The deep roots of Macedonia's protest wave

Adela Gjorgjioska — 2016-04-26T08:10:19Z

“In a neoliberal universe, where markets are the gauge of value, money becomes, more straightforwardly than ever before, the measure of all things. If hospitals, schools and prisons can be privatised as enterprises for profit, why not political office too?”

Perry Anderson in London Review of Books, 2014, 36:10, pp. 5

Mass protests have vigorously and consistently spread across Macedonia for over ten days now. The spark of citizen revolt was caused by a Presidential blanket amnesty acquitting 56 officials from charges ranging from election rigging, embezzlement of public money and property, to corruption and party capture of state institutions. This act has confirmed that the presidential office is only another one on the list of institutions privatized by an elite of capitalist politicians in service of their interests. As such it represents a manifestation of a specific form of Balkan neoliberalism, born out of a symbiosis interlocking profit and politics, and built on three mutually supportive pillars: privatization of institutions, privatization of the commons, and privatization of the electorate/demos. Rather than an ephemeral crisis caused by a political elite gone rogue, it represents a symptom of the ongoing logic of neoliberalism, which has in fact created the ideological background against which criminal politics have thrived, whilst suffocating the rule of law, democracy, equality and social justice.

- IV495 - April 2016 / Macedonia

International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

The deep roots of Macedonia's protest wave