money here, experience of, okay, I have a personal interest in Greek not defaulting on their debt, which is, of course, besides of that, and for all those people who don't have any money in the bank, not of any interest at all, but it's like, and it's going to be coming back to there. It's sort of implicating everybody in the, I just want to give a little bit of background because everybody may not be following in detail the Eurozone thing, if you don't mind Christina. Look, you know that there is this whole thing that first Greece and then now Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and possibly Italy, okay, are in positions near default, but basically Greece is at the top of the line and the perception is it's because they've overspent, okay, but this is a narrative that misses out that what really happened after the Eurozone was formed is the creation of a common ability to borrow externally for all of the Eurozone countries and what that meant was that these countries in the south got very large capital inflows. A lot of it from German banks, Austrian banks, Dutch banks, French banks, in fact those four countries banks account for 80% accounted for 80% of the money held borrowed by these countries, except for Greece, which had fudged its government accounts with the help of Goldman Sachs, okay, and this was only discovered when the new socialist government came and PASOC came and they looked at the accounts and discovered that everything had been fudged and then a bit like idiots they went and announced that this is not the real deficit, it's much more and then there was this big capital flight and collapse, but in the other countries it wasn't the government, okay, the government has actually been running budget surpluses, so Spain and Ireland had 3% of GDP surplus, they were not spending too much, the opposite, okay, even today Spain's public debt to GDP ratio is lower than Germany's, so it's not true that they've all been crazy and overspending, what happened is that their banks got into big trouble in 2008 with the financial crisis and to save their banks, they had to take over the bad loans and they ended up holding the losses, okay, so particularly Spain and Ireland, basically they are running deficits because they gave large bailouts to the banks. Having done that, they're now in deficit and then the bank, the same finance is turning around and saying, oh my God, look at you, you have terrible deficits, you have to immediately cut wages, cut spending on hospitals, cut spending on schools, et cetera, et cetera, okay, so the story is different from the story that we get told, it's actually a story of finance capital creating imbalances which have become unsustainable and then because they're unsustainable there's a crisis and then the burden of the crisis is then paid for by the people, okay, I want to ask you now, Christina, this story we never get, right, so that's the media, this is something, I mean look, we all know what the media does in India but if anything, it's hard to think of a worse media but possibly the US kind of tops the list but look at even European media, I mean how big a role do you think they are playing even in intensifying this crisis? Well I think maybe it's worse than the US actually in a way that because of the privatized media sector in the US there is some kind of polarization, you will get people like Bill Maha or John Stuart or people who are really addressing these issues and in Germany, aside from some left newspapers which are not spread very far, there has been up to, I'd say this, I'm not sure about the date but in the beginning there has been basically Unisono tale told about Greece that was exactly what we just depicted and there was nobody telling the different story on the scale that is basically received on a large scale discussion. There have been some slight changes in that, there are some people saying okay, if the people won't have enough money to consume anything there will be an economic problem especially for countries like Germany who live on exports so somebody has to buy these exports otherwise that we will be part of this spiral as well. So that has changed a little bit but basically there's, which is extremely strong is the ideology of debt, that is wrong, debt has to be fought and this whole discussion that you need public debt for investment for example or that there's some kind of justice even in making, in taking up debt to build a bridge for example. I mean why should only one generation pay for a bridge that is used by free so that is the sense of having debt on that. You get the money and all the generations pay for that and this whole discourse is basically gone and it's far into the social democrats, the whole social democrats, even partly the left party that the people say we can't leave our children and grandchildren with all these debts as if they would have to pay personally for the state debt. So it's like, it's a very, very strong discourse and it's almost impossible to implement an alternative to that because people think of themselves and think of their fridge and their bank account and say okay debt is something that is bad and so we all have to get rid of that. And the other thing is that I think throughout the era of neoliberalism this, the idea that public spending and public infrastructure and public social, the social system is some kind of wealth that has, that is to be cherished. Wow, no problem. So this notion has been very much reduced in favor of privatization and it's hard to pick up on that and to push that again. So the answer on the neoliberal crisis is only more of neoliberalism and more of austerity and not so much turning around in this perspective. Let me open, is there, I mean, would anybody like to ask something to Christina make a comment at this point? Because I have some more questions but I mean as I said, this is a small group so we can, we can, you know. Please do. Get into discussion at any point. But if you don't, I want to take up again, you know, on this, this, the struggles in Europe, okay? Last year, all summer was about occupying. In fact, even till winter, even in the midst of the snow and the ice, there were these tents and it was actually quite inspiring for a lot of people. It's all, it's all kind of evaporated. What happened? Well, I would say there are different paths that were taken. Some of them, some of the big struggles aren't gone. They are just no longer reported on. There has been a two million march in Spain which was basically absent from media in Europe. And the people still hit the streets. What they don't do anymore or what they are not allowed to do anymore is stay there. So the people, the police is very forceful against occupation, tents and all these things. And there are some parts in Spain where the miners have taken up some astonishing militant version of self-defense or claiming their subsidies for the mining area with very hard, fighting the police very hard on that. And the police came back on them and then just moved on to their huge demonstration they were having in Madrid and they hurt so many people so that there is a new mode of police violence, I would say that is driving these people off the streets. And of course, there's only so much sitting in the street that you can do, you know, if you stay in the street for weeks and months and nothing is changing, people will say, you know, I can sit at home and people have to care more and more for everyday things like how to organize food, how to organize rent or living and which relative to move into when if they have to sell the house and things like that. In Greece, I would say there's Greece and then this is partly true for Spain as well. There has been a shift from not only protesting in the streets but deepening the resistance to some everyday solidarity networking, building food banks, building committees to care for housing. It's a little bit similar like in the US where the term is used is occupy the hood. So go back to your neighborhoods, organize the people there and organize your everyday things together and then come back out and address the questions that are not able to be solved in the neighborhood. So, but still there's, and the other thing is at least in Greece, there has been a change in or it's not, there has been a development that the formerly, the protests were very distant towards parliamentary representation. And with this new left party, the Syriza Coalition, they were able to integrate a lot of people of this protest into this organized version of protest. And it's not like, now we're all going to the parliament and things are only happening in the parliament but they organize both at the same time and they organize these activist solidarity networks as well. And it's a little bit similar in Spain. The Ischera Unida opened up their lists for indignados people from this organized people from the streets to be part of their parliamentary group. So, but still I, of course, I mean, things have calmed down a little bit in the US and Canada. Well, in the US, at least there has been a very forceful police as well. In Canada there are still protests, right? Yeah, right, especially in Quebec, although Quebec kind of has this very special story that they have this not very high student fees that are about to be imposed. And that brought out so many people on a daily ratio of demonstration and then brought in towards talking about austerity and spending every day. So it wasn't exactly an outcome of the Occupy Movement or something, but it's still a huge everyday protest there. Okay, I'm going to come back to the good news, if you like, or the progressives later, because we may as well end on something that makes us feel slightly more optimistic. But I want to ask you about the other part of politics that has grown in Europe now, which is the right. And in different forms, but it's a peculiar kind of thing which is going on, because you have Bepi Griglio and that group in Italy, which is, I mean the only defining feature is that he says, all politics is a joke and I'm against the Euro. And then you have the other groups which are quite openly racist, I mean Marine Le Pen and et cetera, et cetera. So what do you see in store for Europe on that front in terms of? Well, that's very hard to say because the moods are changing very quickly, but if you look, for example, France, at Greece and some parts of Spain, there's a very vivid racism against immigrants, which is a so common development in the crisis that there are those foreigners, those poor people who are, and they organize raids against them. So they really, they get really hunted in this. There are some food kitchens that are asking for Greek citizen cards before they give food. Yeah, that's the right wing. They propose these. The right wing in Greece especially proposes that social security and solidarity networks and all these are just for Greek citizens. And there are some openly fascist movements in Europe who very much try to take up, yeah, well, the one thing is not so complicated. They're just organizing all these anger and trying to blame. And of course, it falls along the line of blaming. For example, in Germany, blaming the Greek, you can easily jump on that for a right discourse. In Germany, the organized far right isn't that strong because of our very special history, but still this everyday discussion is strong. And then, I don't know, it's always been like whether left is weak, the right grows, and at the moment, the left has some difficulties to take the place and claim the explanation and the resistance towards the crisis for themselves. I mean, I think Greece, they did actually very good. I mean, they had like 26% in this latest election when they had what was it, 4.7 in the one before. So that was, I think that is a huge victory because it could have easily come the other way round. So that, I think is something where the rest of Europe should learn from how to combine the forces in the street, forces in parliament, and an everyday way of resisting and organizing solidarity there. Now that I was looking at in Germany, how strong are the Nazis? Has there been some influence of the Nazis or anything, but not as many as 100, I should say. On the Occupy movement in 2006, I wouldn't say that there hasn't been anything. The ones part of the neo-Nazis in the Occupy movement, there's more like, people like the, who are not talking about politics at all, might be stronger in this Occupy things besides the rather leftist people there. But the Nazis, I think, that is too chaotic for their interests in a way. The neo-Nazis depends a little bit on who you count in, but if you look at who gets elected, they're between 1.5% and maybe in some areas, about six, even some, and then there might be some areas where, for example, all young men under 30, in this group, there might be like 25% people as a, what do you call it? 25% in favor of the Nazi party. But that is only in some areas. At the moment in Germany, there has been a major scandal about the right-wing extremist party because it just became clear that there was a series of 10 murders over the last couple of years, murders of Turkish and other people throughout Germany, and it just became clear that the Secret Service was very much involved in these organizations and the party as well as the group who conducted all these murders. It's not very, it's very hard to say something really definite about that because the Secret Service got rid of all the papers related to that, but it's a major scandal and so at the moment it's not, there's not a public mood in favor of the Nazi party. There is an everyday reception of racism, of anti-Muslim racism raising every now and then, especially in the crisis, especially after 9-11, and in Germany the poorer immigrants and Muslim often is used as a synonym and then there are all these discussions similar to the UK in a little bit, all these discussions about oh, they are just a different culture, they don't get rid of their religion, it's them, not us. So this is going up and down a little bit and there has been, for example, a former social democrat who has been put out a book, basically an insult against Muslims from the beginning to the end and he was one of the best-sold books that was ever sold on the markets in the last year, so it's hard to tell. You know, this, I was just thinking when you were talking about it, this is something we have too which is that okay, here is capitalism facing probably the biggest crisis it's faced in a very, very long time and certainly it's getting bigger and in a sense, it's also you can see that the solutions are not available to it partly because of, in a sense, I would say that the way the Anarchy of Capitalism is playing out also in a political sense, by which I mean that we know of the Anarchy of Capitalism as the fact that there's this competition between capitals and every individual is doing something for his or her own good, they feel, but it ends up actually being worse because of the way the whole thing works, right? The process works and I think what's happening now is let's say in the Eurozone as a classic example that finance has created a situation where the political leaders now cannot take the steps that will rescue finance. In other words, it's really capitalism caught in its own tentacles. It's a very strange kind of crisis where they have created a politics, this narrative of the hard-working north versus the lazy south, which is false, but it is preventing the kind of integration which finance now needs to survive because otherwise you're heading for the biggest banking crisis that we have seen ever and they can't do anything about it. Yet the left is unable to capture the popular imagination and this is something we know in India too. It's the same problem we face and sure we can blame the media. I think it's a huge part of the explanation, the media, no question about it, but it's obviously not the only explanation. So this is just, I'm just thinking, I don't know how seriously I want to take this, but supposing I put it to you that maybe one of the problems is that the left, what we have become is essentially reactive. We say, don't do neoliberalism, don't cut, don't do austerity, don't do this, don't do that, but we don't really offer a very clear, pragmatic, practical vision. I don't mean it in the sense of when people say what is your alternative because for every particular situation we have alternatives. We can always say you shouldn't be doing X, you should be doing Y for that particular situation. Certainly in India we have very clear alternatives. I have German friends who are economists who have very clear alternatives about how to resolve the Eurozone thing, and I mean Peter Wohl and Detlef and Heiner, they're always banging on about, and I believe them. I take their word for it. The Keynesian left alternative is there. I don't mean it in that way. I mean that we don't have, shall we say, you know, the grand vision which gives us that push to be more positive. And I think maybe that's because we've become very hesitant. You know, all these decades have been pushed back and pushed around, not decades, maybe one decade at least of being pushed back a lot has made us less, you tell me what you think, I don't know, less confident about actually envisioning. I've been going to Latin America a lot recently and maybe I'm very influenced by that because the difference in the discourse is so palpable. They are not talking about what not to do. They're really saying, okay, give us ideas, what more can we do here? What shall we push there? Then it's completely forward-looking. It's completely positive, you know? And I'm wondering maybe we're not, maybe part of it is that we're not being sort of energetically positive. You know, we're being very sort of reactive and saying don't do the following because, you know, it will be all terrible, which it will be. Yeah, I think you're right in a way that, I would say we are lacking concepts that are able to combine some kind of utopian, pragmatic and everyday cultural approach. We always have one of those. We have either utopia, say, okay, socialism should look like that, or we have a pragmatic, well, the left reform of the financial system would be the following. And we have people who are working on this everyday culture and everyday mode of production level. But I think some kind of, in our institute for critical social analysis in the Rosalexmark Foundation, we started to favor the term of transformation over meaning some kind of a combination of reform and revolutionary prospect in a way that is stressing the idea of, you know, entries into this transformation here and now, but you still need this horizon of how do you decide and what is capturing, as you said, what is capturing the imagination of people. And I think in Europe, especially in Germany, but of course in Eastern Europe as well, there is a problem with socialism in the popular imagination. People just don't think of something really great and fun and desirable when they hear socialism, which is, I think, which I think is, is... I think in Western, it's really like it's very intellectual, almost like, they write wonderful books who only read themselves, so it's not like they find the language of the people. And they also, they stay apart for themselves, but because sometimes they feel also they are, they know better, they are the better ones and they don't mean to, not mean to, like going to a village festival. Exactly. And what's exactly... Sorry. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. You first, and then we'll check that, yeah. Just to respond to this whole question of terminology and the ways of articulating what the problem might be. And so on. What I actually found very exciting about the occupation was in fact exactly this, that there was new terminology, there was a new way of articulating the problem. That it's the 99% versus the 1%. The moment you do that, it's something that makes sense to everybody. Everybody gets it. It's not something that you highly intellectualize. It's not something that is only reserved to the professors and the university and so on, but ordinary hope like us, we get it. That's one thing that I found exciting about it. The other thing that I found excited about it is the fact that Occupy actually, by focusing on the 99% versus the 1%, actually brought tax to focus on inequality rather than on poverty. And poverty is something that is easy to be in. In the sense that you can always say, oh, you know, these unfortunate people, we must have more social spending or something, whatever, or we must have some safety net into which the poor can sort of fall and not break their heads. The moment you shift the focus from this poverty onto a system that actually perpetuates inequality, there's a slight change in the discourse, in the terrain of the discourse. And that I actually found very exciting. And in that sense, I'm not so, I'm not sure that Occupy has, in that sense, run out of steam in the sense that obviously, the actual tactics of the move of occupying Wall Street and wherever it is, occupying all this. That obviously is no longer there. And you're absolutely right, because you know, that there very soon you're running into problems of, actually, sort of taking the, of how to maintain the occupation, in a sense. But I think that the, hopefully, I don't know, I'm asking you the question, that do you think that the questions that have been posed by of are going to be as easy to get rid of, as the actual tactics have sort of seem to have a physical effect? Okay, Shankar also. So, two questions, one's that you might have said that this financial system has previous politics with Germany sort of following, or that are in us, how it is described, sort of working clear. Secondly, when we talk about the left party's lack of vision, and which, I mean, for me, the reality is, I think, not having a vision is sort of, by the vision, because having a vision asks too many questions to you. And in a sense, being negative about things, that sort of repeating structures is, in a sense, more important than propagating a vision immediately. But in case that you have a vision, how would you describe this vision, because it doesn't raise too many questions? I was just wondering what kind of force is behind this Occupy movement? Is it autonomous or spontaneous groups, or are they victims, or prospective victims of the crisis? And what sort of response has there been of the main German left party, that is D-Linkers? And whether it is open or some kind of support, not so open, but is the party, just as Jethi explained, that is mainly reactive, or there is some kind of strategy of the party to deal with. And actually, I was in a seminar last week, organized in the Indian International Center, and there, the General Secretary, the three commons parties, the three commons parties of India was there, and that party, Comrade Karat was also there, and he agreed that in India, a party left is not the only left, and this question should be considered that a party left along with other left should come together, and though there are many practical and organizational difficulties and hurdles. I will try, just remind me if I miss something, okay? Maybe I can jump into the middle. What forces against the... What forces behind the Occupy Movement? Well, in Germany, the Occupy Movement was quite weak altogether. There were just Berlin and Frankfurt, and, well, at the 15th of October, when... Oh, okay, I'm sorry. At the 15th of October, when there was this Global Action Day, there were actually about 50,000 people all over Germany coming out, meeting in the streets, but that was something different than the Occupy Movement, because that was... I mean, I'm not... I'm not saying any bad things about that, because I think that was astonishing, because it showed that there is some... Some people were willing to do something, and there's a lack of organizing around that, and that was... That they came out was very much, I think, due to the media, because there was, although there's this very unisono discussion about the crisis, there was kind of this Occupy hype in the German media as well, and then they said, well, then there's this International Action Day, and whoever knows what's going on, and then there's their calls for demonstration here, and there, and there, and there, and suddenly there were people there. I mean, after that, they just vanished. They were just gone, but it was like a small glimpse that you could mobilize if you knew how, but those parts where there was actually an occupation and something you could really call an Occupy movement was only big in Frankfurt and Berlin, and in a couple of others, sometimes really surprising smaller towns, but it wasn't like something like in the US. And a lot of people in the Occupy movement in Germany, well, they got very much addressed by the pirate, which is this very new party that is, well, finally the head of the party said, I'm not a leftist, I'm liberal, so I mean, I could have told that, but they are very much playing on this transcendency, politics is kind of too ideological, internet, computer party thing. They are kind of a new phenomena at the moment, and so they are stronger there, and there are a couple of people from ATAC and other networks, and a couple of from the radical left and the left party as well, but they in Germany, the Occupy movement stayed very much distant towards the parties, except the pirates, because they didn't recognize the party members. And they were, I think they were more middle class phenomena in Germany than they were, for example, in the US. I think that is very interesting that in a lot of places there has been a true alliance or broader platform, at least, being built by the Occupy movement that started out with the student protests that was joined by the leftist organizing scene, people who were organizing on the ground for years and years and moved into the Occupy movement and helped build the force it got. That was not something that happened overnight, just like that. There were a lot of experienced people there who brought all their skills and their experience into that. And then there were a lot of homeless people joining the occupation. I think that was real in the US. I think that was a real challenge for them to find a way to communicate and find a way of not being blown up by those people most affected by the crisis joining them. So I think that was an interesting process. And I don't know if you've ever seen the website they put on, WeAreThe99%.org, which I think is a very powerful image of what was going on, but it's only a blog and everybody can load up their picture and their story. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who posted their picture and described their living situation there. And that went from, I'm a veteran, I don't have, I'm homeless now, I'm a student, I'm $40000 in debt and I have a small business and I have white people working for me and I still have to buy my clothes in the Swift shop and going on and on and on without blaming anybody else but the system. So it was really interesting, I think, and I think that captured kind of the new way of thinking about something, some unity that is, you know, it's not analytically totally correct and all these things, but it created an image that was kind of new and I think that was, he was dealing with. And in Germany we had a different phenomenon in the midst of May this year, there was, oh yeah, sorry, I missed one point. And I think what was interesting as well was that part of the Occupy movement, especially in the West Coast, started to target, for example, the West Coast industrial ports. They have this, I don't know if this made the news in India, they shut down West Coast ports, like, what's the name? There was one port in particular. Right, they have this one, what's the name? Just besides San Francisco, the industrial center besides San Francisco. No, no, Oakland. And Oakland had a very vivid Occupy movement and they organized the demonstration down to the port and organized together with the rank and file members of the Longshore Union and they just closed the whole port. It was closed for four hours. I mean, that's the biggest industrial thing going on in that area. And they tried to repeat that a couple of weeks afterwards, which was okay, it was a huge success, but it targeted different parts of the economy. And the other thing is, I think, some of these movements connected with the cooperative movements, trying to start different ways of dealing, living together, working together and doing alternative ways of economy. So in Germany, there was this rather hype about this Oakland thing and there was from the more radical left and the left party and ATAC, we organized together something that was called Blockupy, which was taking up this blocking idea and it was supposed to block the European Central Bank, which is in Frankfurt and supposed to be a sign of solidarity towards the other European movements that were fighting so hard. And that was basically, it's difficult to say if that was a success, because the whole Frankfurt was blocked because everything was illegal and the whole city was blocked by the police. So you couldn't do anything, but nobody could move. The people living there, they were so pissed off. But you couldn't hold an occupation or an assembly. You couldn't even, the civil rights movement tried to have an assembly saying, this is a violation of our constitution and they were banned. There were people holding up the constitution and there was police saying, I'm going to hold up the constitution. It's like, yeah, okay, that's the point. So there was really some anger building up about that and then we had this, the only thing that was not illegal was the demonstration at the last day and that was really powerful and colorful. So that kind of worked, although it's hard to tell how it's going on or what is growing out of that. Well, and this might be a hint on the concept of how does the left party view the social movements. I think, first it's important to understand that the left party in Germany is kind of a merger of the former socialist party of the eastern democratic, the socialist state in Germany and some radicalized social democrats who were not following the social democratic party towards the neoliberal way then some leftist unionists who haven't been part of the social democrats before and some radical lefts and people who were actively integrated into the party like activists from the migrant movement and so the forming of the party itself was kind of bringing together different people and different tendencies understood as linking the party with other people and other leftists other social movements of course not only the social movements but rooting them in them as well. So for example one of those the leaders, Bernd Rixinger, he and I actually were the two spokesperson of the We Won't Pay for Your Crisis movement and he used to be a leftist unionist activist so it's kind of I think they're coming back to this concept which was kind of called Mosaik Left which is a little bit I don't know if it really works in English but it's so bringing together different fragments and forming them into something that is no longer just the fragmented left but maybe adds up to some picture of something new there. Let me try and take up Shankar's question first the easier one which is about what did I mean when I said that that basically capitalism now has become an octopus caught in its own tentacles and essentially the Eurozone is a classic example of it but it's a wider problem it's true of global capitalism at the moment and it goes like this which is that the way that capitalism has worked in the 20th century is really through an integration of the state with large capital and that is what has given it stability and etc etc competition between capitals occurs of course but it's more and more moderated by the role of the state which intervenes effectively to pursue the interests of capital but in a way that will keep the stability and of course that is also why you have had the expansion of finance because it has been a stability which has not allowed the distributive change that Sudhu mentioned in other words basically it's your suppressing worker incomes so your suppressing worker incomes where you get the demand for your stuff you get it by giving them credit so you create credit booms you create asset booms that give people the illusion of wealth and allow them to buy more than their incomes would otherwise allow that ends up in a crisis you have a bit of a shock and then you come back again so the 90s in the US was a classic situation you had the dot com boom and then the bust and then you had the housing boom in the 2000s in Europe the way this has reflected and why I am saying that now it's caught up because basically you have got into a situation where everybody is too indebted you can't play that card anymore governments are too indebted private individuals, households are indebted everybody is trying to reduce their debt level so you can't keep playing that card now at the moment but finance requires that at one level you have created finance because that's how you solved your demand problem or you allowed finance to grow because that was the way you solved your demand problem finance then becomes a powerful political lobby in itself which demands that it will get repaid you do the repayment by transferring the burden on to taxpayers but that also has its limits because the more burden you put on the state the more that becomes unviable because the state is now also implicated in the financial market in Europe the way it's also playing out politically is that this process whereby banks went out capital went from northern to southern Europe southern including Ireland bit of a broad brush view of southern but from the core to the periphery capital went out from the core to periphery created a boom there which was going to be unsustainable like all developing countries that crisis were the same kind of boom is created there when it crashes however you have created a politics through the media through your own emphasis on you know the prudent debt and all of that you created a politics that says no can't pay we will not have the solidarity that let's say the north should then provide to the south within the eurozone you could have resolved this through fiscal transfers but there's no way you can do the fiscal transfer because the politics of Germany, Austria, Finland etc won't permit it because they have you know been okay so you've created this Frankenstein monster which is now out of your control in a sense so the reason I say this is because I actually met the laws of the universe there was a conference in Austria of these banking types and all these you know head of Deutsche Bank head of American expiry the laws of the universe they were terrified they were completely scared of the mind they said we want euro bonds we want a coordinated expansion you know they would more left Keynesian than I would dream of being because they realized that they are actually heading for disaster Armageddon but it's now a monster they can't control okay so that's why I'm saying this is this enormous crisis now the second question is actually a very tough question do we really need a clear alternative vision because doesn't that just complicate matters because the minute you specify it then you can start getting into arguments no not this but that and then you know then we can fight forever about what exactly which I agree with you I take your point so what I meant was actually not a very clear vision in the sense of like a manual okay this is the detail of how this future socialist whatever whatever the word is society is going to be economy but more that a lot of the a lot of the way that we present arguments is often to say do not do X and Y okay underlying it we do have a vision of the things that we would rather do instead but we don't go and push that very confidently okay I'm not saying we don't have the you know the vision I think you know people are as I said not just economists but lot of citizens know quite clearly what would be required yeah but we don't go out and push it confidently and that doesn't give us an overarching one narrative you know like we are the 99% is a wonderful slogan to bring everybody but you also need another thing you know what I mean to keep to create the mosaic as you you're saying to bring that mosaic into one when you look at the places where there has been political transformation okay certainly you know a lot of the regimes in Latin America okay they're not pure socialist certainly not communist etc but there's certainly something different and they all came literally like Phoenix rising out of the ashes right they came out of political situations that looked like there was nothing and there was no hope and you were really at the you know you were dredging the bowl okay Thailand you look at okay this guy is a personal creep I'm sure he's a kind of Thai Belusconi all of that he's a big businessman but when he was in power he just did two things that have ensured that some that if there are democratic elections in Thailand not children's generation they're going to vote for that guy okay he basically said we're going to ensure that every citizen of this country has access to institutional credit to do activities and we're going to give universal free health healthcare okay now doing those two has meant so much I mean what we don't realize is that credit was not just bank credit it was also dignity to farmers to workers to informal sector people you know it was a peculiar roundabout economic way of giving dignity and universal healthcare is your ultimate social protection right I mean so he had a narrative that somehow you know created a thing that lots of people could come around in Ecuador in Bolivia even in Argentina you get regimes that you know which are all over the place politically right they're just full of all kinds of people because they're umbrella movements they're like Syriza they're like whatever is trying to be created in Spain they're umbrella movements with crazy you know Christian healers and crazy traditional healers and very very staunch communists and very all kinds of people are in there there is a narrative that somehow brings them together so I I think it's if I could put it it doesn't have to be very specific but it does have to have some broad brush positive things that attract everybody attract a 99% which is goes beyond saying fix those bastards you know I mean it has to be more than just we hate the bankers it has to be a positive thing I think the thing is that in a way we are the 99% implied reclaiming democracy on a different scale and that is often a little bit understressed in our discussion that it's not just it's inequality but it's inequality linked to democracy saying we're living in a system where that serves the 1% and we're claiming our part in that and I think that is a good move in that