French Labour Minister El Khomri, PM Valls, Economy Minister Macron, talk to MEDEF and CGT, March 2016. Thibault Camus /Press Association. All rights reserved.
Thomas Fazi (TF): Regarding Varoufakis’ movement, I don’t deny that totally rewriting the international system in a radical way would be great, and I think that is what we should aim for in the long run. But this idea that some people in the European left have, that you can somehow skip the nation-state and change things directly at the regional or even global level, without, for example, being bothered with winning elections at home – not only do I think this is wrong, I think it is dangerous. What are the chances of this happening? Or better, what are the chances of this happening peacefully?
It could be the last nail in the left’s coffin. We have already lost terrain to the extreme right all over Europe. The reasons for this are of course various, but it is partly because these movements and parties are the only ones who are willing to use the ‘n-word’: to speak of the ‘nation’. So unless we develop a progressive, well, a progressive nationalism sounds quite bad, so we definitely need to find a better word, but we have to develop a progressive agenda that understands that change – especially in the eurozone – must first happen at the national level. If not, we are doomed.
