Table Of ContentTHE UNION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
W H AT
D O E S
E U R O P E
WA N T ?
Ž I Ž E K
SLAVOJ &
H O RVAT
´
SRECKO
what does europe want?
Insurrections
Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Insurrections
Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis,
Jeffrey W. Robbins,
editors
The intersection of religion, politics, and culture is one of the most
discussed areas in theory today. It also has the deepest and most
w ide-r anging impact on the world. Insurrections: Critical Studies in
Religion, Politics, and Culture will bring the tools of philosophy and
critical theory to the pol itic al implications of the religious turn. The
series will address a range of religious traditions and pol itic al view-
points in the United States, Eur ope, and other parts of the world.
Without advocating any specific religious or theological stance, the
series aims nonetheless to be faithful to the radical emancipatory
potential of religion.
For a list of titles in this series, see page 203.
what does
europe want?
The Union and Its Discontents
slavoj žižek
srećko horvat
Columbia University Press
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Foreword Alexis Tsipras The Destruction of
Greece as a Model for All of Europe: Is this the Future
that Europe Deserves? vii
Preface S. Horvat What Does the U.S. Want, or
What to Do After Occupy? xv
1. S. Žižek Breaking Our Eggs without the Omelette,
from Cyprus to Greece. 1
2. S. Horvat Danke Deutschland! 12
3. S. Žižek When the Blind Are Leading the Blind,
Democracy Is the Victim 21
4. S. Horvat Why the EU Needs Croatia More than
Croatia Needs the EU 26
5. S. Žižek What Does Europe Want? 35
6. S. Horvat Are the Nazis Living on the Moon? 43
7. S. Žižek The Return of the Christian-conservative
Revolution 50
8. S. Horvat In the Land of Blood and Money:
Angelina Jolie and the Balkans 61
9. S. Žižek The Turkish March 70
10. S. Horvat War and Peace in Europe: ‘Bei den
Sorglosen’ 76
11. S. Žižek Save Us from the Saviours: Europe and the
Greeks 88
what does europe want?
12. S. Horvat ‘I’m Not Racist, but … The Blacks are
Coming!’ 93
13. S. Žižek Shoplifters of the World Unite 104
14. S. Horvat Do Markets Have Feelings? 113
15. S. Žižek The Courage to Cancel the Debt 121
16. S. Horvat The Easiest Way to the Gulag Is to Joke
About the Gulag 133
17. S. Žižek We Need a Margaret Thatcher of the Left 143
18. A. Tsipras Europe Will Be Either Democratic and
Social or It Will No Longer Exist (interview) 150
19. S. Žižek and A. Tsipras ‘The Role of the European
Left’ (debate) 160
Afterword S. Horvat Europe Is Dead, Long Live
Europe! 177
Notes 193
(cid:2)(cid:3)
A T
LEXIS SIPRAS
From the middle of the 1990s until almost the end of the first
decade of the twenty-first century, Greece tended towards
economic growth. The main characteristics of that growth
were the very large and non-taxed profits enjoyed by the rich,
along with over-indebtedness and the rising unemployment
among the poor. Public money was stolen in numerous ways,
and the economy was limited mainly to the consumption of
imported goods from rich European countries. Rating
agencies considered this model of ‘cheap money, cheap labour’
the model of dynamic emerging economies.
The Vicious Cycle of Depression
Everything, however, changed after the 2008 crisis. The cost of
the bank losses that were created by uncontrolled speculation
were transfered to national governments, which were in turn
transf erred to society at large. The flawed model of Greek
develop m ent collapsed and the country was deprived of the
opportunity to borrow, causing it to become dependent on
what does europe want?
the IMF and the European bank. And all this was accom-
panied by an extremely severe austerity programme.
This programme, which the Greek government adopted
without proper debate, consists of two parts: ‘stabilisation’
and ‘reform’. The conditions of the programme are presented
as positive, in order to cover up the huge social destruction it
has caused. In Greece, the part of the programme named
‘stabilisation’ leads to indirect, destructive taxation, large cuts
in public spending and the destruction of the welfare state,
especially in the areas of health, education and social security,
as well as the privatisation of basic social goods, such as water
and energy. The programme which forms part of the ‘reform’
deals with the simplification of redundancy procedure, the
elimination of collective agreements and the creation of
‘special economic zones’. This is accompanied by many other
regulations designed to facilitate the investment of powerful
and colonialist economic forces, without the inconvenience
of, say, having to go all the way to South Sudan. These are just
some of the conditions that are in the ‘Memorandum’, the
contract that was signed by Greece with the IMF, the European
Union and the European Central Bank.
These measures are naturally supposed to lead Greece out of
the crisis. The strict ‘stabilisation’ programme should lead to
budget surpluses, allowing the country to stop borrowing, while
at the same time enabling it to pay off the debt. On the other
hand, the ‘reforms’ are aimed at regaining market confidence,
encouraging them to invest after witnessing the destroyed
welfare state and the desperate, insecure and low-paid workers
in the labour market. This would lead to new ‘developm ent’;
something which does not exist anywhere except in ‘holy books’
and the perverted minds of global neoliberalism.
It was assumed that the programme would be very effective
and fast, and that Greece would soon be ‘reborn’ and back on
(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:3)
foreword
the path of growth. But three years after the signing of the
‘Memorandum’, the situation is becoming worse. The economy
is sinking further, and the taxes are obviously not collected, for
the simple reason that the Greek citizens are unable to pay
them. The reduction of spending has now reached the core of
social integrity, creating the conditions of a humanitarian
crisis. In other words, we are now talking about people who are
reduced to eating rubbish and sleeping on the pavements,
about pensioners who can not afford to buy bread, of house-
holds without electricity, of patients who are unable to afford
medicine and treatment. And all this within the eurozone.
Investors, of course, do not come, given that the current
bankruptcy option remains open. And of course, the authors
of the ‘Memorandum’ after each tragic failure, react by
imposing more taxes and more cuts. The Greek economy has
entered a vicious cycle of uncontrolled depression that leads
nowhere except to complete disaster.
Taliban Neoliberalism
The Greek ‘rescue’ plan (another convenient term used to
describe this disaster) ignores a fundamental principle. The
economy is like a cow: it eats grass and produces milk. It is
inconceivable to take away a quarter of her grass and expect
her to produce four times more milk. The cow will simply die.
The same is now happening to the Greek economy.
The Greek Left realised, from the very first moment, that the
austerity measures would not ‘cure’, but actually deepen the
crisis. When someone is drowning, he needs to be thrown a
lifeline, not a weight. For their part, the Taliban neoliberalists
still assure us that things will improve. Yet even the most stupid
among them must now know that this is a lie. But this stance
is not nonsense, and it’s not dogmatism. The leaders of the IMF
(cid:3)(cid:5)
