4 lessons from Iceland & Greece for fighting austerity

[Oscar]

4 lessons from Iceland and Greece for movements fighting austerity

[ http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/4- ... austerity/ ]

George Lakey July 8, 2015

EXCERPT:

When Greece´s 1 percent brought the economy to its downward economic spiral in 2010, Europe´s 1 percent stepped in and Greece´s centrist government accepted the imposition of austerity measures. The result of the ensuing five years of austerity? Greece now threatens to beat Iceland´s record as Europe´s worst economic collapse.

When Iceland fell apart it initially followed the rules, turning to the International Monetary Fund for help. However, the people brought down the ruling government and installed a leftist government that defied the IMF´s prescription. Iceland quickly rebounded, avoiding high unemployment and preventing people´s loss of their mortgaged homes. Iceland´s democracy refused to bow to the IMF´s austerity requirement, and bailed out the people instead of the banks.

In contrast to the results in the United States and Europe of post-2008 austerity, where the wealth gap has widened, Iceland´s solution produced a shrinking of its wealth gap. Iceland increased its social safety net, increased taxes on the rich and reduced taxes on low-income people. In the U.N.´s 2012 World Happiness Report, Iceland came in number 1 in the world.

During a research trip to Iceland in 2014 I interviewed education professor Hanna Ragnarsdottir and asked her about the impact of the collapse on Icelandic education. "We had to tighten our belts, or course," she responded, looking solemn and pausing in thought for a moment. Then, to my surprise, she told me that they avoided laying off teachers or other staff. They did leave vacant some positions and put off new projects, but "now things are looking up again," she said.

While there are many economic differences between Iceland and Greece, I´m struck by the overwhelming determination in both countries to take charge of their own economies. Their popular movements understand that austerity is actually a weapon in the class war. In Iceland, the majority was able to reclaim self-determination and create a left solution to their economic crisis - and it worked. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said, "What Iceland did was right. It would have been wrong to burden future generations with the mistakes of the financial system."

At the moment, the Greek majority is fighting for the same freedom, but the famously undemocratic European Union has no intention of allowing anything except its 1 percent solution.

What does this mean for social movements in the United States and elsewhere?

- Make transparent the costs of the austerity weapon. Health economist David Stuckler´s statistical studies have shown that austerity triggers psychological depression and predictably increases the incidence of heart attacks and suicides.

- Don´t wait: Create crises to expose the role of the economic elite. In both Iceland and Greece the majority allowed the minority to create their crisis through wrecking their economies. The U.S. majority up until now seems willing for the 1 percent to wreck our economy through its climate policies. As strategist Bill Moyer pointed out in his 2002 book "Doing Democracy," the role of social movements is to create a mini-crisis that alerts the majority to what has been going on behind its back.

- Build alternative institutions that build confidence, the skills of cooperation, and teamwork. ( . . . ) Dealing with one´s own compulsion to be competitive is tough, but a useful arena for change is community, and we can create community in our living choices, activist organizations and co-ops.

- Assist the majority to realize that the economic elite plays by different rules. The willingness of national elites in Iceland and Greece to support international muscle to hold on to wealth at the price of the suffering and death of their compatriots can be hard for majorities to wrap their minds around. Nationalism still has its appeal, and it is especially challenging for people raised middle class to be duly cynical about their masters - in the United States, as well as in other countries. Many of us need to learn cynicism. As Aldous Huxley wrote, "It´s good to be cynical, if you know when to stop."

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George Lakey co-founded Earth Quaker Action Group which just won its five-year campaign to force a major U.S. bank to give up financing mountaintop removal coal mining. Along with college teaching, he has led 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national, and international levels. Among many other books and articles, he is author of "Strategizing for a Living Revolution" in David Solnit´s book Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2004). His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in and most recent was with Earth Quaker Action Team while protesting mountain top removal coal mining.