Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe 9781786993250, 9781786995087, 9780755640409, 9781786997746

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Note about the Author
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 Resisting Water Privatization: An Introduction
Introduction
Conceptualizing water struggles
Overview of the book
Notes
Chapter 2 Capitalism's Relentless Thirst for Accumulation
Introduction
Capitalist accumulation and the relentless drive to outward expansion
The global economic crisis of the 1970s and its resolution
Global financial crisis, transnational capital and the privatization of water
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3 Mobilizing From Below: Victory in the Italian Water Referendum
Introduction
The road to victory
La lotta continua: The aftermath of the 2011 referendum
Ongoing struggles: The examples of Arezzo, Turin and Naples
Conclusion: Lasting legacies of the Italian water movement
Notes
Chapter 4 Water is a Human Right: The First European Citizens' Initiative Over Public Water
Introduction
Mobilizing for change
EU policy-making within capitalist structuring conditions
Conclusion: Links of transnational solidarity
Notes
Chapter 5 Contesting the Troika: Resistance in Greece Against Imposed Water Privatization
Introduction
In the claws of the Eurozone crisis
Fighting against water privatization
Capital strikes back
Conclusion: Residues of resistance
Note
Chapter 6 ‘We Will Strike, We Will Fight, Water is a Human Right’: The Irish People Rise Up
Introduction
From agricultural autarky to export-oriented development
Social partnership and the lack of resistance against austerity
The Irish people rise up: No to water charges
Conclusion: In search of new forms of democracy
Notes
Chapter 7 Transforming Capitalism Towards the Commons?
Introduction
Key factors sustaining the success of water struggles
The human right to water as a progressive strategy?
Participatory democracy and the transformation of water
Conclusion: Open-ended struggles over the future of water
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

FIGHTING FOR WATER

ii

FIGHTING FOR WATER

Resisting Privatization in Europe

Andreas Bieler

Zed Books Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Andreas Bieler, 2021 Andreas Bieler has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Adriana Brioso Cover image © Iconographic Archive / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7869-9325-0 PB: 978-1-7869-9508-7 ePDF: 978-1-7869-9774-6 eBook: 978-1-7869-9773-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Note about the Author vii List of Abbreviations viii Acknowledgementsxi Prefacexii CHAPTER 1 RESISTING WATER PRIVATIZATION: AN INTRODUCTION1 Introduction1 Conceptualizing water struggles 7 Overview of the book 24 Notes26 CHAPTER 2 CAPITALISM’S RELENTLESS THIRST FOR ACCUMULATION27 Introduction27 Capitalist accumulation and the relentless drive to outward expansion30 The global economic crisis of the 1970s and its resolution 38 Global financial crisis, transnational capital and the privatization of water 43 Conclusion49 Notes50 CHAPTER 3 MOBILIZING FROM BELOW: VICTORY IN THE ITALIAN WATER REFERENDUM51 Introduction51 The road to victory 52 La lotta continua: The aftermath of the 2011 referendum 62 Ongoing struggles: The examples of Arezzo, Turin and Naples 70 Conclusion: Lasting legacies of the Italian water movement 75 Notes78 CHAPTER 4 WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT: THE FIRST EUROPEAN CITIZENS’ INITIATIVE OVER PUBLIC WATER79 Introduction79 Mobilizing for change 80

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Contents

EU policy-making within capitalist structuring conditions 89 Conclusion: Links of transnational solidarity 97 Notes100 CHAPTER 5 CONTESTING THE TROIKA: RESISTANCE IN GREECE AGAINST IMPOSED WATER PRIVATIZATION101 Introduction101 In the claws of the Eurozone crisis 102 Fighting against water privatization 109 Capital strikes back 116 Conclusion: Residues of resistance 121 Note124 CHAPTER 6 ‘WE WILL STRIKE, WE WILL FIGHT, WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT’: THE IRISH PEOPLE RISE UP 125 Introduction125 From agricultural autarky to export-oriented development 126 Social partnership and the lack of resistance against austerity 129 The Irish people rise up: No to water charges 134 Conclusion: In search of new forms of democracy 146 Notes150 CHAPTER 7 TRANSFORMING CAPITALISM TOWARDS THE COMMONS?151 Introduction151 Key factors sustaining the success of water struggles 152 The human right to water as a progressive strategy? 158 Participatory democracy and the transformation of water 166 Conclusion: Open-ended struggles over the future of water 173 Notes177 Bibliography178 Index207

NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy in the School of Politics and International Relations, and Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at the University of Nottingham/UK. His general expertise is in the area of International Relations/International Political Economy theories and the analysis of European integration as well as resistance to neo-liberal globalization with a particular emphasis on the possible role of labour movements understood in a broad sense. He is author of Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union: Austrian and Swedish Social Forces in the Struggle over Membership (Routledge, 2000), The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU in Times of Global Restructuring (Manchester University Press, 2006) and Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (with Adam David Morton) (Cambridge University Press, 2018). His personal website is https://andreasbieler.net and he maintains a blog on trade unions and global restructuring at https:// andreasbieler.blogspot.co.uk.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ABC –

Acqua Bene Comune, public water company in Naples/ Italy ACLI – Christian Association of Italian Workers (Associazioni Cristiane dei Lavoratori Italiani) ADEDY – Civil Servants’ Confederation, the main public sector union in Greece AEEGSI – Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity, Gas and Water (l’Autorità per l’Energia Elettrica e il Gas) AGESCI – Association of Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts (Associazione Guide e Scouts Cattolici Italiani) AöW – Alliance of Public Water Providers (Germany) (Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft) ARCI – Italian Recreative and Cultural Association (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana) ARERA – Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste (L’Autorità di Regolazione per Energia Reti e Ambiente) ATTAC – Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens’ Action CEE – Central and Eastern Europe CGIL – Italian General Confederation of Labour (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro) CICMA – Italian Committee for World Water Contract (Comitato Italiano Contratto Mondiale sull’Acqua) CISL – Italian Confederation of Trade Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori) Cobas – Italian rank-and-file trade union (Confederazione dei Comitati di Base) DWB – Detroit Water Brigade DWD – Drinking Water Directive ECB – European Central Bank ECI – European Citizens’ Initiative EcoSoc – European Economic and Social Committee EMU – Economic and Monetary Union EP – European Parliament EPSU – European Federation of Public Service Unions ESF – European Social Forum

List of Abbreviations

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ETUC – European Trade Union Confederation EU – European Union EWM – European Water Movement EYATH – Water Supply and Sewerage Company, Thessaloniki EYDAP – Water Supply and Sewerage Company, Athens FDI – Foreign Direct Investment FILCTEM CGIL – Italian Federation of Chemical, Textile, Energy and Manufacturing Workers Union (Federazione Italiana Lavoratori Chimica Tessile Energia Manifatture) FP-CGIL – Italian public services trade union (Funzione Pubblica) GDP – Gross Domestic Product GSEE – General Confederation of Greek Workers, the main private sector trade union confederation in Greece GVC – Global Value Chain HCAP – Hellenic Company for Assets and Participation HDADF – Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (aka TAIPED) ICTU – Irish Congress of Trade Unions IMF – International Monetary Fund K136 – Initiative 136 M5S – Five Stars Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle), a political party in Italy MoU – Memorandum of Understanding ND – New Democracy, a political party in Greece NGO – Non-governmental Organization OME- EYDAP – EYDAP Federation of Workers’ Union PASOK – Panhellenic Socialist Movement, a political party in Greece PD – Democratic Party (Partito Democratico), a political party in Italy PPP – Public-Private Partnership PPS – Purchasing Power Standards PSIRU – Public Services International Research Unit, Greenwich University/UK SEEYATH – trade union of EYATH, the public water company in Thessaloniki/Geece SEKES – water sector trade union in Athens SEL – Left Ecology Freedom (Sinistra Ecologia Libertà), a political party in Italy SGW – Save Greek Water SOS te to Nero – coalition against privatization of water in Thessaloniki/ Greece SP – Socialist Party, Ireland

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List of Abbreviations

SpA – joint-stock company (Società per azioni), owned by the public with a focus on profit-making (Italy) SWP – Socialist Workers Party, Ireland SYRIZA – Coalition of the Radical Left, a political party in Greece TC – Textile and Clothing TINA – There Is No Alternative TNC – transnational corporation TSCG – Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (in the Economic and Monetary Union) TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership UIL – Italian Labour Union (Unione Italiana de Lavoro) UN – United Nations UNCTAD – United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNICEF – United Nations International Children’s Fund USB – Italian rank-and-file trade union (Unione Sindacale di Base) ver.di – German services trade union WECF – Women in Europe for a Common Future WTO – World Trade Organisation WWF – World Wildlife Fund

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The final drafting of the manuscript took place between September 2019 and July 2020 during my time as Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland. I am extremely grateful to the Collegium for providing me with the space and time for writing this book. Tuomas Forsberg, its director, together with Hanne Appelqvist, Deputy Director, Kaisa Kaakinen, Research Coordinator, and Eeva Lindström, Service Coordinator, as the management team has ensured that the Collegium has remained a space for academic freedom and intellectual scholarship of the highest quality at a time, when higher education too is increasingly being transformed into a commodity to be purchased by those who can afford to pay for it. Thank you! I am indebted to many colleagues, who have commented on various draft chapters of the book, including Yiorgos Archontopoulos, Laurence Cox, Adriano Cozzolino, Emanuele Fantini, Jan Willem Goudriaan, Jamie Jordan, Madelaine Moore, Noreen Murphy, Jörg Nowak, Heikki Patomäki, Jokubas Salyga, Janna Tsokou and Kayhan Valadbaygi. I am also thankful to Niko Besnier, Natalya Bekhta and Heidi Härkönen for their close reading and intensive discussion of Chapter 1 as part of our Helsinki Collegium reading group in May 2020. Special thanks to Adam D. Morton for his thorough comments on the whole manuscript. The help by Shanna Constantinescu with putting together the bibliography as well as list of abbreviations was invaluable and is much appreciated. Many thanks to Kayhan Valadbaygi for compiling the index. Moreover, I want to thank my interviewees for their time in assisting me with this project. Over the years, I have come to admire their resourcefulness and tenacity in resisting capital through collective action. It is this kind of activism, which provides hope for the future in these times of multiple, overlapping crises. This book is dedicated to them! In addition to the academic exchanges at the Collegium, I am grateful for the friendships the Collegium fostered throughout the year. From meeting up on the Baltic coast to outings with the Saturday Gang, they left an important mark on this book. No intellectual scholarship can thrive without friendship. Last but not least, I am indebted to my wife Cecilia and children Mattia and Annika for making it possible for me to be in Helsinki and concentrate on writing this book.

PREFACE This book is based on a research project carried out between April 2014 and July 2020. While I was writing the book at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2019/2020, the continuing importance of public water became apparent. First, in January 2020, the municipality of Jyväskylä in central Finland announced its intention to part-privatize between 30 and 40 per cent of its multi-utility company Alva, including water, energy and heating. As elsewhere, privatization was said to promise increased efficiency and lower consumer prices. However, the announcement was met with a public outcry. Several critical opinion pieces appeared in Finnish newspapers, and activists from the Left Alliance party launched a public petition to push the Finnish parliament into action. On 10 February, Jyväskylä announced that it had withdrawn its proposal (Baczynska Kimberley and Bieler 2020). This news was soon dwarfed by the COVID-19 pandemic. When we were encouraged to wash our hands regularly in the fight against the coronavirus, more and more stories appeared of people having had their water supply cut off, because they were unable to pay for the inflated prices of private companies (e.g. Alston 2020; McDonald, Spronk and Chavez 2020). Suddenly, the struggle for public water and the dire consequences of privatizing water and, thereby, turning it into a tradable economic good took centre stage. This book is intended to contribute to the fight against water privatization.

Chapter 1 R E SI S T I N G WAT E R P R I VAT I Z AT IO N : A N I N T R O DU C T IO N Introduction Water is a fundamental human need. We cannot survive without access to drinkable water. As COVID-19 has revealed, access to water is also essential for a healthy life. Washing our hands regularly is key to overcoming the pandemic. At the same time, capital uses water to expand profit-making into ever-new avenues. Local communities are rarely consulted and their needs hardly taken into account. The global financial crisis of 2007/2008 has intensified capitalist pressures towards the privatization of public services. In this ongoing neo-liberal attack, a global infrastructure market for profitable investment by private capital is being created. Water services infrastructure is no exception in this respect. And yet, from the Cochabamba water war in Bolivia in 2000 to the United Nations (UN) declaration of water as a human right in 2010, from the re-municipalization of water in Grenoble in 2000 to the re-municipalization of water in Paris in 2010 and Berlin in 2013, the struggle against water privatization has picked up pace. Between 2000 and 2015, there were 235 cases of water re-municipalization in thirtyseven countries affecting 100 million people worldwide (Kishimoto, Lobina and Petitjean 2015). This book is about resistance to capital’s expropriation of water resources. Water privatization has also been part of restructuring in the European Union (EU) before and in response to the global financial and closely related Eurozone crises. In Greece, Ireland and Portugal, for example, the Eurozone crisis has been used for the imposition of water privatization in exchange for bailout agreements. Nevertheless, in Europe too water is the area where resistance against capitalist exploitation has been most successful. When privatization of water started in some towns in central Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, consumers were almost immediately hit by drastic increases in water charges of over 100 per cent. In response, resistance started to emerge around local water committees. When they encountered water activists

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from Latin America and other parts of the world at the first Alternative World Water Summit in Florence/Italy in 2003, Italian activists realized that their local struggles are part of a wider pattern. They moved towards establishing the Italian Forum of Water Movements at the national level in 2006 as the next step. The Forum provided the organizational basis for the successful mobilization in the referendum on water privatization in 2011, when Italian citizens rejected water privatization by a large majority. In turn, the success of the Italian water movement in the 2011 referendum encouraged the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) to organize the first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ in 2012. Once the ECI had been approved by the European Commission on 10 May 2012, the collection of signatures started and between May 2012 and September 2013 close to 1.9 million signatures were collected across the EU and formally submitted to the Commission. When water activists from the Greek city of Thessaloniki followed the hearing of the ECI outcome in the European Parliament (EP) via video link in 2014, these activists decided that they too would organize a referendum in their city in support of public water. The rejection of privatization was overwhelming. On 18 May 2014, 98 per cent of participating citizens voted in favour of keeping water in public hands. Ireland came rather late to the struggles over water in the EU. During the ECI, for example, Ireland had not been one of those countries, in which the required number of signatures had been collected. It was only in 2014, when the Irish government established a national water company and started to roll out a programme of installing water meters – perceived by many as the first steps towards privatization – that activists mobilized. Large demonstrations, a non-payment campaign of water charges and civil disobedience in the active blocking of the installation of water meters proved to be a powerful set of strategies, which ultimately led to the suspension of water charges in 2016. In short, through a detailed investigation of the Italian referendum on water privatization in 2011, via the ECI on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ in 2012 and 2013 to the ongoing struggles against water privatization in Greece as well as the fight against the introduction of water charges in Ireland between 2014 and 2016, this book will analyse why water has been an area for successful resistance against intensified capitalist exploitation in Europe. A focus on the agency of resistance around broad alliances of trade unions, social movements as well as environmental and development groups will be placed within the wider structuring conditions of global capitalism in the twenty-first century.

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The comparative analysis in this book does not follow a standard positivist, comparative research strategy, which identifies clearly selfcontained, distinguishable units to be externally compared with each other. Case studies have not been selected according to a most-similar or most-different strategy. The goal is not to identify any law-like, causal relationships in an ‘objective reality’ (Ward 2010: 479–80). It is accepted that ‘cases cannot be abstracted from their time/space location, via an experimental logic which juxtaposes cases “externally”, in order to generalize from observed patterns’ (McMichael 2000: 672). Hence, although I focus on struggles in Greece, Ireland and Italy, this is not on the basis of a ‘methodological nationalism’, which understands national borders as sealing off distinctive units. Instead, I pursue a related or incorporated comparison, which argues that ‘what are typically seen as bounded “units of analysis” are often more usefully understood as vantage points from which to try to begin to grasp the coming together and interconnections of what (at least initially) appear as key processes’ (Hart 2018: 389). Rather than regarding individual cases as separate, they are recognized as co-constitutive. Throughout the book, we will see how the struggle in one location has had implications on struggles in other places. As already mentioned, the success in the Italian referendum gave EPSU the confidence to move ahead with the ECI. Italian activists, in turn, participated in collecting signatures for the ECI and were also present as international monitors during the referendum in Thessaloniki in May 2014. Thus, following the methodological strategy of an incorporated comparison this book demonstrates how the proposed sale of public water and sanitation services is not simply a set of nationally tailored policies. Instead, privatization policies are understood as spatial and temporal components of broader dynamics of neo-liberal, capitalist restructuring within crisis conditions inside the global political economy. In short, while specific struggles over national trajectories of development are compared with each other, they are at all times embedded and internally related within the wider struggles contesting the possible privatization of essential public services as part of the ‘historically integrated process’ of global capitalist restructuring (Morton 2013a: 245). The incorporated comparison adopted in this book is ‘a singular form, analysing variation in or across space within a world-historical conjuncture …; [the case studies] are comparable precisely because they are competitively combined, and therefore redefined, in an historical conjuncture with unpredictable outcomes’ (McMichael 1990: 389). While global neo-liberal developments shape policies in different

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national contexts, which are compared with each other in the way they co-constitute each other as well as the overall system, the global political economy itself is in a process of changing. ‘In effect, the “whole” emerges via comparative analysis of “parts” as moments in a selfforming whole’ (McMichael 1990: 386; see also McMichael 2000: 671). Hence, while each case in a way responds to similar pressures within the overall system, and here especially capital searching for profitable investment opportunities on the back of neo-liberal restructuring, the overall system is not a pre-given, fixed totality. Rather, it shapes and equally is being shaped by the various individual cases of struggle. It is this co-constitution of the various parts as well as the whole through its parts (Hart 2018: 378), which implies that transformation of the whole is possible in the first place. Italian, Greek and Irish struggles have clearly been shaped by developments at the European level, while struggles against water privatization in the EU were affected by national level struggles in turn, all shaping and being shaped by neo-liberal restructuring within the global political economy. Neo-liberal economics, first experimented with in Pinochet’s Chile in the early 1970s before it was implemented in the UK by Thatcher and the United States by Reagan during the 1980s, gained a hegemonic status at the global level during the 1990s, underpinning the so-called Washington consensus. Neo-liberalism consists of a set of policies, including deregulation and liberalization of the economy, the privatization of national companies, the marketization of public services delivery as well as an attack on workers’ rights and the power of trade unions, through which the state unleashes market forces. However, neo-liberal economics is more than just specific policies. It has also been the hegemonic project of transnational capital to secure the continuation of accumulation and re-assert its power over labour against the background of economic recession as well as rising workers and trade union militancy during the 1970s (Harvey 2006b). Individual case studies offer vantage points of assessing and looking into wider general developments. Unsurprisingly, the cases selected for this book are not the only possible ones. An alternative or additional case could have been, for example, the struggle over re-municipalizing water services in Berlin. This too would have offered an interesting vantage point to understand ongoing contestation of capitalist expropriation of water. Ultimately, the case studies were selected due to the way they directly impacted on each other, as will be revealed throughout the book. Moreover, the Berlin case is still an integral part of struggles analysed in this book. Activists from the Berlin Water Table (Berliner

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Wassertisch) were active members of the ECI struggles and they continue to be members of the European Water Movement (EWM), which is concerned with struggles over water at the local, national and European level. Ongoing contestations in Spain and here in particular Catalonia, where there is an intensive struggle to wrest control of water services from the Suez subsidiary Agbar group, could have been chosen as another vantage point. Again, Spanish activists have been involved at the European level and contributed significantly to the knowledge of how water can be managed differently. I will at least consider the latter aspect more closely in the final chapter of this book, when I discuss the experiences of the Water Observatory in Terrassa. In short, the case studies of this book are not exhaustive of all current water struggles in Europe. Nevertheless, as a combination they provide clear insights into ongoing struggles against capitalist expropriation co-constituting each other across different levels and, thereby, constituting the overall system. Methodologically, the research for this book is partly based on a set of sixty-one semi-structured interviews with water activists in the three countries and across the EU between 2014 and 2020. Interviewees include activists from local citizens’ committees, established and rankand-file trade unions, environmental and development NGOs as well as a number of academic-activists, who were themselves involved in the struggles reflecting and writing about them at the same time. Overall, in addition to official communications by the various organizations involved and relevant secondary literature, this interview material provides a rich texture of the various dynamics underpinning water struggles in Europe.1 In its relentless search for higher profits, capital expropriates water in a number of ways. First, as part of the globalized system of food production, water is often diverted from local use towards large agribusiness companies. These moments of ‘land grabbing’ by large corporations or states through their sovereign wealth funds are ultimately a form of water grabbing, as this agricultural land would be worthless without access to the water necessary for growing crops. In turn, however, this focus on the production of export cash crops, often enforced by international organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, implies that enormous amounts of water are taken away from local populations. For example, ‘flower production for the USA and Europe in vulnerable areas of Kenya and the Andean mountains of Colombia and Ecuador profoundly affects the quantity and quality of local community water sources, as well as overall livelihood conditions’ (Boelens, Vos and Perreault 2018: 8). Second, extractive industries

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including mining projects as well as hydrocarbon industries such as fracking, tar sands and the exploration for oil are a significant burden on drinking water resources. ‘In 2014, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission investigated 22 large-scale Canadian mining projects in nine Latin American countries, concluding that they all caused profound environmental impacts, contaminating rivers, displacing people, impoverishing communities, and dispossessing water rights’ (Boelens, Vos and Perrault 2018: 9). Third, large dam constructions for the generation of energy as well as the increasing use of rivers as part of hydropower development put heavy pressure on local water supply (Nilsen 2010). The Mekong River in Asia, for example, with its enormous fish variety and rich agricultural soil on its banks, sustaining millions of people’s livelihood, is under threat from numerous dam projects (Khidhir 2019; Peter 2019). In Europe, the unspoilt rivers of the Balkans have become a target for investors in small hydropower plants, endangering local eco-systems (Interview No.52; Interview No.56). Fourth, ‘bottled water is one of the world’s top businesses even in countries where water stress is acute. The global market is valued at about 250 billion USD, and it’s only expected to grow’ (Pacheco-Vega 2020: 113; see also Barlow 2019: 17–18). This industry, which also includes the production of other beverages relying on access to water, is a key example of how capitalism draws on water as a ‘cheap’ resource in order to make profit. Recent developments in California indicate the political nature of water shortages. ‘During the drought, bottled water companies were extracting groundwater to sell water to other places while residents had water restrictions, creating considerable controversy’ (Sultana 2018: 486). Finally, there is the privatization of water and sanitary services, which has increasingly become a focus for profitable private investment. The provision of certain public services such as education and health, water and energy, is the responsibility of the state in industrialized, developed countries. It is this state responsibility, with profits guaranteed by the state and state bailouts ensured should anything go wrong, which makes the privatization of services like water such an attractive investment opportunity for capital. At times, when the global economy is in crisis, investing in services provision promises large profits, when any other investment opportunities have dried up. In sum, all these different processes are aptly referred to as ‘water grabbing’, a process in which water resources are appropriated by capital to expand accumulation to the detriment of local communities (Veldwisch, Franco and Mehta 2018: 62). Thus, water grabbing ‘is a form of accumulation by dispossession; water is no

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longer a public good but rather a commodity, shifting risk from private investors to the public, whilst profits move in the opposite direction’ (Moore 2018: 4). All these forms of water grabbing have resulted in moments of resistance. This book will analyse resistance to the privatization of water and sanitary services. While this push for privatization has been a global phenomenon, this book will focus on ongoing struggles in Europe. In doing so, however, these struggles are always understood as being nested within broader global dynamics in line with the research strategy of incorporated comparison.

Conceptualizing water struggles The management and distribution of drinking water is often described as a technical problem, which requires a rational solution. See, for example, the UN Water Report 2012 in this respect (UN 2013). Nevertheless, this ‘diverts the attention from the deeply uneven political, social and economic power relations and conflicts that ultimately choreograph access to, distribution and management of water’ (Swyngedouw 2013: 826). Water shortages or scarcity are not natural phenomena due to environmental characteristics, but the outcome of political struggles (Loftus 2009: 953). In other words, ‘the global water problem is neither one of physical water scarcity nor of excessive demographic development. It is primarily the fusion of the dynamics of water with the power of money in highly uneven ways’ (Swyngedouw 2013: 828). This book adopts this ‘political ecology’ insight and, therefore, focuses on struggle, when it comes to water privatization. However, accepting that water management and distribution is a matter of political struggle waged by actors with uneven access to power resources does not tell us how the analysis of these struggles should be conceptualized, who the agents are and in what way they relate to the wider structures. In this section, I will discuss how we can conceptualize struggles over water privatization. I will argue that only a historical materialist approach allows us to comprehend the historical specificity of capitalism within which these struggles are placed. Within sociology and political science, the analysis of social movements has gained significant attention in recent years in the wake of increasing contestations of globalization. Hence, I will first provide a critical engagement with this set of approaches. Subsequently, I will introduce a Marxist approach to social movements. Only a historical materialist

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approach, I will argue, allows us to understand why it is that capitalism is driven by this relentless pressure towards continuing outward expansion. This book will therefore deal closely with the structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production, which ensure that capitalism is such a dynamic, but ultimately also destructive economic-political system for human beings and nature alike. This focus on structure, however, does not imply that agency is overlooked. On the contrary, this book is about the multiple social class forces, which have refused to accept the imposition of intensified exploitation. It is analysed in detail how these social class forces are internally related to the structuring conditions of capitalism through a focus on class struggle. Instead of privileging ‘class’ as an analytical category over other categories, class struggle is, thereby, conceptualized in a way, which acknowledges the multiple forms of oppression in a capitalist social formation, including patriarchal structures as well as the ongoing expropriation of nature, which are part and parcel of capitalist accumulation. Liberal social movement studies Social movements and civil society more generally have been widely studied by liberal approaches in view of increasing levels of inequality against the background of globalization. In line with Karl Polanyi’s (1957) ideas about a double movement, in which a period of laissezfaire is followed by a period of regulation, liberal scholars discuss the possibility of establishing global governance institutions, which can ensure a more just distribution of increasing wealth, resulting from neo-liberal restructuring at the global level (e.g. Held and McGrew 2002: 135–6; Held et al. 1999: 449–52). There are, however, a number of problems associated with this. First, these scholars understand civil society as some kind of progressive force (Buttigieg 1995: 5). Nevertheless, civil society also includes pro-globalization forces such as business associations, which are often a driving force behind global restructuring. Of course, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the voiceless are indeed important elements of civil society, and they merit special attention precisely because they are generally overlooked, even though they are in the majority; but to regard them as tantamount to civil society can only result in a false understanding of the complex dynamics of power relations within, among, and across states. (Buttigieg 2005: 35)

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Second, liberal analyses overlook the crucial importance of the capitalist social relations of production around the private ownership or control of the means of production and wage labour. As a result, different organizations have different levels of structural power available, with business organizations in times of transnational production networks being more powerful than trade unions, for example (Bieler 2011: 165– 70). Hence, ‘civil society is not some kind of benign or neutral zone where different elements of society operate and compete freely and on equal terms, regardless of who holds a predominance of power in government’ (Buttigieg 1995: 27). Civil society is precisely the location inside the state, within which struggles over the management and distribution of water take place. A range of liberal, empirical pluralist approaches attempts to combine a focus on agency in civil society with an emphasis on the wider institutional structure, within which these struggles are located. Emanuele Lobina and colleagues analyse policy networks resulting from the interdependence between agency and structure in their analysis of water struggles (Lobina, Terhorst and Popov 2011: 20). Elsewhere, Lobina develops a sophisticated approach around agency and institutional governance structures (Lobina 2012: 170; see also Lobina, Weghmann and Marwa 2019). This institutional focus is further deepened by Donatella della Porta and Luisa Parks in their analysis of changing opportunity structures within the EU, when assessing whether social movements focus on the European or the national level in their campaigns on issues of social justice (della Porta and Parks 2018). Acknowledging the complex, multilevel structure of EU policy-making across the supranational and national levels, Parks develops a variable political opportunity approach, which ‘accounts not only for interaction between actors on multiple levels, but also for the interaction between opportunity structures on multiple levels’ (Parks 2015: 22). Nevertheless, these analyses locating agency within the wider (changing) institutional structures still overlook the crucial importance of the sphere of production for the outcome of struggles. Of course, institutional structures are important for understanding agency, but understanding why certain institutions have been established in the first place and why they might be in the process of changing still requires analysing the underlying social relations of production and how they have conditioned institutional formations. Della Porta has gone furthest from a liberal perspective towards bringing capitalism and a focus on class back into social movement analysis. Drawing on the concept of political cleavage, she argues

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that this concept ‘can indeed be useful to discuss the extent to which capitalist transformations, in particular neoliberalism and its crisis, have contributed to the emergence of a new class (of losers of globalization, or precariat) or the re-emergence of old, formerly pacified conflicts’ (della Porta 2015: 16–17). Ultimately, however, the concept of cleavage is a liberal, pluralist theoretical approach, in which different social positions are determined through a number of equally valid, parallel characteristics. It is an aggregative approach that keeps on adding new determinations without comprehending their co-constitutive nature. Unsurprisingly, drawing on this approach, della Porta then focuses on the identification of the mobilizing bases for social movements along a number of categories including class, generations and educational levels (della Porta 2015: 42). She outlines the dynamics of capitalism and here especially the implications of neo-liberal restructuring, but who the agents are behind neo-liberal restructuring and why they pursue this strategy are left unexplored (della Porta 2015: 29–35). We end up with a very interesting picture of who participated in the Global Justice Movement during the 2000s in contrast to the anti-austerity protests in the 2010s. While the former included a large presence of well-educated middle-class people, mobilizing against inequality also between the Global North and South, the latter were dominated by the losers of globalization such as the young unemployed, precarious workers and pensioners, who all faced welfare cuts and reduced social security in one way or another (della Porta 2015: 60–6, 224). Nevertheless, the dynamics of struggles, the strategies pursued and the outcomes secured remain outside the scope of investigation. Social movement studies ‘is good at providing descriptions and tackling the questions of how social movements maintain themselves and who participates, but is less adept at moving beyond the internal relations of the movement and asking questions of why, or pushing an emancipatory position’ (Engelhardt and Moore 2017: 286). Elsewhere, della Porta acknowledges the importance of revealing the class basis of anti-austerity protests. Nevertheless, she subsequently reverts to separating out different moments of struggle – the Global Justice Movement in the early 2000s vis-à-vis the antiausterity movements after 2007/2008 – and rigidly separates struggles against exploitation in the workplace from struggles over accumulation by dispossession in the wider sphere of social reproduction (della Porta 2017: 465). As I will demonstrate in this book, however, fights against water privatization are precisely struggles, which reach across both the spheres of production and social reproduction.

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A necessarily historical materialist moment Mainstream approaches tend to engage in a dualist framing of history across international studies. They identify distinct spheres such as ‘agents’ and ‘structures’, ‘politics’ and ‘economics’, or ‘states’ and ‘markets’ as separate spheres in a relationship of ontological exteriority (Morton 2013b: 139–43). This ontological exteriority is also visible in the liberal approaches discussed above, with structures being externally related to agency and different forms of struggle being artificially put in different categories. Of course, categories such as the state and market do appear as separate in capitalism. Nevertheless, by taking them as their startingpoint of analysis, mainstream approaches cannot grasp the historical specificity of the current capitalist period (Burnham 1995). Instead, it has to be explored why it is that the state and market, the political and the economic appear as separate in the first place (Bieler and Morton 2018: 3–23). Hence, this book pursues a Marxist, historical materialist approach with a focus on how production, broadly understood including related social institutions and norms, is organized as a point of departure in order to acknowledge the historical specificity of capitalism. Production is of primary importance, because every human being fundamentally depends on access to the means of reproducing herself. As David Camfield points out: People cannot gain access to the means of life outside of social relations that organize that access. Crucially, in class-divided societies access to the means of life is mediated by how the dominant class extracts a surplus from the direct producers (whether they are independent producers, slaves or wage-workers). Thus social production has a privileged role in conditioning historical change in human societies. (Camfield 2016: 294)

It can then be comprehended that it is the specific ways in which the capitalist social relations of production are organized that makes the state and market appear as separate spheres. Based on wage labour and the private ownership or control of the means of production, the extraction of surplus labour is not directly politically enforced unlike in feudalism, because those, who do not own the means of production, are ‘free’ to sell their labour power (Wood 1995: 29, 34). Nobody is forced to work for a particular employer. However, without owning one’s own means of social reproduction, people are indirectly compelled to look for paid employment. They are forced to sell their labour power in order

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to reproduce themselves. To understand exploitation in capitalism we need to go beyond the appearance of the bourgeois economy, in which we seem to be equal, as we all have one vote in democratic elections regardless of the economic inequalities between us. As Marx reminds us, we need to investigate the ‘hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there hangs the notice “No admittance except on business”. Here we shall see not only how capital produces, but how capital is itself produced. The secret of profit-making must at last be laid bare’ (Marx 1867/1990: 279–80). Importantly, Marx distinguishes between necessary and surplus labour. Necessary labour refers to the part of the working day, for which workers receive a wage in order to buy the means for their social reproduction. The rest of the day constitutes surplus labour, during which workers are not paid and, therefore, create surplus value for capital. It is surplus value, which represents workers’ exploitation in the capitalist production process. It is surplus value, which constitutes the real basis of capitalist profit. Unpaid labour, exploitation is masked by the wage-form, which ‘extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid labour and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour’ (Marx 1867/1990: 680). Thus, while there appears to be some kind of equal exchange in the sphere of circulation with workers receiving a wage for their labour power, this moment of exploitation becomes only clear when we look at the production process itself. In sum, it is the way production is set up in capitalism, which compels workers to sell their labour power and subject themselves to capitalist exploitation (Barker 2013: 44). This non-political compulsion of workers to create surplus value for capital is specific about the capitalist historical period and this is why the state and market appear to be separate, while they are ultimately only two different forms of the same underlying configuration of the social relations of production. Unless we understand this historical specificity of our current period, any conceptualization of resistance will fall short of grasping the concrete opportunities of, but also obstacles to, transforming capitalism. Taking the capitalist social relations of production as ontological starting-point, it can be conceptualized how structure and agency are internally related. Because of the way in which capitalist social relations of production are organized around wage labour and the private ownership or control of the means of production, capitalism is characterized by a set of key structuring conditions (Bieler and Morton 2018: 38–41). First, because not only labour but also capital has to reproduce itself through the market, the resulting compulsion

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of companies to competitiveness in order to avoid bankruptcy makes capitalism such a dynamic mode of production. At the same time, however, capitalism is also crisis-ridden, the second structuring condition, due to regular ‘crises of overaccumulation’, when surpluses of both capital and labour can no longer be brought together in a productive way within the capitalist social relations of production (Harvey 1985: 132). In order to overcome crises, as a third structuring condition, capitalism constantly has had to expand outward. This outward expansion can be geographical, in that new, non-capitalist areas are integrated into capitalism, or already integrated capitalist space is re-integrated along new lines. Alternatively, it can be an inward expansion, in that de-commodified areas are re-commodified for profit-making. As we will see in Chapter 2, it is in relation to the third structuring condition that the privatization of public services including water becomes important. At times when the global economy is in crisis and other investment opportunities are lacking, investing in service provision, ultimately guaranteed by the state, promises regular profits. At the same time, these social relations of production also engender social class forces as key collective agents. As a result of the private ownership or control of the means of production and wage labour, two main classes oppose each other in capitalism, on one hand capital, the owners of the means of production, and on the other labour, those who are indirectly forced to sell their labour power. Analytically, these two classes can then be further divided into different fractions of capital and labour, depending on the particular scale of production – e.g. national versus transnational capital and labour – or orientation of production – e.g. producing predominantly for the domestic market or being internationally, export-oriented (Bieler 2000: 10–11; Bieler 2006: 32–5). This focus on the social relations of production as the generator of both structure and agency allows us to assess the role of class agency within the structuring conditions of capitalism. As I will show in this book, transnational capital has been the driving force behind water privatization in Europe. In order to grasp both structure and agency and their internal relations within the analysis, the focus will be on class struggle as the heuristic device of investigating key dynamics underpinning struggles over water privatization (Bieler and Morton 2018: 49–50; see also Radice 2015: 35). In sum, this book adopts a historical materialist approach to social movements with an emphasis on social class forces as main collective actors and a focus on class struggle as key to understanding economicpolitical developments (Barker et al. 2013; Engelhardt and Moore

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2017). As a result, it is understood that the underlying power structures and different levels of resources within the capitalist social relations of production engender asymmetries across business, trade union and social movement groups. Moreover, this focus on the social relations of production allows a historical materialist approach to analyse how institutional changes are conditioned by changes in these underlying structures. Furthermore, comprehending the historical specificity of capitalism through a focus on class struggle permits us to assess the potential for transformation beyond capitalism. ‘It helps us to both analyse the actual transformation of past and present structures of class power as a result of workers’ strategic action and also to understand the potential transformation of class structures when pursuing different class strategies’ (Las Heras 2019: 474). Finally, by acknowledging the historical specificity of capitalism, a Marxist approach to social movements is also able to appreciate the contributions by social movements to knowledge creation as ‘modes of popular learning-in-struggle around techniques and strategies of organising’ (Cox 2014: 959). Unlike liberal approaches regarding social movements purely as external objects of analysis, a historical materialist approach recognizes activists as key contributors to the shaping of future social formations. As I will show, especially when it comes to developing the notion of ‘the commons’ as well as new forms of participatory democracy, social movements involved in water struggles have made a major contribution to theorizing about possible developments beyond capitalism. The multiple forms of class agency Starting an analysis through a focus on production implies a number of potential conceptual pitfalls. First, there is the danger of economic or structural determinism, reading off strategies or positions of different labour or capital class fractions from their particular location in the production process. Mainstream approaches often reject historical materialism out of hand for this reason, but even sympathetic scholars at times dismiss Marxist approaches on these grounds. Erik Olin Wright, for example, argues that ‘the classical Marxist theory of alternatives to capitalism is deeply anchored in a deterministic theory of key properties of capitalism’s trajectory’ (Wright 2006: 104). In order to avoid this danger, this book focuses on open-ended class struggle as main explanatory strategy. Of course, as mainstream approaches include structurally determinist, teleological approaches, so does historical materialism. Nevertheless, this is neither automatic nor inevitable.

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Second, there is the danger that by starting an analysis through a focus on production the main emphasis is placed on workers, narrowly defined, as a privileged agent of transformation and the workplace as the main location of struggle. Because of trade unions’ prominent role in the political economies of advanced capitalist countries after the Second World War, scholarship on resistance, including historical materialist research, often reduced class struggle to conflicts at the workplace and to struggles between workers and employers or trade unions and employers’ associations as the respective institutional expressions. Trade unions themselves started to adopt this narrow role and were not always progressive. ‘As the “labour movement” has emerged as a recognised and licensed agency of working-class representation, it has also commonly narrowed its ideological agenda. Trade unions appear as agencies of both struggle for and containment of workers’ demands’ (Barker 2013: 52). Nevertheless, we need to remember that while trade unions are not automatically progressive agents, neither are they inevitably reactionary. Rather, trade unions can be regarded as a terrain for class struggle over their political direction. Hence, when analysing water struggles, we should not automatically write off trade unions as potential, progressive allies. This includes established trade unions, but equally rank-and-file trade unions, as we will see especially in the Italian case in Chapter 3. The latter are often successfully involved in organizing an increasingly precarious workforce. It is correct that water struggles are much broader in their relevance. ‘Cultural, ethnic and gender discrimination often constitute the (implicit or explicit) foundation to privilege allocation of water rights to some over others’ (Boelens, Vos and Perrault 2018: 5). In response to a narrow focus on trade unions and events around the protests in Paris in May 1968, there has been a move towards replacing class conflict over exploitation at work with a focus on struggles over ‘new’ issues related to gender, ethnicity and the environment from within social movement studies. In this process, trade unions and other forms of labour movements have been classified as old social movements, which are no longer relevant, in contrast to new social movements including feminist or environmental groups. Other studies continue to include a focus on class in their analysis, but they end up in a position of empirical pluralism, in which class, gender, ethnicity, race and the environment are treated as separate explanatory variables. They can focus on the external relations between these categories, but overlook how they are always internally related, which is accentuated

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in moments of contestation. See in this respect the discussion of della Porta’s work above. Nevertheless, as Laurence Cox reminds us, ‘the problem with structuralist determinisms cannot be resolved by adding yet more determinisms, because actual popular agency and consciousness are not passive and mechanical things but active and creative processes’ (Cox 2018: 64). Hence, the challenge is to develop a historical materialist approach, which is nonetheless able to include other forms of oppression into its analysis in addition to exploitation in the workplace, not on the basis of adding separate categories but in terms of how such struggles are internally related. As a first step, we need to define ‘labour’ more broadly, going beyond the capitalist workplace, and understand that there will be organizations different from trade unions, which are also involved in water struggles. According to Camfield, society is produced by human beings. Work, understood in the broad sense of creative practice, is the basis of social organisation. ‘Work is all-constitutive’. Here it is very important to heed the feminist insistence that work is much more than what is done for wages. Much human labour is unpaid, including the unpaid domestic labour, largely carried out by women. (Camfield 2002: 42)

Harry Cleaver’s work is an important starting-point for a broader understanding of class agency and class struggle in an attempt to conceptualize agency from a historical materialist perspective in a broad way, encompassing the internal relations between forms of oppression around class, gender and the destruction of the environment. When reflecting on the increasing number of struggles in the late 1960s and 1970s, Cleaver asserts that ‘the reproduction of the working class involves not only work in the factory but also work in the home and in the community of homes … ; the working class had to be redefined to include nonfactory analysis’ (Cleaver 2000: 70). Analysing what he called the ‘social factory’ allowed Cleaver to take into account all the other forms of unwaged activities including child rearing, education, which are necessary for the reproduction of capital, but take place outside the workplace. Such a framework, he argues, implies that the identification of the leading role of the unwaged in the struggles of the 1960s in Italy, and the extension of the concept to the peasantry, provided a theoretical framework within which the struggles of

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American and European students and housewives, the unemployed, ethnic and racial minorities, and Third World peasants could all be grasped as moments of an international cycle of working-class struggle. (Cleaver 2000: 73)

In short, the concept of ‘social factory’ allows us to understand class struggle as stretching across the spheres of production as well as social reproduction. This resonates closely with more recent work within Marxist feminist research and here in particular Social Reproduction Theory (e.g. Bhattacharya 2017a; Ferguson 2016). Water shortages differ in their impact on men and women in the sphere of social reproduction. ‘Water is very much a gender issue, as women and girls are burdened with providing water for their families worldwide. They spend hundreds of hours a week fetching precious water, undertaking care work or domestic labour that involves water, which is important for the household’s survival and flourishing’ (Sultana 2018: 485; see also Barlow 2011: 9–10). Unsurprisingly, feminists too have criticized the often exclusive focus by historical materialist approaches on the sphere of production and confrontations between employers and workers. ‘Large swathes of historical-materialist analysis have failed to understand and emphasise the interdependence between relations of production and reproduction, or to capture the role of gender and sexuality in forms and structures of oppression that shape capitalism’s social matrix in terms of both material conditions and ideologies’ (Ferguson et al. 2016: 28–9). The question is, then how can we conceptualize the internal relations between class and gender? As Tithi Bhattacharya argues, ‘the relations between labor dispensed to produce commodities and labor dispensed to produce people [are] part of the systematic totality of capitalism’ (Bhattacharya 2017a: 2). Importantly, these are not pre-given or natural roles. Biological reproduction and necessary social relations are shaped by the mode of production within which they occur. When thinking about capitalist accumulation, workers do not just reproduce themselves through wage labour in the workplace, but they equally reproduce themselves on the basis of unpaid work at home including social care, cooking, the washing of clothes and the bringing up of children, tasks which are still predominantly carried out by women. Consequently, ‘labour can only be productive in the sense of producing surplus value as long as it can tap, extract, exploit, and appropriate labour which is spent in the production of life, or subsistence production which is largely non-wage labour mainly done by women’ (Mies 1986/2014: 47). Extending this understanding to our conceptualization of resistance, we

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can then comprehend that struggles around the expropriation of unpaid labour in the sphere of social reproduction, such as ‘struggles for access to abortion, childcare, better wages, and healthy drinking water’ (Ferguson 2016: 52), are to be conceptualized as class struggle similar to struggles over pensions, salary levels and working conditions in the workplace. As Bhattacharya (2017b: 92) argues, Let us rethink the theoretical import of extra-workplace struggles, such as those for cleaner air, for better schools, against water privatization, against climate change, or for fairer housing policies. These reflect, I submit, those social needs of the working class that are essential for its social reproduction. They also are an effort by the class to demand its ‘share of civilization’. In this, they are also class struggles.

Water struggles are a key example of struggles across the social factory, the spheres of production and social reproduction. The privatization of water and sanitary services affects, of course, workers at the workplace. One key way of making profit for private companies is to reduce the number of workers employed and lower wage levels and working conditions. Water privatization, however, equally affects all people beyond the workplace in that everyone relies directly on access to drinkable water for their survival. Hence, citizens’ movements against the privatization of water, which can be found across the various case studies dealt with in this book, are also part of class struggle against capitalist exploitation. The sphere of social reproduction does not only cover unpaid work at home, but equally the expropriation of nature. As already Marx noted, in capitalism ‘for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production’ (Marx 1939/1993: 410). Jason Moore has made a significant advance in conceptualizing these dynamics. Similar to other Marxist approaches, Moore emphasizes capitalism’s inner dynamic of constant outward expansion. However, this is not only related to intensified exploitation of wage labour in the production of commodities. Capitalism equally depends on the expropriation of what Moore calls cheap natures, ‘a rising stream of lowcost food, labor-power, energy, and raw materials to the factory gates (or office doors, or … )’ (Moore 2015: 53). As capitalist accumulation

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increases faster than the expropriation of unpaid human work and cheap natures, there is this constant pressure to extend the capitalist frontier into new forms of cheap natures. Thus, analysing the capitalist social relations of production, Moore offers us the possibility to comprehend and conceptualize capitalist exploitation as not only taking place in the workplace. Echoing feminist Social Reproduction Theory, he argues that capitalist accumulation equally depends on the expropriation of unpaid work and cheap natures in the sphere of social reproduction (Moore 2015: 65). Capital overcomes crises through a combination of expanding capitalist commodity production in tandem with establishing new ways of expropriating cheap natures. ‘The response to this imperative has been endless geographical expansion and endless innovation’ (Moore 2015: 155). Ariel Salleh in her ecofeminist contribution understands both moments of expropriation as inextricably internally linked. ‘By proposing that the nature-woman-labour nexus be treated as a fundamental contradiction of capitalist patriarchal relations, ecofeminism affirms the primacy of an exploitative gender-based division of labour, and simultaneously shifts the economic analysis towards an ecological problematic’ (Salleh 2017: 139). Gender justice and environmental sustainability are part of the same struggle against capitalist accumulation. One form of oppression cannot be overcome, without tackling the other. While highly innovative in their understanding of capital’s reliance on expropriating unpaid labour and cheap natures, both Salleh and Moore overlook agency (of resistance) in their analyses. Moore’s account suggests that capitalism is doomed to collapse due to the inevitable exhaustion of nature and the impossibility to identify yet further cheap natures. Nevertheless, ‘how are we to judge an analysis that excludes the ecological movement and its perspectives, abandons Marx’s value analysis, has nothing at all to say about class struggle, and leaves humanity’s fate to the evolution of capitalism as a singular bundles actor?’ (Foster 2016). An alternative understanding of the relationship between capitalist accumulation and environmental destruction has been developed by John Bellamy Foster: Like any complex, dynamic system, capitalism has both an inner force that propels it and objective conditions outside itself that set its boundaries, the relations to which are forever changing. The inner dynamic of the system is governed by the process of exploitation of labour power, under the guise of equal exchange, while its primary relation to its external environment is one of expropriation. (Foster and Clark 2018: 1)

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Understanding capitalist accumulation along these lines makes clear that the relentless pressure of outward expansion is due to the way the production of commodities is set up around wage labour and the private ownership or control of the means of production. Outward expansion includes continuing encroachment into nature, the destruction of which, however dramatic, will not result in the inevitable collapse of capitalist accumulation. In fact, capitalism is quite adaptable in generating surplus value from and within conditions of ecological destruction. ‘We should not underestimate capitalism’s capacity to accumulate in the midst of the most blatant ecological destruction, to profit from environmental degradation (for example through the growth of the waste management industry)’ (Foster 2002: 10–11). Nevertheless, if capitalist collapse is not inevitable, then the role of class agency matters. Capitalism’s relentless outward expansion in the search of cheap natures, as understood by Moore, is always confronted with resistance. Struggles over environmental expropriation such as new opencast coal mining projects also have to be understood as class struggles against capitalist accumulation. Related to the purpose of this book, the privatization of water and sanitary services is, of course, part of capitalism’s strategy to access cheap nature in its attempt to overcome crisis. Hence, environmental movements and NGOs participating in resisting privatization are then equally involved in class struggle. ‘The future lies with the development of the twenty-first-century socialist/ecosocialist movement, to be rooted in a diverse, all-inclusive environmental working class’ (Foster 2018: 133). It is this focus on class struggle, which allows us not only to analyse the internal relations between structure and agency, but equally reveals the manifold ways in which class is internally related to gender, environmental expropriation and other forms of oppression, which constitute the capitalist mode of production. From an ecofeminist perspective, ‘formulated as an embodied materialism, ecofeminism gets at the lowest common denominator of all oppressions. As such, it opens up new possibilities for dialogue between classes and social movements resistant to capital’ (Salleh 2017: 263).2 Provided class is understood as a relation between human beings as well as between human beings and nature, gender and environmental expropriation enter in moments of class struggle. ‘Theorizing structure and struggle as internally related through the constantly contested process of capitalist social reproduction puts class, gender and other social struggles at the centre of analysis’ (Camfield 2002: 49; see also Camfield 2004/2005: 423). Hence, this book focuses on moments

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of class struggle as heuristic device when it comes to unravelling the underlying dynamics of struggles over water privatization in their various formations. Unlike liberal social movement studies, this emphasis on class struggle and social class forces in their complexity reveals the intersection and influence of transnational struggles on global structures of capital accumulation. It allows us to comprehend how individual moments of struggle co-constitute each other and shape the overall system, while being shaped by it at the same time. It allows us to reflect on potential alternatives beyond capitalism. As Barker and his co-authors make clear, while feminist, ecological and anarchist thought all share its movement origins, none holds the same ability to connect the critique of structure with a strategic analysis of social movements both as they are and as they could be – to find within the limitations of the world as is the potential to create a new world in the teeth of powerful opposition and structural constraints. (Barker et al. 2013: 15)

Class struggle within civil society, the material structure of ideology and the transnational Institutional structures matter when it comes to the analysis of class struggle. Unlike liberal approaches, which perceive civil society as inherently progressive, this book is based on a historical materialist, Gramscian understanding of civil society, which regards civil society as the location within which the struggle over hegemony, the struggle over a country’s direction takes place. ‘Civil society is the arena wherein the ruling class extends and reinforces its power by non-violent means’ (Buttigieg 1995: 26). Civil society, consisting of political parties, unions, employers’ associations, churches, etc., is regarded as one part of the state, while political society, referring to the administrative system of the state apparatus including the means of coercion such as the police and the military, is the other (Gramsci 1971: 257–63, 271). Rather than contrasting civil society as a separate sphere of freedom to the state as liberals would do, for Gramsci both formed what he referred to as the integral state. ‘Gramsci’s theory of hegemony hinges on his radical rejection of the sharp distinction drawn in mainstream liberal theory between the state or government, on the one hand, and civil society, on the other’ (Buttigieg 2005: 37). Equally, in Gramsci’s understanding civil society and political society are not separate from the sphere of

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production. Instead, they ‘are conceived as “two major superstructural levels” in this more complex three-dimensional spatial sense, or two major “ideological forms” in which men become conscious of their conflicts in the “world of production”’ (Thomas 2009: 172). This allows us then in a subsequent step to understand the role of ideology in class struggle over hegemony. Ideologies are neither external to the material, as constructivists would argue, nor can everything be reduced to ideas in the form of discourse, as post-structuralists propose. Rather, we need to conceptualize the material structure of ideology in order to grasp the internal relations between ideology and the material (Bieler and Morton 2018: 51–75). Thus, ideas can only be of significance, if they are based on a ‘material organisation intended to maintain, defend and develop the theoretical or ideological “front”’ (Gramsci 1995: 155). In other words, ideas must be disseminated through a material structure consisting of publishing houses, political newspapers, periodicals, etc. to become relevant. Unsurprisingly, the material structure underpinning certain ideologies, the structural power of particular class fractions behind certain ideologies, has a decisive influence over which ideology is likely to shape hegemony and thus state direction as a result of open-ended class struggle. Ideology plays an important role in the struggle over water. ‘Neoliberal discourses have become so dominant in framing the terms of water debate that they have come to be accepted as normal or inevitable’ (Boelens, Vos and Perrault 2018: 12). Nevertheless, this must not imply that they can be understood as external to the material or separate as one echelon of struggles over discourse, next to other echelons of analysis (Perreault, Boelens and Vos 2018: 349–50). Chapter 2 will ground this dominance of neo-liberalism within the material structure of the capitalist social relations of production and here especially the role of transnational capital in water struggles. The role of ideology in class struggles within civil society also provides the grounding for understanding the increasingly important role of transnational capital resulting from processes of globalization. Here, transnational capital is not conceptualized as external to the state and the interstate system with analysis then focused on the extent to which the former can impose its will on the latter, or whether states are able to retain authority in decision-making over the former. Drawing on Nicos Poulantzas, the state is understood as ‘the condensation of a relationship of forces between classes and class fractions, such as these express themselves, in a necessarily specific form, within the state itself ’ (Poulantzas 1978: 132). The main emphasis, therefore, has

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to be placed on analysing the extent to which the material interests of transnational capital have become internalized within different forms of state as a result of class struggle (Bieler and Morton 2018: 123–8). In more concrete terms, it has to be investigated to which extent transnational capital has been successful so that privatization of public water companies has been accepted as the best way forward in different countries. Poulantzas’s notion of the relative autonomy of the state is important in this respect. Because the capitalist state has to ensure the continuity of capitalist accumulation overall, it ‘has to maintain relative autonomy of the fractions of a power-bloc in order to organize their unity under the hegemony of a given class or fraction’ (Poulantzas 1978: 91). At times, this may imply that the state has to sacrifice the interests of a particular capital class fraction in the interest of capital as a whole. Equally, it may have to organize concessions to the dominated class fractions of labour in order to protect capitalist production. Considering ongoing class struggle as inevitable within capitalism, the relative autonomy of the state, ‘the separation of “economy” from “politics” and of “state” from “society” is thus a crucial condition for the possibility of the existence and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production’ (Hirsch and Kannankulam 2011: 15). When analysing ongoing class struggle within a particular form of state, however, the relative autonomy of the state does not imply that institutional structures would be neutral vis-à-vis class forces of capital and labour. Because the state has the task to ensure continuation of capitalist accumulation, the interests of capital are always likely to be privileged by state institutions in this struggle. According to Bob Jessop’s strategic-relational approach, the state ‘can never be considered as neutral. It has a necessary structural selectivity’ (Jessop 1990: 268), favouring certain strategies over others. Nevertheless, institutions never determine strategy. There are always different possible strategies, from which actors can choose. Hence, when analysing water struggles within the Italian, Greek, Irish as well as EU institutional structures, these forms of state have to be understood as ‘an ensemble of power centres that offer unequal chances to different forces within and outside the state to act for different political purposes’ (Jessop 2007: 37). Importantly, the relative autonomy of the state is never fixed, but constantly changing and re-constituted in processes of class struggle. As a capitalist state, the state inevitably will privilege strategies by capital. Nevertheless,  this does not imply that strategies beyond capitalism are impossible, because ‘it is the dialectical motion of struggle that constitutes the state, leaving disruptive possibilities open’ (Angel and

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Loftus 2019: 210). And because class struggle constitutes a particular form of state, class struggles over the way water is maintained and distributed are shaped by state structures, but equally have an impact on the wider institutional set-up in return.

Overview of the book The next chapter will analyse in detail the general structuring conditions of the global political economy as they have unfolded from the global crisis during the 1970s onwards. While enormously dynamic, capitalism is also crisis prone. Hence, there is constant pressure of outward capitalist expansion into new areas and privatization pressures on public services in general and water in particular are part of these dynamics. Moreover, this chapter will analyse the agency of transnational capital and the way it has been involved in pushing for water privatization. Thus, this chapter sets the scene for a focus on the various case studies on alliances of resistance. In turn, Chapter 3 will focus on the first case study, the struggles around the water referendum in Italy in June 2011. This chapter will analyse the emergence of the Forum of Water Movements and its successful mobilization in the 2011 referendum against water privatization. It will explore how it had been possible to construct such a large alliance of trade unions, citizens’ movements, environmental organizations and development NGOs. In a second step, I will contrast this success of agency in the referendum with the lack of implementation of the referendum outcome between 2011 and today through an exploration of the internal relations between class agency and the wider structuring conditions of ongoing capitalist crisis. EPSU had been involved in struggles against water privatization in various Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries from the early 1990s onwards. Based on its own experience as well as the unfolding wider water struggles in different national contexts and at the global level EPSU launched the ECI in 2012. It was especially the success in the Italian water referendum, which had convinced EPSU that this was a viable strategy. A broad set of objectives and large alliances at both national and European level are identified as key reasons for success in Chapter 4. In a final step, this success is then related to the structuring conditions of the global political economy and the particular way they have played out in the EU form of state in order to assess the outcomes in terms of concrete policy changes.

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Chapter 5 is dedicated to an analysis of the underlying dynamics of water struggles in Greece against the background of EU imposed austerity. Unlike in other European countries, the pressure on Greece to privatize its water services has been brutally direct. As a result of the Eurozone crisis, Greece had to accept bailout agreements, which were conditional on the restructuring of its political economy. In addition to budget cuts and a deregulation of labour markets these conditions also included enforced privatization of national assets with water companies being one of the targets. Significantly, although Greek activists had initially won against privatization of water services in both Athens and Thessaloniki in 2014, the issue returned onto the agenda after the third bailout agreement in July 2015 and the establishment of the socalled Superfund, entrusted with the task to oversee privatizations. This chapter will provide an up-to-date account of current struggles in view of the pressures by transnational capital and the wider structuring conditions within the global political economy. Traditionally, water services were paid through general taxation in Ireland. As part of its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Troika of European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and IMF, however, the Irish state committed itself first to create a national water company and then install water meters in all households to facilitate direct charging of water usage. In Chapter 6, I will analyse how this imposition of yet another austerity payment in 2014 triggered some of the largest demonstrations in Irish history. In the end, having been confronted with a non-payment campaign, the physical blocking of meter installations and regular large demonstrations, the Irish government had to suspend the introduction of water charges in 2016. Interestingly, against the background of an improved economic situation and lower levels of pressure from within the structuring conditions of the global political economy, there has been less renewed effort by capital to impose water charges and privatization to date. Struggles over public water are ongoing. Even where there have been victories, capital comes back and attempts to re-open the issue. In order to overcome economic crises, there is constant systemic pressure towards capitalist expansion into new areas and water remains a key target for capital. Nonetheless, resistance against water privatization has not only demonstrated that contestation of capitalist restructuring and exploitation can be successful, it has also opened up avenues towards transformative practices beyond capitalism. It was especially in the Italian and to some extent Greek contexts that the principle of ‘the commons’ emerged as an alternative way of administering water.

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Instead of the private market, focused on profit maximization, and the public sector, which had very often proved to be rather inefficient in Italy, the principle of ‘the commons’ as an area to be collectively owned and administered based on citizens’ direct democratic participation was put forward as an alternative. The Conclusion will explore this idea further and assess its potential for a future beyond capitalism.

Notes 1 I guaranteed all interviewees anonymity. Hence, in the Bibliography I have listed them by function but not by name. Moreover, because of anonymity no direct quotes from the interviews will be included in the presentation of the argument with one exception in Chapter 7, approved by the particular interviewee. Instead, I will indicate where I have drawn on which particular interview by adding references to the interviews at the appropriate places in Harvard style. Interviews have the advantage of providing an insight into the internal decision-making process of an organization in contrast to policy documents, which only state the outcome of a debate. The validity of information was cross-checked through the information from other interviews as well as the consultation of further primary and secondary sources. 2 The work by Moore and Foster is not generally regarded as compatible. Moore accuses Foster of incorrectly emphasizing a dualism between nature and society, while Foster criticizes Moore for overlooking the importance of agency. In this book, however, for analytical purposes I combine Moore’s understanding of capitalism’s relentless outward expansion into nature with Foster’s emphasis on agency and Salleh’s insights into the internal relations between patriarchal oppression and environmental destruction.

Chapter 2 C A P I TA L I SM ’ S R E L E N T L E S S T H I R ST F O R AC C UM U L AT IO N Introduction The case for the privatization of water follows neo-liberal lines of argument. ‘Proponents of privatization assert that private companies will perform better: they will be more efficient, provide more finance, and mobilize higher-quality expertise than their government counterparts’ (Bakker 2010: 2). By contrast, the state is generally perceived to be inefficient and corrupt in the delivery of people’s infrastructure needs (Robbins 2003: 1074). As such, the privatization discourse seeks to delegitimize not only the role of the state in economic governance in general and in water management in particular but also the public’s control over it. In more detail, neo-liberal economics expects that privatizing public services would result in three benign consequences due to the competitive pressures of the ‘free market’: (1) the production of services becomes more efficient; (2) the quality of services is improved; and (3) the cost of services for consumers is reduced. For instance, the European Commission (2011: 33) proposed that the privatization of Greek state-owned enterprises including the municipal water companies of Athens and Thessaloniki would lead to ‘an increase in efficiency of the companies and by extension in the competitiveness of the economy as a whole’. Defining water as an economic good is key to this line of reasoning. In 1992, Principle 4 of the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development, adopted at the International Conference on Water and the Environment, stated that ‘water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good’ (Dublin Statement 1992). Indicating the value of water through the correct price would ensure the most efficient distribution of a precious resource. In neo-liberal terms, ‘the “true value” of water is best achieved where the market model of development is used; prices become the mechanism which sends appropriate signals to everyone about decision making on allocation, distribution, and consumption’ (Spronk 2010: 162). Many

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governments, the EU as well as private companies refer to the Dublin Statement, when justifying the commodification of water (e.g. Water Europe 2019: 16). Nevertheless, as work by researchers from the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at Greenwich University and at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam has demonstrated (e.g. Kishimoto, Lobina and Petitjean 2015; Pigeon, McDonald, Hoedeman and Kishimoto 2012), these positive expectations have not materialized. Water privatization has generally resulted in insufficient investment into infrastructure, soaring consumer tariffs, lower levels of efficiency, poor service quality and ‘the failure of private water corporations to contribute investment finance’ (Lobina 2014: 10). The expectations that private water services would be less wasteful and ensure wider coverage especially in developing countries were not met either. ‘There is some evidence that imposing full cost recovery, or “market prices” for water in Third World settings allows the rich to use water as wastefully as they want, as long as they can pay, while the poor continue to suffer from lack of access to water’ (Robbins 2003: 1078). Instead, corporations have reaped large amounts of profit on the back of water privatization. These profits, of course, have to be funded somehow and unsurprisingly, it is water users who foot the bill through higher tariffs. Despite unchanging operating costs, water prices in the UK have increased by 50 per cent since privatization in the late 1980s (Lobina 2014: 11). As we will see in Chapter 3, privatization of water services in central Italy resulted in price increases of over 100 per cent and more at times. When in Greece the public water companies of Athens and Thessaloniki were commercialized in 2001, water charges tripled (see Chapter 5). In Ireland, where water had traditionally been paid through general taxation, the government wanted to introduce a completely new charge (see Chapter 6). Leveraging debt on water companies is another way of ensuring profits. As Aditya Chakrabortty reported in The Guardian, between 2007 and 2012 there was only one year in which the consortium of shareholders of Thames Water in the UK took out less money of the company than it had made in post-tax profits, thereby doubling the company’s debt to £7.8 billion (Chakrabortty 2014). Transfer pricing has been a further, particularly prominent way of reaping profits. ‘This practice consists of inflating operating subsidiaries’ payments to the parent corporation as a way of increasing profits, because the subsidiaries’ deficits are then compensated by rate increases or public subsidies and so such deficits constitute a net gain for shareholders’ (Lobina 2014: 12). Furthermore, if there are infrastructure improvements or repairs to be carried out,

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water companies frequently ensure that these contracts go to their own subsidiaries. In Paris prior to re-municipalization in 2010, for example, Suez and Veolia had ‘subcontracted works and maintenance to subsidiaries of the same groups, so that the parent companies could realise additional profits’ (Lobina, Kishimoto and Petitjean 2014: 7). Activists of the Arezzo Public Water Committee observed the same practices in Italy (Interview No.11). And should TNCs be in danger of incurring losses, be it as the result of economic crisis or be it due to a change in state policy, controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms allow them to recuperate their profits. ‘Argentina has faced compensation claims for over USD 20 billion, following the impact of its economic crisis in 2001 on the viability of numerous water and electricity privatisations’ (Hall 2006: 184; see also Hoedeman, Kishimoto and Pigeon 2012: 108). Finally, privatization has not secured greater levels of accountability either. In a market dominated by few large corporations, the temptation of collusion is high. ‘In both France and Italy competition authorities have condemned the private companies for uncompetitive behaviour. In France, Suez and Veolia were ordered to break up a series of “joint ventures” which they had formed in order to share contracts rather than compete against each other’ (EPSU 2012b: 4). In reverse, re-municipalization indicates where the real savings may lie. When municipal water had been taken back in Paris in 2010, ‘Eau de Paris saved the city about €35 million with the shift to public ownership, leading to a reduction of water tariffs by 8% compared to 2009’ (Pigeon 2012: 25). In short, water privatization is not about how to provide best water. The main purpose is to generate private profits. Rather than being about efficiency and universal access to water, this discourse of superior private services is primarily attempting to delegitimize the role of the state in delivering public services, facilitating further accumulation of surplus value through the privatization of public assets (Swyngedouw 2005: 87). Water struggles do not take place within a structural vacuum. As discussed in Chapter 1, we need to assess the agency involved and strategies employed in struggles over water privatization within the wider structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse precisely those structuring conditions and explore in detail why it is that capital constantly searches for higher profits in general and how water is related to these processes in particular. In the next section, I will first explore how the underlying dynamic of capitalism’s drive to outward expansion is rooted in the way capitalist production is organized around the private ownership or

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control of the means of production and wage labour. Then, I will look in more detail at the way the economic crisis of the 1970s was overcome, resulting in a fundamental restructuring of global capitalism around neo-liberal economics, before analysing how the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 has impacted on water privatization.

Capitalist accumulation and the relentless drive to outward expansion The sole purpose of private companies is to accumulate surplus value. As Marx pointed out, ‘it is the rate of profit that is the driving force in capitalist production, and nothing is produced save what can be produced at a profit’ (Marx 1894/1981: 368). Importantly, the purpose of making profit is not to satisfy any specific needs of individual capitalists. Despite of all the fancy cars, luxury yachts and expensive houses individual capitalists may buy for themselves, they will never use up all the surplus value, underpinning profits, in their own private consumption. Instead of private consumption, profits constantly have to be re-invested in order to generate yet further surplus value and, thus, stay ahead under the pressures of capitalist competition. ‘The idea that accumulation is achieved at the expense of consumption … is an illusion that contradicts the essence of capitalist production, in as much as it assumes that the purpose and driving motive of this is consumption, and not the grabbing of surplus-value and its capitalization, i.e. accumulation’ (Marx 1884/1978: 579). The type of production, in which capital is invested, does not matter. Surplus value is used to generate yet more surplus value in an ongoing process. Where does this relentless pressure towards constantly increasing accumulation of surplus value come from in capitalism? In his historical overview of the emergence of capitalism, Jason Moore notes this expansionary dynamic underpinning capitalism: the rise of capitalism after 1450s was made possible by an epochal shift in the scale, speed, and scope of landscape transformation in the Atlantic world and beyond. The long seventeenth century’s forest clearances of the Vistula Basin and Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest occurred on a scale, and at a speed, between five and ten times greater than anything seen in medieval Europe. (Moore 2015: 182)

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Locating the emergence of capitalism at a global level in the fifteenth century, Moore reveals his affinity with world-systems theory and the definition of capitalism related to the emergence of a world market (Moore 2015: 12; see also Patel and Moore 2018: 3). Capitalism is understood as ‘production for sale in a market in which the object is to realise the maximum profit’ (Wallerstein 1979: 15). Nevertheless, by basing its argument on a ‘logic of circulation’ world-systems theory’s definition of capitalism assumes that the outward expansion of capitalism is grounded in individual greed (Teschke 2003: 140). Similar to neoclassical economics and its understanding of the utilitymaximizing homo economicus, world-systems theory overlooks the systemic compulsion to constant outward expansion, which goes far beyond the satisfaction of individual pleasures. Simply to say that ‘the permanent demands of profit-making require those profits to themselves generate profitable returns’ (Patel and Moore 2018: 27) does not explain where these permanent demands for profit-making originate from in the first place. Of course, Marx himself pointed out that the world market had been included in capitalist production from the very beginning. The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome. Initially, to subjugate every moment of production itself to exchange and to suspend the production of direct use values not entering into exchange, i.e. precisely to posit production based on capital in place of earlier modes of production, which appear primitive [naturwüchsig] from its standpoint. (Marx 1939/1993: 408)

Nevertheless, the world market here is the result of capitalist production, rather than its origin. The feminist Marxist Silvia Federici is another scholar who relies, at least implicitly, on Wallerstein’s worldsystems theory and his definition of capitalism as a 500-year long phenomenon, based on a world market. Unsurprisingly, Federici is unable to conceptualize and explore the relentless outward dynamic of capitalist expansion. ‘How can we account’, she wonders, ‘for the fact that after five hundred years of relentless exploitation of workers across the planet, the capitalist class in its different embodiments still needs to pauperize multitudes of people worldwide? There is no obvious answer to this question’ (Federici 2019: 19).

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When it comes to the definition of capitalism, this book relies on an amended version of the social property relations approach by Robert Brenner (1985) and Ellen Meiksins Wood (1995). Brenner rejects the above explanation of the emergence of capitalism as a result of the growth of market relations and increased trade centred in the rise of towns and cities (Brenner 2001: 171). In order to understand the dynamics of capitalism, the focus has to be instead on the underlying social property relations, that is how production is organized in variegated forms in order to ensure surplus extraction. Of course, the prior existing world market has shaped capitalism and capitalism, in turn, has completely transformed the world market, but in itself the world market alone cannot explain the transition from feudalism to capitalism. ‘As the feudal monarchies of Spain and Portugal were to discover, the wealth plundered during the mercantile period did not fuel an industrial revolution on the Iberian Peninsula precisely because social relations were not transformed’ (Ashman 2010: 194). Through a detailed analysis of variances in social property relations, Brenner argues that it was in medieval England that a specific set of social property relations based on a landlord/capitalist tenant/wage-labourer structure was established (Brenner 1985: 46–9). As a result of the enclosures of the commons, peasants were driven from the land and thereby separated from their means of subsistence. This then led to a situation in which both the capitalist tenant and the wage-labourer depended on the market for their social reproduction. The capitalist tenant was in competition with other capitalist tenants for market share, while peasants competed with each other for wage labour, the only way left to them for ensuring their survival. Importantly, the specificity of this development was not facilitated by the emerging world market and the trade in luxury goods for the elites, but the development of a unique domestic economy based on a growing mass market for cheap basic goods such as foodstuffs and cotton cloth (Brenner 2001: 233; Wood 2002b: 82). ‘This system was unique in its dependence on intensive as distinct from extensive expansion, on the extraction of surplus value created in production as distinct from profit in the sphere of circulation, on economic growth based on increasing productivity and competition within a single market – in other words, on capitalism’ (Wood 2002a: 23). While Brenner asserts the importance of the emergence of agricultural capitalism in Britain in the sixteenth century as a result of the enclosures, he also demonstrates how this was a rather specific development, very different from agricultural development in France, where peasant ownership of the land continued, or Eastern Europe, characterized by the enserfment of the peasantry.

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As indicated already in Chapter 1, the way production is organized around wage labour and the private ownership or control of the means of production results in a number of structuring conditions in capitalism. First, capitalist competition not only subjects workers to a struggle for survival in search for paid employment, it also submits capitalists to a struggle for surplus value maximization and larger market share to avoid bankruptcy (Bieler and Morton 2018: 86–94). ‘Conceptually, competition is nothing other than the inner nature of capital, its essential character, appearing in and realized as the reciprocal interaction of many capitals with one another, the inner tendency as external necessity’ (Marx 1939/1993: 414). Thus, because labour and capital both reproduce themselves through the market, there is a constant emphasis on competitiveness and the related pressure for further technological innovation in a relentless struggle for ever higher profit levels. As Marx noted, ‘under free competition, the immanent laws of capitalist production confront the individual capitalist as a coercive force external to him’ (Marx 1867/1990: 381). In order to remain competitive every capitalist is forced to innovate production in order to produce more goods at lower costs. ‘If accumulation is not carried on, if the apparatus of production is not constantly modernized, then one’s own enterprise is faced with the threat of being steamrolled by competitors who produce more cheaply or who manufacture better products’ (Heinrich 2012: 16). Nevertheless, the technological advantage gained is never permanent, because as soon as one capitalist has moved ahead, others are forced to catch up in order to remain competitive themselves. Once this step has occurred, there is then renewed pressure to move ahead technologically yet again, and so forth (Harvey 2006a: 120). In other words, this constant pressure towards technological innovation is a key structuring condition of the capitalist social relations of production. ‘Competition subordinates every individual capitalist to the immanent laws of capitalist production, as external and coercive laws’ (Marx 1867/1990: 739). Competition explains why capitalism is such a dynamic mode of production. At the same time, this dynamic nature of capitalism underpins its crisis tendency, the second structuring condition, which is closely related to the falling rate of profit. Technological upgrade and a rise in productivity increase the organic composition of capital. While capital invests more in constant capital such as cutting-edge machinery and latest technology, comparatively less is invested in living labour, variable capital, which is, however, the only part that is actually able to create surplus value.

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Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization With the progressive decline in the variable capital in relation to the constant capital, this tendency leads to a rising organic composition of the total capital, and the direct result of this is that the rate of surplusvalue, with the level of exploitation of labour remaining the same or even rising, is expressed in a steadily falling general rate of profit. (Marx 1894/1981: 318–19)

Hence, what is logical for the individual capitalist is problematic for capital as a whole. When every capitalist attempts to produce more goods with fewer workers through the application of new technology, there will be fewer and fewer people who can actually buy those goods. ‘We see here’, Harvey argues, ‘the necessary contradiction that arises when each capitalist strives to reduce the share of variable capital in value added within the enterprise while speculating on selling his output to workers employed by other capitalists’ (Harvey 2006a: 134). In other words, capitalism is characterized by periodic crises of overproduction, in which more is produced than can actually be consumed and, consequently, in which it is impossible to realize the surplus value contained in these commodities (Marx 1894/1981: 367). Expressed differently, there is a situation of a surplus of both capital and labour, which can no longer be brought together in a productive way within the capitalist social relations of production, a ‘state of overaccumulation’ (Harvey 1985: 132). Thus, Marx identified the following economic cycle: ‘feverish production, a consequent glut on the market, then a contraction of the market, which causes production to be crippled. The life of industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation’ (Marx 1867/1990: 580). Capital has a number of strategies at its disposal of how to respond to crisis, as Marx and Engels already pointed out in the Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels 1848/1998: 18). It can increase exploitation of the existing workforce through salary cuts and less good working conditions. Alternatively, capital can engage in ‘creative destruction’ of existing production capacities. Two companies in the same sector merge and shut down part of the production lines, for example. In addition, however, and this is the third structuring condition, there is always also the relentless pressure of outward expansion in the attempt of overcoming crisis. Rosa Luxemburg had already pointed to ‘the inherent contradiction between the unlimited expansive capacity of the productive forces and the limited expansive capacity of social consumption under conditions of capitalist distribution’ (Luxemburg 1913/2003: 323). These crises, she argued, cannot be solved within

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capitalism itself. Instead, new markets have to be opened up elsewhere. ‘The decisive fact is that the surplus value cannot be realised by sale either to workers or to capitalists, but only if it is sold to such social organisations or strata whose own mode of production is not capitalistic’ (Luxemburg 1913/2003: 332). The opening up of China and India for the export of textile goods among other commodities during the nineteenth century, supported by brute force if necessary – see, for example, the Opium wars with China in 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860 – is one example in this respect. Equally important is, however, outward expansion in the search for cheaper labour. Dutch capitalism in the seventeenth century depended on access to cheap labour in Asia (Anievas and Nişancioğlu 2015: 226–7). More recently, the overcoming of the world-wide recession during the 1970s relied on transferring labour-intensive production to locations in the Global South (see below). Expansion, therefore, does not only imply capitalist expansion into noncapitalist space, but can equally take place through a re-organization of existing centre-periphery relations within global capitalism. The latest re-organization of this type is reflected in the rolling out of an expanded free trade regime, extending trade beyond the trade in goods to trade in services, public procurement and including investment measures and intellectual property rights (Bieler and Morton 2014: 40–2). Finally, expansion can also be inward through processes of commodification of areas not yet commodified or which had previously been decommodified (Harvey 2006b: 44–50). It is here that the privatization of public services becomes important. At times when the global economy is in crisis and other investment opportunities have dried up, investing in service provision ultimately guaranteed by the state promises sustainable and usually subsidized profits (Fattori 2013b: 378). This also affects the provision of water. ‘Municipal governments and communities end up bearing all the risks and liabilities, while private water corporations enjoy guaranteed profits whatever their performance’ (Lobina 2014: 12). In short, capitalism’s pressure towards relentless outward expansion is not the result of greedy individual capitalists, but structurally based on the way the social relations of production are organized around wage labour and the private ownership or control of the means of production. The relentless accumulation through outward expansion is structurally necessary in order to overcome economic crises. Each resolution of crisis is, however, only temporary, preparing the ground for even larger crises. Capitalist outward expansion does not imply even development, but due to the way competitive capitalist markets work structurally,

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it results in unevenness with development in the periphery subordinated to development in the core (Kiely 2007: 18). As Leon Trotsky initially formulated, outward expansion is driven by processes of uneven and combined development. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he observed that while Russia was generally backward vis-à-vis industrialized Western European countries due to its large, inefficient agricultural sector, there were a number of small pockets around Moscow and St. Petersburg of highly industrialized production especially in the arms industry. Financed by foreign loans and a response to hostile neighbours, Russian development was combined with Western European countries, while at the same time also highly uneven (Trotsky 1906/2007: 27). Uneven and combined development, furthermore, also characterizes development inside countries, which are drawn into the capitalist orbit. As Adam D. Morton notes, ‘a “peculiar mixture of backward elements with the most modern factors” arises within a social formation confronted with insertion into, and catch-up with, the expanding system of capitalism’ (Morton 2010: 10).1 Especially in Chapter 5, these dynamics will be visible, when analysing the way Greece has been drawn into uneven and combined development with more advanced industrialized EU member states since it joined the EU in 1981 and become deindustrialized as a result. Increasing inequality in Greece, Ireland and Italy as well as across the EU is the result of how uneven and combined development has played out within the various forms of state, analysed in this book. Importantly, however, we must not mistake these structuring conditions for some kind of positivist laws, which determine development. Rather, they are structural pressures shaping the terrain of class struggle. How precisely these structuring conditions play out, in what way capitalism expands outward and the concrete manifestations of uneven and combined development are decided in open-ended class struggle. ‘The production of economic landscapes is the result of political conflict, between labour and capital and between different segments of labour and of capital who might have quite different visions for how the landscape should be structured’ (Herod 2006: 158). As the struggles against water privatization in this book demonstrate, the outcome of these moments of contestation is open-ended. The structuring conditions of capitalist social relations of production explain the constant pressure towards outward expansion underpinning water privatization and shape the terrain of class struggle, but they do not determine struggle itself.

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Nevertheless, does this not imply then an almost inevitable focus on the workplace when it comes to analysing resistance against capitalist exploitation, overlooking the spheres of social reproduction and gendered forms of oppression as well as ecological destruction, as discussed in Chapter 1? We need to remember that capitalism as a mode of production will always include forms of exploitation other than wage labour. As Marx argued, developed capitalism depends on the dominance of wage labour, but this does not exclude the contemporary existence of other forms of oppression and domination (Marx 1884/1978: 554). Thus, historical capitalism is not some kind of abstract, pure form of social relations of production and any definition of capitalism as an abstract mode of production risks to overlook the historical forms through which capitalism emerged. For example, ‘the externalisation of “extra-economic” forms of exploitation and oppression from capitalism ultimately leads Political Marxists [i.e. the social property relations approach] to exclude the histories of colonialism and slavery from the inner workings of the capitalist production mode’ (Anievas and Nişancioğlu 2015: 31). British capitalism in the eighteenth century was not only characterized by wage labour and the production of commodities in Britain, but also dependent on slave labour in the production of, for example, cotton in the colonies. ‘In the late 18th century, income from colonial properties in the Americas was equal to approximately 50 per cent of British gross investment. Since much of this would have been reinvested in British industries, it provided a significant input into British industrialisation’ (Anievas and Nişancioğlu 2015: 164). In turn, slave labour in the Americas was only possible on the basis of the Atlantic slave trade, in which Britain was heavily involved and the receipts of which also directly fuelled the industrial revolution from the late eighteenth century onwards. ‘From 1783 to 1793 the slavers of Liverpool sold 300,000 slaves for 15 million, which went into the foundation of industrial enterprises’ (Ernest Mandel, quoted in Mies 1986/2014: 90). In other words, the full establishment of the capitalist mode of production in Britain was dependent on the slave trade as well as slave labour. ‘The English Industrial Revolution would have been virtually impossible without cotton and the expropriation of populations and the land in Africa and the Americas with which the empire of cotton was built. The origin of the age of capital was thus intimately bound to a racialized system of accumulation’ (Foster and Clark 2018: 12). Anievas and Nişancioğlu (2015: 218) make an important conceptual distinction between capital and capitalism. ‘While capital … refers to a social relation defined by the relation between capital and wage-labour,

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capitalism refers to a broader configuration (or totality) of social relations oriented around the systematic reproduction of the capital relation, but irreducible – either historically or logically – to the capital relation itself.’ Although not new as capitalist exploitation has always relied on other forms of exploitation than wage labour, today too, capitalism depends on other forms of exploitation including, as indicated in Chapter 1, the expropriation of unpaid labour and cheap nature in the sphere of social reproduction. Again, the pressure towards relentless outward expansion comes from within the way the production of commodities is set up around the private ownership or control of the means of production and wage labour, which is the dominant form of exploitation in capitalism. However, we need to amend the social property relations approach in order to take into account how other forms of exploitation have been part of the historical emergence of capitalism as well as ongoing capitalist accumulation today. In the next section, I will discuss in more detail the global economic crisis of the 1970s and how the internal relations between the structuring conditions of capitalist social relations of production and class agency have played out since then.

The global economic crisis of the 1970s and its resolution The post-1945 period in industrialized countries is often referred to as the ‘thirty glorious years’ due to large increases in economic growth. National class compromises between capital and labour underpinned the post-war economic recovery. On one hand, labour in the form of predominantly white, male workers accepted capital’s prerogative over the means of production and the way production is organized; on the other, capital agreed on workers participating in growing wealth through a steady increase in wages and improvement in working conditions. In tripartite relationships, the state supported this compromise through Keynesian, demand-led economic policies guaranteeing full employment in a system of mass employment and mass consumption. In addition, the state lent its support through an expanding welfare state establishing universal access to services such as health and education. Nevertheless, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a declining rate of profit manifested itself in a crisis of overaccumulation within the global political economy (Robinson 2014: 131). Economic growth was no longer strong enough to ensure both large capitalist profits and rising wages for workers. Unsurprisingly, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw increasing levels of industrial conflict across the industrialized world.

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In response to the economic crisis and industrial conflict, capital renounced national class compromises and re-organized production across the global political economy through a combination of various ‘fixes’, part of the new neo-liberal hegemonic project with its focus on the continuation of surplus value accumulation and dominance of (transnational) capital over labour. First, a technological fix, characterized by drastic innovation in production processes at the capital-intensive end in industrialized countries, was combined with a spatial fix, transferring labour-intensive parts of manufacturing such as in the textile industry to cheap labour locations especially in the Global South (Silver 2003: 64–6; see also Smith 2016: 188). Capitalism, in short, was expanding outward through a re-organization of already existing capitalist centre-periphery relations. As a result, large parts of global production have increasingly been organized across borders with transnational corporations (TNCs) emerging as key new players in the global economy. Outflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have increased drastically especially since the early 1980s. The resulting build-up of FDI stocks over time, reflecting the lasting relationships of cross-border production, demonstrates the ever more important role played by TNCs. While outward FDI stocks had been US$ 2,091,496 million in 1990 (UNCTAD 2013: 217), they were US$ 7,408,709 million in 2000, US$ 20,465,356 million in 2010 and US$ 34,571,124 million in 2019 (UNCTAD 2020: 242). Thus, in the search for cheap labour the organization of production has become increasingly transnationalized and transnational capital has emerged as an important, if not dominant new class fraction. The greater centralization and control of production in the global economy by transnational capital have been combined with a fragmentation of the production process itself (Robinson 2004: 15). Rather than owning all the production sites in different countries, TNCs have started to outsource parts of production to independent contract manufacturers organized in so-called global value chains (GVCs). TNCs ‘began dividing the production process into ever finer segments, both vertical and horizontal, and locating the separate stages in two or more countries, creating cross-border production networks’ (Hart-Landsberg 2013: 91). In general, these developments highlight again the increasing transnationalization of production and the rising importance of TNCs in the global political economy. ‘To the extent that participating firms are not themselves transnational, it means that TNC dominance over international economic activity is greater than previously stated. And to the extent that these firms are themselves

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transnational, it means that contemporary capitalist accumulation dynamics have given rise to a hierarchically structured, interlocking system of TNCs’ (Hart-Landsberg 2013: 20). Overall, transnational restructuring of production has resulted in a complex new structure of how commodities are produced across borders with emerging markets such as the so-called BRICS, that is Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, developing into new important hubs of capitalist accumulation in the global political economy. This ‘process, aided by governments, has knitted together third world economies in ways that reflect the interests of leading core and third world country capitalists as well as their allies’ (Hart-Landsberg 2015: 7). Equally important for overcoming the global economic crisis in the 1970s was a financial fix, often referred to as financialization. It revived growth potentials in that the financial sector itself was transformed into an area of capitalist accumulation in its own right through the introduction of ever more new financial products and investment opportunities. Within capital, power shifted from manufacturing to finance capital. ‘Neoliberalism meant, in short, the financialisation of everything and the relocation of the power centre of capital accumulation to owners and their financial institutions at the expense of other fractions of capital’ (Harvey 2006b: 24). Financialization has, furthermore, also penetrated people’s every-day lives, who have increasingly become dependent on credit to secure access to basic services such as housing, pensions, education, health services and general consumption. Assessing the emergence of finance capital as dominant actor within transnational capital, Costas Lapavitsas argues that financialization or financial expropriation ‘should be clearly distinguished from exploitation that occurs in production and remains the cornerstone of contemporary capitalist economies. Financial expropriation is an additional source of profit that originates in the sphere of circulation’ (Lapavitsas 2009: 131). Nevertheless, accumulation in production cannot be separated from accumulation in the sphere of circulation in this way. On the contrary, while the creation of surplus value takes place in production, it always has to be realized in the sphere of circulation. Capitalist accumulation depends on the tight integration of both the spheres of production and circulation. The role of Interest Bearing Capital in financialization is not simply to provide money for purchases, but it functions as capital to be invested in production in order to generate surplus value (Fine 2013: 49). This speculative investment of capital in the sphere of finance still depends on the exploitation of labour power in the production of commodities in the sphere of production and the

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realization of commodities’ surplus value in the sphere of circulation. Financial profit in the sphere of circulation ‘exists simply in the form of future claims on surplus-value and profit, in other words promissory notes on production in their various forms’ (Marx 1894/1981: 362). Financialization is, thus, inextricably bound up with the production of commodities. Since the 1990s the privatization of public assets, referred to by Harvey as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003: 145–6), has developed into an important part of financialization. In this process, a global infrastructure market was created, providing capital with new profitable investment opportunities often through so-called Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Private infrastructure investment, writes Dexter Whitfield, ‘is referred to as a “new asset class”, which refers to it becoming a profitable source of private investment with a range of competing investment funds providing good returns relative to other types of investment’ (Whitfield 2010: 91). As we will see below, this has also affected water services. Drawing on Chapter 1, however, we know that capitalist accumulation does not only depend on exploitation of wage labour in the production of commodities at the workplace. It also depends on unpaid labour in the sphere of social reproduction as well as on the expropriation of cheap nature. Both areas have seen developments in response to the global economic crisis of the 1970s. In her analysis of how social care has been provided in capitalism, Nancy Fraser notes a shift emerging from the early 1980s onwards. ‘Globalizing and neoliberal, this new regime is now promoting state and corporate disinvestment from social welfare while recruiting women into the paid workforce. Thus, it is externalizing care work onto families and communities while diminishing their capacity to perform it’ (Fraser 2017: 32). Care has become re-commodified, with children nurseries or old people care homes having been turned into profitable business opportunities. Hence, we have experienced a bifurcated development. ‘The result, amid rising inequality, is a dualized organization of social reproduction, commodified for those who can pay for it, privatized for those who cannot – all glossed by the even more modern ideal of the “two-earner family”’ (Fraser 2017: 25–6). We can label this tentatively a ‘social fix’. The way the Eurozone crisis has been handled indicates how this social fix was further deepened in response to renewed crisis. It has been women, who bore the brunt of austerity policies in the wake of the global financial crisis from 2007 onwards based on a ‘strategy to displace the effects of the crisis from the “public” to the “private” [which] has intensified the crisis of social reproduction experienced by households

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across Europe’ (Bruff and Wöhl 2016: 97). Considering that a majority of employees in the public sector are women, job cuts in this area inevitably will affect women more than men (Hozić and True 2016: 8). Moreover, as it is predominantly women who carry major caring responsibilities or are more likely to be lone parents within the Eurozone, any cuts to benefits and public services affect women disproportionately. Finally, women are more likely to be subjected to domestic violence. When specialized local services are abandoned and women refuge centres are closed, women are the first to suffer. In short, ‘the impact of the financial recession and austerity measures has disproportionately affected women with respect to loss of homes, unpayable debt, public sector job losses, and cuts to services’ (True 2016: 53). Importantly, the financial fix should not be regarded as separate from this social fix. In fact, financialization has increasingly encroached on social reproduction in the search for new profitable investment opportunities. ‘An increasing number of people (students, welfare recipients, pensioners) have been forced to borrow from the banks to purchase services (health care, education, pensions) that the state formerly subsidized, so that many reproductive activities have now become immediate sites of capital accumulation’ (Federici 2019: 62). Pensions, which can be understood as part of the social reproduction of the working class as a whole or as the generational reproduction of labour power, have become one way of how financialization has penetrated the sphere of social reproduction. As Oran (2017: 163) demonstrates, in a shift from public pay-as-you-go systems run by the state to individual, private provision for pensions through pension funds invested on financial markets, pensions have become a new area of profit-making. At the same time, risk has been individualized as pension returns depend on the profitability of financial markets. In short, ‘while households increasingly reproduce themselves with the intermediation of financial mechanisms, financial actors redefine social reproduction areas as profit-making areas’ (Oran 2017: 164). In relation to cheap nature, Moore speaks about the tendency of the ecological surplus to fall, parallel in relation to Marx’s argument about the declining rate of profit. While surplus capital tends to rise, ecological surplus falls. As capitalist accumulation increases faster than the expropriation of cheap nature, there is a constant pressure to extend the capitalist frontier into new forms of cheap energy, cheap raw materials and cheap food, all closely related to the provision of cheap labour. Analysing the rise of neo-liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s including the transnationalization of production, Moore identifies the

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crucial role of cheap nature in this process, as ‘commodity prices for food declined 39 percent – and metals by half – between 1975 and 1989’ (Moore 2015: 236). The flow of cheap food from the Global North into the Global South during the 1980s, made possible by imposed structural adjustment programmes, displaced millions of peasants and, thereby, created the cheap labour, TNCs have drawn on ever since (Moore 2015: 263). In general, securing cheap nature fixes as a response to crisis demonstrates capitalism’s innovative ways of securing accumulation through constant expansion. Even climate change is not beyond capitalism’s capacity to expand accumulation into new avenues, as the marketization of carbon trading indicates. Rather than addressing the challenges of climate change, however, carbon markets have deepened socio-ecological inequality, while re-enforcing the dominance of highcarbon industries predominantly located in Europe and North America (Bryant 2019). Accessing cheap nature is then ‘a set of strategies to manage relations between capitalism and the web of life by temporarily fixing capitalism’s crises’ (Patel and Moore 2018: 22). In sum, the crisis of the 1970s was temporarily overcome through a combination of technological, spatial, financial, social and cheap nature fixes across the spheres of production and social reproduction. Importantly, these fixes should not be understood in an additive manner, but in the way they are internally related, as for example the financialization in the sphere of social reproduction and of climate change has demonstrated. However, crisis, an inevitable feature of capitalism, returned with a vengeance during the 2000s, when we now have multiple crises overlapping, with a crisis of overaccumulation going hand in hand with the global climate crisis.

Global financial crisis, transnational capital and the privatization of water Water had played an important part in capital’s search for new, profitable investment opportunities already during the global economic crisis in the 1970s and 1980s. ‘Water presented itself as a possible new source to mobilize and harness as it offered the possibility for turning H2O (again) into capital and profit’ (Swyngedouw 2005: 87). As reports confirm, subsequently to the 2007/2008 global financial market crisis international banks and investment institutions intensified the commodification of water, very much in line with Moore’s notion that capital needs to extent constantly the capitalist frontier into cheap nature. ‘A disturbing trend

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in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” – the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires – are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace’ (Yang 2012). Slogans such as ‘water is the petroleum for the next century’ (Goldman Sachs) or ‘the water market will soon eclipse oil, agriculture, and precious metals’ (Citigroup) drive this new investment fever. ‘In April 2008, Allianz SE launched the Allianz RCM Global Water Fund which invests in equity securities of water-related companies worldwide, emphasizing long-term capital appreciation’ (Yang 2012). As confirmed by Shiney Varghese, ‘in areas ranging from the Ogallala aquifer to the Great Lakes in North America, water has been referred to as liquid gold’ (Varghese 2013). Unsurprisingly, a report by the World Economic Forum referred to the buying and selling of water sources as ‘innovative investments’ (Hall and Lobina 2009: 6). Finance capital’s expansion into water, importantly, includes both the expropriation of water as cheap nature and the expropriation of already existing water-related infrastructure as in the case of the privatization of water services. Ultimately, ‘from the perspective of the financial sector, investing in water is expected to be profitable because of growing demand and constant or diminishing supply which will put upward pressure on the price’ (Bayliss 2014: 301). The pressure for water privatization, however, must not be exclusively understood as being conditioned by capitalism’s structuring condition of outward expansion. Class agency is closely involved in shaping this expansion into water services. Water management has developed into big business with two powerful French TNCs Suez and Veolia holding about two-thirds of the private water operations and pushing for further privatization. They lobby hard and apply their structural power on governments to achieve privatization policies (Ciervo 2010: 17; Hall 2006: 179). Since the early twentieth century, with the exception of France where public-private partnerships for drinking water supply had dominated from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, water companies had been mainly in public hands. Against the background of neo-liberalism emerging as the new economic consensus, privatization became more widespread in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Globally, it was a network around the World Bank, which had pushed for water privatization especially in the Global South during the 1990s and early 2000s (Goldman 2007: 790). Within Europe, ‘the biggest national change came in the UK in 1989, when the Thatcher government privatised water throughout England and Wales, against strong public opposition, by floating the 10 regional companies on the stock exchange’ (Hall and Lobina 2012b: 124). In

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short, the expansion of privatization during the 1990s especially in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War and in Latin America as well as developing countries in Africa was carried out by this small group of French and British private water companies (Hall and Lobina 2009: 81). They were backed up by the conditionality of the IMF’s and World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes, as well as by some NGOs and development agencies, which had bought into the narrative of privatization as a way of securing necessary infrastructure investment. During the 2000s, the shift towards privatization of water services started to stall. The private French and English companies withdrew from their international engagements, in particular from developing countries. In view of insufficient profitability and related criticism by their share-holders, the companies’ inability to deliver on their promises and mounting resistance movements, these companies started to look for business elsewhere (Hall and Lobina 2009: 84–8). The French companies Suez and Veolia ‘have instead refocused on engineering work, such as water and wastewater treatment plants and desalination plants, water and sanitation services for industrial companies, and consultancy contracts’ (Hall and Lobina 2012b: 132). In turn, British private companies have increasingly focused on profits via financialization with private equity funds playing an increasingly dominant role in the British water sector. ‘Of the 10 large water and sewerage companies, four – Anglian, Southern, Thames and Yorkshire – are already owned by private equity or financial groups. Three large companies are still part of groups quoted on the London stock exchange – Severn Trent, South West and United Utilities’ (Hall and Lobina 2012a: 20). Water distribution as such is not the main concern of these investment funds. By turning water into a tradable commodity, they establish water services as an area for surplus value accumulation. Companies invest to make profit. Unsurprisingly, investors bought the water companies ‘in large part using debt finance, which was then added to the debts of the company (rather than staying with the investors)’ (Bayliss 2017: 387). Moreover, in order to provide investment opportunities satisfying the interest in water by international banks and investment institutions mentioned above, ‘financial innovation has led to the launch of at least four major water-focused exchange traded funds (ETFs) since 2005’ (Bayliss 2014: 298). This securitization of water companies is based on household water bills, which have been repackaged and sold on via offshore jurisdictions, linking water consumers to global financial markets.

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Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization Few of the 15 million Thames Water customers, for example, will have any idea that paying their water bill connects them to one of the largest Australian investment banks via a portfolio of European infrastructure funds. They are, however, beholden to these investors. Average household bills have increased by 40 per cent in real terms since privatisation. Over the 2010–15 price review period, nearly 27 per cent of the average customer bill of £360 was paid for ‘return on capital’. (Bayliss 2017: 388)

As all households depend on access to water, it is this reliable income stream, which underpins the financialization of water services. Thames Water is an interesting example of these financialization processes. Bought in 2006 by the Australian Macquarie Group, it generated a total of £1.8 billion in dividends for shareholders between 2007 and 2012, while the debt of the company increased from £3.2 to £7.8 billion over the same period. As John Allen and Michael Pryke summarize the situation, ‘since its purchase by the Macquarie-led consortium in 2006, the net worth of Thames Water has hardly risen and yet its debts have more than doubled, threatening its investmentgrade rating and leaving it in a position where the only plausible way that it can raise further funds for infrastructure investment is by raising household water bills’ (Allen and Pryke 2013: 432). The company actually paid more in dividends than it earned in cash flows, hence the increase in debts. Should it ever fail, of course the state would have to step in to secure people’s access to this vital everyday resource. Overall, Thames Water has been turned into an investment opportunity for sovereign wealth funds from countries such as Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and China as well as British and Canadian pension funds (Loftus, March and Purcell 2019: 1). The very way in which new water infrastructure projects are funded in public-private partnerships constitutes processes of financialization, with returns on private investment being backed up by consumer bills. ‘The Carlsbad desalination plant in San Diego, California, the largest of its kind in the Americas, which opened in 2015’, write Pryke and Allen, ‘represents something of a development in the consolidation of urban infrastructure as a financial asset class, or more specifically in the ability of financial intermediaries to extract value from illiquid assets by turning them into liquid forms’ (Pryke and Allen 2019: 1327). In this project, profits are generated via consultancy fees for intermediary firms, which set up the finance for the desalination plant, an innovative

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use of municipal bonds and factored in equity returns. An agreement between the San Diego County Water Authority and the company operating the desalination plant in 2012 secured the envisaged profits. ‘That agreement effectively guaranteed a market for the plant’s water, with the authority agreeing to purchase a stated volume of water at a set price over a 30-year period, regardless of whether the water is needed or not by the residents of San Diego’ (Pryke and Allen 2019: 1342). The price for water, on which these profits are based, was engineered in a way so that it was about twice as much as any potential alternative. Capital’s profits are directly paid by San Diego households. Another example is the Thames Water Desalination Plant. Dressed up as an ecological and sustainable response to future water shortages in the wider London region due to its reliance on renewable energy sources, it provided a ‘win-win situation in which environmental gains are made through the foresight of enlightened financial entities that can guarantee secure return for the investors’ (Loftus and March 2016: 57). However, considering that leakage prevention and demand management alternatives were overruled in the establishment of the plant, it is clear that this new piece of infrastructure is part of the strategy to absorb surplus capital in infrastructure projects. Financial institutions, thereby, do not only offer investment in water products as profitable investment opportunities. They also provide the underlying rationale for why private capital will be able to solve, as it is argued, the world’s growing water problems due to natural disasters and increasing demand by a growing global population. Thus, they provide the justification for these in practice rather inefficient infrastructural solutions. They constitute institutional platforms for ‘organic intellectuals’ of capital (Bieler 2006: 36) to prepare the ideological ground for capitalist investment. In a report published in 2017, academics commissioned by Citi, a large, global financial institution, argue that water needs to be priced correctly in order to ensure proper management of resources. ‘The development of wellestablished markets for water can in theory result in more efficient allocation of water between different users and effectively price water to encourage less wastage and more the use of water to the highest valued uses’ (Citi GPS 2017: 31). Once properly priced, investment can then be secured to construct the necessary water infrastructure. ‘The good news is that new financing instruments are surfacing’, the report states, ‘allowing various types of institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds who are seeking yield to invest in infrastructural projects’ (Citi GPS 2017: 94).

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The water trading scheme in the Murray Darling Basin in Australia, intended to manage competing environmental and agricultural demands on water, is one of the most drastic examples of the disastrous consequences of such an approach. Water rights were delinked from land and transformed into a tradable commodity from the 1980s onwards. Over time, small-scale farmers were priced out with prices increasing by 15 per cent year on year, while large agribusiness backed up by banks and financial investment firms bought up and traded water rights. These rights have been turned into profitable investment opportunities for capital, which never had any intention of actually using these water resources (Moore 2020: 94–9). ‘In just a few years Australia created an annual $2.6 billion, largely unregulated water market that involves hundreds of brokers buying and selling water on the open market’ (Barlow 2011: 81). What was intended as an efficient way of water allocation turned into a profitable market, on which water rights were traded and re-traded. The market transformed and concentrated rural social relations and agribusiness and resulted in high profits for few investors, while the oversubscription of water was not resolved and its sustainability not secured.2 In short, attaching a price to water facilitates surplus value accumulation, but it does not ensure an efficient and sustainable distribution. The increasing focus on consultancy contracts, infrastructure projects and general financialization, moreover, does not imply that private companies would no longer be interested in taking over water services. When studied at the global level, a mixed picture emerges. While private corporations have abandoned unprofitable water services in the Global South, running water services in some parts of the Global North and the so-called emerging markets are still attractive for water corporations. Even though there has been an expanding process of remunicipalization between 2000 and 2015 across the world (Kishimoto, Lobina and Petitjean 2015), private companies have become more innovative and selective in their engagements focusing on middle- and high-income countries. ‘In other words, the “retreat” of the private sector has left less profitable water supply activities in the hands of the state (or communities), while retaining higher profit activities’ (Bakker 2013: 257). This rather mixed picture is confirmed by Jeff Powell and Yuliya Yurchenko’s global overview of water privatization. When counting the number of large cities with more than one million inhabitants, those being provided with private water have increased from 11 to 18 per cent over a period of ten years. While re-municipalization was concentrated in Western Europe and the Americas, privatization countries included

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China, India, Russia and the Gulf states (Powell and Yurchenko 2019: 2–6; see also McDonald and Swyngedouw 2019: 324–5). And even where re-municipalization has been successful, it came at a high price at times. While in Paris in 2010, re-municipalization was carried out once the private concession had come to an end, the re-municipalization of water in Berlin in 2013 after a victorious popular referendum in 2011 was extremely expensive. Due to German and EU regulations, investment protection mechanisms and Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement in EU agreements, the repurchase of shares alone cost Berlin €618 million paid to RWE and €590 million to Veolia (plus €54 million from a range of financial operations), all financed by 30-year loans. This was in addition to the payout for the loss of future profit that was guaranteed in the initial contract and was paid out in cash on repurchase. (Powell and Yurchenko 2019: 8–9)

High costs, of course, may make it impossible for less well-off municipalities to take back control of their water companies. As we will see in the next chapter on Italy, this has been the case for many municipalities after the victorious referendum in 2011. Italy and Greece are also good examples for countries, where corporations are still interested in taking over water companies with both Suez and Veolia playing an active role.

Conclusion Because of its dynamic, but also inner crisis tendency, capitalism is under constant pressure to expand outward in order to ensure ongoing accumulation. It integrates non-capitalist space, re-organizes the centreperiphery relations within existing capitalist space and/or commodifies sectors, which had been decommodified. The global economic crisis of the 1970s was temporarily resolved through a combination of fixes including a technological, a spatial, a financial, a social as well as a cheap nature fix, all part of a neo-liberal hegemonic project by transnational capital. The transnationalization of production and the increasing importance of finance capital constitute the material structure of neoliberal ideology. When economic crisis returned in full force after the global financial crisis in 2007/2008, the privatization of water and

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sanitation services, the financialization of these water companies as well as the financialization of new, water-related infrastructure projects have become increasingly important areas for absorbing capital. Large, powerful TNCs and here especially Suez and Veolia have played a crucial role in transforming water into an economic, tradable good. According to neo-liberal economics, as long as water as an economic good is priced correctly, its most efficient distribution and use is ensured. In reality, while the quality of service declines, consumer prices increase and infrastructure investment is lacking, capital reaps huge profits. Nevertheless, capitalist expansion is always contested. The next chapter looks in detail at the struggles surrounding the Italian referendum against water privatization in June 2011.

Notes 1 For an overview of the vast literature on uneven and combined development, see https://unevenandcombineddevelopment.wordpress. com/writings/; accessed 11 July 2020. 2 I am grateful to Madelaine Moore for clarifying this point for me. Despite this negative Australian experience, a market for Water Futures based on the Nasdaq Veles California water index was recently launched in the hope that ‘the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand’ (Chipman 2020).

Chapter 3 M O B I L I Z I N G F R OM B E L OW : V IC T O RY I N T H E I TA L IA N WAT E R R E F E R E N D UM Introduction The privatization of water services in Italy started in the late 1990s, early 2000s especially in the region of Tuscany and other parts of central Italy. The country is a good example for why water scarcity is the result of failed policies rather than ecological problems. ‘While there should be enough water for all users everywhere in Italy, water delivery is a real concern for many Italians, not least because of the very bad state of the aqueducts’, Augusto de Sanctis and Antonio Senta report (2005: 1). One in three households in Southern Italy does not have regular access to water, for example. This chapter is about the Italian Forum of Water Movements (from now on called Forum), a broad alliance of trade unions, social movements, development NGOs and environmental groups, and its successful mobilization for a referendum against the privatization of water on 12 and 13 June 2011. The main impetus for the referendum in 2011 provided a law by the Berlusconi government in 2009, the so-called Decreto Ronchi, enforcing privatization by requiring municipalities to put water contracts out for tender and to establish public-private partnerships with a private participation of at least 40 per cent (Ciervo 2010: 162). In response, the water movement first collected a record number of 1.4 million signatures in support of the referendum questions against water privatization and then campaigned for the referendum itself (Fantini 2013: 33). Referenda in Italy, provided they are based on an electoral turnout of at least 50 per cent plus one person of the electorate, acquire immediate legal status, but can as such only abrogate laws. The eventual referendum on water included two questions. ‘The first question cancelled the legal obligation to privatise the management of water services’ (Fattori 2011), that is the 2009 law of the Berlusconi government. The second question removed the legal right of private investors to make 7 per cent of profit on their running of water services. Together, both questions removed the rationale for private involvement in water distribution.1

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The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, I will analyse how and why the Forum was able to bring together such a wide range of different groups into a successful campaign. Thus, the next section will assess the developments in the run-up to the referendum, the emergence of the Forum, who participated, the strategies they used and internal tensions. Second, I will investigate why, despite the overwhelming success in the referendum, the implementation of the results has been at best partial. Hence, the subsequent section will analyse the lack of full implementation of the referendum outcome against the background of the capitalist structuring conditions at the time. This is followed in the fourth section by an analysis of three local case studies, the water committees in Arezzo, Turin and Naples, to assess more recent strategies in view of ongoing privatization pressures. The research strategy of incorporated comparison, as outlined in Chapter 1, underpins the analysis. Rather than regarding Italy as a distinctive, sealed off unit of analysis, I explore Italian struggles over water as embedded in, and shaped by, developments at the global level such as the water war in Cochabamba/Bolivia in 2000. Equally, individual studies of struggles at the local, municipal level are understood as co-constitutive and shaped by developments at the national level, while in turn impacting on the latter, which itself is being shaped by but also shapes developments within the EU.

The road to victory The emergence of the Forum Against the background of the economic and political crisis at the beginning of the 1990s – Europe in general was hit by economic recession and the Italian political system was in meltdown as a result of the so-called Tangentopoli scandal2 – public services including the water sector were restructured in Italy. In times of financial difficulties, the private sector was regarded as a source of capital investment and public-private partnerships appeared as a good way forward (Carrozza 2013: 7–8). The so-called Galli Law of 1994 turned ‘the Italian sector – previously scattered into around 13,000 municipal providers – into a national industrial service inspired by market logics’ (Fantini 2014: 41). It opened up water services to potential private involvement and introduced the full-cost principle as well as the so-called financial remuneration of the invested capital,

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guaranteeing a profit of 7 per cent (Cernison 2019: 84). These reforms, however, took until the late 1990s to filter through into practical restructuring. The French transnational corporation (TNC) Suez, for example, arrived in Arezzo in 1998 and in Florence in 2001. In 1999, the TNC Veolia bought a stake in the water company in Aprilia in the province of Latina (Interview No.8). Promises made by supporters of water privatization included the usual claims: lower tariffs for consumers, an increase in investment in infrastructure as well as improvements in services (Ciervo 2010: 161). Unsurprisingly, reality turned out quite differently. Almost immediately, privatization led to a drastic rise in water prices. ‘In the region of Toscana, for instance, tariffs have increased by an average of 24% and in some municipalities the increase was up to 120%’ (de Sanctis and Senta 2005: 2). In the province of Latina, where the French TNC Veolia became the main private entity in a public-private partnership, prices even rose between 50 and a staggering 330 per cent (Fantini 2010: 260). While company profits soared, investment in infrastructure maintenance was inadequate. As the Forum reported in 2018, investments in infrastructure as a percentage of profits decreased from 58.6 per cent in 2010 to 40.2 per cent in 2016 (Forum 2018: 20). Unsurprisingly, the loss of water is high in Italy. ‘An average of 39% of the water running through the aqueducts is lost due to poor maintenance’ (de Sanctis and Senta 2005: 1). In the metropolitan area of Turin, it is alleged that water loss in 2016 was as high as 47 per cent (Rosolen 2018). Private profits are not solely based on price increases and lack of infrastructure investment. As water activists from the water committee in Arezzo explained, when it comes to maintenance work of infrastructure, these lucrative contracts are often awarded to companies linked to members of the public-private water consortium (Interview No.11; Lobina 2005: 11). ‘Privatization’, however, did not only result in public-private partnerships. Some public companies under public law were transformed into ‘Società per azioni’ (SpA) or ‘joint-stock companies’ fully owned by the public, but operating according to the principles of the market (Carrozza 2013: 13). In the region of Apulia, for example, the water company was transformed in a joint-stock company in 1999 and here too the result was a company focused on profit-making through increases in water charges, cuts in workers’ conditions and the disconnection of water supply to those, who cannot pay their bills (Ciervo 2010: 174). Ultimately, a SpA’s focus on the market is not compatible with the notion of water as a human right and ‘socio-spatial equity criteria’ (Ciervo 2016: 541).

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In response to the drastic increases in water tariffs, a range of local committees emerged and first actions of ‘civil disobedience’ were implemented. In Aprilia in the province of Latina, for example, citizens continued to pay their water charges, but according to the old tariffs and to the local municipality, not the new public-private provider (Fantini 2013: 27–8; Interviews No.7 and No.8). The impetus for a wider movement, however, was only partially the direct result of these local developments. Members of the later established Comitato Italiano Contratto Mondiale sull’Acqua (CICMA) had already participated in a meeting in Lisbon in 1998, when the first water manifesto was agreed upon stating that water is a human right, not a commodity or market (Interview No.14). The initial focus of this movement had been the international level, inspired by the struggles of indigenous people in Latin America for access to water. Especially development NGOs were engaged, bringing an international dimension to the Forum from the very beginning (Interview No.13). CICMA itself was founded in 2000 as the Italian wing of the international movement for a world water contract (see Petrella 2001). A second international influence resulted from what is sometimes referred to as the ‘No Global’ movements, including, for example, ATTAC Italia. In Italy, it was especially the experiences with the G8 meeting in Genova in 2001, which brought fresh focus on resisting water privatization as an international goal (Fantini 2013: 24; Interview No.13). Importantly, the local dimensions of resistance against the privatization of municipal water services were linked to the formulation of demands at the international level. The Arezzo public water committee, for example, was established by a group of local activists linked to the Genova G8 summit. A social forum in Arezzo had prepared for Genova and one of the groups from this meeting later on formed a working group on water after the summit. This was also the time, when there were the first refusals by citizens in Arezzo to pay higher water charges resulting from privatization (Interview No.11). The first Alternative World Water Forum in Florence in March 2003, itself inspired by the first European Social Forum held in the same city in November 2002 (Cernison 2019: 86), became a crucial moment for Italian water activists (Interviews No.3, No.5 and No.9). The focus of the meeting was on the right to water at the global level with the objective to de-marketize water and to democratize the government of water as a resource (Interview No.9). In Florence, Italian activists, learning from Latin American activists about their experiences with water privatization, where TNCs had reaped huge profits, became aware of similarities with

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their own situation (Interview No.13). Thus, the successful resistance against water privatization in the so-called water war in Cochabamba/ Bolivia in 2000 loomed large in the background of Italian struggles. As water activist Mariangela Rosolen from the Turin local water committee asserts, ‘everything began in Cochabamba. We heard about the people’s struggle against the privatisation of water imposed by the World Bank with a multinational corporation called Bechtel. That was a real water war! We wanted to learn more about it and later we met those people in the World Social Forums’ (quoted in Carrozza and Fantini 2016: 99). The flowing together of local and international experiences resulted in the establishment of the Tuscan water forum in 2004 (Interview No.8). Inspired by the emergence of further local committees beyond Tuscany and because of the increasing need to co-ordinate local activities, the Forum was established at the national level in March 2006 as a broad network with a national secretariat in Rome (Interview No.2). In short, the formation of resistance to water privatization in Italy was a multiscalar process. Initially, it had been ATTAC Italia, the Confederazione dei Comitati di Base (Cobas), a rank-and-file trade union, and CICMA, which were key in starting the water movement (Interviews No.4, No.5 and No.14). In the years between the establishment of the Forum in 2006 and the referendum campaign in 2010/2011, membership of the Forum was increasingly broadened. On the trade union side, Funzione Pubblica – Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (FP-CGIL), the largest Italian trade union federation organizing public sector workers, was the most important actor, joining the process from about 2004/2005 onwards (Interview No.3). A second rank-and-file union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) too had become actively involved. Dealing with social labour issues, the left-oriented network of social centres ARCI (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana) as well as the catholic network of social centres ACLI (Associazioni Cristiane dei Lavoratori Italiani) signed up as did various environmental groups including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Italia and Legambiente, when the referendum committee was established in 2010. Moreover, the consumer group Federconsumatori joined as well as various precursors of the Five Stars movement, which is today a party in parliament (Fantini 2013: 32). Importantly, a large range of catholic organizations and individuals too supported the water movement including, in addition to ACLI mentioned above, the Catholic scout movement AGESCI, the Christian pacifist group ‘Beati i costruttori di pace’, the Diocese of Termoli-Larino and the well-known missionary Alex Zanotelli (Fantini 2014: 45–53).

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In short, it was an enormously broad movement, which was built over the years in the run-up to the referendum. It organized resistance across the social factory with trade unions organizing in the workplace, while environmental and development groups, social movements and local water committees mobilized in the sphere of social reproduction. Of course, tensions in alliances within and between trade unions and social movements are normal (Bieler and Morton 2004: 312–16) and the Italian water movement was no exception in this respect. First, there were tensions inside the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), the largest Italian trade union confederation. While FP-CGIL strongly supported the movement against privatization from 2004/2005 onwards, the smaller federation FILCTEM – Chimica, Tessile, Energia, Manifatture – which actually organizes workers in privatized water companies, played no role (Interview No.12). Having a much more narrow vision of its tasks as a trade union, it argued that it does not matter whether a company is private or public as long as the workers of these companies have good salaries and working conditions negotiated by their union (Interview No.14). In the end, the confederation CGIL came down on the side of FP-CGIL during the referendum campaign (Interview No.9). Nevertheless, there had been genuine concerns about unsettling the balance between forces on the right of the union, focusing on social partnership and social dialogue with employers and the government, and forces on the left and their emphasis on broader alliances and wider struggles (Interview No.7). Different strategies became also apparent between the three large trade union confederations. While CGIL supported the referendum strongly, the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, CISL) and the Italian Labour Union (Unione Italiana de Lavoro, UIL) played no part at the national level. As a representative of the Funzione Pubblica – CISL federation pointed out, his trade union is not opposed in principle against private participation in water distribution, as long as the service is based on sustainability.3 ‘The CISL … general secretary, Raffaele Bonanni, expressed his personal opinion against the water referenda’ (Fantini 2014: 47). Nevertheless, CISL and UIL trade unionists supported the movement at the local level in individual capacity and UIL was even formally part of the movement in the region of Apulia (Interview No.16). Initially some trade unions had believed that privatization may actually be a way of modernizing water companies (Interview No.7). Just because water companies were owned by the state had not meant that they were run well. In fact, Italian state companies were often accused

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of being rather inefficient as a result of nepotism and corruption. Even more narrowly, there were tensions over how to evaluate companies, which were fully owned by the public as share-holder, but operated according to market principles, the SpA or ‘joint stock companies’. Some within FP-CGIL argued that such a company was a public company and this type of company should therefore be the goal, while others in the water movement pointed out that only once a public company operates outside the market without the objective of making profit can it actually be considered a proper public company (Interviews No.4 and No.5). It was a joint research project by FP-CGIL, ARCI, Associazione Rete Nuovo Municipio and ATTAC Italia, which published the book 15 anni dopo: il pubblico è meglio [15 years later: the public is better] (Ediesse) in March 2007. This provided the basis for trade unions and here especially FP-CGIL to accept that the public with not-forprofit companies, not the market is the better provider of services and ensured an organic connection between the various members of the Forum (Interview No.7). On the other hand, many social movement activists had concerns about co-operating with trade unions, which they perceived to be conformist and part of the establishment. They accused them, for example, of over-looking the plight of the increasingly large number of precarious workers (Interview No.7) and of having regarded themselves as co-managers of capital since 1992/1993 (Interview No.6). CICMA too was slightly critical of the involvement of trade unions, perceived to represent special interests (Interview No.9). People would be citizens first with a human right to water, and workers second. The campaign could not really incorporate issues such as workers’ pay and working conditions and remain broad and inclusive at the same time, it was argued (Interview No.14). Co-operation with Cobas and USB was considered by some to be easier, as these unions themselves have a movement character (Interview No.5). Finally, ACLI and ARCI, although they deal with similar social problems, come from very different ideologically backgrounds. While ACLI is affiliated to the Catholic Church, ARCI is a left-wing, anti-fascist movement. How was it possible to unite such a variety of different organizations successfully? Water and the commons as rallying points on the road towards victory It was especially the single issue of water, which made the large alliance possible. As noted above, there had been many concrete examples, which demonstrated that privatization had not resulted in

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more efficiency, lower prices and higher water quality. The necessary investment in infrastructure had not been made and prices gone up (Interview No.2). While CGIL federations are in disagreement with USB and Cobas on many trade union issues, water privatization and its negative implications for workers and users allowed them to come together in a joint campaign (Interviews No.3 and No.5). Moreover, the theme of water also included symbolic power with water being understood as a fundamental source of life. This discourse resonated with the Catholic Social Doctrine, facilitating ‘the mobilisation of Catholic groups, particularly during the referenda, and contributed to highlight the moral, symbolic and cultural aspects of the contention, consolidating a broad popular consensus over the principles of social justice and universality that should inspire water management’ (Fantini 2014: 37). A second important issue developed around the notion of water as a commons. Carrozza and Fantini (2013, 2016) highlight well the three different ways of how the commons were defined and used within the Forum. There is the definition of the commons around this idea of water as a commons of human kind, which was especially important during the early stages of the movement and the First Alternative World Water Forum in Florence in 2003. It brought the international dimension to the Forum as well as already a direction against privatization through links with struggles in Latin America and the notion of public-public partnerships as an alternative to the involvement of the private sector (Carrozza and Fantini 2013: 81–3). Second, there was the local dimension of ‘beni comuni’ and the related emphasis on empowering municipalities, the local territory and local democracy as the right level of making decisions about the common use of water (Carrozza and Fantini 2013: 86–8). Finally, there was the reference to the commons as an area beyond the public and the private or the state and market, an area which ultimately requires a new form of democracy. A form which ‘guarantees citizens’ direct participation in local government and the administration of the commons, which goes beyond the mere participation in local public institutions’ [translation by the author] (Carrozza and Fantini 2013: 77). Precisely in a situation perceived by some within the Forum as post-democratic (Interview No.11), the focus on a new form of democracy proved attractive. As Fantini points out, the Italian water movement effectively managed to influence the official public discourse about water services management, framing it in terms of an issue first and foremost related to democracy. The

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mobilisation for public water acquired the role of paradigmatic battle in defence of democracy and against the commodification of life, powerfully synthetized in the movement’s motto: ‘It is written water, it is read democracy’. (Fantini 2014: 42)

The idea that the public can be an efficient provider of services such as water had suffered in Italy prior to privatization and simply arguing that the public is better would not have worked. Hence the need for a new form of public ownership and administration (Marotta 2014: 46). It is one of the key successes of the Forum that it managed to re-establish the public as a feasible alternative in the wider discourse through its focus on the commons and the creation of a new social culture in Italy around ‘beni comuni’, in which the public is not automatically something negative (Interviews No.3, No.5, No.6, No.7 and No.12). The support by a group of lawyers, the so-called Rodotà Committee, chaired by Stefano Rodotà, was crucial for the development of this particular understanding of the commons. In 2007, the centre-left government at the time instructed them to develop proposals, which would facilitate putting a limit on the privatization of public assets. While their proposals were never implemented, their work on the commons inspired water activists. Moreover, lawyers from this group drafted the water referendum questions and oversaw the legal procedures related to the referendum (Bailey and Mattei 2013: 994–5; Carrozza and Fantini 2016: 111). In sum, underlying the success in the referendum was the ability of the campaign to dominate public discourse, ‘framing the issue of water services management in terms of human right, the commons and democracy, against competing frames referring to the technical aspects or to the governance of the water sector’ (Fantini 2014: 42). Beyond the themes of water, the commons and democracy, the water movement had made a number of key strategic decisions, facilitating the positive outcome in the referendum. First, although clearly coming from the traditions of the left and No Global movement, the Forum decided not to portray the referendum as a left-wing campaign, but to provide it with a broad appeal. Hence, it relegated political parties to a secondary, supportive committee (Interview No.5). Some basic principles such as anti-fascism and anti-racism were formulated as preconditions for participation, but otherwise all groups from whatever political orientation were welcomed (Interview No.2). In short, ‘since its constitution, the Forum has remained strictly outside the traditional party system’s modus operandi’ (Marotta 2014: 41). This strategy paid off

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in the end. While centre-right parties such as the Lega Nord and Forza Italia had not endorsed the referendum, many people who normally vote for centre-right parties also supported the referendum (Interviews No.2 and No.3; Fattori 2011). Second, all organizations agreed on the three necessary legs of the campaign: (1) the workers in the water sector, hence trade unions; (2) citizens as the consumers of water, hence social movements and local, territorial water committees; and (3) municipalities, who are responsible ultimately for the provision of water (Interview No.3). The first network of local municipalities in favour of the re-municipalization of water services was formed in the region of Apulia led by the city of Bari in 2007. On the basis of this experience, a similar network the Associazione Rete Nuovo Municipio was then established at the national level in November 2008 (Fantini 2013: 29). This group of over 200 municipalities participated in the Forum and worked towards the public provision of water services (Interview No.3). In a way, many municipalities had felt disempowered, dis-enfranchised and expropriated of an important local function in the provision of an essential good through the pressures towards a marketized water service (Carrozza and Fantini 2013: 86–8; Ciervo 2010: 166; Interviews No.10 and No.13). Essential, too, was the double structure of the movement’s organization brought together in the national Co-ordinating Committee. On one hand, the Forum included a number of wellknown organizations at the national level including, for example, FPCGIL, ATTAC Italia, Legambiente and WWF Italia. On the other, the movement was organizationally present at the territorial level in all Italian regions including often also the provincial and local level (Interviews No.5 and No.9). In local water committees, the members are not the well-known organizations as at the national level, but more individual citizens from a large range of different backgrounds, who became actively involved in the water campaign (Interviews No.11 and No.12). The territorial presence ensured constant direct contact with citizens across Italy and it was this direct interaction in the streets, in addition to online campaigns, which had been essential first to collect enough signatures and then to ensure a large turnout on the day of the referendum itself (Interview No.8). Finally, it was a general learning process for everyone involved. The Italian constitution provides citizens with the opportunity of proposing a law by popular initiative. If enough supporting signatures are collected, these laws have to be dealt with by parliament. The drafting of such legislation specifically requesting the re-municipalization

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of water services (Ciervo 2010: 163) and the collection of enough signatures was first accomplished at the regional level in Tuscany in 2005 – unsurprisingly, considering that privatization had started in this region – and then successfully repeated at the national level in 2007, when a record number of 400,000 signatures were collected within a few months (Fantini 2013: 31). As one interviewee remarked, the drafting of the law in 2007 was a genuine collective effort. About 200 people participated in the actual process of writing and various drafts had been discussed by around 10,000 people across Italy. While timeconsuming and cumbersome, this long process allowed the water movement to mature (Interview No.5). Another example of collective struggle is the development within Publiacqua, the public-private water company in Florence. In response to privatization, a worker committee was formed, bringing together members of different trade unions and working closely with user organizations (Interview No.7). It was here that first notions of a new model of democracy based on demands for participation by workers and consumers in the running of water companies were developed and that trade unions were working together with other organizations, demonstrating also to activists at the national level what can be possible (Interview No.9). It was during these collective struggles that activists participated in the creation of knowledge. Learning-in-struggle (Cox 2014) occurred in the development of these alternatives. Moreover, many activists had entered the movement on the basis of their particular organizational background. During the struggle, however, they started to broaden their approach and evolved into water activists. It was in the concrete process of collective struggles that the water movement became more than simply the sum of participating organizations. Activists ‘gradually transformed a single, very practical issue into a theme that was able to produce a partially independent element of identity’ (Cernison 2019: 89–90). Committed people from different backgrounds became members of a more homogenous organization (Interview No.13). During the referendum campaign, there was sustained activity based on a mixture of initiatives online via social media and off-line through concrete presence in the streets (Cernison 2013; 2019: 92–7). Activities included political encounters, meetings in the street, flags specifically devised for the referendum campaign as well as imaginative advertisements (Interview No.10). Catholic commitment to the water as a human right discourse ‘translated into grassroots information campaigns and educational activities targeting schools, associations, and parishes, which heavily drew on the expertise and on the social capital

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of development NGOs’ (Fantini 2014: 46). The campaign itself was conducted in an hostile environment, in which political parties and the national media did not only not facilitate, but at times actually hindered the dissemination of information about the referendum and the reasons of its promoters (Carrozza 2013: 16; Cernison 2019: 102–5). This clearly indicates even more the importance of the online as well as territorial presence of the Forum, which was crucial for the wider mobilization of voters in the referendum. Ultimately, the fact that a new culture of water around water as a human right had been developed over a period of ten years paid off. When the referendum took place on 12 and 13 June 2011, the victory of the water movement was overwhelming. For the first time in sixteen years, it had again been possible to secure the quorum of at least 50 per cent plus one voter participating. In fact, just over 57 per cent of the electorate, more than 26 million Italians, cast their vote. The majorities in relation to the two questions on water were even more impressive. ‘95.35% yes (4.65% no) on the first question; 95.80% yes (4.20% no) on the second’ (Fattori 2011). The victory could not have been more decisive. Nevertheless, was it enough to ensure that water services would remain public or be transferred back into public hands? Those, who expected that the referendum outcome, legally binding according to the Italian constitution, would be implemented after the decisive victory, were disappointed. The post-referendum period has been characterized by political delays, direct blockage of the implementation as well as new attempts at privatizing water.

La lotta continua: The aftermath of the 2011 referendum Undermining popular will All Italian political parties had been rather lukewarm vis-à-vis the water referendum including parties on the left and centre-left. The  Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) only endorsed the referendum fifteen days ahead of the actual voting, having realized that there was actually a chance of success (Interview No.5; Bailey and Mattei 2013: 991). By 2014, however voices inside the party supporting privatization had re-gained strength and it was again an open question for PD (Interview No.7; Cernison 2019: 99–100). The then existing party Left Ecology Freedom (Sinistra Ecologia Libertà, SEL), although speaking at times in favour of the referendum, did not really follow through in practice either. Its leader Nichi Vendola was

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the president of the Southern Italian region of Apulia, but even there the re-municipalization of water services after the referendum was blocked at the political level and the joint-stock company, completely owned by the region, has continued to make profit despite the second referendum question (Ciervo 2014). The referendum victory, in a way, it is alleged by activists, unmasked the real agenda of the Italian centre-left parties and their unwillingness to follow through with the implementation of the outcomes (Interview No.16). The first moves by the Italian water movement had already been blocked at the political level even before the referendum. The draft 2005 law by popular initiative against water privatization was received in the regional parliament of Tuscany, but never debated. The draft 2007 law by popular initiative against water privatization was received by the national parliament, but also put into a drawer (Interview No.3). Only in March 2014 was the draft 2007 law re-introduced in parliament by an inter-parliamentary group including MPs from the Five Stars Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle, M5S), SEL as well as some from the PD following revived efforts by the Italian water movement (Interviews No.3 and No.5). When it was finally discussed in parliament in 2016, the responsible committee changed its content in a way completely undermining the initial intentions (Marotta 2016). From obligatory re-municipalization, the law was modified in a way of making re-municipalization a possibility rather than mandatory, thereby losing completely its effectiveness (Interview No.46). It was so poor in its changed form that the Forum actually opposed it. The modified law was passed in the Chamber of Deputies including the votes of the PD in April 2017, but it never reached the Senate, the second house in the bicameral Italian Parliament. In the end, the Forum even regarded the blocking of this law as a positive outcome (Interviews No.44 and No.45). The referendum encountered similar obstructions. Almost immediately after the referendum, the Italian government moved against the outcome. First, it disempowered municipalities in that an independent national regulatory agency, the Authority for Electricity and Gas (l’Autorità per l’Energia Elettrica e il Gas, AEEGSI) – now ARERA including also responsibility for waste collection – was entrusted with the task of setting water tariffs (Interview No.13; Carrozza 2013: 18). A complex mathematical equation is put forwards, which municipalities have to translate into their particular situation (Interview No.11). Second, the principle of the EU Stability and Growth Pact of balanced budgets was transferred to the level of Italian

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municipalities. With their financial possibilities constrained, those municipalities, in which water services had already been privatized, found it difficult, if not impossible to buy back private shares, especially against the background of the Eurozone crisis (Interview No.14). Importantly, if a local water company is a joint stock company, and be it completely owned by the public, it does not appear on this municipality’s budget sheet. However, if the water company were remunicipalized and directly owned, then it would (Interview No.13). The 2015 Stability Law entrenched this position even further. It undercut re-municipalization efforts ‘by obliging municipalities to prioritize private management companies in the allocation of public funds and by incentivizing the selling of whatever municipal water shares still exist’ (Muehlebach 2016). Moreover, the second question of the referendum abrogating the right of private companies to a guaranteed profit of 7 per cent has never really been implemented. Shortly after the referendum the formula, calculated in exactly the same way, but called differently, was reintroduced at the slightly lower level of 6.4 per cent (Interviews No.2 and No.3). In March 2014, the Forum challenged the 6.4 per cent formula unsuccessfully in the Regional Administrative Court of Lombardia (Interview No.5), which argued that according to the principle of ‘full cost recovery’, the investment costs by the companies have to be covered through water tariffs. As critics argued, the court thus fully upheld ‘the economic principles of the prevailing free market theory’ (Marotta 2014: 43). Unperturbed, the Italian water movement appealed against the decision to the highest administrative court the Council of State (Consiglio di Stato). Yet again, the enforcement of free market orthodoxy was ensured by the council, requesting expert opinions from three economics professors. On the basis of their assessment, it ruled in May 2017 that in order to ensure the recuperation of capital investments, different from its remuneration, the charge was justified in line with the principle of full cost recovery (Marotta 2017a: 751–2). As a result, the political decision is completely aligned with the market, while the allocation of resources according to alternative principles is rendered impossible (Marotta 2017b). The Italian water movement even had to pay for the legal costs of the court case of about €40,000 (Comitato provinciale Acqua Pubblica di Torino 2019; Interview No.26). ‘In practice the only result produced by the referendum is that the advance on the bill for interest on advanced capital was replaced with the payment that managers actually paid the banks to finance investments’ [translation by the author] (Marotta 2012b: 662).

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As outlined in Chapter 1, it is important to take into account the structuring conditions of global capitalism, within which these struggles take place. In the next section, I will assess these structuring conditions as well as related changes in the Italian form of state in view of the nonimplementation of the referendum results. The Italian water movement in the structuring conditions of global capitalism Over the years, Italian political society, that is the part of the state in Gramscian terms consisting of the government, police, military and general state administration, has become restructured against the background of repeated economic crises. The executive has become increasingly empowered vis-à-vis the legislative, Parliament, through decree laws, that is laws originally reserved for situations of extraordinary necessity and urgency or laws in response to a formal delegation by Parliament (Cozzolino 2019: 337). Generally, the early 1990s are identified as the moment of change. Domestically, the Italian post-war party system collapsed as a result of the Tangentopoli scandal, uncovering widespread political corruption. Internationally, Italy signed up to the Treaty of Maastricht and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1990, before it was hit by severe fiscal crisis in 1992 with the Italian Lira dropping out of the European Monetary System. In response, there was a shift towards a majoritarian system in 1993, ensuring alternating centre-right and centre-left governments as well as an increasing reliance on governance by decree laws. In an important contribution to our understanding of Italian state formation, however, Adriano Cozzolino convincingly demonstrates that ‘the use of emergency legislation to enact supply-side and fiscal adjustment policies started in the late 1970s and early 1980s’ (Cozzolino 2019: 339). At a time when capital confronted increasing labour militancy and a popular Italian Communist Party against the background of a declining rate of profit, the executive was strengthened to discipline labour and restore capital profitability. A key moment was the separation of the Bank of Italy and the Treasury in 1981, which put an end to the possibility of the state financing budgetary expansion (Cozzolino 2020: 583), combined with the first reform of the so-called scala mobile in 1983, which loosened the automatic link between inflation and salary increases. This intensification of governance by decrees was often justified with reference to financial market expectations and EU requirements. ‘The EU turned out to be the anchor to pursue, at the domestic level, an ambitious program of neoliberal macroeconomic adjustment while

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also limiting, by technocratic means, the political opposition within and outside the parliament’ (Cozzolino and Giannone 2019: 453). As always, capital used economic crises to strengthen further its position vis-à-vis labour. The crisis of the Lira in 1992 provided the opportunity of further undermining labour market protection, ‘finally demolishing the little guarantees remaining under the already substantially reformed Scala Mobile with the Accord of 31 July 1992’ (Talani 2017: 265). Developments reached a high-point in response to the global financial and Eurozone crises, when a technocratic, unelected government under Mario Monti, the former European Commissioner for Internal Market (1995 to 1999) as well as Competition (1999 to 2004), was installed in November 2011. It pushed through structural reforms including the balanced budget principle (Cozzolino 2020: 592), which was then turned into an instrument against water re-municipalization at the local level (see above). The main objective of these reforms was to facilitate further privatization of public services. ‘By deploying a state of emergency declaration, the Monti Government has been able to implement a “shock doctrine”, facilitating the expansion of capital and profits from the public to the private sector’ (Bailey and Mattei 2013: 987). The fact that these reforms were supported by both centre-left and centre-right parties in parliament indicates the extent to which neo-liberal economics had become the common sense of Italian policymaking. Reflecting on the various centre-left governments from the early 1990s onwards, Adriano Cozzolino and Diego Giannone conclude that there is not much difference to centre-right government policies: the policy mix sponsored by center-left is, therefore, made of privatizations, inflation targeting, flexibilization of labor market, reduction of labor cost through income policy and wage moderation, emphasis on enterprise culture and competitiveness, and the aforementioned permanent austerity program. Therefore, apart from a more Euro-enthusiastic tone if compared to center-right wing executives, no specific differences in terms of overall political economy are detected in center-left wing documents. (Cozzolino and Giannone 2019: 456)

Overall, there has been a continuity since the 1980s of fiscal consolidation whatever the make-up of the particular government of the day. This neo-liberal consensus shared by centre-right and centreleft parties indicates why there has been so little political support for water re-municipalization (Marotta 2012c).

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Historically, when looking at the emergence of capitalist social relations of production in Italy, ‘albeit agriculture was commodified during the 19th century and ecclesiastical and noble rule were abolished, traditional agriculture continued to dominate large parts … until the mid-20th century. Industrial clusters (e.g. mining, steel, chemical and machinery industry) developed only in a few regions of northern Italy’ (Caterina and Huke 2020: 7). Nevertheless, despite this uneven development, high post-war unemployment levels and lack of modern technology in large companies, Italy experienced remarkable economic growth between 1950 and 1962 with large profits based on low wage levels (Bellofiore 2013: 12). It was neo-liberal restructuring in response to global economic crisis and the related falling rate of profit from the late 1970s onwards, which had dramatic consequences for the Italian production structure. The neo-liberal consensus established through government by decree laws (see above) relentlessly pushed labour market liberalization further. The availability of cheap labour, however, had a counterproductive impact on capital. Rather than responding to crisis through investment in new technology to raise productivity and competitiveness, capital intensified exploitation of existing labour (Bellofiore 2013: 10). ‘Instead of stimulating investment in innovation and R&D through higher profits, the modification of the price of labour relative to that of capital has encouraged companies to remain in labourintensive traditional sectors, to employ non-highly skilled workers and to endow them with non-innovative traditional capital’ (Ciccarone and  Saltari 2015: 230). Hence, relentless labour market deregulation and  flexibilization has moved the Italian political economy towards a model with high demand for low-skilled labour often supplied by migration. In a situation of what Leila Simona Talani refers to as ‘underdevelopment’, labour market reforms ‘increased precariousness, limited the innovation and skill content of the working force and, ultimately, reinforced the irregular labour market rather than reducing it’ (Talani 2017: 266). Unsurprisingly, an informal, underground economy has boomed, relying heavily on irregular employment especially in personal and domestic services, but also in agriculture and to some extent even manufacturing. ‘The estimates provided by reputable Italian research institutes are that the size of the Italian underground economy is currently half of official GDP’ (Talani 2019: 120). Drastic restructuring and austerity came at a high price. ‘In the Eurozone Italy has the third highest poverty rate after Greece and Spain (over the total population) and the highest poverty gap among 18–65 year-olds. It is worth noting … that all such trends (and prominently that of absolute poverty) have

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risen sharply during the years of the crisis’ (Cozzolino 2020: 586). Shifting Italian development to labour-intensive production sectors has moved the Italian political economy increasingly to a peripheral status within European uneven and combined development. There is still combined development with other EU regions, but it is highly uneven vis-à-vis core EU members as well as inside Italy itself. It is against this political-economic background, that water activists have struggled to enforce the full implementation of the referendum. First, the strategic selectivity of the state was further shifted towards the interests of capital in general with alternating centre-left and centreright governments shielding the neo-liberal consensus against popular opposition through governing by decree laws. Second, economic recession and increasing inequality fuelled by ongoing restructuring undermined the financial possibilities of water re-municipalization. It was precisely in the second half of 2011, shortly after the referendum, that Italy too increasingly ran into difficulties of re-financing state debt on the financial markets. In turn, the EU and ECB put heavy pressure on Italy towards privatization. In August 2011 Jean-Claude Trichet, the then president of the ECB, and Mario Draghi, who succeeded him in November 2011, urged ‘“the full liberalisation of local public services … through large scale privatisations”, ignoring the fact that 95.5 per cent of Italian voters had rejected the privatisation of local water services in a valid national referendum less than eight weeks earlier’ (Erne 2012: 229). The Berlusconi government collapsed in November 2011 and was replaced by the technocratic government led by Mario Monti. Evaluating the Monti government’s reform proposals, the European Commission added further pressure in relation to water privatization and liberalization in a report for the Eurogroup on 29 November 2011. It ‘argued that Italy was not doing enough and additional measures were needed. One of these structural reform measures is that Italy needs “enhancing competition in key network industries … ; other sectors, such as telecommunications, postal services, water and transport, are also significantly shielded from full competition pressures”’ (EPSU 2012a; see also Goudriaan 2012). Eventually, in 2012, the Italian government committed itself in ‘precautionary agreements’ with the ECB to radical ‘reforms’ of its economic, social and fiscal policies in order to qualify for the ECB’s so-called Outright Monetary Transactions bond purchases programme (Blankenburg et al. 2013). Nevertheless, this did not include the liberalization of water services, which had been blocked by the Council of State with reference to the referendum in a ruling on 20 July 2012 (Marotta 2012a: 450; Marotta 2012c).

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At the same time, capital has continued putting pressure towards further privatization. As noted above, both Veolia and Suez were involved in the initial steps of water privatization in Italy towards the end of the 1990s, together with Italian partner companies. In relation to the latter, Acea, in partnership with Suez, has emerged as the major private Italian water operator. ‘In 2012, Acea owned dominant stakes in the water operators of Rome and Frosinone, Gori, Pisa, Florence, Perugia, Arezzo and Siena’ (Hall and Lobina 2012a: 24). These TNCs have been involved in making profits through the management of water services and have strongly worked against re-municipalization. Interestingly, when activists of the Arezzo water committee spoke with the ‘independent’ agency AEEGSI in charge of setting water tariffs, they suddenly noticed a thick file entitled ‘Meetings with Suez’ on the shelf behind the agency official. Clearly, there are close ties between private companies and this supposingly ‘independent’ regulatory agency in administering the sector (Interviews No.8 and No.11). Moreover, water activists point to the danger of more recent creeping privatization pressures. While the Berlusconi government in the period of 2008 to 2011 had intended to privatize water through direct legislation forcing all providers to part-privatize services, privatization pressures are now being increasingly introduced by stealth. Ongoing public services restructuring facilitates privatization indirectly, while cuts to municipalities’ budgets incentivize raising finance through privatization, activists point out (Interview No.44). Thus, there is a tendency towards the creation of large multi-utility companies including water with public and private participation (Forum 2018: 3). Previous PD Prime Ministers Renzi and Gentiloni had even talked about creating four to five large Italian multi-utility companies, which would then be able to compete on the global water market for contracts (Interview No.44; Forum 2015). The main four multi-utility companies covering water and other utilities such as gas, electricity and in some cases also public transport are A2A (Lombardy including Milan and Brescia), HERA (Emilia-Romagna and parts of the Marche), IREN (Piedmont and parts of Liguria) as well as Acea (Rome and Lazio). All four are quoted on the stock market and continue to expand (Interview No.45). For example, a merger in the region of Lombardy brings together a number of companies with the water company A2A. The majority part of this new company is held by the still fully publicly owned water companies from Milan and Brescia. Considering, however, that this company will operate like private companies, profit-making will be at the heart of its strategy. In the southern region of Apulia, there is a fight against

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the regional administration and its plans to establish a fifth national water company, Polio Sud, based on the privatization of the biggest water aqueduct/network in Italy (Interview No.45 and No.48). These are all developments, which clearly go against the spirit of the 2011 referendum outcome. In the next section, I will focus on three local case studies to analyse ongoing struggles within the context of the above mentioned structuring conditions as well as changes within the Italian form of state.

Ongoing struggles: The examples of Arezzo, Turin and Naples The Forum’s local presence had been one of the key aspects ensuring success in the referendum in 2011. Across Italy, local water committees had been the driving force behind collecting signatures and ensuring a large turnout on the days of the referendum. In this section, I will look at three local water committees the one in Arezzo in central Italy, the one in Turin in the North as well as the local committee in Naples in the South of Italy to assess strategies of ongoing struggles. Arezzo and the campaign of ‘civil obedience’ When it became clear after the referendum that attempts were made to block the implementation of the outcome especially in relation to the second question regarding the right to a guaranteed profit of 7 per cent, the Arezzo water committee devised the campaign of ‘civil obedience’. It was called ‘civil obedience’ rather than ‘civil disobedience’, because the initiators argued that by withholding the 7 per cent of their water charges when paying the bills they actually complied with national law resulting from the referendum (Interviews No.3 and No.8). ‘The term obedience was evocative here: it was the government that was positioned as “disobedient”, as flaunting and transgressing the law that the referendum ought to have become’ (Muehlebach 2017a: 20). In late 2011, the campaign of ‘civil obedience’ was adopted by the Forum as a whole. It was quite successful and supported by many in some areas of Italy such as Arezzo, Pistoia and Aprilia. While I interviewed members of the Arezzo water committee in April 2014, an Italian citizen actually entered the office and asked activists to calculate for him exactly by how much he should reduce his water bill (Interview No.11). Fed up with collecting further signatures, initiatives which had resulted in few concrete results according to activists, the Arezzo water committee had

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moved towards direct action, co-ordinating activities with other likeminded local water committees. In other areas, however, people were less enthusiastic about the campaign and felt that it was not a suitable strategy forward. In Turin, for example, there was an attempt to adopt the campaign. Considering, however, that many people live in large apartment blocks, where the payment of water charges is sorted out by an administrator for the whole block, this was never likely to become a mass action (Interview No.12). When first the Regional Administrative Court of Lombardia in March 2014 and then the Council of State in May 2017 upheld the legality of the re-calculated percentage in line with the principle of ‘full cost recovery’ (see above), the campaign collapsed. Not only was the withholding of this percentage of the water bill declared illegal, but people were also asked to pay back the withheld payments (Interview No.26). When some held out in Arezzo and continued refusing to pay, the local water company cut off their water access. Water activists supplied water to affected houses and filed one test case in court. This was, however, lost. The local water committee was unable to enlist the support of water workers in Arezzo against the water cut-offs. These workers were organized outside FP-CGIL and perceived the water campaign as an attack on their company and jobs. Finally, key Arezzo water activists were issued with a law suit for defamation by the water company. This strategy by capital was unsuccessful, but ensured that the campaign was further undermined and activists cowed into submission. When I returned to Arezzo for a follow-up interview in May 2018, the atmosphere had drastically changed. Fewer members were present and activists made a dejected impression (Interview No.43). Once a lively hub of imaginative strategies of resistance, it appeared that the water committee had almost ceased to exist. Turin: Political route with the help of M5S? With the ‘civil obedience’ strategy considered unsuitable, the Turin water committee’s focus has been on the example of Naples and the remunicipalization of water services (see below). In the province of Turin, the water company SMAT is still fully owned by the city of Turin and 306 small- and medium-sized municipalities of the larger metropolitan area, but with a legal status as SpA, which ‘is subject to private commercial law so that profits are generated and distributed to the shareholders’ (Rosolen 2018). When water consumption dropped between 2008 and 2011 and the company SMAT made less profit than expected, this

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commercial focus became visible. Rather than celebrating the saving of water, SMAT attempted to recover profit levels by introducing a so-called balancing cash adjustment ante 2012. This was ruled illegal, when challenged by the committee. Equally unsurprising, while prices are rising there is a lack of infrastructure investment and in 2016 ‘the company was forced to publicly acknowledge water losses of at least 92,000,000 m3 of water per year in the city and metropolitan area of Turin’ (Rosolen 2018). Similar to the Tuscan regional and the national laws by popular initiative, the Turin water committee put forward such a law towards the full re-municipalization of SMAT. And again, as in the other cases, the local parliament first refused to consider the law and, when it finally did, argued that the re-municipalization was not feasible on legal and financial grounds (Interview No.12). Change came with the election of a M5S local administration by an absolute majority in June 2016. The emergence of M5S as a political force from around 2014 onwards at the national as well as local level has opened up new political possibilities, some in the Italian water movement argue (Interview No.5). Water is one of the five initial stars and many of the party’s predecessor meetup groups had been involved in the water movement at the time of the referendum. Prior to the local elections in Turin, the party had promised to transform the statutes of SMAT, but it was not before 2017 that councillors of the party started moving into this direction (Interview No.26). Eventually, it took until October 2017 that a draft resolution for the re-municipalization of Turin’s water system ‘was finally approved by the absolute majority of the Turin City Council’ (Rosolen 2018). The problem is, however, that all of the 306 other municipalities also have to approve, before the transformation of the statutes of SMAT can be implemented. About forty of them had done so, before a blocking minority rejected re-municipalization on 5 June 2020 (EWM 2020). This particular strategy had run its course. The importance of M5S for public water is contested within the Forum. Some argue that the party is either incompetent or has forgotten its initial commitment to public water (Interview No.43). In Rome, where a mayor from M5S was also elected in June 2016, the party set up a Round Table on water, but its members did not propose innovative solutions (Interview No.44). If it had not been for some local municipalities involving Forum activists, the Forum would not even have been allowed to participate in the Round Table in the first place (Interview No.45). At the national level, the coalition agreement with the centre-right Lega party in 2018 mentioned the implementation of

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the referendum, resulting in a revival of the law by popular initiative in Parliament (Interview No.55). In September 2019, M5S switched to a coalition government with the centre-left PD. Considering the general neo-liberal direction of centre-left and centre-right governments in the past, neither of these two coalition governments has been expected to change drastically the situation of public water. Unsurprisingly, the Forum continues to counsel against too close a relationship with any one particular party. The water movement would have to be able to talk to governments at all levels, regardless of which particular political parties are in power (Interview No.44). Naples: Re-municipalizing water In the ongoing struggles over public water in Italy, it is the municipality of Naples and its water company Acqua Bene Comune (ABC), which has played a special role throughout the years of conflict. In 1998, the water company in Naples, then called AMAN, was transformed into ARIN SpA, a SpA or joint-stock company publicly owned but with a focus on profit-making. It was, however, the plan to part-privatize ARIN SpA in 2004, which resulted in a broad alliance of resistance. This alliance consisted of local water committees around the well-known Catholic priest Alex Zanotelli on one hand, and a network of intellectuals on the other (Interview No.46). While the committees mobilized broadly among the population, the network of intellectuals set up an assembly, which produced a publication for public water and drafted an appeal on 22 December 2005 against privatization, which was signed by well-known public people (Lucarelli and Marotta 2006: 17–25). After ongoing struggles throughout 2005, the mayor of Naples accepted on 30 January 2006 that privatization was a mistake and cancelled the competition (Interviews No.46 and No.48; Marotta 2014: 44). Based on this success, activists from Naples became closely involved in the setting up of the Forum at the national level in 2006, which in turn was then behind the successful referendum in 2011. Naples was the only city, in which the water company with a SpA status was transformed back into a fully public company outside the market. After considerations had started in 2011 following the victory in the referendum, the new company ABC was finally established in April 2013. This was an extremely difficult process, as the law had provided for public companies being transformed into SpAs, but not the other way round (Interview No.47). There was a ‘lack of previous experience in transforming a joint-stock into a public non-profit company’

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(Marotta 2014: 44). Two lawyers from the Rodotà Committee, Alberto Lucarelli and Ugo Mattei, played a crucial role in this transformation (Carrozza and Fantini 2016: 113). Unlike private companies or SpAs, which have the objective of making profits, ABC has the obligation to balance the books. This allows the company to spend any surplus generated on infrastructure improvements and good causes, including a discounted social tariff for families and users on lower income. This also involves an international solidarity fund, which is used to provide development assistance to countries in Africa, for example, in securing access to water. The most important aspect of this victory was, as one of my interviewees pointed out, that the transformation had been based on participatory democracy (Interview No.48). As a result, the new statutes include a number of important novelties emphasizing the importance of social solidarity, ecology, participatory democracy, sustainable development and good governance (see www.abc.napoli.it; accessed 9 December 2019). Introducing mechanisms of participatory democracy, however, has not been easy. Article 41 of ABC’s statutes outlines its ambitions for the involvement of civil society in the running of the company. It sets up a committee, the Comitato di Sorveglianza, as an institution of control, which includes elected worker representatives and members from the water committees and environmental groups. Nevertheless, the committee does not meet regularly, it is not fully institutionalized and does not have a clear role (Interview No.47). During the period of Maurizio Montalto’s directorship of ABC, water activists told me, positive steps had been taken towards the involvement of civil society. A Civil Council was established, open to anyone interested in public water. From this assembly, five delegates and one referent were elected, who had the right to participate in the administration of ABC. However, when Maurizio Montalto was dismissed in 2016 over a disagreement with the mayor about the future direction of the company, this experiment came to an end (Interview No.48). Unsurprisingly, with citizens involvement not fully implemented, frequently changing directors and the accounts not presented for two years, ABC is under pressure (Interviews No.26 and No.44). And there are difficult challenges ahead for the company. As elsewhere in Italy, there is continuing pressure on water privatization (see above). ABC is currently in charge of the water pipe network and the delivery of water to households, but wastewater is handled by a separate public company, also owned by the city of Naples. The intention is that wastewater will be shifted to ABC, but this still

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needs to happen (Interview No.47). Moreover, a new law in 2015 reorganized the five separate administrative areas of the region Campania into one administrative unit, the so-called Ente Idrico Campano. In turn, this new unit wants to establish one water company providing an integrated service in each of the five regional districts. ABC, which provides water for Naples, is entitled to participate in this process, but this means that ABC has to take over the water services of an additional thirty-one municipalities in its regional area. Some of these water services are public, some have been privatized. ABC has already attempted to take over several of the other municipal water services, but so far without success. In short, there are great uncertainties about whether ABC will be able to incorporate these thirty-one municipalities in line with the new law (Interview No.48). If not, a private company may want to step in and control the water services of the region. In view of these ongoing challenges and the continuing tensions over providing institutions for meaningful citizens’ participation in ABC, the alliance against water privatization has started to fragment. There is a lot of mistrust between the administration of ABC and the mayor on one hand, and activists from the water committees on the other (Interview No.48). In turn, workers at ABC question to what extent members of civil society would actually have the relevant knowledge to participate in the management of water services. In addition, they argue that the mayor should show more support for ABC in its attempts to take over other municipal water companies (Interview No.47). Finally, even within the water committees themselves, tensions have come to the fore. Unfortunately, as one activist told me, political parties have become involved in the committees trying to attach their electoral fortunes to public water, although the strength of the Italian water movement had traditionally been that it had not become involved in party politics. Nevertheless, water activists agree that Naples needs to be defended as a positive example for others, especially now when the pressure on privatization is increasing again across Italy (Interview No.48).

Conclusion: Lasting legacies of the Italian water movement Against the background of a very difficult economic situation characterized by high unemployment, slow growth, high debt, the proliferation of part-time, insecure jobs and increasing poverty levels (Palumbo 2018), the future of public water in Italy is highly uncertain. Water prices continue to rise. In parts of the southern

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region of Campania, prices increased ‘67 per cent between 2011 and 2016; another 9 per cent in 2016; and another projected 31 per cent between 2016 and 2019’ (Muehlebach 2017a: 22). It would be incorrect to argue that the Italian water movement has ultimately failed due to the incomplete implementation of the referendum outcomes. The Forum’s success in the 2011 referendum is arguably the most important example of a victorious anti-neoliberal campaign in Europe over the last decade. The broad alliance, the wide mobilization across Italian society and the emphatic endorsement of the questions with over 95 per cent of the votes is without comparison. Nevertheless, the victory came at an unfortunate time. Italy had already moved towards a labour intensive, low wage production structure through neo-liberal restructuring via decree laws from the late 1970s onwards. When the global financial and the Eurozone crises affected also Italy in 2011, the country’s response entrenched further this particular neo-liberal consensus through the technocratic government of Mario Monti. It proved to be difficult to push implementation through within these structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production. In her assessment of the Italian water movement, Andrea Muehlebach separates struggles in the workplace from struggles around public water. ‘The political subjectivity that arouse out of a consciousness of precarity was largely grounded in labour mobilization and the strike. The turbulent worlds of volatility [around water struggles] are generating different mobilization forms: (dis)obedience, rot and insurgency – a kind of vital politics that seeks to respond to the dispossession of our time’ (Muehlebach 2017a: 23). Nevertheless, the ongoing water struggles in Italy indicate why it is not possible to separate resistance to capitalist exploitation in the workplace from resistance in the sphere of social reproduction. The lack of success against the imposition of a charge in line with the full cost recovery principle is precisely due to the failure of backing up the strategy of civil obedience with action in the workplace. As written above, the Arezzo water committee had been unable to form an alliance with water workers and failed to convince them not to cut off water supplies. In Rome, there was an initiative called ‘Supermario’, which reconnected water ‘illegally’, but this too did not work in the long-run. Water workers had been worried about losing their jobs, if they did not obey orders, and the trade union organizing the sector was not supportive. In fact, some workers, who had not complied with the policy of disconnecting water supply to customers unable to pay, lost their jobs as a result ‘of bringing their employer in disrepute’ (Interview No.45). As the co-ordination group of public water in Rome reported

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in November 2019, the local water company Acea had just cut off again the water supply of a number of families, putting profit before people (Coord Romano Acqua Pubblica 2019). In short, capitalist exploitation occurs across the spheres of production and social reproduction and resistance too has to cover both spheres. This is why trade unions had been an important part of the Forum from the very beginning. Despite these setbacks, it would be wrong to argue that there have been no positive results due to the referendum victory. First and perhaps most importantly, as many of the interviewees pointed out, the 2009 law of the Berlusconi government, enforcing water privatization on all municipalities, was abrogated. Hence, many water companies such as in Turin and Milan are still fully owned by local government, even though they may operate like a private company in their status as jointstock companies. Further privatization has been stopped. Second, the city of Naples has re-municipalized water services, exploring steps towards participatory forms of management. Third, when assessing the underlying discourse around water as a commons, it is important to acknowledge its fundamentally anti-capitalist dynamic. The focus on ‘beni comuni’, the commons as a space outside market competition directly challenges the capitalist focus on commodifying ever more areas and submitting them to the profit logic of the market. Rejecting the possibility that anyone can make a profit from dealing in water implies a move towards a new economic model, as one activist argued (Interview No.8). It is this new economic model combined with elements of participatory democracy, which implies a transformative dimension. This will be further explored in Chapter 7, the conclusion of this book. Activists view the struggle for public water in Italy as an open process, in which the referendum was only one stage. Everything is still possible many maintain. The very fact that the Forum has by now existed for almost fifteen years despite the problems with the implementation of the referendum results should be regarded as a success (Interviews No.2; No.3; No.5 and No.9). The Forum continues to meet regularly and keeps on pushing for public water (Interview No.44). Finally, the successful referendum in Italy inspired the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) at the end of 2011 to move ahead with a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on water as a human right (Interview No.9). This indicates how developments in one moment of struggle co-constitute developments in other moments including at a larger geographical level in line with the incorporated comparative research strategy underpinning this book. The ECI within the EU is the subject of the next chapter.

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Notes 1 A third, water-related question, which would have prevented the participation of private providers in the running of water services, was deemed unconstitutional and, therefore, not admitted by the Constitutional Court. It argued that the EU had already decided that water was a market (Interview No.13; see also Ciervo 2010: 170). In the end, there were four referendum questions. In addition to the two on water, there was one on repealing the ‘legitimate impediment’, which allowed government ministers to avoid criminal prosecution while in power, and one on rejecting nuclear energy. The latter two questions were initiated and supported by the then existing political party Italy of Values (Italia dei Valori) (Cernison 2019: 94, 98–9). The nuclear disaster at Fukushima in March 2011 may have aided the large turnout, considering that the fourth question was precisely in this area. I am grateful to Emanuele Fantini for pointing this out to me. 2 Between 1992 and 1994 the Italian political party system imploded due to a wave of corruption charges against politicians from the main parties. Established parties such as Democrazia Cristiana disappeared, while others such as the Lega Nord and Forza Italia emerged. 3 E-mail message to the author on 21 March 2014.

Chapter 4 W AT E R I S A H UM A N R IG H T : T H E F I R ST E U R O P E A N C I T I Z E N S ’ I N I T IAT I V E OV E R P U B L IC WAT E R Introduction Since the initial steps of European integration in the 1950s, the European Union (EU) has emerged as a form of state at the supranational level in Europe, providing important opportunities of influencing policymaking. In 2012 and 2013, the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) used this level, when it embarked on the ambitious project of launching the first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’. At the European Social Forum (ESF) in Malmo in 2008, it had already co-ordinated the establishment of the European Water Movement (EWM) and the publication of a water manifesto. This water movement did not fully take off and was re-launched in Naples/Italy in December 2011 (see below), but a premeeting of trade unions to the ESF was interesting. Reflecting on possible further campaigns on the basis of their experiences in local struggles, it was at this meeting that the idea of an ECI was raised as an option for the first time to be then adopted as formal policy at EPSU’s 2009 Congress (Interview No.15). The Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 had introduced the tool of an ECI as a way of increasing popular participation in EU decisionmaking, but it took until 2012 for it to be formally established. Between the EPSU Congress in 2009 and 2012, two crucial developments had taken place, indicating how European level struggles have been conditioned by developments across multiple geographical scales. First, the General Assembly of the UN had declared water to be a human right in 2010. This allowed EPSU to link its demands at the European level to general developments at the global level (FischbachPyttel 2017: 190). Second, the successful Italian referendum in June 2011 (see Chapter 3) had convinced EPSU that water was indeed an issue around which many people can be mobilized (Interviews No.1 and No.9). Hence, EPSU went ahead and submitted its request to organize an ECI to the European Commission on 2 April 2012 and the

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Commission approved the ECI on 10 May 2012. Three key objectives were stated at the launch of the ECI in May 2012: ‘(1) The EU institutions and Member States be obliged to ensure that all inhabitants enjoy the right to water and sanitation; (2) water supply and management of water resources not be subject to “internal market rules” and that water services are excluded from liberalisation; and (3) the EU increases its efforts to achieve universal access to water and sanitation’ (http:// www.right2water.eu/; accessed 13 January 2020). Between May 2012 and September 2013, close to 1.9 million signatures were collected across the EU and formally submitted to the Commission. The start of the campaign had been slow and the targets proved challenging. Eventually, however, the campaign went well beyond the required 1 million signatures and also reached the quotas for the minimum of seven required EU member states in that thirteen countries including Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain collected the required amount of signatures. Germany stood out as the country with the most signatures. A total of 1,341,061 signatures were collected, of which 1,236,455 were considered valid (van den Berge, Boelens, Vos 2018: 227). The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the dynamics underlying the successful mobilization of a broad coalition of actors at the European and various national levels sustaining this action as well as assess the concrete impact of the ECI on EU policy-making. In the next section, I will first examine the key reasons for the successful mobilization, before the subsequent section focuses on the policy impact, taking into account the current capitalist structuring conditions within the global political economy.

Mobilizing for change The ECI did not emerge out of the blue. Parallel to international developments around the water war in Cochabamba in 2000, the UN declaration of water as a human right in 2010 and the Alternative World Water Forums from 2003 onwards, there had been ongoing struggles at the national and sub-national level in Europe. Water was first remunicipalized in the French city of Grenoble in 2000 (Avrillier 2005). The same occurred in Paris in 2010, followed by the re-municipalization of water in Berlin in 2013 (Lobina, Kishimoto and Petitjean 2014: 7–8). In Germany, co-operation in struggles against water liberalization at

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the national level goes back to 2000. The establishment of the network Unser Wasser already included trade unions and environmental NGOs (Interviews No.18 and No.22). The Italian Forum of Water Movements was established in 2006 including a broad range of trade unions, social movements, environmental groups and development NGOs (see Chapter 3). In turn, EPSU itself had been involved in struggles against water privatization in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the early 1990s, as, for example, in Vilnius/Lithuania in 1993 (Interview 25; see also Pietilä 2005: 11–12). Moreover, it established the Reclaiming Public Water Network together with the Public Services International and key Canadian trade unions at the end of the 1990s and started its co-operation with the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at Greenwich University/UK in establishing a related database at that time. Furthermore, water privatization had already been on the EU agenda in 2002, when EU Commissioner Bolkestein, responsible for the EU Services Directive, declared that liberalization of the sector was ‘a practical instrument for establishing the correct relationship between price, quality and the standard of the service provided’ (Bolkestein quoted in Szabó 2019: 5). He, thus, echoed standard neo-liberal, capitalist rhetoric that efficient allocation of a scarce resource was to be obtained best through the correct market price (see Chapter 2). EPSU was strongly involved in the campaign ensuring that water services remained outside the Services Directive as well as the subsequent Public Procurement Directives in 2003/2004 (Interviews No.15 and No.25). In this section, I will argue that it was the variety of objectives facilitating broad alliances at European as well as national levels across the social factory, which were crucial for the success of the ECI. Variety of objectives A total of 149 organizations came together in the Right2Water campaign including trade unions, which accounted for 47 per cent of member organizations, religious groups, development organizations, environmental movements, consumer organizations and a range of other civil society groups (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 234– 5). EPSU’s main focus was on opposition to water privatization, which was understood as a struggle against neo-liberal restructuring and a struggle over how production is organized, whether it is publicly or privately owned (Interview No.1). EPSU wanted to emphasize the antiprivatization and anti-austerity dimension of the ECI. As the EPSU

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General Secretary at the time Carola Fischbach-Pyttel (2017: 194) writes, ‘the Right2Water campaign can thus be considered an anti-neoliberal and anti-free market movement, against the supposed promises of privatisation, such as more efficiency, higher quality and cost reductions for consumers’. Nevertheless, because a direct ‘no’ to privatization would not have been possible, as it is outside the Commission competence and thus not admissible, the ECI was organized around a human rights discourse (Interview No.15). Moreover, it was clear that in order to attract a large number of allies, the ECI had to be framed more broadly (Interview No.17). Thus, the three objectives of the ECI incorporated various dimensions of water, with different concerns being of more importance in different countries and for different types of movement partners. For example, in Germany the opposition to the liberalization of water services, Point 2 of the ECI and closest related to EPSU’s anti – neoliberal position, was crucial in that it was directly linked to discussions around the Concessions Directive. While the ECI was ongoing, the Commission had also published the draft Concessions Directive, forcing public entities including water services to tender contracts openly across the EU (Szabó 2019: 8). Liberalization does not automatically imply privatization. Considering the complex procedures and capital and technology intensiveness of such public tendering, however, it would have been inevitable that these contracts had been snapped up by large, private TNCs such as Veolia and Suez (Interview No.15). Hence, liberalization of water as part of the Concessions Directive would have implied, for example, privatization of the many public water providers across Germany (Interview No.17). The perceived danger was that the quality of water would deteriorate, access to water made more difficult, the working conditions for employees worsened and the prices for consumers increased (Falk 2013). Especially the Alliance of Public Water Providers (Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft, AöW), organizing public, often small-scale water providers in Germany, made this link between the ECI and the draft Concessions Directive (Interview No.21). Nevertheless, while the Concessions Directive was of equal concern for Austria, the issue of water as a human right was more prominent in the Dutch campaign (Interview No.17). For Catholic groups, universal access to water and sanitation, demanded in Point 1 of the ECI, proved important as an issue of social justice especially in the Italian context (Fantini 2014: 37), while Point 3 about the EU pushing for water as a human right globally was relevant for development NGOs such as the Comitato Italiano Contratto Mondiale sull’Acqua (CICMA) in Italy, which is part of the World Water Contract movement (Interview

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No.14), or German groups such as the Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung or the church related organization Brot für die Welt, arguing that Europe had a responsibility for the whole world (Interviews No.21 and No.22). Environmental groups including, for example, the Italian Legambiente or the German Grüne Liga equally participated, because when water becomes privatized and the sector is dominated by the profit motive, the protection of the environment generally comes second, it was argued (Interviews No.10 and No.22). Trade unions were equally concerned about the potential privatization of water and the implications for salaries and working conditions. ‘Public sector workers tend to have higher protection through collective bargaining coverage and are less affected by precarious work’ (Jakob and Sanchez 2015: 76). In turn, social movements organizing consumers worried about the potentially higher prices and some people being cut off in case they are unable to pay. Thus, the struggle for water as a human right and against privatization is precisely a struggle taking place in the wider social factory against exploitation in the sphere of production and the organization of the workplace, as well as the sphere of social reproduction and the importance of ensuring affordable access to water for everyone as well as the protection of the environment. Of course, there were also tensions inside the broad alliance. Social movements had sometimes had exaggerated expectations what unions can deliver in terms of finance, but also their flexibility of taking decisions quickly, trade unionists argued (Interview No.18). Perhaps, social movements just wanted trade unions’ resources and credibility for their own campaign (Interview No.15). In turn, some social movements felt that trade unions had imposed the ECI on the wider movement without enough possibilities for others to participate in the formulation of the ECI as well as the devising of the strategy. For example, a representative of the Berlin Water Table stated that the wording of the ECI was drafted by EPSU together with the German service sector union ver.di and that it had been made clear that this was not negotiable. Some regret was expressed that in contrast to the initiative by the World Water Contract movement (see below), the EPSU text did not include a concrete legislative proposal (Interview No.20). From within the Italian water movement, some felt that the ECI had been imposed on them from the outside by EPSU and its local affiliate Funzione Pubblica-CGIL (Interview No.14). This is to some extent a classical expression of social movements’ experience and fear that trade unions want to be in charge of those initiatives, they are participating in, rather than operating together as equals.

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Moreover, two ECIs with a focus on water were initially discussed at the European level. The one organized by EPSU and one discussed by the World Water Contract movement. In the end, it was decided to go first with the EPSU initiative and not to split forces in two parallel campaigns. Nevertheless, some had also more contents-related reasons for why they preferred the EPSU initiative. As a representative from the German environmental NGO Grüne Liga pointed out, the World Water Contract movement interprets the human right to water in a way, which implies that water should be free. By contrast, however, this interviewee argued that the cost of water and the protection of the environment should be covered by the price. What must not be possible is making a profit with water (Interview No.22). These tensions over the price, the cost of water also played a role inside the ECI. Some argued that access to water should be free and the supply of this water should be the responsibility of public companies. In Belgium, for example, every citizen has the right to access a certain amount of water for free. Others, however, pointed out that the guarantee of universal access to water was state responsibility and that water as such had to have a price (Interview No.17). This issue represented especially a problem for the German AöW, which represents public water companies, relying on payments to ensure the successful running of the service (Interview No.21). Because this was an issue also at the European level, the decision within the campaign was that both ways of providing water and, thus, guaranteeing the human right to water were acceptable.1 Ultimately, there was a clear consensus on the three main objectives stated in the ECI itself and this was a significant starting-point for the successful campaign. Importantly, the campaign on purpose excluded close connections to political parties following the strategy of the Italian water movement in the 2011 referendum. In Germany, as well as at the European level, political parties were not officially part of the movement in order to ensure the broadest possible support (Interview No.18). There were, of course, contacts with MEPs from the Left Party and the Greens in Germany, for example, but the alliance overall did not want any of the political parties to dominate the campaign and make it into an electoral tool (Interview No.19). To generate maximum support, water had to be clearly an issue beyond political party divisions, it was argued. Being neither perceived as right-wing nor left-wing and consisting of a range of different organizations proved to be a strength of the campaign (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 235).

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Broad alliance of actors at European as well as national level The fact that the ECI had been based on and supported by a broad alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs across the social factory was also crucial. At the European level, it was EPSU, which initiated the campaign and sustained it with its administrative and financial resources. It formed a European level alliance together with other organizations such as the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN), the Social Platform, the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), since 2016 called Women Engage for a Common Future reflecting the increasingly global outlook (Fattori 2013a; Fischbach-Pyttel 2017: 190). However, these EU-based groups ‘did little more than place banners on websites and publicise the ECI through their networks’ (Parks 2015: 71). It was EPSU, which had been the leading organization co-ordinating and holding the campaign together (Interview No.22). Its organizational structure, bringing together representatives of its national federations in the organizing committee, provided the crucial backbone and leadership of the campaign (Interview No.15). For example, when the unions organizing workers in the water sector in Lithuania and Slovenia struggled to collect signatures, the energy federations in both countries, also EPSU members, stepped in and led the national campaigns (Interviews No.23 and No.24). EPSU’s broad coverage of public services and utilities facilitated this strategic move. In short, EPSU has a strong presence, expertise, and resources in Brussels, but can also rely on developed networks of national and local trade union chapters for the collection of signatures. During their campaign, the EPSU also drew on the support of other national and local movement groups formed in long-term collaborations with water movement groups, particularly in those member states hardest hit by the effects of the financial crisis. (della Porta and Parks 2018: 97)

From the beginning, EPSU’s efforts at co-ordinating the Europeanlevel as well as various national campaigns were strongly supported by the EWM. Its initial establishment at the ESF in Malmö/Sweden in 2008 did not have lasting consequences. However, once re-launched in Naples/Italy in 2011 with a clear anti – neo-liberal and anti-privatization agenda around the Naples Charter of the European Movement for Water

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as a Commons (EWM 2011), it became an integral part of collecting signatures across the EU during the ECI (Interviews No.50 and No.53). Even more important, however, than the European-level alliance were the various alliances of unions and social movements at the national level. National quotas had to be reached in at least seven countries and the collection of signatures, therefore, had to be organized at the national level. When EPSU had organized a successful European level alliance of trade unions and green and social movements and NGOs in opposition to new Public Procurement Directives and the related attack on public sectors across the EU in 2000 to 2003, this alliance had been unable to establish similar alliances at the various national levels (Bieler 2011). This time round, it was different. All the successful campaigns were based on strong national alliances. Unsurprisingly, the success of the ECI was not the same across all EU countries. It was in Germany that the most signatures were collected, related to the perceived impact of the Concessions Directive on the German water industry (see above). Making the link between the ECI and the Concessions Directive proved to be crucial for the high number of signatures (Interviews No.17 and No.21). Moreover, there was a tightly organized campaign around the services trade union ver.di, supported by the German trade union confederation DGB, together with a whole range of local water movements such as the Berlin Water Table, the Wasser Allianz Augsburg, the Working Group Water and Privatization of ATTAC München and the NGO Wasser In Bürgerhand, environmental movements such as the BUND, the Grüne Liga and the feminist group EcoMujer, as well as development NGOs including the Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung (Interviews No.20, No.21 and No.22). Especially the organizational structure of ver.di in the various districts across the whole country was vital for the local presence of the campaign. Finally, the possibility of signing on the internet was significant. Around 80 per cent of all German signatures were online signatures. This possibility obtained additional importance through media presence, be it a discussion of water privatization in the investigative programme Monitor in December 2012,2 be it the picking up of the campaign and portraying of the internet address in the comedy show ‘Neues aus der Anstalt’ in January 2013,3 or the coverage in the ZDF heute show in February 2013.4 Nevertheless, the fact that a large part of signatures was collected in Germany should not make us overlook the success of the campaign across the EU. In both Lithuania and Slovenia, most of the signatures were also collected online. The Lithuanian campaign, led by the Lithuanian

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Industry Trade Unions’ Federation, had very good links with the media, providing space on a number of occasions for campaign leaders to state their case. Parallel to the ECI, the law on water management was amended and with effect of 1 November 2014, this law prohibits both water privatization and the transfer of concessions for drinking water supply. The law also specifies that people should pay no more than 4 per cent of family income for water as a maximum (Interview No.23). In turn, Facebook proved crucial in Slovenia. Led by the Trade Union of Energy Sector Workers, the campaign succeeded at convincing politicians, artists, theatre stars and a famous Slovenian rock group, whose song ‘Water’ was used for the campaign, to accept that they post supporting material on their Facebook sites (Interview No.24). In Italy, the water movement had already successfully collected signatures on a number of occasions (see Chapter 3). For the referendum against water privatization in 2011, for example, 1.4 million signatures had been gathered. When it came to collecting signatures yet again in relation to the theme of water, the Italian water movement of trade unions and social movements indicated a degree of fatigue with this particular way of organizing opposition as well as disillusion with the lack of positive impact by the successful Italian referendum of June 2011 (Interviews No.5, No.9 and No.10). They still managed to reach the national quota with 67,484 validated signatures, but this was a relatively small number in comparison with past collections and was only accomplished after eleven other countries had already reached their required national quota (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 237–8). In countries in the European periphery such as Portugal, Spain and Greece, linking the ECI to austerity policy and its negative consequences had been decisive in the final push. ‘As various groups including national members of the EPSU, municipalities and movement groups worked to link the ECI to austerity issues signatures did pick up in these countries, with all but Portugal passing the threshold to pass the ECI’ (Parks 2015: 76). Here too, the European campaign could build on prior successful local campaigns. For example, ‘in Spain, the Platform against privatizing Canal de Isabel II and the 15-M (anti-austerity) Movement [had] organized a popular consultation in Madrid region (March 2012) to vote on privatizing Canal de Isabel II, with over 160,000 people voting against privatization’ (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 239). The close link to the concessions directive also ensured a successful campaign in Austria similar to Germany (Interview No.19). In other instances, specific national events proved decisive. When the mayor of the Hungarian town of Ózd decided on 2 August 2013 in the middle

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of a heat wave that it had become too expensive to supply eighty-eight roadside pumps in poorer parts of the city with a large Roma population, the right to water was directly threatened (EPSU 2013b). In response, it was Roma groups in Hungary, which strongly mobilized for the ECI and ensured that the national quota of signatures was met (Interview No.17). In Belgium, trade unions used the ECI also as a recruitment and organizing campaign with shop stewards collecting signatures by approaching colleagues in the workplace. Belgium was one of the first countries, which fulfilled the required national quota, mainly through paper signatures reflecting the direct collection by union activists (Interview No.15). Other countries did not meet the national quota. In France, for example, trade unions were lukewarm towards the initiative, because their sectoral federations are organizing workers in the big TNCs Suez and Veolia and did not want to campaign against ‘their’ companies (Interview No.51). From a narrower trade union perspective, they argued that it was their task to focus on salaries and working conditions of their members. Whether the company itself was private or public would be a secondary issue (Interview No.1). Furthermore, Veolia and Suez added intimidation. They ‘warned their own personnel that a signature for Right2Water would be an act against their company, making workers and unionists afraid of supporting Right2Water openly’ (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 240). Even the fact that water services had been remunicipalized in Paris in 2010 did not encourage a broader signature collection campaign (Interview No.17). In the UK too, the ECI did not pick up much support. No trade union had been willing to make water one of their key campaigns, which may at least partly have been due to the fact that there were ongoing struggles against so many other attacks on the public sector (Interview No.15). In Ireland the quota was not reached either. The ECI had occurred just before the Irish campaign against water charges took off. Moreover, EPSU had the feeling that its two affiliated Irish unions the public sector union IMPACT, now part of the public services union Forsa, and the services sector union SIPTU were actively boycotting the ECI, as they were linked to the Labour Party, which was the junior coalition partner in the Irish government at the time (Interviews No.25 and No.27). Unsurprisingly, neither of the two trade unions played a strong role in the Irish water movement between 2014 and 2016 (see Chapter 6). In Scandinavia, with water privatization not being an issue, there was hardly any activism around the ECI (Interview No.60). In Romania, although water quality is the

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poorest in the EU, no campaign was launched (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 239). CEE trade unions generally suffer from a lack of resources (Interview No.60). Nevertheless, the fact that the quota was achieved in thirteen countries is a sign of success and this was also due to the fact that it had been possible on the basis of a variety of objectives to connect the European alliance with local and national campaigns across the social factory, bringing together trade unions organizing workers in the production process with social movements and NGOs mobilizing people within the sphere of social reproduction. In the next section, I will discuss the ECI’s impact on EU water policy.

EU policy-making within capitalist structuring conditions Possibilities and limits of influencing EU policy-making To some extent, the ECI was clearly successful in policy terms. Especially in Germany and Austria, the Concessions Directive was a crucial point for the mobilization of opposition. When the ECI had reached one million signatures in February 2013 and it became clear that it might actually be successful, Commissioner Barnier, responsible for the Concessions Directive, went to Berlin and discussed with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel an exception for the German water economy. When it then became clear that this would create even more difficulties for the Directive, water was excluded from the Concessions Directive (Conrad 2014a: 35). ‘In short, the ECI on water [had] already achieved a significant political result and an extraordinary victory even before it formally arrive[d] on the Commission’s desk’ (Fattori 2013a; see also EPSU 2013a). Of course, capital and here especially large TNCs had not been inactive. There was heavy lobbying of the Commission by the water industry. Private water companies rejected the link made between the ECI and the Concessions Directive and expressed their disappointment about the exclusion of water, considered to make up half of the concessions within the EU (AquaFed 2013). They had unsuccessfully argued that the private sector would be able to play an important role in securing water as a human right (Fischbach-Pyttel 2017: 196–8). The fact that this pressure by capital failed further indicates the success of the ECI. It is a clear moment, when the capitalist EU form of state had to sacrifice the interests of a particular class fraction, the water industry, in order to ensure the continuation of capitalist accumulation in the

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interest of capital in general in line with Poulantzas’s understanding of the relative autonomy of the state, discussed in Chapter 1. Moreover, the ECI has substantially changed the public discourse on water in Europe. Arguments about the importance of keeping water in public hands are no longer laughed at or belittled, interviewees point out. Prior to the 2013 national elections, all German parties committed themselves to retaining water in public hands and this issue also featured in the coalition negotiations between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (Interview No.21). At the European level, the ECI campaign energetically lobbied the candidates for the new president of the Commission in 2014, and four out of five committed themselves to implementing the human right to water if elected (EPSU 2014c). The public consultation on the Drinking Water Directive (see below), even if not demanded by the ECI, is also a reflection of the fact ‘that water has taken its place on the European agenda’ (Parks 2015: 95). Equally, the new rules established by the EU to improve the monitoring of drinking water across Europe in October 2015 indicate the high profile of water in EU policy-making. In its press release, the Commission explicitly stated that the public consultation and new monitoring rules are ‘part of the wider response to the European Citizens’ Initiative Right2Water’ (European Commission 2015). Water policy-making has, thus, gained a completely new status in public awareness. Previous struggles against water privatization remained unknown to the general European public and limited to water justice activists. This time, by engaging trade unions, environmentalists, anti-poverty campaigners and many other civil-society groups, it broke out of this inner circle of water activists and reached an unprecedented audience, focusing on the issue of water-service provision and the threat of privatization. (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2018: 242)

A more direct translation of the ECI into the EU form of state and European policy-making was, however, more difficult. On 17 February 2014, hearings of the ECI took place with the Commission and the European Parliament (EP). The Commission representatives mainly asked questions during their hearing and its response, delivered on 19 March 2014, was a disappointment. It argued that it would not introduce water as a human right into EU legislation, as the Commission was not responsible for water. This was a matter of national level legislation. Similarly, while the Commission confirmed that it would not further

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pursue the liberalization of water, this too was not backed up by EU legislation. Instead, it declared that it had to remain neutral vis-à-vis national decision-making in the water industry. As a response by the AöW makes clear, however, the Commission had not observed this neutrality in relation to EU crisis countries (AöW 2014: 2), having pushed for further liberalization and privatization in Greece, Portugal and Italy (see Chapter 5). The Commission, moreover, announced that it intended to hold a consultation on drinking water as part of the review of the Drinking Water Directive (DWD) (see below). Nevertheless, this could have been done even without the ECI and does not really address its main objectives (Conrad 2014b). The Commission did not promise a general change in foreign policy in relation to pushing water as a human right in its dealings with other countries around the world either (Interview No.17). Observers also noted that there is still an emphasis on market conformity in Commission statements (Interview No.19). In contrast to the hearing of the ECI with the Commission, the hearing in the EP on 17 February 2014 was deemed more successful by activists (Interview No.17). It was four hours long and sixty MEPs mainly from the environment but also some other committees were present, with most of them talking at some stage. The co-ordinators of the EP’s environmental committee decided in September 2014 to work on an initiative report as a follow-up to the ECI. In September 2015, a resolution passed in the EP stated that the Commission’s response ‘lacks ambition, does not meet the specific demands made in the ECI, and limits itself to reiterating existing commitments’ (European Parliament News 2015). The lead MEP of this resolution Lynn Boylan of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left political group, whose report was approved by 363 vote to 96 (with 261 abstentions), stated that ‘[o] wnership and management of water services are clearly key concerns for citizens and cannot be ignored’ (European Parliament News 2015). Water should neither be part of a revised Concessions Directive in the future, nor of any trade deals negotiated by the EU, the resolution states. The EP, moreover, rejected water cut-offs for households unable to pay and demanded that member states ensure non-discrimination in access to water (Laaninen 2019: 3). As EPSU noted at the time, ‘with today’s vote the EP demands that the [EU] make[s] concrete legislative proposals to recognize the human right to water and sanitation as defined by the UN’ (EPSU 2015; see also Fischbach-Pyttel 2017: 200–1). Other EU institutions pursued a similar line to the EP. In October 2014, the European Economic and Social Committee (EcoSoc) adopted by a large majority a supportive statement, in which the Commission was asked

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to implement the ECI’s demands urging the Commission ‘to propose legislation establishing access to water and sanitation as a human right as set out by the United Nations’ (EcoSoc 2014: 3). In addition, it was demanded that access to water and sanitation is excluded ‘permanently from the commercial rules of the internal market by proposing that they be reclassified as a service of non-economic general interest’ (EcoSoc 2014: 6–7). This positive momentum was transferred into the campaign around the revision of the Drinking Water Directive (DWD). When the Commission published its proposals for a revised DWD on 1 February 2018, it added a new Article 13, in which it made direct reference to the ECI and proposed two specific measures. ‘First, it sets an obligation for Member States to improve access to and promote use of drinking water via a number of measures … ; second, it includes an obligation for Member States to take all measures necessary to ensure access to drinking water for vulnerable and marginalised groups’ (Laaninen 2019: 5). The initial response by EPSU and its allies was cautiously positive in that this proposal at least partly addressed the demands of the ECI, even though it did not enshrine the human right to water and sanitation into EU legislation (EPSU 2018a). Hopes for more progressive legislation by the EP in its amendments were, however, dashed, when the Environment and Public Health committee of the EP failed to endorse key amendments in its meeting on 10 September 2018 (EPSU 2018b). The report was endorsed by the EP on 23 October 2018. EPSU noted positively that the EP supports the free provision of water in public buildings and discourages the use of bottled water, but regretted that ‘the majority of the Parliament rejected a minimum supply of water for each citizen and the creation of a European water observatory. These would have led to real progress and transparency’ (EPSU 2018c). The Council of the EU, by contrast, watered down the requirements of the draft Directive on 5 March 2019, wanting to ensure as much flexibility as possible for member states in the way the new provisions are to be implemented. As EPSU remarked in response, ‘there are no clear and unambiguous legal obligations on Member States to ensure people’s access to safe and clean drinking water in line with the right to water and sanitation as adopted by the UN. There are too many loopholes’ (EPSU 2019). The trilogue negotiations between Council, Commission and EP were concluded on 18 December 2019 and, unsurprisingly, resulted in a rather weak text, no longer even mentioning the ECI in the new Article 13 and leaving it to member states to decide on how to ensure access to clean water:

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Member States should be required to tackle the issue of access to water at national level whilst enjoying some discretion as to the exact type of measures to be implemented. This can be done through actions aimed, inter alia, at improving access to water intended for human consumption for all, for instance with freely accessible fountains in cities, and promoting its use by encouraging the free provision of water intended for human consumption in public buildings and restaurants. (EP and Council 2019: 38)

As the process of recasting the DWD indicates, the impact of the ECI was ultimately limited. In order to understand better why this was the case, it is important to assess EU policy-making on water within the structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production as well as the strategic selectivity of the EU form of state against the background of the global financial and Eurozone crises. EU decision-making in times of crisis As part of the wider transformation within global capitalism, the EU as a whole had moved towards a neo-liberal political economy from the mid-1980s onwards. The Internal Market programme of 1985 was complemented with plans of moving towards Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as part of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991. Both were driven by a neo-liberal rationale of deregulating and liberalizing the European political economy. The Internal Market established not only the free movement of goods, but also capital, services and people. EMU complemented the new policy direction through a focus on price stability and low inflation, expressed in the so-called convergence criteria forcing countries to restrict budget deficit spending and constituting a first move towards austerity policy-making. This neoliberal shift was further intensified in the 1995 enlargement when Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU under the new conditions, followed by enlargements to CEE in 2004 and 2007 (Bieler and Bieling 2019: 55-7). Globally, neo-liberal restructuring underpinned the EU’s free trade policy of Global Europe from 2006 onwards, pushing trading partners down the same policy direction (Bieler 2013). In short, the EU has been fully part and parcel of global restructuring, referred to as globalization, which was capital’s response to the global economic crisis during the 1970s. By the time the global financial crisis struck in 2007/2008, the EU had moved to a fully fledged neo-liberal political economy, supplemented by ever weaker common social policies.

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The material structure of this shift towards neo-liberal economics in European integration is reflected in the rising importance of TNCs for the European political economy. Parallel to the developments at the global level (see Chapter 2), European production structures have become increasingly transnationalized from the mid-1980s onwards. While inward FDI stock was US$ 761,821 million and outward FDI stock was US$ 808,660 million in 1990 (UNCTAD 2013: 217), these figures increased to US$ 2,322,122 million and US$ 2,907,116 million in 2000, US$ 7,028,467 million and US$ 8,675,008 million in 2010, and US$ 11,068,983 and US$ 12,573,803 in 2019 (UNCTAD 2020: 242). Moreover, an increasingly integrated European financial capitalism, resulting from the financialization of privatized social security, such as pensions, and public services including rail, telecommunications, post and energy, sustained the structural power of transnational capital (Bieling 2013). Unsurprisingly, European transnational capital has become more and more important in shaping the direction of European integration against this background of increasing structural power. The European Round Table of Industrialists, for example, representing a large number of important European TNCs, was crucial for the design of the Internal Market programme in 1985, the move towards EMU during the 1990s as well as EU enlargement towards CEE in the 2000s (van Apeldoorn 2002). It comes, therefore, as no surprise that the EU’s response to the global financial and then the Eurozone crises from 2010/2011 onwards followed neo-liberal lines. First, Greece – on three occasions – Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus had to accept painful conditions of restructuring in exchange for bailout agreements, imposed by the so-called Troika of ECB, Commission and IMF (see Chapter 5). Then, a new economic governance regime was rolled out across the whole EU. Crucial here are the so-called Six-Pack, the Two-Pack as well as Fiscal Compact giving the Commission and Council the right to issue country-specific neoliberal recommendations. According to these six new EU laws that came into force after their publication in the EU’s Official Journal on 23 November 2011, Eurozone countries that do not comply with the revised EU Stability and Growth Pact or find themselves in a so-called macroeconomic excessive imbalance position, can be sanctioned by a yearly fine equalling 0.2 per cent or 0.1 per cent of GDP respectively. (Erne 2012: 228)

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The related surveillance procedures are organized in four, ever more intrusive stages: (1) the assessment of countries according to a scoreboard (European Commission 2013b); (2) in-depth reviews; (3) corrective actions plans; and (4) surveillance visits (Erne 2012: 231). The new surveillance powers of the Commission, re-enforced by the so-called Two-Pack of new EU laws in 2013 (Erne 2015: 346), allow the Commission to evaluate the planned budgets of EU member countries. These mechanisms have been further enhanced by the ‘Fiscal Compact’, also referred to as the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU (TSCG), which came into force on 1 January 2013. The so-called balanced budget rule requires ‘the national budgets of participating member states to be in balance or in surplus’ (European Council 2013). If the balanced budget rule is breached then an ‘automatic correction mechanism’ would be initiated to bring the ‘deviations’ in line over a fixed period. It is to be implemented in national law of binding force, ideally in the form of a constitutional amendment (EuroMemo Group 2013: 19). Countries which do not observe these structural constraints are referred to the European Court of Justice, the rulings of which are legally binding (Degryse 2012: 58). Assessing country-specific recommendations between 2009 and 2019, Jordan, Maccarrone and Erne (2020: 3) conclude ‘that the EU’s substantive policy interventions in the area of industrial relations and labour market regulation continue to be dominated by a liberalization agenda’. Clearly, European control over national fiscal policy has been tightened. The crisis has been used by capital to roll back the state and extend the marketization of essential public services. Rather than a problem, the crisis has provided capital with an opportunity to press for further privatization, which had been impossible at a time of economic growth and stability. As Olivier Hoedeman from Corporate Europe Observatory concludes, ‘the EU’s response to the crisis fits hand in glove with the corporate agenda of these lobby groups. The Commission’s use of its new economic governance powers will reshape societies in exactly the way that these lobby groups have demanded for many years’ (Hoedeman 2012: 7). The strategic selectivity of the EU form of state has always been heavily skewed towards the interests of transnational capital and the way they enjoy privileged access to the key Commission Directorates responsible for Competition, Internal Market, and Economics and Finances, while trade unions, social movements and NGOs are generally side-lined (Bieler 2006: 179–82). In the wake of the global financial crisis, as della Porta and Parks

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demonstrate, it has become even more difficult to impact on EU policymaking. ‘Power at the EU level has moved to the most unaccountable and opaque of the EU institutions, with opportunities closing down particularly (but not only) for groups active on issues of social justice’ (della Porta and Parks 2018: 90). These changes in EU economic governance, internalizing the neo-liberal interests of transnational capital, can be related to a gradual deepening of depoliticization in the form of ‘authoritarian neo-liberalism’. Authoritarianism here does not refer to an order imposed by nondemocratic means and brute force. Rather, it can ‘be observed in the reconfiguring of state and institutional power in an attempt to insulate certain policies and institutional practices from social and political dissent’ (Bruff 2014: 115). This reconfiguration is generally passed by national parliaments within political systems of representative democracy albeit by narrow majorities. As Burak Tansel clarifies (2017: 2), authoritarian neo-liberalism ‘reinforces and increasingly relies upon 1) coercive state practices that discipline, marginalise and criminalise oppositional social forces and 2) the judicial and administrative state apparatuses which limit the avenues in which neoliberal policies can be challenged’. In this process, both the Commission as well as the ECB gained power within the EU internal decision-making process. The Commission’s role has been enhanced in the way it is responsible for the implementation of the new economic governance regime. For example, ‘the Commission’s fines apply automatically unless a qualified majority of national financial ministers veto them within a period of 10 days’ (Erne 2015: 347). In turn, the ECB’s authority over managing the Euro and role as member of the Troika, responsible for dealing with the countries in the Eurozone crisis, enhanced its overall position in the EU decision-making process. By contrast, the power of trade unions and social movements to politicize austerity policy at the European level has been further limited due to the ability of the Commission to nationalize social conflicts (Erne 2015: 357). One of the eleven indicators used by the Commission as part of its scoreboard when assessing the economic performance of member states (see above) is related to changes in nominal unit labour costs. ‘Increases that go beyond the thresholds set out in the scoreboard trigger the regulation’s prevention and correction mechanisms’ (Erne 2015: 347– 8). In other words, the Commission is now empowered to intervene directly in national wage-setting systems through its role as overseer of the European political economy with the clear objective of reducing the power of trade unions and eroding wages and working conditions. As this European-level policy is, however, enforced through individual national implementation rounds, it is extremely difficult for trade

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unions to contest this policy at the European level. In short, the new economic governance of the EU form of state internalizes the interests of transnational capital at the EU level, while limiting the possibilities of oppositional social forces at both the national and European levels. Hence, the push by the Commission in favour of privatizing water services should not come as a surprise. On the basis of their structural power, large European TNCs have lobbied strongly for neo-liberal restructuring. Especially lobbying groups in the services industry have become increasingly stronger over the last decade. For example, the European Services Forum has been closely involved in advising the Commission on further liberalization and privatization of the public sector. ‘In 2012, the Commission accepted just one meeting with trade unions on the issue of services trade. In contrast, it met more than 20 times with the [European Services Forum]’ (Corporate Europe Observatory 2013: 5). More specifically in the area of water, Aquafed was established in October 2005. As a water lobbying group it mainly represents the interests of Suez, Veolia and their various subsidiaries with a specific focus on EU policy-making (Hall and Hoedeman 2006). More recently, Water Europe, also including Suez and Veolia among its members, has pushed for public-private partnerships in water management at the European level (Water Europe 2017; 2019). In short, against the background of increasing economic pressures due to the global financial and Eurozone crises as well as a shift towards authoritarian neo-liberalism it is not difficult to understand why all the activities around and subsequently to the ECI had such a limited impact on EU policy-making. The pressure on (transnational) capital to find new profitable investment opportunities has grown enormously at the global level and this is also expressed in the way the EU has responded to the crises.

Conclusion: Links of transnational solidarity While impressive in itself, it is not only the large number of signatures, which is a sign of success. The ECI, based on a broad alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs, was successful at a time, when austerity policies were enforced across the EU member states, including pressures towards further privatization especially on the countries in the EU’s periphery such as Greece and Portugal and a general shift towards authoritarian neo-liberalism inside the EU. It, therefore, went completely against the trend and in opposition to dominant forces

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pushing for further neo-liberal restructuring. When analysing the reasons for the (partial) success of this campaign, we need to focus on class struggle across the social factory, including resistance at the workplace against privatization and the inevitable worsening of working conditions as well as struggles in the wider sphere of social reproduction for universal, affordable access to water as a key source of human lives as well as the protection of the wider environment. This wider struggle is reflected in the broad alliances of trade unions, representing workers in the workplace, and social movements and NGOs, representing struggles against expropriation in the sphere of social reproduction. In concrete terms, although the Commission has refused to institutionalize the human right to water and sanitation in EU legislation, the ECI ensured that water was taken out of the Concessions Directive and, therefore, to some extent protected against privatization. Moreover, it fundamentally changed the discourse over water provision at the EU level, but also within a variety of different domestic contexts, which resulted in a number of national initiatives. In the Spanish town of Alcazar de San Juan, for example, a mass mobilization of citizens led to the collection of 11,000 signatures and an occupation of the city council, opposing and eventually stopping the privatization of the city’s water services in February 2014 (EPSU 2014a). In July 2016, Valladolid, a Spanish city of 300,000 inhabitants, announced that it will take back water management into public control, when the concession of the Agbar-Suez group expires in July 2017 (Sánchez 2016). In November 2016, Slovenia amended its constitution to establish access to drinkable water as a fundamental right, specifying that water is a ‘public good’, not a ‘market commodity’ (Agence France-Presse 2016). Will this success of the ECI be enough to ensure that water remains permanently outside the market in the EU? As observers point out, a review clause has been included in the Concessions Directive, which could imply that the decision to exclude water might be revoked in the future (AöW 2014: 2). Moreover, the ‘Commission’s Communication makes no commitment to explicitly exclude these services from trade negotiations such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)’ (EPSU 2014b). Ongoing mobilizing will be essential to ensure that access to water is guaranteed and water does not become a commodity. As European water activists confirm, the large alliance of movements around the ECI at the European as well as various national levels has disintegrated and no longer exists (Interview No.50; Interview No.60). Nevertheless, the EWM continues its work for public water (Moore 2018). It met twice during 2018 as well as in November

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2019, bringing representatives of EPSU and Food & Water Europe together with key national organizations including the Thessaloniki water workers’ trade union SEEYATH, representatives from the Italian Forum of Water Movements, activists of the organization Eau Secours 34 in Montpellier/France, members of the Berlin Water Table/ Germany, activists from the Catalan Aigua és Vida and other Spanish groups, representatives from the Irish anti-water charges movement as well as increasingly also activists from water movements in Balkan countries. The purpose of the EWM is twofold. First, it continues to lobby EU institutions over EU policy-making (Interview No.51). With the review of the DWD concluded, the Urban Waste Water Directive and the forthcoming review of the Water Framework Directive are the next big issues (Interview No.60). ‘Article 9 [of the Water Framework Directive] is of particular concern for water activists, as it calls for fullcost recovery and requires member states to use an economic analysis in managing their water resources’ (Moore 2018: 15). EPSU, supported by Food & Water Europe, is the leading organization at the European level, keeping other EWM members informed about EU developments (Interview No.53). Thanks to its good contacts with the Commission and other EU institutions it is in an ideal position to lead the EWM’s efforts at the EU level (Interview No.60). This European level role was recently acknowledged by the Commission, which invited the EWM to comment on the Water Framework Directive (Interview No.50). Second, the EWM supports local struggles across the EU such as the struggle in Barcelona to re-municipalize the local water company (Interview No.59). The Balkan region has also become increasingly important for the EWM’s activities as hundreds of micro hydropower plants are being proposed across the still largely unspoilt rivers of the region (Interview No.51). NGOs counted in 2015 ‘1640 projects of dams and hydropower plants … of which 630 are large or medium in size and 817 are in protected areas’ (EWM 2018). In Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, both countries hoping to join the EU, ‘the argument by the state and vested interests is that this would produce renewable energy and help the EU accession process’ (Moore 2018: 33), responding to EU pressure on these countries to produce more renewable energy. As activists, however, point out, the construction of these power plants is not pushed by the energy sector, but the construction sector in search for new projects. Foreign capital including from Russia is involved, looking for profitable investment opportunities (Interview No.56). The struggle is about the human right to water, but also the protection of the environment and cultural heritage (Midžić 2018). For example, the

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Serbian village of Topli Do is one of those potentially affected by the construction of a hydropower plant. The village is located in a natural reserve, and the construction would disturb the distribution of water and the way local springs are sourced. Moreover, the river is in a way the soul of the otherwise rather poor village (Interview No.52). Thus, these struggles are clearly instances of resistance against capital’s attempts to gain access to cheap nature in its relentless efforts of continuing accumulation. In addition, the Balkan countries still have large public sectors and there are indications that the EU uses the accession negotiations to attack them with Suez and Veolia organizing field trips to these countries (Interview No.60). Hence, the EWM’s work remains highly important in the Balkans. When there was, for example, a large environmental protest in Serbia in 2019, other EWM members collected signatures and delivered them to the various Serbian embassies in their own countries (Interview No.52). In general, Balkan activists feel that being a member of the EWM not only provides them with information on water-related issues, but also gives them credibility within their own countries. In short, the ECI and its legacy have successfully established lasting links of transnational solidarity, which not only increases the power for European level activities, but has also facilitated international support for local campaigns. An important example is the struggle against water privatization in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. While witnessing the hearing of the ECI in the EP through a video link in February 2014, activists from the Thessaloniki citizens’ movement against water privatization decided to hold their own independent referendum about the privatization of the water services in their city on 18 May 2014. EPSU, the Italian water movement as well as others from the EWM sent monitors in support (Interviews No.2, No.7 and No.15). The next chapter will analyse in detail the struggles for public water in Greece.

Notes 1 A third acceptable alternative to guarantee the right to water would by the Irish solution, in which water is financed through general taxation (Interview No.15) (see Chapter 6). 2 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYqYTtkE4Ds; accessed 12 December 2014. 3 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBg5AY5rfvQ; accessed 12 December 2014. 4 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EtyYKXDvYQ; accessed 12 December 2014.

Chapter 5 C O N T E ST I N G T H E T R O I KA : R E SI STA N C E I N G R E E C E AG A I N ST I M P O SE D WAT E R P R I VAT I Z AT IO N Introduction Unlike in other European countries, the pressure on Greece to privatize its water services has been brutally direct. Because of the Eurozone crisis, Greece had to accept three bailout agreements between 2010 and 2015, based on so-called Memoranda of Understanding (MoU), which were conditional on the restructuring of its political economy. In addition to budget cuts and a deregulation of labour markets, these conditions also included enforced privatization of national assets with water companies being one of the targets. Water services in Greece are generally in public hands, managed by the municipalities. Only the water companies of the two largest cities, the Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP) in Athens and the Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYATH) in Thessaloniki, are owned by the Greek state (Steinfort 2014). Both companies have not only been very efficient in providing high quality services, but also extremely profitable over the years. In 2012, for example, EYDAP posted ‘a net annual profit of €62 million out of a €353 million turnover’. In addition, it held €43 million in cash reserves, €881 million in equity, and had €1.2 billion owed to the company by the Greek government, various agencies and businesses. In turn, EYATH ‘posted a net income of €18 million in 2013, a turnover of €77 million, with €33 million in cash reserves, and €135 million equity’ (Petitjean 2014). This profitability goes a long way in explaining why the privatization of these companies is of such high interest for capital. In this chapter, the struggles against water privatization in Athens and Thessaloniki are analysed. Considering the heavy pressure on privatization resulting from the Eurozone crisis, the next section will first discuss the structuring conditions of capitalism and the onslaught by capital in the Greek context. The emergence of resistance against austerity will also be discussed including a period of popular protest in the streets from 2010 to 2012, followed by a period of resistance with

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a focus on elections from 2012 onwards. This provides the backdrop to the formation of resistance against water privatization as part of the general societal opposition to imposed restructuring, dealt with in the subsequent section. Significantly, although Greek activists had initially won against privatization in 2014, the issue returned onto the agenda after the third bailout agreement in July 2015 and the establishment of the so-called Superfund, entrusted with the task to oversee privatizations. The fourth section of the chapter analyses this renewed period of struggle since 2015, before the Conclusion provides an outlook on the possibilities of resistance ahead.

In the claws of the Eurozone crisis From the end of the economic crisis in the early 1990s and especially in the first half of the 2000s, GDP growth rates had been comparatively high in Greece and often higher than in Germany as well as the Eurozone and EU averages (Bieler and Morton 2018: 223). As a result, when looking at the volume index of GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS), as expressed in relation to the European Union (EU28) average set to equal 100, by 2006 Greece had almost caught up with the EU average at a level of 96 (Eurostat 2017). However, when financial markets froze during the global financial crisis in 2008, and banks and financial institutions ceased lending to each other as well as industrial companies due to high levels of uncertainty, especially peripheral Eurozone countries found it increasingly difficult to refinance their debts. Greek debt-driven economic growth quickly vanished, as it could no longer be financed (Hart-Landsberg 2016: 2). By 2016, Greece had dropped back to 68 compared to the EU average, set at 100 (Eurostat 2017). Institutionalist approaches blame the particular institutional setup of Greece for the crisis, lacking for example strong co-ordination mechanisms able to contain large public sector wage increases (Hancké 2013: 60). Post-Keynesians, by contrast, point to the institutional setup of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as the main cause of uneven development across the European political economy and, ultimately, the crisis (Stockhammer 2016). With exchange rates fixed between countries due to the common currency and national fiscal policy severely restricted within the Stability and Growth Pact, the only way to increase competitiveness has been downward pressure on wages and work-related conditions. Unsurprisingly, post-Keynesians

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argue, there was not enough demand to keep the European political economy profitable. Instead, export-driven economies such as Germany depended on foreign debt by countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, while debt-driven development models such as Greece relied on domestic debt. The global financial crisis put an end to this bubble. EMU has clearly intensified uneven and combined development across the EU. Nevertheless, uneven and combined development, as discussed in Chapter 2, is a general, structuring condition of the very way markets in capitalism work. Because capitalism has an in-built crisis tendency, capital is constantly driven to expand accumulation along uneven and combined development lines to overcome crisis and be it only temporarily. Free trade rather than being a positive-sum game with everyone involved benefitting, actually causes unevenness through processes of unequal exchange (Bieler and Morton 2014). Within the global and European political economy, ‘the more advanced countries mostly produce and export commodities of higher organic composition of capital, higher technological level and higher income elasticity of demand compared to those produced by the less advanced’ (Economakis, Markaki, Androulakis and Anastasiadis 2018: 46). The moment these economies trade with each other, value is transferred from less advanced to more highly developed countries. This does not mean that no development is possible in less developed countries. Here too, capital is able to accumulate surplus value. However, as a result of development being combined with more developed countries, development is and will become increasingly uneven between these countries. From the very beginning of Greek capitalist development in the nineteenth century, the country found itself in a subordinated position within the international political economy, being mainly involved in agricultural and food processing production. Even with an intensification of industrialization at the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth century, ‘this increase in industrial activity remained one-sided, given that more than two-thirds of the industrial installations handled foodstuffs (1917), with limited liability companies numbering 13 in 1896, rising to a figure of only 56 by 1918’ (Sakellaropoulos 2018: 205–6). Post-war economic growth was stable at a high level of 5.7 per cent until 1973, but based on low wages and the repression of labour rights (Sakellaropoulos 2018: 210). Again, a focus on labour-intensive production sectors does not imply that no development is occurring, but it is highly uneven vis-à-vis trading partners, the production of which is based on a high organic composition of capital, in other words capital-intensive production.

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EU integration, and here not only EMU membership as PostKeynesians attest, but EU membership itself from the very moment Greece joined the EU in 1981, has intensified the dynamics of uneven and combined development (Bieler, Jordan and Morton 2019: 81114). ‘Greece’s problems are not caused solely by the EMU, but began long before with its incorporation into the European common market’ (Mavroudeas 2018: 24–5). Unsurprisingly, Greece’s focus on trading labour-intensive, low organic composition of capital goods has remained the same inside the EU and its trade with other member states after accession to the EU in 1981. For example, ‘in 2013 the share of manufacturing (without Energy and Constructions) in the total gross value added of the Greek economy was 9.67%, while for the EU27 countries this amounted to 15.12%, and for Eurozone-18 countries 15.75%’ (Economakis, Markaki, Androulakis and Anastasiadis 2018: 56). Considering the structuring conditions of capitalism, countries at the labour-intensive end of production are unlikely to escape this position through industrial upgrading. ‘In 2005 expenditure on Research and Technology in Greece came to 0.59% of GNP, in comparison to 1.82% in the EU-25, 1.89% in the EU-15 and 1.84% in the 16 countries of the Economic and Monetary Union’ (Sakellaropoulos 2018: 216). Nevertheless, a focus on labour-intensive production has not only continued inside the EU and EMU. It has actually accelerated. Despite Greece’s policy programme of ‘modernisation’ during the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, its economy experienced deindustrialization from the moment it joined the EU in 1981, unable to cope with the higher levels of competition within the EU. This is reflected in the GDP share of industry, which stood at 23.3 per cent in 1976, but fell back to 18.7 per cent in 1994 and dropped further to 13.8 per cent in 2013. In the process, many large industrial manufacturing companies, constituting the core of Greece’s industrial production structure, went bankrupt. Now, small firms dominate Greece’s industrial sector when compared with businesses in most other European countries (Jordan 2017: 112–13). An overview of Greek exports since the 1990s indicates the predominantly labour-intensive activities. In 1990, the top exporting industries in Greece were the Textile and Clothing (TC) and footwear sectors (25.5 per cent of total exports), food products (17.9 per cent), chemicals and minerals (13.1 per cent), and metal products (7.5 per cent). By 2006, a significant shift had occurred, evidenced by the chemicals and minerals sector contributing to total exports with an increase to 16.2 per cent, followed by food processing (11 per cent), construction materials and equipment (11 per cent), and then the TC

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and footwear share of exports standing at only 8.7 per cent (Jordan 2017: 136). Greece’s problems of lacking competitiveness inside the EU have been further compounded by the integration of China and other cheap labour locations in Asia into the global political economy, as reflected in China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 and the end of the Multi Fibre Agreement in 2005. This undermined precisely those sectors, in which Greece had done well such as the TC and footwear sector (Jordan 2017: 141). While capitalist structuring conditions exert clear pressure, the way development precisely works out still depends on agency. A brief period of higher state investment targeting specific sectors and nationalizing a range of industrial companies to overcome backwardness under the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government of Andreas Papandreou in the early 1980s (Jordan 2017: 103–4) came to an abrupt halt in 1985, when PASOK embarked on a course of public spending cuts (Kontogiannis-Mandros 2018: 158). Since then, very similar to the ongoing neo-liberal restructuring of the alternating centre-left and centre-right coalition governments in Italy, discussed in Chapter 3, alternating PASOK, the Greek social democratic, centreleft variety, and centre-right New Democracy (ND) governments intensified uneven and combined development by opening up and integrating the Greek political economy within the wider European political economy. Especially after the PASOK victory in 1996 under Costas Simitis and the new government’s subsequent ‘modernisation project’ neo-liberal restructuring dominated the Greek political economy as elsewhere in the EU. The programmes of the two parties converged and both parties were closely related to capital throughout this process, expressing ‘an intra-bourgeois negotiation’ (Gaitanou 2018: 134). ‘Modernisation was not only the expression of the strategic interests of capital’, writes Angelos Kontogiannis-Mandros (2018: 162), ‘but indeed a hegemonic ideological narrative’. Thus, the Greek state fulfilled its role as a capitalist state, ensuring a political economy strategy, which guaranteed surplus value accumulation for capital in general. Against the background of a convergence around neoliberal restructuring, throughout the 1990s and especially from 1996 onwards Greece embarked on an ambitious privatization programme generating some of the largest incomes through this route among EU members. ‘For instance, the state raised a total of €1.8 billion in 1998, €3.3 billion in 1999, €535 million in 2000, €1.6 billion in 2001, and €2.3 billion in 2002’ (Jordan 2017: 120). Initially, as already indicated above, the strategy seemed to work:

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The period between 1995 and 2008 was one of high growth, characterized by credit liberalization, investment in public infrastructure, a booming market in real estate, tourism, services and shipping, the contracting-out of public services to private firms, and privatization. It was a type of growth predicated on favourable interest rates that made possible extended borrowing and gave impetus to a finance-led economy. (Markantonatou 2018b:146)

The global financial crisis put an end to this debt-led economic ‘growth miracle’, which had been facilitated by the low interest rates of the Eurozone. Unable to compete with high productivity production in Northern Europe and due to increasing competition by labour-intensive production from China and East Asia, Greek capital had sought to escape these pressures and searched for cheaper labour locations outside Greece even before the onset of the global financial crisis. Considering that wages in countries such as Romania and Bulgaria are as low as in China (Stan and Erne 2014), Greek capital had shifted production into this area contributing further to the deindustrialization of Greece. Between 2003 and 2008, the flow of Italian and Greek direct investments in Romania and Bulgaria (12.89bn US$), for example, drastically exceeded German investments in these two countries (11.08bn US$), especially if we bear in mind that the German GDP figures were about 40 per cent higher than the combined Italian and Greek numbers (UNCTAD 2014). Since the crisis hit, ‘more than 12,000 firms (1.5 per cent of all Greek companies in 2012) have relocated from Greece to the Balkans and Cyprus during 2007–2012’, and here especially Bulgaria, in order to avoid bankruptcy (Kapitsinis 2017: 703). Trade too has been increasingly re-oriented to countries outside the EU, to countries with which Greece enjoys a more favourable comparison as far as productivity is concerned (Economakis, Markaki, Androulakis and Anastasiadis 2018: 63). Between 2009 and 2013, ‘exports to the Balkan countries increased from 22.2% to 25.1%, to the countries of North Africa and the Middle East from 8.5% to 12.1% and to “other” countries from 6.1% to 12.4%’ (Sakellaropoulos 2018: 222). The bailout agreements of May 2010 and March 2012 continued already existing neo-liberal restructuring to some extent. At the same time, the MoUs indicated a new phase in that political sovereignty was passed onto external institutions in the form of the Troika consisting of the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF. Similar to ‘authoritarian neo-liberalism’ at the EU level around the new economic

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governance structure (see Chapter 4), restructuring was anchored in decision-making outside democratic accountability procedures. As a result, the strategic selectivity of the Greek form of state was further shifted into the direction of the interests of capital, limiting the way social class forces of labour could contest restructuring. The bailout packages came at a high price with financial assistance conditional on austerity policies including: (1) cuts in funding of essential public services; (2) cuts in public sector employment; (3) a push towards privatization of state assets; and (4) the undermining of industrial relations and trade union rights through enforced cuts in minimum wages and a further liberalization of labour markets. In more detail, ‘public sector wages were frozen in February 2010, then cut the following month; and public sector employment was reduced, dropping 8% between 2010 and 2012, with plans to lay off 150,000 more state employees by the end of 2015’ (Markantonatou and Kennedy 2019: 113–14). It was made easier for employers to lay off workers, and trade union rights to negotiate the minimum wage and special allowances for children or education were removed. Instead, the state stepped in and reduced the minimum wage in line with demands of the second MoU by 22 per cent and even 32 per cent for young people under the age of twenty-five (Kouzis 2018: 123). The social consequences for Greek people have been dramatic: As the Greek economy contracted by more than 25% and public debt skyrocketed from 109.4% of the GDP in 2008 to 179.6% in 2017, living standards deteriorated severely, with wages and pensions being cut by 20% to 50%. Total unemployment in Greece rose from 7.8% in 2008 to a dramatic 27.5% in 2013, and although it was reduced to 20.2% in 2017, it remains the highest in the European Union. (Markantonatou and Kennedy 2019: 112)

Youth unemployment climbed to over 50 per cent, the education system crumbled and the health sector fell apart with more and more people losing access to vital medical treatment. Child poverty, ‘according to a 2014 report by the United Nations Children’s fund (UNICEF), rose from 20.08% in 2008 to 40.5% in 2012’ (Markantonatou 2018b: 152). Nevertheless, Greek people did not just accept the undermining of their livelihoods. They rebelled in large numbers. The uproar following the killing of a young student by special police in Athens in December 2008 was a first sign of things to come. When the MoUs deepened economic hardship, the Greek population fought back. Especially the period of 2010 to 2012 is notable for resistance on a previously

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unexperienced scale. Considering the ‘post-democratic consensus’ between PASOK and ND around neo-liberal politics within the electoral arena (Markou 2017: 56), people were left with no alternative but going outside representative democratic institutions. Protests took place in the sphere of production in the form of strikes. ‘In 2011 alone, there were 91 strikes in the public sector and 240 in the private sector – mostly within firms but also across professional categories or in whole sectors or branches of the economy’ (Markantonatou 2014: 73). Protests, however, also spread into the sphere of social reproduction from 2011 onwards. The ‘Won’t pay’ movement, for example, opposed the payment of road tolls or public transport tickets, in direct protest against the cuts in public services and increases in taxation. Members of the group also re-connected ‘illegally’ power to homes, who had been disconnected due to their tenants’ inability to pay the electricity bill (RT 2013). Moreover, the popular occupation of squares, which had started as part of the Arab revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and was then embodied by the 15-M movement (also known as Indignados) in Spain, also took hold in Greece from May to July 2011. Large groups of citizens met on prominent public squares such as Syntagma square in Athens or around the White Tower in Thessaloniki. Interestingly, those coming together in so-called People’s Assemblies as bodies of direct democracy were not automatically of the same political persuasion. Reports indicate that the thousands of demonstrators on Syntagma square in Athens were roughly divided into two groups. While more nationalist elements congregated on the upper part of the square expressing their outrage about ‘corrupt politicians’, the more radical and left people formed in the lower part seeking alternatives through processes of direct democracy. Thus, at least initially there was a division ‘between a patriotic block whose political prescriptions, even when referring to the capitalist crisis, are organized around the category of the nation (upper square), and that of a left-wing bloc which is deploying an inclusive discourse of social justice (lower square)’ (Sotirakopoulos and Sotiropoulos 2013: 447). It was in the joint struggle against police brutality in the general strike on 15 June 2011 that some kind of unity was at least temporarily produced. Importantly, squares were also occupied in smaller neighbourhoods. ‘Being inspired by the self-organised collectives formed at Syntagma and taking advantage of their local character, many of these assemblies played a critical role in the creation of social solidarity initiatives such as social pharmacies, dispensaries and grocery stores’ (KontogiannisMandros 2018: 171).

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This intensive cycle of popular mobilization lasted until the passing of the second MoU. ‘After the pivotal mobilisation of 12 February 2012, when the legislation associated with the second Memorandum was voted for in parliament and tens of thousands of people took to the streets in militant and mass demonstrations, the social movement entered a new phase’ (Gaitanou 2018: 143). Especially after the electoral success of SYRIZA in the two parliamentary elections in May and June 2012, when the party had significantly increased its share of the vote to 16.8 per cent and 26.9 per cent respectively, there was a noticeable shift of resistance towards the terrain of electoral politics. SYRIZA seemed to offer the possibility to stop austerity through the ballot box. ‘Its programme promised not only an end to austerity but also a radical break with the old political establishment’ (Kontogiannis-Mandros 2018: 169). SYRIZA itself had not been leading the protests in the square movement. Nevertheless, it had been the party closest to popular mobilization and attracted most of the votes from this movement (Karyotis and Rüdig 2018: 165). The birth of the water movements in Athens and Thessaloniki and their greatest success in 2014 took place during this period of wider general mobilization against austerity. The next section will analyse the emergence of the water movements, the various participating groups as well as their strategies.

Fighting against water privatization As discussed above, privatization of state-owned companies had started well before the imposed austerity of the MoUs and water was no exception in this respect. EYATH and EYDAP had been transformed into commercial companies already back in 2001, with the Greek state as the main shareholder. ‘This change brought with it the imposition of a commercial logic and of methods straight from the book of private sector management: on the one hand, staff and investments saw dramatic cuts; on the other hand, the shareholders – the Greek government and municipalities – were receiving substantial cash dividends’ (Petitjean 2014). EYATH’s workforce was reduced from 700 to 235 people and the infrastructure has suffered from lack of investment, while water charges have tripled. In the process, Suez secured a 5 per cent stake in EYATH and has intended to increase its share ever since. The struggle against water privatization in Thessaloniki started in 2006/2007. When there was the first visit by Suez (Interview No.33), the trade union of EYATH, SEEYATH, staged a three-day hunger strike (Steinfort 2014). The Greek

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government then published its intention of privatizing both companies fully in 2009 without being able to implement the decision due to ongoing resistance, initially almost exclusively by SEEYATH (Neos Kosmos 2009), the members of which had occupied the main building of the company for twelve days (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2020: 165). The main push for privatization resulted directly from the first two MoUs. Initially, the Troika had envisaged that the Greek state itself was responsible for the administration of privatization. At the time of the fourth review of the first MoU in Spring 2011, however, the initial target of €3 billion as proceeds from privatization was raised to the new target of €50 billion by 2015. ‘Included in the plan was an expected share sale of “at least 40 per cent” of EYATH by Q3 of 2011 and 27.3 per cent of EYDAP by Q2 of 2012. A further round of share sales was expected to be completed by Q4 of 2012 in the case of EYATH and Q4 of 2013 for EYDAP’ (Bieler and Jordan 2018: 943). Moreover, the Troika demanded now that a separate privatization fund was to be set up to administer privatization without government interference, having lost the confidence in the Greek government’s willingness or ability to do so. On 1 July 2011, the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HDADF, also known as TAIPED) was established and the state-owned companies including EYDAP and EYATH, earmarked for privatization, were transferred into the Fund’s ownership. Unsurprisingly, Suez has been strongly interested in both companies and, together with its Greek partner the construction firm EllAktor, put in a bid to purchase a further 51 per cent of EYATH in early 2013. A rival bid was prepared by the Israeli water company Mekorot (Petitjean 2014). The formation of the alliance against water privatization across the spheres of production and social reproduction occurred from the second half of 2011 onwards, strongly influenced by the general mobilization across Greek society in the squares movement during the summer of 2011 and in response to the renewed privatization pressures resulting from the MoUs. In 2011, EYATH water workers went to the Indignados, which had occupied the square around the White Tower, Thessaloniki’s landmark building on the waterfront. In an assembly, it was decided that citizens should buy the water company themselves, if the government put it up for sale. In turn, people consulted with Proskalo, the Initiative for the Social Solidarity Economy, and established the Initiative 136 (K136) (Interviews No.34 and No.36; van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2020: 165). At the outset, SEEYATH joined K-136. ‘The main idea of K136 is that if every household connected to the city’s water service bought a nontransferable share in the state-owned water company of Thessaloniki, the

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public could own the water and sanitation company through a system of neighbourhood cooperatives coming together through a single overall cooperative’ (Bieler and Jordan 2018: 950). Cooperatives are regarded as part of the social and solidarity economy, which benefits all citizens. By including special provisions for the financially weak, a water cooperative could guarantee that all citizens have access to drinking water and sanitation. As summarized by Kostas Nikolaou (2018), one of the main activists of K136, ‘once the water belongs to everyone, since it is a commons, a social good, a human right, then it must be social ownership and management’. All citizens become the owners and managers based on direct democracy, equality and social solidarity. Similar to the situation in Italy, activists of K136 identified the cooperative initiative as an alternative to both private and state ownership. While the former would treat water as a commodity to make profit, the latter would regard water as an opportunity to tax citizens. Water cooperatives, by contrast, ‘are created and operated “from below” on a non-profit basis, they are independent of economic and political interests, they ensure the most possible democratic citizen participation and they do not leave a distinct position for bosses of private and public sector’ (Nikolaou 2014a). The development of K136 is an interesting example of how social movements create knowledge in the form of concrete alternatives in moments of collective struggle. In order to unite the citizens’ movements and water worker trade union, SOS te to Nero (SOS Water) was established as a broader platform in March 2013 (Kotsaka 2016). It should play a leading role in the organization of the Thessaloniki water referendum in May 2014 (Interview No.35). SOS te to Nero was joined in October 2013 by the Water Warriors, who established an independent, more radical platform based on the student movement and its fight against the privatization of education. Having observed the dire consequences of water privatization elsewhere, but also the victories of re-municipalization in Paris and Berlin, the Water Warriors regarded water struggles as a stepping-stone to a broader movement (Interview No.39). As we have already seen in the Italian and ECI cases, resistance was again organized across the social factory. The water workers union SEEYATH organized in the sphere of production, while K136, SOS te to Nero and the Water Warriors focused on mobilizing in the sphere of social reproduction. In the process of struggle, the identity of individual organizations and activists changed, integrating both spheres of resistance into a coherent whole. Trade unionists, for example, had transformed into activists with a broader conscience for the good of society, going beyond their initial focus on economic interests as workers (Interview No.33).

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In Athens, a group of young professionals, radicalized by the squares movement, established the group SAVE GREEK WATER (SGW) in July 2012, when the Greek government had announced that EYDAP and EYATH were to become part of TAIPED. There was a strong interest in ensuring people’s direct participation in policy-making and the group focused on producing research and information material for the antiprivatization campaign. Realizing that many of the relevant decisions were taken at the European level and that corporations such as Suez lobbied directly EU institutions, SGW also engaged with policy-making at that level (Interview No.41). The second key organization in Athens was SEKES. Unlike in Thessaloniki, where SEEYATH is a united trade union, SEKES is only one of several trade unions competing within OME-EYDAP, the workers’ union of EYDAP, for influence. It secures between 10 and 12 per cent of votes in union internal elections, but has a strong impact on the outlook of the union as a whole. SEKES was established in 2012 as a hybrid between trade union and social movement. Its main objective was not only to represent the more narrow interests of workers at the workplace, but also to serve the wider community (Interview No.40). In itself, the setting-up of SEKES is an interesting development in that it reflects water struggles as a struggle across the social factory bringing together concerns of workers in the workplace with citizens’ interests more generally. Nonetheless, SEKES and similar initiatives elsewhere were also a response to a situation, in which people had lost trust in the established trade unions, who had been closely aligned to the dominant political parties PASOK and ND, responsible for implementing austerity. Thus, these trade unions were not regarded as key agents able and willing to contest austerity. ‘GSEE [the main private sector union] and ADEDY [the main public sector union] had ignored the ETUC’s call for a European Day of Action against austerity measures [on 29 September 2010], so many Greek unionists “started taking matters into their own hands”’ (Burgmann 2016: 223; see also Gaitanou 2018: 148). Smaller unions such as SEEYATH and SEKES filled the organizational void and gained people’s trust through their concrete actions. With the water companies under threat of privatization, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ (see Chapter 4) came at the right moment. It was SGW, having already engaged in water policy-making at the European level, which picked up the campaign in Greece. Only once the first 10,000 signatures had been collected, did trade unions join in and engaged strongly in the collection (Interview No.41). ‘In the end, 36,000 signatures were collected against a

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threshold of 16,500’ (van den Berge, Boelens and Vos 2020: 161). Moreover, to reach a wider audience SGW launched the information campaign ‘Something’s Up with the Water’ in February 2014, based on video and radio spots produced with the help of more than 250 young artists (SAVE GREEK WATER 2014). Otherwise, SGW and SEKES invested significant energy in supporting the filing of a lawsuit to Greece’s Constitutional Court, the Council of State, arguing that the transfer of EYDAP to TAIPED had been unconstitutional and should be reversed. Meanwhile, SEEYATH in Thessaloniki also submitted a lawsuit to the Council of State. In addition, inspired by the ECI and here especially the hearing in the EP in February 2014 the broad alliance of activists in Thessaloniki decided to hold their own referendum on 18 May 2014. While the state tried to intervene and block it, calling it unconstitutional, the various mayors of the eleven municipalities of the area of Thessaloniki, the Regional Association of Municipalities, lent their support. Tightly organized across the wider area of Thessaloniki and within each municipality, activists from SOS te to Nero, SEEYATH, K136 and the Water Warriors approached citizens directly in the streets (Nikolaou 2014b). Institutionally,

the central organization had a five-member committee including two mayors, the president of the municipal council of Thessaloniki, George Archontopoulos, the president of EYATH and member of SOS te to nero, and Lazarus Angelou, representative of K136. Additionally, the central executive committee consisted of 13 members; 11 representatives of each municipality, one representative of EYATH, and one representative of K136. On a municipal level, local committees were made up of three members: one delegate each from the municipality, EYATH and K136. (Steinfort 2014)

On the day of the referendum, representatives from the European Water Movement (EWM) including unionists from EPSU and activists from the Italian Forum as well as the Berlin Water Table supported Greek activists on the ground, indicating how the struggle against water privatizations resonated across different geographical scales. In the end, the hard work paid off. ‘The result of the referendum was resounding. 218,002 citizens voted in the referendum across 181 polling stations,

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with 98 per cent voting against the privatisation of water’ (Bieler and Jordan 2018: 948; see also Karyotis 2014). The strategy of organizing the campaign across the social factory had worked out. The EYATH lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds. However, the case of EYDAP was successful. On 25 May 2014, the Council of State ruled that the transfer of ownership to TAIPED, and the proposed privatization beyond this, had been unconstitutional because it violated articles 5 and 21 of the Greek constitution, which make the state responsible for the protection of citizens’ fundamental right to health. Privatization would remove water services from state oversight and, thereby, endanger universal access (Neos Kosmos 2014). In the end, the ND government decided to put a stop to the privatization of water services in both Athens and Thessaloniki (Macropolis 2014). When explaining its decision to suspend the privatization of water, the government referred to both the decision by the court as well as the response by citizens, that is the outcome of the referendum in Thessaloniki (Interview No.38). The water campaigns had achieved a major victory. Throughout 2014, the tide was slowly turning in Greece. Dissatisfaction with austerity was widespread and SYRIZA gained further in electoral strength. With 26.6 per cent of the vote, SYRIZA became for the first time the strongest party in Greece in the elections to the EP on 25 May 2014. People’s hope increasingly turned to the electoral route and a future SYRIZA government. The moment came on 25 January 2015. SYRIZA on the basis of an anti-austerity political programme won the national elections with 36.3 per cent of the vote translating into 149 out of 300 seats in parliament. It formed a coalition government with the conservative, nationalist Independent Greeks (ANEL) party and SYRIZA’s leader Alexis Tsipras became Greek prime minister. The subsequent six months were characterized by intense negotiations with the Troika. As the Greek government was presented with further austerity measures, Tsipras called a referendum for 5 July 2015 on the new bailout programme. Against the expectation of many and despite enormous social and political pressure by the EU and Greek capital, the new austerity programme was rejected by a clear majority of 61 to 39 per cent (Sotiris 2018: 275). The No-side had won in every Greek region. Nevertheless, only a few days afterwards, Tsipras agreed on the third MoU on 13 July 2015, imposing yet further restructuring and austerity. Some argue that within the capitalist structuring conditions, the SYRIZA government had no alternative than to comply. Soon after the decision on a referendum had been announced, the ECB

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decided that it would no longer provide additional emergency liquidity assistance to Greece. Hence, transnational capital had indirectly forced the Greek government to close banks and stock market as well as limit ATM withdrawals and transfers of funds (Hart-Landsberg 2016: 19). Nevertheless, there is always the possibility of agency and alternative strategies. The Oxi-Referendum was the moment, when the Greek population had been mobilized at the highest level. People knew that the consequences of a confrontational course with the EU would be harsh, one of my interviewees argued, but they were ready for it and, therefore, voted No in the referendum (Interview No.41). Hence, the explanation for SYRIZA’s turn-around also has to be sought in SYRIZA’s own actions. As observers point out, there was a shift in SYRIZA’s strategy towards parliamentarism and a focus on elections from 2012 onwards (Kouvelakis 2016: 50). The period following the major mobilizations around the legislation in relation to the second MoU in February 2012 ‘has been defined more by the shift of the confrontation and of expectations towards the parliamentary level, beginning with the double elections of May-June 2012’ (Gaitanou 2018: 143). SYRIZA increasingly moved to a more moderate, reformist stance to become more electable. In fact, right at the beginning of its government accepting the interim deal with the Troika on 20 February 2015 had already ‘meant a negation of its electoral promises and acceptance of the basic demands of Greece’s creditors regarding austerity measures and privatisations’ (Sotiris 2018: 274). This should not have come as a surprise, but was fully in line with the party’s shift away from a confrontational position with the EU, adopted three years earlier (Kontogiannis-Mandros 2018: 172). The SYRIZA acceptance of the third MoU had a drastic impact on water activists. Some argued that they had never expected anything else from SYRIZA than becoming the new Greek social democratic party replacing PASOK in this role (Interviews No.34; No.36 and No.39). Others, however, were completely shocked, leading to an atmosphere of disillusion and hopelessness. They spoke about a sense of betrayal resulting in melancholy and depression among activists and wider Greek society (Interview No.33) and an apathy vis-à-vis the state and public space (Interview No.35). Activists had realized that they cannot expect anything from political parties. SYRIZA had dashed their hopes for change through the political system of representative democracy (Interview No.40). As Yanis Varoufakis states, the SYRIZA turn-around ‘was, in a sense, an even worse blow against the Left than Thatcher. She destroyed the unions and introduced the dogma of TINA: There Is No

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Alternative. Syriza’s capitulation extended TINA to the Left. It was as if the Left acknowledged that there is, indeed, no alternative’ (Varoufakis quoted in Souvlis 2020b). As a result, water despite the victories in 2014, was back on the privatization agenda.

Capital strikes back The third MoU included yet more painful measures. Pension reform was a part of it, as was further privatization and labour market liberalization. EU agents were given oversight of Greek government spending. As part of the renewed privatization drive, the Syriza government had to agree to the establishment of the Hellenic Company for Assets and Participation (HCAP), also referred to as the Superfund. Approved by the Greek parliament in September 2016, this Superfund holds all major public companies including the water companies of Thessaloniki and Athens. The government claimed that transferring 50 per cent of these companies into the Superfund would not contradict the legal ruling of the Council of State that privatization was unconstitutional. On the contrary, public ownership of these companies would be secured for the foreseeable future as a result of this manoeuvre. As activists made clear to me, however, when looked at more closely, this is highly questionable (Interview No.40). First, while it is correct that three members of the five members Supervisory Board are appointments by the Greek government, they require the approval of the European Stability Mechanism and the Troika. Moreover, two members are appointed by the European Stability Mechanism, one of whom is the Director of the Supervisory Board. Here, only the Greek finance minister has to countersign the appointment (Interview No.37; SAVE GREEK WATER 2016). Considering that the two external members of the Board in practice enjoy a veto over all decisions, it is clear that Greek economic sovereignty is severely undermined (Interview No.33). This is compounded by the fact that the Superfund is given the task to generate profits, the distribution of which is highly circumscribed. Fifty per cent of the profits are earmarked for paying off Greek national debts, while the remaining 50 per cent are due to be invested in the companies of HCAP as well as the Greek economy more generally. Of course, these investment decisions are subject to the control by the two external, nonGreek members of the Supervisory Board (Interview No.37). The prospect of privatization looms large, because the Superfund ‘as mentioned in Article 184 para. 4, “does not belong to the public

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or broader public sector, in the way that each is defined”’ (SAVE GREEK WATER 2016). Companies in the Superfund are not in the direct ownership of the state. ‘The Fund and its assets will be under professional management at arm’s length from the State’ (European Stability Mechanism 2018: 40). And while privatization is not the only stated method of the Superfund, it is clearly part of its tools. As the Commission responded to a question by the EP in August 2017, ‘HCAP will fulfil its purpose via monetising the assets it owns through privatisation and other means, one possible example of the latter being a constant dividend stream from the assets’ (European Commission 2017). Moreover, while 50 per cent plus one share of both companies are in the Superfund, the remaining public 24 per cent of EYATH and 11 per cent of EYDAP, up to that point in TAIPED, were to be privatized immediately. In view of the renewed threat, activists in Thessaloniki rallied and devised new strategies. However, during this process the alliance started to fragment and two separate campaigns emerged. There had already been tensions over the exact way of how a fully public water company would be run before the referendum, but back then everyone had agreed on putting these differences on the backburner and focus jointly on carrying out the referendum and preventing further privatization in the first place. Now these differences came to the surface. On one hand, there were the activists around SEEYATH and SOS te to Nero supported by some of the municipalities and several environmental organizations, emphasizing that the main focus still had to be on preventing privatization. In March 2016, they organized a conference on reforming the Greek constitution with the objective of including water as a human right (Interview No.38), similar to what Slovenia achieved later on in the same year (see Chapter 4). The Greek constitution already includes the right to health, personal development and human value. Water could be linked to this (Interview No.37). This objective was then taken up in the new campaign of ‘Not also the water’, which was launched in September 2017. In addition to pushing for constitutional change, activists renewed their efforts through this campaign aiming at organizing one hundred events around water in commemoration of the successful referendum four years earlier (Interview No.35). ‘The peak of the campaign [was] on 18th May, the 4th anniversary of the water referendum. We agreed that the mayors will finance the showing of Yiorgos Avgeropoulos’s film “Up to the last drop” in municipal cultural centers’ (Archontopoulos 2018). The purpose of these events is not only creating awareness, but also actually motivating people to become active, to become water activists

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themselves (Interview No.39). In addition, this alliance launched a legal challenge against the Superfund owning 50 per cent of EYATH. This transfer, campaigners argued, implied the loss of public control over water, contradicting the decision of the Council of State in 2014 that it is the state, which should be in charge of water services. The very way the administrative structure of the Superfund is set up and the objectives it is supposed to achieve would undermine the sovereignty of the Greek state (Interview No.37). Some activists pointed out that the legal challenge incorporates great risks. Should the Court’s decision go against the wishes of water activists, and ultimately legal decisions too are a matter of power, there would be no comeback possible and even some previous achievements may unravel (Interview No.41). Nonetheless, considering the power imbalance between activists and Greek government plus Troika, it was argued that the campaign would have to draw on all potential weapons and the legal route was definitely one option (Interview No.38). K136 now established its separate campaign. Rather than just opposing water privatization, it would be necessary to offer a concrete alternative. SYRIZA had announced at a conference in Thessaloniki in March 2018 that potential buyers for the 24 per cent stake in EYATH did not necessarily have to be private companies (Interview No.36). This went hand in hand with SYRIZA’s general attempt to support the social solidarity economy in passing a new law facilitating the setting up of cooperatives (Interview No.42). Hence, the focus of K136 was to approach the eleven municipalities of wider Thessaloniki and bid for the 24 per cent of EYATH shares, which were to be sold on the market. Activists acknowledged that 24 per cent would not be enough to establish a cooperative, but it would be a concrete first step in the right direction (Interview No.34). In support of its initiative, K136 put together an alliance of fifty-four organizations including cooperatives and other social initiatives (Interview No.36; Nikolaou 2020). In a public statement, the alliance declared: We propose the internationally proven, most successful water management model with primary non-profit water cooperatives in each water-borne municipality of the city, whose Union will manage the EYATH of citizens, workers and municipalities in order to provide high quality water with low prices, environmental protection, democratic functioning and social justice. (K136 2018)

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When I interviewed water activists in Thessaloniki in April 2018, the divisions between various groups, which had worked together in the 2014 referendum, became apparent. K136 and its allies accused SOS te to Nero and SEEYATH to be closely aligned with SYRIZA (Interview No.36), while the latter accused the former to be dominated by PASOK (Interview No.33). At the same time, both sides stressed the importance of having been independent of political parties during the 2014 referendum (Interviews No.34 and No.35). Key individuals from the various groups no longer talked to each other. The Water Warriors, who attempted to stay neutral and continue working with both sides, came under pressure and criticism from either (Interview No.39). The relentless onslaught by capital had taken its toll. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to explain divisions simply by reference to clashes between different personalities. Clear strategic differences, which had been kept in the background while everyone co-operated over the referendum in 2014, had now come to the fore. While K136 and its allies strongly pushed for a cooperative solution and argued that state control on its own was insufficient (Interview No.34), SOS te to Nero, SEEYATH and their allies emphasized the importance of more democratic involvement by workers and users in the running of the company. The idea that the municipalities could assist in purchasing the 24 per cent of EYATH was deemed fanciful considering municipalities’ high levels of indebtedness. Yes, SYRIZA had passed a new law in March 2018, permitting the purchase of utilities by municipalities as a kind of productive recovery. What this means in reality considering the indebtedness of Greek cities would be a different issue, it was argued (Interview No.57). Divisions between SEEYATH and K136 were, moreover, also based on a fragmentation of the workforce inside EYATH itself. Back in 2006/2007 in order to facilitate privatization the subsidiary company EYATH Services was set up in charge of hiring contract workers. While the permanent workforce was cut, the number of contract workers increased. It became ever more difficult to maintain solidarity between workers, and whenever SEEYATH called for industrial action, contract workers undermined the action by crossing the picket lines (Interview No.33). Under the SYRIZA government, the situation was reversed in March 2018. The hiring of contract workers outside the public selection scheme for civil personnel was declared illegal. While 90 of the EYATH Services workers, whose contracts had been renewed on an annual basis, were made redundant, 150 new permanent workers were hired. In response, the group of former contract workers started industrial action. In October 2016, the Trades Union Centre of Thessaloniki,

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dominated by the trade union closely related to PASOK, had created the rival union KSE-EYATH inside EYATH in order to secure additional votes in the national elections of the main private sector trade union GSEE. Although PASOK no longer plays a strong role in Greek elections, its affiliated union still secures about 45 per cent inside GSEE. In 2018, then, KSE-EYATH used the confusion around contract workers and started to organize them. Moreover, it was KSE-EYATH, which ended up signing the K136 declaration in support of a cooperative solution to the sale of the 24 per cent stake of EYATH (Interview No.36). This situation illustrates the difficulties capitalist restructuring can present for workers’ solidarity. SEEYATH had not been able to organize the contract workers itself, as they were not permanently employed by EYATH (Interview No.38). The fragmentation of the workforce undermined the effectiveness of resistance to water privatization in the sphere of production and contributed to the division between SOS te to Nero and SEEYATH on one hand, and K136 on the other. The situation in Athens post-July 2015 was less heated also because there had never been the same intensive, broad mobilization as in Thessaloniki (Interview No.40). Activists had generally worked together well and did not want to become involved in infighting (Interview No.41). SEKES has never stopped campaigning in defence of public water. It has continued organizing events in neighbourhoods, outlining the importance of having water as a public company. Equally important, however, SEKES members as well as other water workers have refused to obey instructions to disconnect people’s water supply, if they are unable to pay. Following SEKES’s initiative, it was a big success when OMEEYDAP as a whole decided at its 2017 annual congress that the union would support and protect workers, who refuse to cut off water supplies (Interview No.40). It is this trade union support, unlike the situation in Italy (see Chapter 3), which then also encourages workers to participate in strategies of disobedience in the workplace. SGW, on the other hand, is no longer very active. Ongoing activism with capitalism constantly coming back attempting privatization afresh takes its toll on individual activists, who can get burnt out over time (Interview No.41). The group’s last engagement was an event in the EP in January 2017 on the disclosure of information around the negotiations of the third MoU. Its spokesperson Maria Kanellopoulou demanded to know from the EU Council how it had been possible to agree in negotiations behind closed doors that the two water companies EYDAP and EYATH were to be transferred to the Superfund, despite the decision of the Greek Council of State in 2014 that water privatization was unconstitutional (SAVE GREEK WATER 2017).

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Conclusion: Residues of resistance The struggles against privatization of EYDAP in Athens and EYATH in Thessaloniki are a success story. Organized across the social factory with trade unions working together with citizens’ movements and environmental groups it had been possible to stop privatization, when all other national assets such as regional airports, telecommunications, the railways as well as the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki were sold off. May 2014 was a clear marker first with the successful referendum in Thessaloniki then shortly afterwards with the Council of State’s decision that the transfer of EYDAP shares into TAIPED had been unconstitutional. People’s power behind both developments left the government with no alternative but to abandon water privatization. The struggles against privatization in Greece are an excellent example of how water struggles are linked up and organized across different geographical scales. Resistance in Thessaloniki was organized within the individual municipalities as well as the central level of the city. The campaigns in Thessaloniki and Athens closely cooperated in that the various individual groups were part of the Pan-Hellenic Alliance for Water – Network of Movements and Collectives (Interviews No.39 and No.40), which held its first meeting in Thessaloniki in September 2014 (EWM 2014b), or through direct contacts between various organizations as, for example, SEEYATH and SEKES (Interview No.33). Internationally, Greek activists were closely involved in the EPSU coordinated ECI ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ collecting more than twice as many signatures in 2013 as the required number. In turn, the EWM had sent observers to the Thessaloniki referendum in 2014 with the very idea of the referendum having been inspired by the ECI. In line with the incorporated comparison research strategy underpinning this book, it is clear how struggles over public water have co-constituted each other across multiple geographical scales. The general hopes placed in the SYRIZA-led government from January 2015 onwards, however, were deeply disappointed. The party’s acceptance of the third MoU in July 2015 implied renewed privatization pressure with both water companies being transferred to the Superfund. Ongoing resistance to date prevented any further privatization, but a stable situation has not yet been established. Over the four years in government, SYRIZA had become associated with austerity and neoliberal restructuring. In fact, SYRIZA actually accelerated austerity while in office. ‘It has effectively legislated austerity’s inescapability by promising to maintain a budget surplus of 3.5% for the next five years,

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a target which depends on further cuts (such as heating subsidies and an assistance benefit for low pensioners) and €950 million increases in direct and indirect taxes’ (Roufos 2018; see also Souvlis 2020b). Because of the general disillusionment about its turn-around it is not surprising that the party lost the elections in July 2019, when ND won an outright majority of 158 of 300 seats (Souvlis 2020a). As the main opposition party, SYRIZA has now taken the former role of PASOK and operates as a social democratic party with an almost neo-liberal policy programme (Markantonatou 2018a). Officially, the third MoU had been declared as completed in August 2018, but in practice the Greek government still has to negotiate major policies with the creditors of the European Stability Mechanism (Sotiris 2019). In due course, the new government announced its intention that finally the 24 per cent of EYATH and 11 per cent of EYDAP should be sold to private companies. To date, nothing has happened in this respect. Furthermore, constitutional change in Greece needs to be passed by one parliament and then confirmed by the next parliament in order to be adopted. With the change in government, a whole range of constitutional changes including the inclusion of water as a human right was not confirmed (Interview No.57). Activists continue the struggle as best as possible. On the initiative of SEEYATH, the water company EYATH has become a Blue Community ambassador (Interview No.57). This initiative led by the Canadian author and activist Maud Barlow is one potential way of keeping the water topic alive. By becoming a Blue Community, municipalities have to commit themselves to three objectives: (1) protection and promotion of water and sanitation as human rights in line with the 2010 UN resolution; (2) opposition to privatization; (3) support for tap water and phasing out of bottled water (Barlow 2019: 6–7). And yet, in the process of working towards this goal, divisions occurred even between SEEYATH on one hand and SOS te to Nero on the other. While the former argued that EYATH as a Blue Community Ambassador would be a good first step, the latter wanted to move directly to Thessaloniki becoming a Blue Community (Interview No.57). In the end both was accomplished and the city became a Blue Community on 4 June 2018 (Barlow 2019: 101). As such, there is currently no large, ongoing water campaign in Thessaloniki and Athens. Resistance continues on a much lower flame. SEEYATH and SEKOS remain active inside the water companies and SOS te to Nero continues the ‘Not also the water’ information campaign. In November 2018, the campaign had issued a call for short stories on water, and 240 short stories were submitted by citizens from Thessaloniki including school pupils as well as from people

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outside the city. SOS te to Nero is now in the process of publishing the 40 best stories in a book and all 240 stories on the internet. As a next step, the idea is to establish a group of ‘Artists for Water’, such as painters and photographers, who have the task of producing some art on water in relation to the short stories, which will then be shown in a major exhibition in Thessaloniki (Interview No.61). The fight against water privatization has left residues of resistance in both cities, which may become the nucleus for renewed resistance when water privatization hits again the top of the government’s agenda. Moreover, collective projects continue the struggle against austerity. In Thessaloniki, for example, it is BiosCoop, the biggest cooperative in the food sector in Greece, which continues the ideas of K136. Activists try to expand the idea of cooperatives into new avenues such as the social management of waste or a social energy cooperative (Interview No.36). The solidarity economy in general, although not in a dominant position within the overall economy also due to the lack of access to finance (Interview No.34), is increasing in importance. One of the more recent successful examples is the establishment of the People’s University of Social Solidarity Economy (Interview No.42). A promising local solidarity initiative in Thessaloniki is the Svolou neighbourhood project, a citizens’ initiative based on face to face meetings in the neighbourhood and supported by the municipality. Through weekly meetings in the public library, the project intends to strengthen personal relationships in the neighbourhood. The project asserts the importance of public space as a commons with all decisions taken in assemblies, where everyone has the same right to speak and vote. People want to create and jointly manage a new neighbourhood garden as a meeting point for citizens and social movements. As part of the project, activists decided to support the campaign ‘Not also the water’ including the idea that the first public water tap will be established in the project’s new neighbourhood garden (Interview No.37). Moreover, activists have shifted their focus on the construction of a new metro line in the city, which is currently planned to go through and destroy a major archaeological site (Interview No.61). Water may not be the main focus of resistance at the moment, but activists are still present on the ground contesting destructive policies. One of the constitutional changes, which did survive the transition to a new government in 2019, is a new institutional mechanism, allowing for the possibility of a popular request to the government and parliament to pass a law in a particular area, provided it is backed up by the collection of 500,000 signatures (Interview No.57). Perhaps,

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this could be a major campaign tool in the future for a law against water privatization? In the most recent twist in the water privatization saga, the Fourth Department of the Council of State finally ruled on 16 June 2020 that the transfer of the majority of shares of EYDAP and EYATH into the Superfund in 2016 had been unconstitutional. After the transfer of shares, it was argued, full control of EYDAP and EYATH was no longer with the Greek state, but fell into the hands of the European Commission and the European Stability Mechanism through their members on the Board of Directors of the Superfund. Without full public control, however, the state would be unable to fulfil its constitutional commitment of guaranteeing universal, uninterrupted access to high quality, safe water. This ruling is in line with the court decision in 2014, which had ruled the transfer of EYDAP into TAIPED as unconstitutional. Because of the importance of this decision, the Fourth Department referred its ruling to the Plenary Session of the Council of State for final judgement. The normal experience is that the Plenary Session will confirm rulings by one of its departments, but activists have learned over the years never to take anything for granted.1 The water movements may not be the most active at the moment, but the residues of resistance ensure that should a fight become necessary again, activists will turn out in force.

Note 1 Personal email communication with Yiorgos Archontopoulos, president of SEEYATH, in June 2020.

Chapter 6 ‘ W E W I L L S T R I K E , W E W I L L F IG H T, WAT E R I S A H UM A N R IG H T ’ : T H E I R I SH P E O P L E R I SE U P Introduction The ECI on ‘Water and Sanitation Are a Human Right’ did not get much traction in Ireland. It was only in 2014 when the Irish government had set up a single water company and started to roll out a programme of installing water meters as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Troika of European Commission, ECB and IMF that a large national campaign was launched against the introduction of water charges. People perceived these charges as an additional austerity tax and regarded it as a first step towards full-scale privatization. Having already suffered steep cuts and unemployment due to the Eurozone crisis, water charges turned out to be the straw which broke the camel’s back. People were no longer prepared to accept further charges. This chapter will analyse the dynamics underlying the struggle over public water in Ireland. First, in the next section I will discuss the particular Irish production structure and related implications of the global financial crisis in order to reveal the structuring conditions, which form the backdrop to the government’s introduction of water charges. Subsequently, I will focus on the Irish form of state and the way a consensus has been reached since the late 1980s around a novel form of social partnership, which muted initial resistance against austerity rolled out in view of the crisis and as part of the bailout agreement with the EU in 2010. This will provide the background for a detailed analysis of the broad alliance of water campaigners in the fourth section.

The title of this chapter is inspired by the Rolling Tav Revue’s song ‘No Privatisation, Irish Water, Irish Nation!’, available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OfEOLXR1gcA; accessed 1 May 2020.

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From agricultural autarky to export-oriented development Historically, Ireland’s economy was heavily based on low-technology manufacturing and agriculture shielded by protectionist measures against foreign competition in order to ensure self-sufficiency after independence from Britain in 1922. When Ireland was visibly falling behind the development of other Western European countries, it changed direction in the second half of the 1950s. The new strategy emphasized attracting foreign capital, privileging foreign companies at the expense of domestic firms (Breznitz 2012: 97; Kirby and Murphy 2011: 32). First, in 1956 the Irish government established ‘the Export Profits Tax Relief Scheme, where exporting manufacturing firms paid no tax on profits from exports’ (Drudy and Collins 2011: 339). Then, any restrictions on foreign ownership and the repatriation of profits were abolished in 1964 (Breznitz 2012: 97). Openness and support for exports were further expressed in the country’s decision to join the European integration project in 1973. Economic recession and industrial unrest seemed to endanger the export-led development model during the 1980s, but after consensus was re-established through social partnership in 1987 (see next section), the Irish economy boomed during the 1990s, which led to the label of ‘Celtic Tiger’. Large foreign companies, mainly from the United States, were to become the backbone of the Irish economy with especially financial services, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and information and communication technology playing a leading role. In addition to manufacturing exports, Ireland is also notable for its large amount of services exports. ‘As most services exports are produced by foreignowned [TNCs], they tend to be in modern rather than traditional categories. Computer and information services account for around 40 per cent of Irish services exports, “other business services” almost 30 per cent, and finance and insurance almost 20 per cent’ (Barry and Bergin 2016: 67). Although home-grown industries remained disadvantaged vis-à-vis foreign companies, a strong domestic Irish software industry emerged in these years (Breznitz 2012: 104). Ireland became one of the most open economies in the 1990s with 85 per cent of production being sold outside the country (Regan 2014: 27). ‘Overall, the average growth rate of GDP over the period 1993–2000 was a remarkable 8.1% – peaking at a rate of 11.3% in 1997’ (Drudy and Collins 2011: 341). This period of economic growth came to an abrupt halt in 2000/2001, with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, soon to be replaced, however, by a domestic boom centred on construction based on easy access to

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‘cheap’ finance thanks to the introduction of the Euro. ‘By the early years of the new millennium the nature of Irish growth had changed. While the earlier period had been export-led and underpinned by wage restraint, this later period was fuelled by the construction sector, whose expansion sustained economic growth up to 2007 despite the deterioration in wage competitiveness’ (Barry and Bergin 2016: 72). Land and property prices increased drastically as a result. The residential Property Price Index grew by 311 per cent between 1996 and 2007 (Connor, Flavin and O’Kelly 2016: 90). When the global financial crisis hit Europe, Ireland’s construction sector bubble burst: As so much of the post-2001 Irish boom had been built on easy finance and speculation the collapse in land and property prices since 2008 had severe implications for companies and individuals who had borrowed significant sums to fund residential or commercial development at inflated prices. With the collapse in land prices, many found themselves deep in debt to the banks and other lending institutions. (Drudy and Collins 2011: 344–5)

In turn, banks that had heavily exposed themselves by lending large sums of money, which they had acquired on global financial markets, came under increasing pressure (Connor, Flavin and O’Kelly 2016: 104). On 30 September 2008, also in response to pressure by the United States and EU not to undermine the global financial system, the Irish government took the unprecedented step to guarantee all liabilities of Irish banks without being fully aware of the magnitude of risk exposure. ‘By the end of 2010, €65 billion (equivalent to 42 per cent of GDP) in capital has been transferred by the taxpayer into banks with a further provision for €35 billion earmarked in 2011’ (Drudy and Collins 2011: 345). It was due to this enormous amount of finance required to save Irish banks, why the country ultimately was left with no alternative but to seek help from the Troika (Regan 2014: 28). In November 2010, the Irish government agreed an MoU accepting the related conditions for the bailout. Austerity was immediate and brutal. In the elections of 2011, Fine Gael and the Labour Party had campaigned on a platform to renegotiate the MoU. Nevertheless, once in power, they ensured its full implementation. ‘The cuts to the broader social sector have been substantial. To cite but a few examples: the 2013 budget cut 781 million euros or 5 per cent of the health budget, while the 2012 budget projected

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savings of 812 million euros in Social Protection’ (O’Connor 2017: 68). Unemployment reached 14.7 per cent in 2011 and 2012 and it would have been even higher, had not many Irish people packed their bags and looked for more gainful employment abroad. Irish emigration figures were the highest among European states gripped by the crisis. ‘Eurostat figures show that in 2012 Ireland had a net migration per 1000 people figure of –7.6, followed by the Baltic states and then Greece at –4.0, Portugal at –3.6 and Spain at –3.5’ (O’Connor 2017: 70). As Daniel Finn points out, ‘mass emigration has kept the dole queues down, with almost 475,000 people having left the country between 2008 and 2014’ (Finn 2015: 50). Public sector pay had already been cut in 2009, but the MoU called for further wage cuts as well as further liberalization of an already highly flexible wage-setting regime. Capital, similar to the wider EU context (see Chapter 4), used the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen its power vis-à-vis labour. Unlike in Greece, however, capital found a willing state in Ireland, content on deepening the already export-oriented development strategy, based on inward FDI by foreign TNCs. Unsurprisingly, ‘the Irish nominal [unit labour cost] increases for the 2014–2016 period remained a stunning 29.5 per cent below the ceiling set by the EU’s [Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure] scoreboard’ (Jordan, Maccarrone, Erne 2020: 17). As will be discussed below, even the introduction of water charges was not necessarily a response to the crisis. Rather, the Irish government attempted to use the crisis and related international commitments in the MoU to force through charges, it had been unable to do in previous years. Overall, ‘the austerity programme involved eight national Budgets that imposed cumulative cuts to public spending and wages, social welfare and the raising of taxes on middle- and low-income households, totalling over €30 billion’ (Hearne 2013: 133; see also 2015b: 309). Of course, there are always alternatives and the Irish government’s decision to pay €7 billion over market prices for toxic property assets in the bailout of banks rather than increase taxes in the 2010 budget is a clear political decision to sustain Ireland’s existing political-economic model. By significantly reducing welfare and public services, government is choosing to let those on the lowest incomes bear the brunt of the crisis and to undermine capacity in public services like education and local development agencies. These policies will embed and deepen Ireland’s status as a low taxation/low social expenditure model of development. (Kirby and Murphy 2011: 36)

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In sum, the Irish production structure has been characterized by an export-oriented development strategy from the late 1950s, heavily reliant on inward FDI and especially from the 1990s onwards dominated by large US TNCs. The Eurozone crisis was used to emphasize this development strategy further, when Irish working people were made to pay for the bailout of banks, which had over-exposed themselves to global financial markets.

Social partnership and the lack of resistance against austerity As reported by Rory Hearne, ‘the former Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, commented in April 2009 that other European countries were “amazed” at the Irish Budgetary adjustments and that there would be “riots” if these were introduced in other countries’ (Hearne 2015a: 4). This assessment is, however, only partly correct and the role of social partnership as part of the Irish form of state is crucial in this respect. Corporatist structures of social partnership were established in a number of Western European countries during the first half of the twentieth century including the various Scandinavian countries and West Germany among others. As such, however, they were the result of a class compromise between capital and labour following periods of intensive class struggles. In exchange for rising wages, full employment and an expansive welfare state, labour accepted capital’s continuing control over the means of production (Wahl 2011). Ireland is different. Neo-corporatist, tripartite institutions between employers’ associations, trade unions, farmers’ associations and the state were only established in 1987. The 1980s had been characterized by high inflation levels and significant industrial unrest. When trade union leaders realized that wage increases were generally cancelled out by inflation, they moved towards cooperation. They accepted wage restraint in support of the export economy in exchange for influence on fiscal policy (Culpepper and Regan 2014: 732–3). Moreover, social partnership in Ireland is also different in that it included groups from the ‘community and voluntary sector’ as social partners from 1996 onwards, that is all social movements (in their NGO form) with the exception of the peace and republican movements. These groups were excluded from negotiations of pay and tax issues, but became involved when issues of social exclusion and inequality were discussed. In short, ‘what distinguished social partnership after 1987 was the all-encompassing nature of the social pacts, which gradually expanded to cover most areas of socio-

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economic policy-making, and integrated into the process “new” social partners (civic community and voluntary groups)’ (Doherty 2011: 373). Between 1987 and 2009, social partners concluded seven tripartite social pacts. The effectiveness of social partnership and here especially the inclusion of the community and voluntary sector are heavily questioned. Rosie Meade, for example, concluded already in 2005 that ‘in Ireland community development organizations have been sold recognition within national and local social partnership processes as a cheaper alternative to redistributive justice … ; they have been permitted to participate in social and economic planning forums, but denied a real influence over the outcomes of those deliberations’ (Meade 2005: 353). Even some of those closely involved in social partnership negotiations were sceptical about their usefulness. Only because leaving social partnership would have no positive consequences, it was deemed better to stay and avoid an even worse situation (Murphy 2002: 87–8). At all times, the state ensured a tight control of this additional community and voluntary pillar. It decided which organizations were allowed to participate and controlled their activities through administering their funding applications. In turn, these organizations experienced a degree of professionalization and bureaucratization with many jobs becoming dependent on ongoing government recognition and funding. Unsurprisingly, in this situation there was less enthusiasm for engaging critically with government policy or even opposing it openly. ‘Ten to fifteen years of “social partnership” … had demobilised most participants in community and movement groups at the same time as handing internal power to the small minorities of those able to professionalise and engage in the world of policy lobbying, funding applications, media debate and legal cases’ (Cox 2012: 2–3). The weak position of social partners from the community and voluntary sector but also trade unions became apparent in 2009, when first business refused to negotiate trade unions’ wage claims, before the government simply withdrew from social partnership. ‘As the economy crumbled, the government’s social partners were no longer of any political utility and were discarded’ (O’Connor 2017: 76). Wage restraint could now simply be imposed in tandem with massive cuts to funding of especially working-class community organizations, women’s aid and environmental groups. It is not enough, however, to blame the end of social partnership in 2009 simply on the Eurozone crisis. Because of the increasing openness to inward FDI, the structure of employers had changed. ‘From 1981 to 1987 most of the export-sectors

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in the Irish economy included Irish firms with unionized employers and employees. The era of US led high-tech FDI had not yet arrived’ (Culpepper and Regan 2014: 735). US TNCs, attracted to Ireland by the promise of a non-union environment, neither engaged with trade unions nor participated in social partnership institutions. Having gained the upper hand in the Irish political economy during the 1990s, represented by the powerful American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, capital in Ireland was increasingly less inclined to compromise with labour (Doherty 2011: 377). The Eurozone crisis abolished any need for it. In short, rather than being the result of progressive labour struggles as in Scandinavian countries, Irish corporatism is similar to the Australian experience, where social partnership from 1983 to 1996 was used to establish a neo-liberal political economy (Humphrys 2018). It pacified any opposition by organized labour and other civil society groups to the Irish export-oriented development strategy based on inward FDI by large TNCs. Irish corporatism facilitated restructuring. It did not reflect the interests of working people. How did trade unions and voluntary sector organizations respond to austerity and the end of social partnership? Is it correct that there was no resistance? On one hand, there was an attempt to mobilize. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the peak labour organization in Ireland, organized two large demonstrations on 9 February and 6 November 2009 with 100,000 people in attendance. A total of 250,000 workers participated in a one-day public sector strike on 24 November 2009. A second one-day strike was, however, cancelled to facilitate a return to social partnership. Thus, open resistance by the ICTU was rather half-hearted. ‘Despite 150,000 people attending the ICTU march against the bailout and austerity in November 2010 no further mobilisation was organised in the two-year period up to February 2013’ (Hearne 2013: 133). In November 2012, organized by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) millions of workers marched against austerity across the EU, but the ICTU did not participate. Trade unions did not disrupt workplaces and, thus, failed to undermine capitalist accumulation (Landy 2017: 3). Instead, in 2010 the ICTU supported the Croke Park Agreement between the state and public sector trade unions. In exchange for no further job and wage cuts, public sector unions agreed on wide-ranging restructuring measures. This move divided public sector from private sector trade unions and even led to splits within public sector unions, as unions such as Unite did not endorse the agreement. ‘Mainstream unions’ abdication of their responsibility as a protector of workers in favour of the narrow goal

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of maintaining their members’ rights led to a radicalization of smaller unions that represented more vulnerable private sector workers and lower-paid public sector ones’ (O’Connor 2017: 78–9). Trade union leaders even had lost credibility to an extent that they were booed by the crowd at the large demonstrations in 2009 (Culpepper and Regan 2014: 736) as well as at the 70 to 100,000 strong demonstration on 9 February 2013 at which, moreover, ‘trade union stewards clashed with anti-austerity activists’ (Landy 2017: 4). The main trade unions were also hampered by the fact that the Labour Party, to which many of them were affiliated, had become part of a coalition government after 2011 and actively participated in the rolling out of neo-liberal restructuring and austerity. As some observers point out, the ICTU, ‘along with the largest union SIPTU, has a revolving door relationship with the neoliberal Labour Party and a fundamental commitment to “social partnership”’ (Cox 2017: 174). Trade unions did not want to be seen as opposing ‘their’ own political party. The community and voluntary sector was hardly involved in any direct form of resistance against austerity. ‘Some organisations expressed a fear of losing … funding if they publicly took a critical position on public policy, while others believed that, similar to ICTU, the only “responsible” and realistic approach was one of partnership and consensus with the state’ (Hearne 2013: 134). Outside organized labour, an important moment of resistance was the campaign against the household charge, an annual charge to be paid by owners of residential properties from 2012 onwards. The socialists, Left independents, community independents, antidebt activists, and community groups led the ‘Campaign against the Household and Water Taxes’. Tens of thousands of people participated in protest marches and local actions. This movement contributed to the largest expression of resistance and opposition from the Irish people to austerity prior to the water charges movement. There was a mass boycott of the charge initially when 49 per cent of the 1.6 million households liable for the charge refused to pay it by the deadline of April 2012. (Hearne 2015a: 20)

The campaign never became as big as the anti-water charges campaign and fell apart in 2013, when the government introduced legislation so that payment could be taken directly from wages and welfare payments (Cox 2017: 179). Nevertheless, both the Socialist Party (SP) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), closely involved in this campaign, would become

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leading actors in the later much bigger anti-water charges movement. Further resistance was put forward by movements with more specific interests. A total of 15,000 senior citizens protested against cuts in October 2008 and 40,000 students mobilized in November 2010 (Hearne 2013: 134). Finally, the Occupy movement established their camp outside the Irish Central Bank in October 2011 and the local Ballyhea says No campaign started their weekly protest march on 6 March 2011 (O’Connor 2017: 81–2). This did not leave an impact on Irish politics at the time, but it demonstrates that the idea that the Irish people simply accepted austerity is wrong. Moreover, these moments of resistance provided space for new activists outside established social partner institutions. Many of them would become crucial in the subsequent antiwater charges movement. Overall, however, while there was resistance the practical results have been a series of more-or-less effective particularist battles under often conservative leadership in which wider links have remained marginal (pensioners, students); a series of set-piece protests organised by a union leadership which had been deeply complicit in the construction of austerity politics; and more radical anti-austerity demonstrations which have tended to make visible to elites and activists alike just how few people they are able to mobilise. (Cox 2015: 5)

Resistance was fragmented, individual moments disconnected from each other and generally not sustained enough to put significant pressure on those in power. ‘The labour movement was curtailed by the Croke Park Agreement, the student movement had been intimidated into silence, and two decades of social partnership had undermined the capacity of Irish civil society to engage in contentious protest’ (O’Connor 2017: 80– 1). And yet, some important seeds of resistance had been sown during the period of 2009 to 2013. Those trade unions such as Unite, which had opposed the Croke Park agreement, were to play a crucial role in the anti-water charges campaign, as were the left, radical parties SP and SWP, which had been behind the campaign against the household charge. Local groups such as Ballyhea says No were a forerunner of the many local communities resisting the installation of water meters and the Occupy Movement had inspired and formed activists, who would later become organizers during the water campaign. The three pillars of the anti-water charges campaign all had distinctive roots in earlier moments of resistance.

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The Irish people rise up: No to water charges Historically, water is paid in Ireland via general taxation, which implied that poorer people would have to pay less than the rich. Nevertheless, various governments had already attempted to introduce water charges before the Eurozone crisis. For example, water charges by Dublin City Council in 1994 were met with fierce opposition leading to their abolition before the 1997 elections (Trommer 2019: 222).1 At that time, ‘it was decided that funding for water services was to come from general taxation with £50 million to be ring-fenced from motor tax’ (Murphy 2019). Plans to implement water charges in 2002, 2006 and 2009 were not followed through either due to popular opposition (Dukelow 2016: 151–2). The MoU of the bailout agreement did specify that Ireland had to introduce water charges as part of the austerity measures (MacCionnaith 2015: 44). It ‘included a pledge to “move towards full cost-recovery in the provision of water services”, with responsibility for water transferred from local authorities to a national utility’ (Finn 2015: 54). Nevertheless, the Irish government itself had actually offered to do so in discussions with the Troika. As Silke Trommer concludes, ‘the government used the Troika bail-out to turn householdlevel water charges from a contentious political project of the Irish political elite into an international debt conditionality’ (Trommer 2019: 222). The Eurozone crisis was instrumentalized to implement restructuring, which had been impossible until then (Interview No.30). Privatization had already been introduced in the water sector in 1999 via Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in water treatment and wastewater projects bringing well-known TNCs to Ireland. ‘These include Veolia Ireland which operates more than 30 plants, and Glan Aqua a subsidiary of the Portuguese group Mota-Engil, also operating approximately 30 water treatment plants’ (Dukelow 2016: 158). There are currently 115 PPPs covering 232 sites across Ireland, Hearne reports. They are worth €1.4 billion with most of them running until 2030. ‘It is estimated that Irish Water (previously the local authorities) are paying out €123 million per annum to the private companies to cover the operation/maintenance/ repayment costs of these PPP contracts’ (Hearne 2017). This private sector involvement was now to be intensified against the background of the Eurozone crisis. Before the government could go ahead, however, it first had to establish a national water company as mandated in the MoU with the Troika. The related Water Services Bill was adopted in 2013 and Irish Water started to operate on 1 January 2014. In late 2014, even the junior minister, involved in setting up Irish Water, raised concerns about moves towards privatization of the company (Finn 2014).

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Irish Water had the purpose first to generate investment for the necessary infrastructure upgrade and second to ensure that this investment into water services was off the government balance sheets (Bresnihan 2016: 115, 119). Similar to many Italian public water companies (see Chapter 3), Irish Water, even if still in public hands, is therefore required to operate on the market like a private company. ‘Under self-funding, approximately 50% of Irish Water’s funding is to come from consumer (domestic and non-domestic) charges covering operational costs and the other half, for infrastructural needs projected to be at least €500 m annually, from money raised on capital markets’ (Dukelow 2016: 159). In order to prove attractive for international investors, however, the company has to demonstrate a guaranteed, regular income stream. Hence, the need for water charges and meters measuring this income. In other words, in order to financialize water, ‘this intimate relationship that has emerged “between the flows of water in Irish taps and the flows of money in global financial markets” has therefore meant that unmetered water needs to be transformed into a “predictable, well-performing asset circulating in secondary financial markets”’ (Muehlebach 2017b). As discussed in Chapter 2, in order to continue capitalist accumulation, capital constantly relies on access to cheap nature. The Irish case indicates how capital intended to turn water into a financial, performing asset for profit-making, a process described by Patrick Bresnihan as ‘bio-financialization’ (Bresnihan 2016: 122). Having been able to push through all kinds of austerity measures, the Irish establishment was confident that water charges and the installation of water meters would present no problem either. They were wrong. In the next sub-section, I will first discuss the establishment of a broad alliance of actors across the social factory in opposition to water charges. Between 2014 and 2016, the anti-water charges campaign relentlessly mobilized against yet another austerity measure. Subsequently, I will then assess the success of this alliance and the current situation of the alliance in view of potential future developments. Similar to struggles in Italy and Greece, success is never permanent. There is always the danger that capital comes back for another attempt to open up water for profit-making. The formation of Right2Water Ireland The start of the anti-water charges movement was a grassroots-led initiative. ‘In January 2014 there was public shock and anger when it emerged that €86 million of [Irish Water’s] €180 million set up costs was

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for consultants, contractors and legal advice’ (Hearne 2015a: 6; 2015b: 313). While there was a rhetoric of economic recovery in 2014, the government rolled out another austerity tax. To make things worse, the company which secured the contract for the installation of meters was owned by billionaire Denis O’Brien, who also owns the Independent Media Group (the single largest collection of newspapers and radio stations in Ireland) and has close connections with the political establishment. While working people had suffered from austerity for years, the rich elite seemed to serve their own interests. This made water charges an easy target now, activists argued, which it had not been in 2012 and 2013 (Interview No.32). In 2009, local citizens had had a first broader meeting in Cork about austerity in general, feeding into the subsequent campaign against the household charge. During that period, local activists held many street meetings knocking on doors in the neighbourhood organizing meetings at street corners (Interview No.58). It was this long-term, face-to-face engagement, which provided the backbone of sustained resistance against water charges later on. Unsurprisingly, it was in Cork in spring 2014 that the first installations of water meters were blocked. Following this example, local activists set up ‘Say No’ groups to water charges all over Ireland. Communities up and down the country engaged in blocking water meter installations, quickly resulting also in confrontations with the police (Interview No.28). Community groups were to constitute one of the three key pillars of the campaign. Initial steps towards the establishment of a national level campaign were taken in June 2014 when leading policy officers from the retail trade union Mandate and the general union Unite met with the radical political parties of the left the SP, called Anti-Austerity Alliance and later Solidarity, and the SWP, also known as People before Profit. There was a poisonous atmosphere between the parties, having just competed against each other in the elections to the European Parliament. Hence, the meeting concluded with the parties entrusting Mandate and Unite to build up a campaign on water. ‘It was decided that the campaign would seek to focus attention on the privatisation agenda behind the creation of Irish Water and the resulting introduction of domestic water charges’ (Ogle 2016: 63). Between June and September 2014, the trade unions established the campaign including setting up the website and securing the rights to the Right2Water label as logo. Disappointed about the neoliberal turn by the Irish Labour Party, in government as junior coalition partner since 2011, Unite had decided to disaffiliate from the party in 2013 in order to develop a more radical challenge to austerity (Interview

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No.27). Water was perceived to be the most salient issue in this respect, able to mobilize broader sections of society. The public sector, and largest Irish trade union SIPTU, on the other hand, stayed loyal to the Labour Party. Having already not really pushed the ECI initiative in 2012/2013, it did not become part of the alliance (Interview No.30). In the end, five trade unions constituted the trade union pillar of the campaign, the already mentioned Unite and Mandate in leading capacity plus the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and the smaller civil service union CPSU and the plasterers’ union OPATSI (Cox 2017: 175). Political parties constituted the final pillar of the alliance. This included the already mentioned SP and SWP as well as Sinn Féin, which has a somehow hybrid left/nationalist programme. The participation of political parties is unusual, when compared with the broad water alliances in Italy, Greece and during the ECI campaign. As discussed in previous chapters, in these contexts activists had made sure that water was not regarded as a political issue in order to secure support from the centreright of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the situation in Ireland is different in that especially the SP and the SWP had always been active parts of resistance – see their involvement in the 2012/2013 campaign against the household charge. It was logical from the perspective of other activists that they were included from the beginning (Interview No.31). At the same time, political parties may also have been involved because in addition to resisting water privatization, the campaign also focused on breaking the centre-right dominance in Ireland (see below).2 In sum, it was the emergence of independent community organizations and local protests, which ultimately resulted in the anti-water charges campaign (Interview No.31). They gave Unite officers the confidence that water could be the focal point of broader resistance against austerity. There was a deep anger within the communities and Unite officers knew that they did not start from nothing with their national water campaign (Interview No.27; Ogle 2016: 74). Importantly, neither trade unions nor left political parties would have been able to mobilize the enormous amount of people participating in the large demonstrations as well as the blocking of water meter installations over a period of almost two years. Only the community groups, built up from the ground by ordinary people communicating via Facebook, had the capacity to do so.3 As an activist observed, the water charge resistance is not driven by any fringe. It’s driven by hundreds of local pages, like Edenmore Says No, some with followings in the thousands and some in the tens of thousands.

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This isn’t a movement that has a single centre the establishment can decapitate. It’s a multi-headed organic expression of the power people have when they create collective solutions through co-operation, empowerment and real solidarity. (Flood 2015)

Unlike in Italy, Greece and the ECI, environmental groups were not part of the anti-water charges movement in Ireland. This can partly be explained by a shift to market-based solutions for environmental problems. ‘The underlying assumptions are that the price signal is a key policy instrument for regulating demand and supply, as well as key to changing behaviour, “valuing” the environment and conserving scarce natural resources’ (Dukelow 2016: 144). This argument, very similar to the way business justifies the privatization of water (see Chapter 2), has been accepted by many environmental NGOs as well as the Irish Green Party (Interview No.27). They supported water charges as a way of instilling a focus on saving water (Interview No.32).4 Moreover, many environmental groups had been part of social partnership arrangements since the late 1990s. As mentioned above, having become reliant on state funding and direct channels of influence, they were reluctant to challenge government policy (Interview No.31). The anti-water charges campaign was organized around three key strategies: (1) the blocking of meter installations; (2) the organization of large demonstrations centrally in Dublin but also across the country; and (3) a non-payment campaign of water charges. The blocking of the installation of water meters started the campaign in spring 2014. It gave people something very concrete to focus their resistance on. Wherever contractors appeared, local protestors talked to them, hugged digging machines and engaged in any kind of peaceful obstruction such as jumping into holes, before the meter was installed (Interview No.28). As one local activist writes, ‘the 28th August 2014 was D day for Crumlin. Irish Water, the newly established utility had informed local residents by post a few days previously that they intended to meter the area and to expect their arrival’ (Mac Cionnaith 2015: 79). Local residents confronted water meter contractors directly and forced them to leave the area a couple of weeks later without having installed a single meter. Social media in general helped a lot in linking up with other activists and ensured that people turned out when contractors were moving in. An interesting part of the blocking of water meters was the so-called water meter fairies, who removed water meters if requested from Autumn 2014 onwards (Trommer 2019: 223). Again and again,

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these activists managed to avoid capture by the police. Nobody knew who they were, where they came from and where they went. At the national level, the first demonstration took place on 11 October. The main agents behind large demonstrations were the trade unions and here especially Unite and Mandate. They had the finance and logistical experience to organize these events. Unlike in the past, demonstrations culminated in squares with a professional stage and proper sound system. Political speeches were mixed with performances by artists and musicians. The goal was, as one interviewee stated, that these marches were a fun day out for the whole family (Interview No.27). The result of these efforts went beyond the wildest expectations of the organizers. In the words of the Unite organizer Brendan Ogle, history will record that this was the day that Ireland roared. Over 100,000 burst on to the streets of Dublin that day, throwing off the shackles of compliance with austerity to reclaim their pride and reinforce in themselves, and others, that we could fight back, we could rise again, we could rock the establishment and we could win! (Ogle 2016: 66)

In a country with about 4.8 million inhabitants, this is an enormous turnout. On 1 November 2014, Right2Water then organized over a 100 local protests across Ireland with overall 150,000 people participating despite terrible weather (Hearne 2015a: 6–7), before another national demonstration in Dublin was organized for 10 December 2014, followed by a national demonstration in Dublin on 21 March 2015. Further demonstrations took place throughout 2015 and early 2016. At the final demonstration on 20 February 2016, a week before general elections, 80,000 people attended. Monthly meetings in Dublin coordinated the co-operation of the three pillars and were in charge of preparing the various demonstrations and co-ordinating the overall strategy. Large demonstrations were crucial in the way they showed the broad opposition to water charges reinforcing local resistance to water meter installations (Interview No.30). People knew that they were not alone in their opposition. Finally, especially the political parties SP and SWP, together with anarchists from the Workers Solidarity Movement, were behind the non-payment campaign, at times connected to ‘burn the bill’ or ‘bin the bill’ events at local level. In their view, non-payment was an easy way for every Irish citizen to participate actively in the movement (Interviews No.31 and No.32). And yet, this strategy caused tensions

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inside Right2Water. People still remembered the outcome of the nonpayment campaign of the household charge in the previous year. Many people had ended up with large bills, when the state decided to collect payment through direct deductions from wages and welfare payments. Could the government not simply do the same again? The unions and Sinn Féin were reluctant to advocate a campaign, which may land people in large debts (Interview No.29). Some activists allege, however, that Sinn Féin was reluctant, because they tried to present themselves as law and order party (Interview No.30; Interview No.32). From within the unions, it was argued that it was essential to keep the campaign as broad and open as possible and this included also being open to people who protested against the charges but still felt that they should do their citizens’ duties and pay any bills by the state. Hence, the unions prioritized a focus on the abolition of water charges and recognizing water as a human right, providing the broadest possible frame for the campaign (Interview No.27). When the alliance Right2Water declined to become transformed into a non-payment campaign, the SP and SWP set up their alternative, parallel ‘Non-payment network’. It managed to mobilize a good 10,000 people on one occasion and, at least according to party activists, the slogan ‘No way, we don’t pay’ was one of the most popular slogans during most protests (Interview No.32). In concrete terms and according to best estimates possible, the non-payment campaign was very successful in that around 70 to 75 per cent of those subjected to water charges had not paid them (TheJournal.ie 2016), making the running of Irish Water and thus potential privatization unprofitable. Overall, the scale of resistance is impressive. As Trommer reports: disruptive resistance was practised in all 26 Irish counties. 235 local anti-water charges groups could be identified online. Sixty-seven were organised at the county level while 168 groups organised at the level of towns. Burn the bills protests were held across at least 19 Irish counties. Local communities in at least 13 counties also held bin the bills events. Water meter fairies operated in at least 24 counties. (Trommer 2019: 224)

Overall, the anti-water charges campaign was an enormously powerful movement. In the end, all three strategies played a crucial role in the struggle against the introduction of water charges. ‘The existence of community-based direct action and non-payment enabled an alliance, not only between far-left parties and with Sinn Féin but also between

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those parties and the unions, which could otherwise not have survived its first serious test’ (Cox 2017: 194). Of course, there is still the question of why it was water, which led to this widespread rebellion rather than other austerity measures, which had already put pressure on many working-class households. For Unite, there were three reasons because of which it decided to pick water as its campaign focus: (1) there is something special about water itself and how it resonates with people and how essential it is for people; (2) timing in that people were ready in 2014 for a major campaign against the background of ongoing austerity; and (3) the way the water company and politicians acted enraged people and made it easy to mobilize them (Interview No.27). While the first reason echoes the reasons for the success of water struggles elsewhere, the other two reasons are more specific to Ireland. In general, water was a good issue to mobilize over because it presented some kind of common denominator for both working- and middle-class people. There had been a deep anger over austerity being built up over the previous years and water in 2014 then provided the moment, when this all came to the fore (Interview No.30). People simply had enough of ‘years of inflicted harsh austerity measures, government double standards, systemic corruption, cronyism, and nepotism. In essence, the common sense neo-liberal policies imposed by Government had lost all validity’ (Mac Cionnaith 2015: 92). Thus, water came later onto the public agenda in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe, but when it hit, the response by the Irish public was dramatic. Unlike with other austerity impositions by the Troika, it was easy to see what people could do in resistance through non-payment and the blocking of meter installations (Interview No.29). Victory and the way ahead When the elections in 2016 ended without a clear government majority, the new minority Fine Gael government decided to suspend charges on 1 July 2016 and set up a parliamentary commission to debate the future of water services in Ireland. Since November 2017, those who had paid water charges have been reimbursed. Overall, the Irish water campaign was a major success. How can we explain this? There were tensions within the campaign. The eventually separate non-payment campaign was one issue (see above). Community groups’ suspicion and mistrust of trade unions due to their role in social partnership were another (Interview No.28). For too long, unions had supported austerity through their involvement in social partnership.

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ICTU officials had already been booed at demonstrations in 2009 and 2010. At the very first demonstration of the anti-water charges movement on 11 October 2014, the general secretary of Unite was also booed by demonstrators. It was then that Dave Gibney from Mandate and Brendan Ogle from Unite went to a meeting with Community activists. They made clear that community activists were right to be suspicious of trade unions considering the history of social partnership, during which trade unions had abandoned working-class communities. Nevertheless, there would now be a choice either to go beyond this and start working together, or just go separate ways (Interview No.27). The three pillars went forward jointly from then onwards. Still, community groups continued to complain that they were not really treated as equal partners by the unions and political parties. Their voice was not given equal validity even though it was them, who prevented the installation of meters on the ground (Interview No.30). Some claim that the unions financed the campaign and the demonstrations and were opposed to broader democratic structures beyond monthly meetings (Interview No.32). Ultimately, however, the movement as a whole relied on trade union money for the organization of big marches (Interview No.29). It was the financial power of the unions, which gave them priority inside the organization of Right2Water. Tensions also arose inside the political parties pillar and between political parties and the other two pillars. SP, SWP and Sinn Féin, apart from co-operating inside Right2Water, regularly competed with each other in elections (Finn 2015: 60). For example, some argue that Sinn Féin only really joined the campaign, when it had become clear that it had traction with large parts of Irish society (Interview No.32). There was, furthermore, a feeling among community activists that these political parties’ main interest was to recruit new members and secure more votes through their involvement in the campaign (Interview No.30). Some even alleged that the Right2Water campaign was a front organization created by Trotskyists (Interview No.28). Importantly, however, there was regional variation in co-operation. In Cork, for example, where one of the most important community groups was located, there was very good co-operation across all three pillars. Water united the campaign especially at the beginning (Interview No.58). We should also be careful, not to blame divisions simply on the role and activities of particular individuals. Trade unions, community groups and political parties are rather different organizations and especially their different understandings of democracy inevitably result in tensions. While trade unions and especially political parties are

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based on representative democracy with a focus on winning elections, community groups experimented with novel forms of direct democracy (see Conclusion). If at all, the very fact that the three pillars could cooperate so successfully, should be highlighted. Similar to water campaigns elsewhere, this alliance across the social factory was key to success. While trade unions traditionally organize in the workplace, leading union officers recognized correctly that water affected all their members directly also outside the workplace. Focusing on getting rid off water charges would secure union members more pay than fighting for small salary increases in the workplace (Interview No.27). Unions have to ‘see their work as extending into every facet of their members’ economic existences, “beyond the factory gate, beyond the shop floor”’, Ogle (2016: 264) from Unite makes clear. Co-operating with community groups directly bridges the divide between the spheres of production and social reproduction. Equally, those political parties involved in the campaign are often those parties, which organize working-class and disadvantaged communities that had been left behind during the Celtic Tiger years and were now hit by austerity most harshly. They too provided links into the sphere of social reproduction. In sum, ‘this alliance between community groups, unions and left parties is unprecedented in recent memory, and in scale and significance … ; these multiple fields of struggle and organisational forms represent the movement’s diversity – but also its proto-hegemonic capacity to bring together many different sections of society opposing both water charges and austerity in general’ (Cox 2017: 180). Success within the labour movement was also crucial for the overall victory of the anti-water charges campaign. ‘Right2Water was the first major attempt by Mandate and Unite to organize protests against government policy outside the ICTU framework’ (Finn 2015: 56). Of course, both unions were still affiliated to the ICTU and it was therefore a major success when a majority of delegates at the ICTU conference on 8 July 2015 voted by 203 to 194 for the call to abolish water charges. In the words of Brendan Ogle, ‘the cheering and congratulations that took over the hall after the vote was a spontaneous manifestation that a people’s movement was fighting back within a congress that many thought had abandoned the working class in the social partnership era’ (Ogle 2016: 194). Trade unions such as public sector SIPTU may have felt that they could not oppose water charges considering the Labour Party, to which they were affiliated, was part of the government. Delegates, however, had moved beyond this position against the background of ongoing large-scale protests.

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The creation of powerful discourses against the elite rhetoric of developmental Ireland was important for a broader mobilization. ‘Rather than presenting Irish history as a history of acceptance of authority, protesters presented it as a history of continuous rebellion … ; protesters linked the struggle against austerity to the struggle for Irish self-determination and likened their actions to past activisms’ (Trommer 2019: 229). Resistance to the imposition of water charges was framed as a struggle against the re-colonization of Ireland and linked back to the famous Easter uprising of 1916. As one observer claims, the antiwater charges movement ‘aims to complete the unfinished business/ revolution of the period 1913 to 1921’ (Hearne 2015a: 43). Further support for the campaign was gained through developing international links from early on. The anti-water charges movement came too late for the ECI, which had collected signatures in 2012/2013 (see Chapter 4). Nevertheless, Right2Water drew on the expertise of activists from the ECI throughout the campaign. For example, when the Right2Change agenda was launched on 13 June 2015 (see below), in addition to people from Syriza, Greece and Podemos, Spain water activists from Thessaloniki and the Berlin Water Table were also invited (Interview No.27). Moreover, international links reached beyond Europe. There were some references to the Bolivian water movement resulting from traditional links with Latin American struggles and people from the Detroit Water Brigade (DWB) spoke at a number of public events (Interview No.29). It was the Crumlin water group, which had sent a solidarity message to the DWB and hosted their delegation in Dublin (Mac Cionnaith 2015: 85). The situation there made clear to people in Ireland, what their future under privatized water would be (Interview No.30). ‘The phrase “from Dublin to Detroit, water is a human right” had been a clarion cry since the beginning, a reference to the shutting off of water to thousands of homes in the city of Detroit by a city administration determined to milk dry the poorest citizens, or to make them suffer in the most inhumane way as a penalty if they were unable to pay’ (Ogle 2016: 79). People from the DWB spoke at the 10 December 2014 protest indicating the trajectory privatizing water would take. Equally important, Irish trade unions sent people abroad to attend international conferences in Marseilles, Thessaloniki, Berlin and Brussels for inspiration (Dunphy 2017: 277–8, 281). Struggles within particular countries are not sealed off, but co-constitute each other in line with the research method of incorporated comparison, underpinning this book (see Chapter 1). Irish activists going abroad for new ideas or inviting people from other struggles to come to Ireland confirms this.

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During the campaign, especially the trade unions underpinning Right2Water established the Right2Change campaign in June 2015 to go beyond water. Having organized a number of conferences across the country, ten policy principles were identified as campaigning platform. In addition to Right2Water, this included policies such as Right2Housing, Right2Jobs and Decent Work as well as Right2Health and Right2Democratic Reform among others (Ogle 2016: 156–72). Strategically, Right2Change focused on individual candidates for the 2016 elections to sign up to its agenda for change including rights beyond water. Considering the short time available between June 2015 and the February 2016 elections, the organizers of Right2Change were satisfied with their success. They had asked politicians to endorse the Right2Change principles and in the end 106 candidates did so (20 per cent of all candidates) with 36 of them being elected, of which 22 were from Sinn Féin. Especially campaigning around housing was identified as a potential future focus (Interview No.27). However, due to internal divisions within the campaign, this push for additional rights beyond water never fully took off. The electoral strategy was ‘nebulous’ and trade unions could not agree on the nature of this new political formation (Dunphy 2017: 274–81). First, the SP did not participate, as Right2Change refused to pledge not to participate in a governing coalition with centre-right parties. Right2Change, it is argued, complied with Sinn Féin in this respect, which did not want to rule out joining a coalition government (Interview No.32). Moreover, activists from community groups were not convinced by this move from Right2Water to Right2Change. Trade unions thought that this was the moment to use the broader politicization of people to move beyond water, but they were ahead of the communities in this respect, it is argued (Interview No.30). They had radicalized citizens, but failed to politicize them (Interview No.28). Importantly, with its focus on the 2016 elections, Right2Change pursued the electoral route towards change, but failed to bring the community groups along with them. Instead, the electoral strategy clashed with the increasingly participatory, direct democracy practices of many community groups. Going beyond water is important, but this would really have to emerge organically from below, from within the communities (Interview No.29). As water activists have experienced elsewhere, while water is a particular issue which allows the mobilization across the whole political spectrum, there are doubts about the feasibility of expanding into other areas of social justice such as public transport, education, housing or health, which do not affect everyone in the same way (Interviews No.30; No.31 and No.32). Overall,

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the Right2Change strategy can be understood against the background of a traditional nationalist, developmentalist strategy and the emphasis on the state to sort out development (Interview No.31). It was, thus, more continuity than change.

Conclusion: In search of new forms of democracy A broad alliance of forces across the social factory, encompassing community groups, trade unions and left political parties, successfully challenged the introduction of water charges in Ireland between 2014 and 2016. Blocking the installation of water meters, a widespread nonpayment campaign and regular large protest marches proved to be a powerful combination of strategies, which after two years left the Irish government with no alternative than to suspend charges. There is some discussion of introducing charges for excess usage of 1.7 times the average water consumption, but with 40 per cent of homes still without a water meter (Aki 2018), it is difficult to see how this could be implemented (Interviews No.27 and No.32). Of course, victories are never clear-cut. Irish Water is currently speculating about a water bill of €500 per year per household as a maximum. Metering would take place at the district level, with costs averaged across the district. Moreover, Irish Water is still outsourcing contract work to private providers and water is generally being financialized. For example, the new water treatment plant in Cork as a public private partnership is financed through a guaranteed income over the next twenty-five years. Veolia has been put in charge of reading water meters, even though these readings are currently not used for billing. There is a clear lack of political oversight of Irish Water. At the same time, the initiative of holding a referendum on enshrining the right to water and public ownership of water utilities in the constitution is being stalled by the main parties in parliament (Interview No.58). Moreover, as activists point out, capital is always likely to come back for another attempt. They know that every victory is only temporary and they may have to fight again, should there be a renewed effort to introduce charges through the backdoor (Interview No.28). To date, the positive outcomes of the struggle have held. This is also thanks to the rather different structuring conditions in Ireland, compared to the situation in Italy or Greece. Since 2012 the Irish economy has been successful again mainly on the back of a strong export performance by large, foreign TNCs. In summer 2016, the Irish

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GDP figure for 2015 was upgraded to an impressive 26 per cent after the inclusion of foreign companies into the statistics (Inman 2016). This data, however, needs to be treated with caution. As Aidan Regan already noted in 2014, Irish economic success measured in GDP overlooks the role of transfer pricing used by large TNCs in order to benefit from low corporate taxation in Ireland. ‘In 2012 service related exports associated with large [TNCs] such as Google and Facebook equated to 91 billion euros. But almost 40 billion euros of this was directly associated with tax-related transfer pricing. This means that almost half of the income associated with service exports (which now dominate overall exports) was completely unrelated to anything that is happening in the Irish economy’ (Regan 2014: 28). Moreover, including contract manufacturing outside the country, tax inversions by US companies with their headquarters in Ireland, the relocating of patents and transfer pricing as well as the re-domiciling of assets by the aircraft leasing company Aercap, the Irish GDP figure for 2015 looks impressive, but may actually say little about the actual strength of the Irish economy, estimated to have been around 5 per cent (Taylor 2016). Nevertheless, the general perception is that the Irish economy has rebounded and this has lessened the pressure on water charges and privatization for now. Unlike in the Italian and Thessaloniki context, the commons did not play a role in the Irish struggles. Land ownership is an important issue for Irish people, as Irish farmers had won their land against aristocratic landlords during British occupation in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, one interviewee pointed out. Hence, it was all about private versus public in the Irish context (Interview No.27). Others refer to the lack of political power at the local level (Interview No.28) or the absence of an autonomist tradition in Ireland (Interview No.31) as explanations. Discussions about new forms of democracy, however, played a huge role especially within a number of local community groups. People agreed that representative democracy did not work and that voting in general elections did not change anything. They demanded more say within the local community and started to experiment with alternative forms of democracy including meetings without a leader and decision-making by consensus (Interview No.30). While talk of ‘embryonic soviets’ in Cork (Interview No.32) may have been exaggerated, these experiments were a concrete expression of increasingly widespread dissatisfaction with representative democracy, which had sustained a self-serving elite in power. ‘For now what is being glimpsed, in many local meetings and housing estates across Ireland, is the possibility of a different kind of democracy from below, grounded

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in living practice and tackling the many hidden and not-so-hidden injuries of class as experienced in the Republic’ (Cox 2017: 198). In moments of collective struggle, these activists created new knowledge about how democracy can be organized differently. Rather than focusing on elections, which inevitably result in infighting between different left parties, community activists demanded a move beyond representative democracy. ‘What we need is … an entirely different political system, an entirely different way of us coming together to make decisions that affect not only our local communities and workplaces but indeed the very planet we live upon’ (Flood 2016). Unsurprisingly, this focus on new forms of democracy clashed with the agenda of political parties, which continue to focus on winning elections and securing, finally, a centre-left, left government in Ireland. Moreover, it clashed with the trade unions, which had moved towards the Right2Change campaign in an effort of gaining direct influence on elections if not even moving towards setting up a new party all together. Looking at recent elections in Ireland the futility of hoping for drastic change through the ballot box becomes apparent. When in 2011 Fine Gael and the Labour Party entered a coalition government, early hopes of an end to austerity were dashed, as the two parties dropped their campaign promises to challenge the MoU with the Troika. Hopes for radical change on water were again high in 2016, when both parties were punished for their austerity policies by the electorate. Labour lost twenty-six of its thirty-three seats and was reduced to a small party with hardly any parliamentary influence, while Fine Gael barely managed to hang on to form a minority government after drastic losses. Water charges were suspended, but the move towards institutionalizing the right to water in the Irish constitution never progressed. In February 2020, the same initially radical picture appeared after the elections. This time, it was Sinn Féin’s turn to ‘upset’ traditional electoral politics, gaining most first-preference votes and being only narrowly beaten into the second largest party in parliament. Despite significant economic growth, many had voted for the party in protest over the poor state of affordable housing and public health services (O’Toole 2020). After several months, however, the two traditional centre-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as well as the Green Party concluded negotiations and formed a new government. Considering the support for water charges by the Green Party (Murphy 2019), little can be expected from the new government for more drastic steps in the protection of public water. Equally, considering the Green Party’s support of austerity in the past (Dunphy 2017: 275), the new government indicates the continuation

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of the neo-liberal consensus in Irish politics and almost ensures that elections this time round are again unlikely to have any significant impact on general policy-making. When the full economic fallout of COVID-19 becomes apparent, it may well be back to austerity policy as usual. The old order just continues and be it with a green, yet marketfriendly face (Reynolds and Coulter 2020). Tensions inside the anti-water charges campaign have re-surfaced and intensified since the 2016 victory, when water charges had been put on hold after the elections. In April 2017, the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services, the parliamentary commission established after the 2016 elections, published its report. Community group activists allege that the report had been significantly changed between draft and final publication and that trade union and political party activists had announced victory too early (Interview No.58). As one activist points out, ‘our objectives are the complete abolition of domestic water charges, an end to domestic water meters, the disbanding of the water utility company and a referendum to provide constitutional protection against water privatisation. None of those objectives has been achieved yet’ (Murphy 2019). Many community groups no longer exist (Interview No.30), water is no longer a topical theme in Irish politics and the broad water movement has fallen apart in its individual components due to infighting. ‘Throughout the last few years, in-fighting, back-biting, online trolling, personal attacks and political hijacking have infected the campaign. This has also caused many activists to fall into obscurity and vow to never get involved in political action again’ (Murphy 2019). Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the seeds of resistance planted during the campaign. Having been politicized at a much higher level, Irish civil society may erupt in a new large-scale campaign again. Capitalist exploitation is always contested and Right2Water has demonstrated that resistance can be successful. The first sign of renewed energy of resistance in Irish civil society was the successful Marriage Equality campaign. The May 2015 referendum was clearly won, leading to the right to same-sex marriage being enshrined in the Irish Constitution. Even more dramatic was the campaign for abortion rights, which had been forced on the government by radical grassroots activists. In May 2018, the referendum Repeal of the Eighth Amendment was approved by 66.4 per cent of voters, facilitating the move towards official abortion rights. This is an astonishing feat considering the powerful hold the Catholic Church used to have over Irish society. Catherine Lynch traced the way of how women, who had

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been disproportionately affected by austerity (Cullen and Murphy 2017: 87), had become an important resource in the struggle against water charges and transformed themselves into powerful activists during this process. She concludes that unlike their female counterparts in the 1916 Rising, they are not returning to their lives as before. This is just the beginning. Not only are they protesters, they also assume roles as educators, carers, counsellors and organisers, building on their existing skills and knowledge. They have become confident in themselves and their abilities. On a personal level the implications of their activism has been life-changing. (Lynch 2015: 61)

Especially the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment campaign demonstrates how female activists, educated and trained in the anti-water charges struggles, have found their voice and successfully mobilized for progressive change. Any new attempt by capital at introducing water charges will have its work cut out.

Notes 1 For an analysis of the struggle against these water charges in the mid1990s, see http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/water.html; accessed 3 July 2020. 2 I am grateful to Madelaine Moore for pointing this out to me. 3 Many thanks to Laurence Cox for pointing this out to me. 4 Comparisons with the UK, however, show that household water consumption in Ireland is lower by 15 to 25 per cent, even though water charges had already been implemented in the UK during the 1980s (Right2Water 2018).

Chapter 7 T R A N SF O R M I N G C A P I TA L I SM T OWA R D S T H E C OM M O N S ? Introduction Over the last twenty to thirty years, Europe has been a major location of resistance to water privatization. Against the background of relentless neo-liberal restructuring across the European Union (EU), it has been struggles against water privatization, which stood out due to their success. While other sectors were subjected to deregulation, liberalization, privatization and restructuring, often driven by EU level developments, water proved to be the exception. In June 2011, 57 per cent of the Italian electorate participated in the water referendum and rejected privatization of water by an overwhelming majority of above 95 per cent. As a result, the law forcing municipalities to part-privatize their water services was revoked. In 2012/2013, the alliance of class forces behind the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ collected almost 1.9 million signatures. In response, both the European Parliament (EP) and the Commission were forced to adopt a public position on water as a human right. Water was officially excluded from the Concessions Directive in 2013 and the Commission referred to the ECI in subsequent policy initiatives such as the review of the Drinking Water Directive in 2018 and 2019. In Greece in 2014, the water movements in Thessaloniki and Athens secured major victories. First, activists in Thessaloniki successfully held a referendum against water privatization on 18 May, in which 98 per cent of participating citizens voted ‘No’ to privatization. Then the Council of State ruled one week later that the transfer of ownership of EYDAP, the water company in Athens, to the privatization fund TAIPED had been unconstitutional. Eventually, the Greek government felt that it was left with no alternative but to stop privatization in both cities. The Irish government’s plan of introducing water charges and installing meters in households across the country in 2014 was met with fierce resistance. After two years of large demonstrations, the physical blocking of meter installations and a widespread non-payment campaign the Irish government suspended

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water charges in 2016. Drawing on these case studies, three key reasons for the success can be identified: (1) the unique quality of water; (2) the long history of struggles across different geographical scales; and (3) broad alliances across the social factory. In this concluding chapter, I will first discuss these three factors. Struggles against water privatization are not only noticeable because of their success against restructuring. They are also crucial in the way they point to potential alternative futures beyond capitalism. Hence, in the subsequent section I will discuss to what extent the notion of water as a human right can be regarded as progressive, provided it is combined with a focus on ‘the commons’, an alternative to both public and private management of water. While the notion of the commons has played an important role in Italian struggles as well as during resistance in Thessaloniki, it was less prominent elsewhere. What has emerged, however, as important is a focus on democratizing the management of water. Rather than having public water administrated by technocratic bureaucrats, water activists argue that we need to ensure that the voices of workers and trade unions as their representatives as well as civil society organizations and users are involved in the running of public companies. I will discuss several important examples including the recently established water observatory in the Spanish city of Terrassa in the fourth section. Finally, I will conclude this book with a look at ongoing struggles. As we have seen throughout this volume, while resistance to water privatization has been successful, capital has always come back with renewed attempts at transforming water into a tradable commodity, an economic good. Victories are neither clear-cut nor necessarily permanent. While the successes against water privatization have been important, I will argue that struggles have to go on. The Blue Communities project by Maude Barlow is one key example of imaginative strategies in this respect.

Key factors sustaining the success of water struggles The unique quality of water is perhaps the most important factor of why struggles against water privatization have had such a wide resonance. Water as a source of life, prominent in many religions, resonated deeply, for example, with Catholic Social Doctrine. Unsurprisingly, many Catholic groups played an important role in the struggles over the Italian water referendum in 2011, whether it was in the signature collection demanding a referendum in the first place or whether it was

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in campaigning for two ‘yes’ votes in the referendum itself. Equally important, water’s unique quality is reflected in the support of public water by many people, who normally vote for centre-right political parties. Whether it was the Italian water movement or during the ECI at the European level, activists ensured that political parties were kept in the background. Making water a non-party political issue guaranteed a much broader reach of the campaigns. In Thessaloniki too, parties were not part of the campaign alliance. Interestingly, the scepticism vis-à-vis parties in Greece also factored through to the main trade unions, who had often been accused of having been subservient to the two, traditionally dominant political parties New Democracy and PASOK. Hence, it was the water trade unions SEEYATH in Thessaloniki and SEKES in Athens, which were actively involved in struggles against privatization. They reestablished a credibility for trade unions, which the main trade unions had lost in the eyes of many Greek citizens due to their involvement with party politics. The struggles against water charges in Ireland are an exception in this respect. Here, left parties constituted one of the three pillars of the broad water alliance. This can partly be explained by their history of close involvement in previous struggles, but equally by their slightly different formation. Although they do focus on securing votes and seats in parliamentary elections, they have nonetheless cultivated much deeper roots in local working-class communities, which make them rather different from traditional representative democracy political parties. Moreover, people in Ireland unlike in Italy and Greece have not yet had the experience of a centre-left government not delivering on its promises. Removing the centre-right hold on government was at least for some activists an important part of the anti-water charges campaign. Second, the long-standing tradition of struggles against water privatization across different geographical scales was a major factor underlying the successful water struggles. In this book, my focus was on struggles in Europe. However, we need to understand these struggles as nested in wider struggles at the global level. Since the increasing push for the privatization of water services from the early 1990s onwards, struggles over water had erupted around the world. Most well-known is the so-called water war of Cochabamba in 2000. When water services were privatized in the Bolivian city, ‘one clause of the contract guaranteed a profit of 15 per cent to the consortium; another indexed the profit rate to foreign currency exchange rates, as a protection against devaluation of the Bolivian currency’ (Bakker 2010: 166). Price hikes of 200 per cent or more were the result. Local resistance erupted and when peaceful protesters were met by police and soldiers, violent clashes

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ensued with one seventeen-year-old protester being killed. Eventually, in April 2000 the Bolivian government revoked the concession to Aguas del Tunari, a consortium around the US construction giant Bechtel (Lobina 2000). Of course, this struggle in Cochabamba was a very local moment of resistance for people living in that city. Nevertheless, this success became a much wider, global symbol for what was at stake in instances of water privatization. The very fact that this struggle over access to a vital source of life was directed against the super-profits of a transnational corporation (TNC) ensured broader geographical implications. Success in open struggle was followed by organization at the global level. In July 2001, 800 people from thirty-five countries gathered for the summit Water for People and Nature in Vancouver/Canada to discuss and plan the global fight against the commodification of water. ‘At the end of the summit, the assembly unanimously called for water to remain in the “commons” and launched the Blue Planet Project’ (Barlow and Clarke 2002: 232). Combining environmental concerns with social justice issues, this gathering of civil society organizations and water activists adopted the Treaty Initiative to Share and Protect the Global Water Commons, emphasizing that water belongs to everyone and must not be transformed into a commodity, which can be bought, sold and traded for profit (Barlow and Clarke 2002: xvii-xviii). Environmentalists met with human rights activists, representatives of indigenous people and public sector workers, indicating clearly how the issue of water covers the social factory from production to social reproduction and ecology. Global initiatives of this type fed back into national level activities, but they also provided space for ongoing activities at the global level. These efforts bore fruit, when the UN General Assembly decided on 28 July 2010 to declare water as a human right (Barlow 2011: 1). Several governments from the Global South had sponsored the initiative with especially Bolivia, the country of the Cochabamba water struggle, playing a decisive role (Interview No.9; Fattori 2013a). The global level of water struggles became visible in a number of instances in European struggles. As discussed in Chapter 3 on the Italian water referendum, the encounter of local Italian activists with activists from Latin America, who reported about their struggles in Cochabamba at the first Alternative World Water Forum in Firenze in 2003, was crucial for stepping up the Italian campaign first to the regional, Tuscan and then the national level. Second, the main focus of the ECI on water and sanitation as a human right drew directly on the

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UN having declared water as a human right in 2010. This global level development provided a crucial anchor for the European level initiative. Finally, the Irish anti-water charges campaign invited activists from the Detroit Water Brigade to one of its large demonstrations, indicating to Irish people what happens if water becomes a commercial product. Those who cannot pay, will be cut off from their water supply. Within Europe, we have seen throughout this book, how struggles at different levels inspired and re-enforced each other. The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) had worked towards the ECI since the European Social Forum in Malmö/Sweden in 2008. It was the victory in the Italian water referendum in 2011, however, which fully convinced EPSU that this was a good strategy to go ahead with in 2012/2013. In turn, the success at the European level inspired water activists in Thessaloniki. Having watched via video link the hearing of the ECI by the EP in Brussels in February 2014, they decided that they too would hold a referendum on the privatization of water services in their city. The referendum itself was then supported by observers from the European as well as various national water movements, again highlighting the multi-scalar dynamics of resistance against water privatization. When the campaign in Ireland took off during 2014, the Irish water movement drew on the notion of water as a human right, pioneered as a campaign strategy during the ECI, and on a number of occasions invited activists from the European and various national water movements over to Ireland to address meetings and demonstrations. This multi-scalar politics is also reflected within countries. In Italy, it was at the level of municipalities especially in central Italy, where opposition to water privatization started. Here, people had directly experienced drastic hikes in water prices as a result of privatization. It was these activists’ encounter with activists from Latin America in Florence in 2003, which then resulted in the foundation of the regional water forum in Tuscany in 2004 and subsequently the national water forum in 2006. Since the successful referendum in 2011 during the ongoing struggles over implementation of the outcome, the national level has kept the campaign together, but different local strategies have been explored within various municipalities. While the Arezzo water committee pioneered the civil obedience campaign of refusing to pay the guaranteed percentage to cover companies’ investment costs, the Turin water committee pushed a political strategy via the local Five Stars Movement administration and the Naples water committee experimented with novel forms of democracy in running the re-municipalized water company ABC. In short, it is clear that

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underpinning these successful struggles was a constant flowing of ideas and resources from local to national to European level and vice versa, all shaped and influenced by ongoing developments at the global level, which, of course, were also conditioned by the various European developments. In line with a research strategy of incorporated comparison, introduced in Chapter 1, it is clearly visible how these struggles at different scales have co-constituted each other, shaped by developments within the global political economy, while shaping the global system in turn. While capital’s relentless search for new profitable investment opportunities puts pressure on public water services across the world, moments of successful resistance not only push back against these pressures in particular localities, but also directly impact on the configuration of forces at the global level. In other words, if capitalism is successfully challenged in one place, this challenges capitalism overall in that it points to potential alternatives beyond capitalism. The third key factor underpinning the success of struggles against privatization was the broad alliances of social movements across the social factory. In all the examples of water struggles discussed in this book, trade unions played an important role. The CGIL public sector union Funzione Pubblica (FP-CGIL) was a key member of the Italian water campaign, as were the rank-and-file trade unions Cobas and USB. During the ECI, EPSU had been crucial in holding together the European-level network of social movements as well as co-ordinating the various national level alliances. The trade unions SEEYATH of the water company EYATH in Thessaloniki and SEKES within OME-EYDAP of EYDAP in Athens played a leading role in their respective campaigns. Unite and Mandate plus three smaller trade unions constituted one of the three pillars in the Irish anti-water charges campaign. In general, trade unions know that privatization often implies downward pressure on wages and working conditions as well as job cuts. Hence, they defended working people in the sphere of production. Nevertheless, they also adopted a broader outlook and appreciated that the workers they organize, their families and wider society also depend on access to clean water in the sphere of social reproduction. Hence, in key moments they have been able to shift beyond a narrow workplace focus. FP-CGIL, for example, does not even organize workers in the water sector, but became a main force during the Italian referendum. Of course, trade unions are not automatically pursuing a progressive agenda. While the trade union OME-EYDAP of EYDAP in Athens decided that it would support workers, who refuse to cut off the water supply from people unable to pay, the same solidarity was not extended by trade unions

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in the water sector in Italy in a number of cases. This explains to some extent the collapse of the civil obedience non-payment campaign in Arezzo. Key trade unions in Ireland including the main confederation ICTU were not part of the anti-water charges campaign either. Social movements, citizens’ committees were also active in the various struggles. In Italy, it had been local water committees, which started the struggle in the late 1990s, early 2000s. During the ECI, local water communities such as the Berlin Water Table had been essential in publicizing the initiative and collecting signatures. Social movements were crucial participants in both Thessaloniki and Athens. Kick-starting the campaign in Ireland through physically blocking the installation of water meters, local communities were one of the three pillars in the Irish water movement. The access to clean water is clearly an issue in the sphere of social reproduction and local water committees are, thus, also part of the wider class struggle against privatization. Furthermore, environmental groups formed a crucial part of the water alliances in Italy, during the ECI at the European and various national levels, as well as within the context of struggles in Thessaloniki as part of the alliance SOS te to Nero. These environmentalists realized that wherever the profit motive dominates in private water, the protection of water and the environment becomes a secondary issue. Capital’s attempt to secure water as cheap nature inevitably leads to its pollution and undermines water’s longer-term sustainability. Nonetheless, as the Irish case indicated, the support by environmental groups is not automatic. The Irish Green Party and related environmental groups still pursue market-based solutions to environmental destruction. They argue that allocating the right price to water would ensure that people engage in saving water, even though the contrary has been proven by experiences in the UK, where despite water charges and metering people consume more water than in Ireland. The Italian and ECI struggles have also involved development NGOs and their concerns for water access in countries of the Global South. The third core demand of the ECI even directly refers to EU external policy and demands that it furthers access to clean water across the world. Finally, we have noted the important participation of feminist organizations be it at the European level – Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) – be it, for example, at the German level – the feminist group EcoMujer – during the ECI. Women, moreover, have played a crucial role in the community groups across Ireland in the struggle against water charges. This is a clear reflection of the internally related, double exploitation by patriarchy and capitalism, identified by feminist Marxists.

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Interestingly, while activists started out with their particular institutional identity, over time they transformed into water activists. As an Italian interviewee confirmed, people became part of a more homogenous organization with shared identities (Interview No.13). Activists from SEEYATH in Thessaloniki, initially focusing more narrowly on the interest of their members, developed a broader consciousness for society’s general interests as the collective class struggle unfolded (Interview No.33). Brendan Ogle from Unite in Ireland equally exhibits such a broader consciousness, when he argues that trade unions need to address the concerns of their members not just in the workplace, but also in wider society (Ogle 2016: 264). In short, E.P. Thompson’s (1978: 149) assertion that classes are formed and class consciousness is developed during moments of struggle is visible in the contestation of private water. Different organizations represent different angles from which to approach water privatization. Overall, however, they are closely internally related and part of one common moment of class struggle. Individual campaigners may start out from different positions, but ultimately develop into a more coherent group of water activists. While water struggles were successful, we still need to discuss their wider implications. Are they simply success stories in a particular sector or do these struggles have the potential for a more general challenge of capitalism? In the next section, I will look at this issue by discussing the potential of the concepts of ‘water as a human right’ and ‘water as a commons’.

The human right to water as a progressive strategy? In his article on the human right to water, Emanuele Fantini raises the key strategic question for water struggles: ‘is the human right to water the most appropriate and effective tool to counter the privatization of water services’ (Fantini 2020: 3)? As he reports, critics of the human right to water strategy argue that first, it is based on a Western-centric, liberal worldview; second, it is driven by an individualistic approach overlooking collective claims by indigenous people; and third, it is anthropocentric denying the possibility that rivers, for example, could also be granted legal rights. Along these lines, Bakker considers the human rights strategy to be rather individualistic and thus not conducive to a more collective response to privatization (Bakker 2010: 13 and 158–9). ‘Pursuing a human rights framework as an antiprivatization

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campaign thus makes three strategic errors: conflating human rights and property rights, failing to concretely connect human rights with different service-delivery models, and thereby failing to foreclose the possibility of increasing private-sector involvement in water supply’ (Bakker 2010: 152). Indeed, some corporations have argued that they too support the human right to water through their ‘more efficient’ operations. For example, Suez proudly claims on its website that ‘we want to take part in the promotion and implementation of the right to water and sanitation’.1 In turn, Veolia registers its support for the UN sustainable development goals and related human rights.2 Moreover, the Indonesian Constitutional Court ruled in 2005 that privatization and commercialization as such do not deny the human right to water, thus rejecting the claim by water activists in Jakarta that the human right to water must imply public ownership (Lobina, Weghmann and Marwa 2019: 734). In short, ‘rights discourses do not necessarily preclude marketization, privatization or dispossession’ (Sultana and Loftus 2015: 98). Such an individualistic, narrow definition of the human right to water, however, is not the only way of how to approach it. Jamie Linton, by contrast, emphasizes the transformative potential of water struggles on the basis of understanding the human right to water as a relation. First, he defines the right to water as a rule of governance. ‘Treating water “as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good” implies that the basic questions of how water is allocated and managed should be decided by democratic processes rather than market principles’ (Linton 2012: 50). Second, he defines the human right to water as a rule of social equity. Hence, ‘the right to water entails the right of the collective to a share of the value generated in the hydrosocial production process’ (Linton 2012: 57). For Linton water as part of a hydrosocial cycle is directly opposed to neo-liberalism and, thus, an element of a collective, community-based alternative (Linton 2014: 117). The right to water can function as a potential aspect of broader transformative politics, as a novel discursive terrain with the potential to resist TNCs. It is, therefore, important to ensure that the discourse of the human right to water is filled with progressive contents emphasizing the communal, transformative implications and rejecting the idea that this human right could be met through turning water into a commodity (Sultana and Loftus 2015: 101). Winning the struggle over how to define the contents of the human right to water discourse is part of the wider class struggle against the privatization of water. In other words, emphasizing the right to water can constitute a communal act of resistance against capitalist expansive dynamics, implying thereby a

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much more fundamental, transformative struggle than simply securing a particular individual right. If water is a logical next frontier for capital’s insatiable need to grow through the process of accumulation by dispossession, the global water justice movement is not just resisting a particular version of water governance reform or even a particular conception of water, it is engaged in a key strategic battle in the fight for a different vision of society – a different way of relating to each other and to the environment. (Clark 2019: 94)

Maud Barlow, one of the main driving forces behind the UN declaring water to be a human right in 2010, recognizes the potential of the ‘water as a human right’ discourse. This is, however, only the first principle. It needs to be followed by the principle of water as a common heritage, a commons rather than a commodity. ‘Water is to be preserved forever for public use and governments are required to maintain the water commons for the public’s reasonable good. Therefore, water must never be bought, hoarded, traded, or sold as a commodity on the open market’ (Barlow 2011: 65). Since the infamous article by Garrett Hardin (1968), the notion of the so-called tragedy of the commons has been used to undermine the commons. If there is no overall authority, Hardin argues, rational, utility-maximizing individuals would soon exhaust the commons as everyone would attempt to maximize their personal gains regardless of the overall unsustainability of these practices. Herders, rather than all limiting their cattle so that the common grazing grounds can be preserved, would all attempt to maximize the size of their herds, resulting in overgrazing and ultimately destruction of the common grounds (Hardin 1968: 1244). It is Elinor Ostrom’s achievement to have demonstrated that collective management of a commons does not inevitably result in tragedy. Rather than relying on outside enforcement, she establishes that individuals themselves are potentially able to devise an institutional structure, which allows all participants to enjoy the fruits of the commons, while at the same time preserving the commons for future generations. As rational individuals, focused on solving a problem as efficiently as possible, they can set up institutions, which regulate the size of herds and the time individual herders can access the commons, for example, so that overgrazing is avoided. ‘Unfortunately’, she points out, ‘many analysts … still presume that common-pool problems are all dilemmas in which the participants themselves cannot avoid producing

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suboptimal results, and in some cases disastrous results’ (Ostrom 1990: 24). Ostrom’s insights are important not only because she makes clear that commons can be administrated successfully, but also because she highlights the potential of affected individuals themselves to participate constructively in a successful solution. As important as Ostrom’s contribution is, however, it stays firmly within an ahistoric understanding of capitalism. It provides an alternative way of organizing the management of commons within capitalism, but it is completely unaware of the pressures of the structuring conditions of the capitalist social relations of production on the commons in the first place. ‘Ostrom therefore is not taking a political stance, but an economist’s stance that, without problematizing the historical relation between commons and capital, conceives the cohabitation of these different forms as unproblematic, pace enclosures, exploitation and social injustice’ (de Angelis 2017: 156). She overlooks that it is capitalism’s relentless outward expansion in the search for higher levels of surplus value accumulation in its attempts to overcome crises, which has been the underlying dynamics of continuing encroachment on existing commons. Marx defined the enclosures of the commons in the English countryside between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, when people were separated from their means of subsistence and turned into wage labour, as ‘primitive accumulation’ driving the transition from feudalism to capitalism (Marx 1867/1990: 878–95). As it has been pointed out, however, by Marxist analysts, ‘primitive accumulation’ is an ongoing process (e.g. Federici 2019: 27). ‘Accumulation by dispossession’ in David Harvey’s (2003: 145–50) terms or the struggle against every form of ‘natural economy’ to overcome obstacles to accumulation in Rosa Luxemburg’s (1913/2003: 349) words continues to shape capitalism’s relentless search for surplus accumulation. As Silvia Federici points out, not only are lands, forests, and fisheries appropriated for commercial uses in what appears to be a new ‘land grab’ of unprecedented proportions, we now live in a world in which everything, from the water we drink to our body’s cells and genomes, has a price tag or is patented and no effort is spared to ensure that companies have the right to enclose all the remaining open space on earth and force us to pay to gain access to it. (Federici 2019: 88)

Hence, while Ostrom and her followers focus on how to establish the right institutional set-up in order to avoid depletion, historical

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materialism allows us to understand the wider destructive dynamics of capitalist encroachment onto the commons. In turn, this indicates the transformative potential of a focus on the commons. The anti-capitalist supporters of the commons see the struggle for a commons as an important part of a larger rejection of neoliberal globalizing capitalism since it is the commons in the indigenous areas, in the global sense, and in the area of collective intellectual production that is now threatened with enclosure by a capitalism bent on commodifying the planet, its elements, its past and future. (Caffentzis 2004: 25)

In other words, only a historical materialist approach, which captures the historical specificity of capitalism, as discussed in Chapter 1, is able to comprehend the potential transformative dynamics of the commons as an alternative way of how to organize production. Deliberations of the commons in more abstract theoretical terms have proliferated in recent years, as have ongoing practical experiments at commoning. Before focusing on the importance of the commons in the resistance to water privatization, I will first briefly engage with these developments. An important starting point in defining the commons is to recognize that it is not simply a common resource such as water, forests or land (Bollier and Helfrich 2019: 17). As Massimo de Angelis explains, commons are a common good, but also refer to collective ownership. Hence, commons need to be understood as social systems ‘in which resources are pooled by a community of subjects who also govern these resources to guarantee the sustainability of the resources (if they are natural resources) and the reproduction of the community, and who engage in commoning, that is, doing in common that has a direct relation to the needs, desires and aspirations of the commoners’ (de Angelis 2017: 90). The commons are built on social relations and, thus, a collective ontology, not on Hardin’s individualist ontology (Bollier and Helfrich 2019: 49). The commons are important in that they are an alternative way of how production is organized. Here, production is organized neither by private capital, nor by state technocrats, but jointly by all participants. ‘Commoning thus is an alternative way to make decisions and act upon those decisions to shape the future of communities without being locked into market competition and its anxieties, the blackmail of profit-driven companies, and state agencies’ (de Angelis 2017: 204). Importantly, commons and commoning can take place in parallel to existing capitalist social and power relations in line with autonomist

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Marxist strategies, facilitating change in the here and now. At the same time, however, as a vision of how to go beyond capitalism, the important role of the state is not overlooked. Hence, ‘we must see emancipation as a process of growing commons powers vis-à-vis capital and the state’ (de Angelis 2017: 358). Initially, social movements as key agents ‘must find ingenious ways to deal with some deeply rooted biases of the capitalist economy that are reflected in various structures of state power, law, policy, and socially embedded markets’ (Bollier and Helfrich 2019: 203). Of course, there are tensions between the commons and capital as well as the commons and the state, as the latter plays a key role within the capitalist economy. As discussed in Chapter 1, the strategic selectivity of the capitalist state is biased towards pro-capital strategies and generally privileges capitalist norms and practices. The uneven social and power relations within capitalism are real and the capitalist state and its role of ensuring the continuation of capitalist accumulation of surplus value cannot be overlooked. An immediate, complete rupture with existing capitalist social relations is difficult to envisage. Importantly, the procapitalist strategic selectivity of the state does not imply that commons are unable to form productive relationships with the state in their efforts of expanding. In order to scale up commoning, David Bollier and Silke Helfrich suggest to work together with the state where possible and construct commons-public partnerships that enlist state power in the process of enlarging commons. This strategy ‘respects the need to organically grow a commons over time, and to rely on distributed infrastructures that invite multiple uses’ (Bollier and Helfrich 2019: 344). In the end, however, the focus has to shift to overcoming the capitalist state in a transformation of the economy beyond capitalism. The ‘wider commons ecology, defended and enlarged by social movements, reduces the power to regulate complexity of the state/capital regulator, who is left with the increasingly impossible task of matching society’s variety in order to regulate. This is the case when commons movements outflank the state and capital’ (de Angelis 2017: 384–5). The commons, therefore, challenge both private property underpinning the capitalist economy and the role of the state sustaining it (Bailey and Mattei 2013: 978). It is one of the key contributions of the Italian water movement that it has raised the issue of water as a commons beyond the dichotomy of private versus public (Carrozza and Fantini 2016: 110–14). The commons are understood as ‘elements that we maintain or reproduce together, according to rules established by the community: an area to be rescued from the decision-making of the post-democratic elite and which needs to be self-governed through forms of participatory democracy’ (Fattori

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2011). As Sergio Marotta observes, ‘the case of water management is significant because the defence of public water has encouraged movements to intensify democratic participation’ (Marotta 2014: 46). Thus, the focus on the commons in Italy is combined with an emphasis on a different, more participatory form of democracy, acknowledging that the commons are a set of social relations, a social system as indicated above. A form of democracy, which ‘guarantees citizens’ direct participation in local government and the administration of the commons, which goes beyond the mere participation in local public institutions’ [translation by the author] (Carrozza and Fantini 2013: 77). The mobilization for public water around the Italian referendum in June 2011 ‘acquired the role of a paradigmatic battle in defence of democracy and against the commodification of life, powerfully synthesized in the movement’s motto: “It is written water, it is read democracy”’ (Fantini 2014: 42). In other words, it is the combination of a new understanding of democracy and a new understanding of how to run the economy and, importantly, of how these two dimensions are closely and internally related, which brings with it a transformative dimension. As outlined in Chapter 5, exploring solutions around the notion of the commons combined with forms of participatory democracy was also part of struggles against water privatization in Greece. The activists of the group K136 against water privatization in Thessaloniki understood this dimension and viewed the crisis ‘as an opportunity to intensify the search for democratic alternatives’ (Steinfort 2014). Working on an alternative model of how to run the city’s water services, it adopted this notion of a new form of democracy. ‘The model is based on direct democracy, meaning that decisions are taken at open assemblies and are based on the principles of self-management and one person, one vote’ (Steinfort 2014). Starting out with water as a commons may trigger a dynamic of commoning in other areas. As de Angelis reports from water associations in Ecuador and Bolivia, ‘the regular encounters for the purpose of governing water led to exchanges of ideas and the development of collective government in other areas of the community’s life as well as of the cultural richness of circuits of affect and friendship of the community’ (de Angelis 2017: 129). The unique quality of water makes it an ideal starting-point for commoning, the experience of which may encourage participants to go further. From their establishment in water services, these new models can then be extended to other public services/commons such as health, education, energy and transport. Especially left-wing individuals and groups have been ‘willing to adopt

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water as an “entry point” to pursue a broader political strategy: exploring new forms of political engagement alternative to traditional left-wing parties and trade unions’ (Carrozza and Fantini 2016: 111–12). In the Italian region of Apulia, for example the Rete dei Comitati per i Beni Comuni was established in June 2012, including also areas such as the cycle of refuse collection and recycling as well as public transport as part of the commons (Interview No.16). The local water committee in Turin/Italy also attempted to expand the water movement into a Movement of Public Goods, including issues such as public transport, refuse collection and the No-TAV campaign against the construction of a high-speed railway line in the region (Interview No.12). To what extent have these discussions about the commons been implemented in terms of concrete experiments? As Fattori reminds us, ‘commons and commoning are not an ideology but a set of practices, a fragmentary manner – and at the same time they are generating ideas, projects, and theories’ (Fattori 2013b: 386). Water remunicipalization has been a growing trend world-wide with 235 cases in thirty-seven countries between 2000 and 2015. As David McDonald, points out, however, this does not imply an automatic move towards organizing water as a commons based on participatory processes. There are limits to the extent to which everyone can be socialized into becoming a commoner. Hence, ‘it is hard to imagine a world in which the state does not play a central role in the provision of water and sanitation services’ (McDonald 2019a: 72). It is difficult to see how the requirements of organizing water services in a city of several million people can be met by community collaboration alone. While there are many examples of autonomous water commons in the world, they are generally small-scale. Indeed, the focus on the commons has slightly receded in Europe over recent years. In Italy, the focus on the commons provided a powerful discourse in the mobilization around the water referendum in 2011. The most advanced step in practice has been the full re-municipalization of water in Naples in 2013, but this was not combined with turning the new company ABC into a commons. Rather, as we have seen in Chapter 3, efforts have been made to introduce mechanisms of participatory democracy in running water services, and even the concrete implementation of this less ambitious programme has been problematic. In Thessaloniki too, the focus on the commons does no longer dominate debates. In fact, the way municipal water services are to be governed in the future has been the key issue dividing the broad alliance. While K136 continues to push for common ownership and management by all citizens, groups around SOS te to

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Nero and SEEYATH look towards democratizing the management of public water services. In Athens, activists had never been convinced about the commons as a way of how to organize their water company EYDAP considering that it has to supply water to a city of over five million people (Interview No.41). When the European Water Movement (EWM) was re-launched in Naples/Italy in 2011, the goal was ‘to reinforce the recognition of water as a commons and as a fundamental universal right, an essential element for all living beings’ (EWM 2011). A focus on the commons was included in the founding manifesto as a step towards a new European social model. During the ECI at the European level, however, the commons did not play a role, neither as a discourse nor as a practical proposal of how to run water services. Here, as we have seen in Chapter 4, the discourse of water as a human right was the main unifying element of the campaign. The EWM did raise the commons as an issue at the European level (Interviews No.50 and No.59), when it launched a Manifesto for the Commons in the EU in March 2014. ‘Common goods, by definition’, it was stated, ‘belong to the community. Water, the quintessential common good, should not be privatised or commoditised. Nor should this be the case with education and health’ (EWM 2014a). This initiative resulted in an inter-parliamentary group within the EP, but it did not lead to a judicial framework for common goods (Interview No.60). In Ireland finally, see Chapter 6, the commons were not at the forefront of debates, also due to the particular history around land ownership as a success in anti-colonial struggles. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the transformative potential of water struggles. Especially the focus on democratizing the running of public water services has captured the imagination of water activists and played a major role in concrete experiments over recent years. I will look at this search for new democratic forms in the next section.

Participatory democracy and the transformation of water As became apparent in the case studies covered in this book, the strategic selectivity of the various state forms has been increasingly shifted towards the interests of transnational capital. From the late 1970s onwards, a new neo-liberal consensus emerged in Italy, which resulted in alternating centre-left and centre-right governments from the early 1990s onwards, pursuing similar strategies of neo-liberal restructuring through government by decree laws. In Greece too, after the change in

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strategy by PASOK in 1985 and especially after the elections of 1996, alternating PASOK and ND governments pursued similar neo-liberal policies. After a brief hope of concrete change in the first half of 2015, when SYRIZA had come to power, the situation returned to business as usual after the third bailout agreement with SYRIZA replacing PASOK as the centre-left, neo-liberal option. Chapter 6, in turn, illustrated how the changing Irish coalition governments from the 2000s onwards had no impact on actual policies pursued. For example, the anti-austerity rhetoric by Fian Gael and the Labour Party before the 2011 elections and there promise to re-negotiate the MoU with the Troika was quickly replaced by further restructuring and full implementation of the bailout agreement as soon as they had formed a coalition government. As already mentioned above, Ireland is different in that people have never experienced the disappointment of a centre-left government not delivering, as one centre-right coalition government has replaced another in different political party compositions. If at all, this may explain why there are still many activists in Ireland, who hope for change through the ballot box. Finally, co-constituted by these national level developments but also driving them, the neo-liberal shift within the EU form of state was further intensified through a move towards authoritarian neo-liberalism around a new system of economic governance in response to the global financial and Eurozone crises from late 2011 onwards, isolating especially economic decision-making from popular accountability. In short, institutions of representative democracy have become increasingly unresponsive to people’s political demands. They have removed the accountability of policy-making, shielding the interests of capital against popular pressure. It is in this respect that the focus on participatory democracy, challenging representative democracy, gains in importance. This is clearly visible in the role of referenda for water struggles. The constitutional right in Italy to request and hold a referendum allowed water activists to abrogate the law, which had forced municipalities to part-privatize their water services. The institutional innovation of the ECI at the European level, another type of referendum, facilitated the mobilization for public water across the EU. There is no official provision for referenda in the Greek constitution, but even holding an informal referendum against water privatization in Thessaloniki was a politically powerful strategy. In the case of Ireland, campaigners continue to campaign for holding a referendum on including public water in the country’s constitution. Other important examples of water struggles not covered in detail in this book include the referendum

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in Madrid/Spain in 2012, when the city intended to privatize 49 per cent of its water utility Canal de Isabel II. Having collected 35,000 signatures for a petition against privatization in 2011, activists held an informal referendum one year later. ‘An astonishing 166,000 people participated, 165,000 of whom voted to keep their water public’ (Barlow 2019: 103). After municipal elections in 2015, the new progressive city administration stopped water privatization. Interestingly, in Barcelona Agbar-Suez has attempted to block a referendum on water remunicipalization with a string of lawsuits, even though water activists had collected almost twice as many signatures as the required 15,000 for a citizens’ initiative. While the referendum was officially approved in 2018, it cannot be held until 2021 at the earliest, because local activists of Aigua És Vida (Water is Life) still have to wait for several further legal decisions (Interview No.59). Capital is clearly aware of the fact that referenda on water privatization are generally lost. In Berlin too, a referendum proved to be crucial in the re-municipalization of the city’s water services. They had first been commercialized in 1994, when the public company was re-organized under private law. Five years later, 49.9 per cent were sold to RWE Aqua Ltd. and Vivendi Environment, to become later Veolia. Against the background of drastic increases in water prices, the citizens’ committee Berlin Water Table launched a popular referendum campaign for the disclosure of the secret contracts, on which privatization had been based. ‘In February 2011, at the final stage of the popular referendum, 666,235 Berliners voted in favour of the proposition “Berliners want their water back”’ (Terhorst 2014). The company was re-municipalized in 2013, after the city had bought back the shares of the private companies. Assessing the failures of public sector water provision during the 1980s, David Hall concludes that ‘the problem of the 1980s public sector failures can … be seen as a lack of democratic process in the public sector, rather than a problem with the public sector itself ’ (Hall 2005: 20). Importantly, returning water into public hands does not automatically imply that the service is run better. ‘We acknowledge’, write David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters (2012: 6), ‘that many existing public services are poorly run – or non-existent – and do not meet any of our “criteria for success”. Defending these services is not an acceptable route to developing alternatives.’ The very fact that water privatization was presented as the best way forward during the 1990s came against the background that the traditional public model had failed in developing countries (Bakker 2010: 76–7). In developed countries too, public does not automatically imply efficiency. In fact, Italian state companies were

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often accused of being rather inefficient due to nepotism and corruption. Equally, the traditional public, anthropocentric way of managing water, had been highly exploitative of the environment (Bakker 2010: 87). In short, retaining or returning water into public hands can only be a first step. ‘Remunicipalisation is not merely about returning to the preprivatisation situation, but should be about reinventing public water management altogether’ (Hoedeman, Kishimoto and Pigeon 2012: 107). The way water services are run has to be re-thought more fundamentally. Public ownership on its own is not enough. We also need to think about new ways of how to organize the management of public companies in a more participatory, democratic way. As we have seen especially in the Italian case, water companies, which are fully owned by the public, but are commercialized in the form of joint-stock companies and, therefore, operate like private companies, imply the same problems like private corporations. The water company SMAT in Turin/Italy, for example, has also focused on profit maximization through increases in water charges and insufficient infrastructure investment. Again, public ownership and re-municipalization in themselves do not signify that water services are well managed. Re-municipalization can take different forms and there is this danger of a shift towards ‘the creation of service entities with legal and financial autonomy, operating on commercial principles – a trend called corporatisation’ (McDonald and Swyngedouw 2019: 325). Hence, re-municipalization, public ownership needs to be democratized to go beyond the problems of public utilities in the past as well as commercialized public services in the present. As outlined above, democratizing public ownership was an essential part of Italian and Greek water struggles. The Italian city of Naples, as soon as it had transformed its water services into a fully public company, embarked on experimenting with ways of bringing on board workers’ expertise and civil society’s voices in the running of the company. Other examples of experiments include the Spanish city of Zaragoza, where trade unions signed an agreement with other civil society organizations, political parties and the municipality for public water management in order to secure the human right to water in 2014 (EPSU 2014d). Similar experiments are carried out elsewhere. In Paris and Grenoble, ‘civil society representatives sit on the Board of Directors together with local government representatives, and have equal voting rights … ; [moreover,] citizen observatories have been established to open spaces for citizens to engage in strategic decisions on investment, technology options and tariff setting’ (Lobina, Kishimoto and Petitjean 2014: 5).

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These experiments are not without conflicts. In Naples, water workers have been sceptical whether social movement activists would have the necessary technical know-how to participate in water management, for example (Interview No.47). The Berlin Water Table, which had been the driving force behind the re-municipalization of water, demands further democratization of the Berlin water company and has developed a Water Charter to this effect, including demands for the participation of citizens in the running of the company (Interview 20, Berlin Water Table 2015). However, relations between the citizens’ movement and the workers and trade unions in the water company are bad (Terhorst 2014), and trade unions are reluctant to push this forward. Water companies need to be run by experts, it is argued (Interview No.18) and employee rights to participate in company decision-making may be weakened, if citizens/consumers are also involved (Interview No.19). There are, moreover, some concerns by public employers in Germany, who point out that the responsibility for running water services must remain with local authorities, able to take the necessary decisions to ensure safe water supply (Interview No.21). Concrete experiments are supported with conceptual development. The British campaign organization We Own It has continued to push for public ownership of key infrastructures including water services, something that is supported by more than 80 per cent of the public. In 2019, it published its proposal for a model of public ownership in the twenty-first century. Based on broad participation by government, users/citizens, civil society groups such as community groups and environmental organizations, workers, managers and trade unions, the emphasis rests on balancing ‘professionalism – experience and expertise – with voice – participation, democracy and co-production’ (We Own It 2019a: 33). A new Office of Public Ownership is part of the plan as is a ‘national statement of public values’. A shopfront of public services on the high streets in towns and cities is intended to facilitate interaction with citizens. The general focus is on how to ensure that everyone becomes actively engaged. Thus, a new organization with the name Participate is envisaged, having the task to provide a platform for organizing participation. As We Own It points out, ‘trade unions organise workers. The people who use public services also need to be organised through a new organisation’ (We Own It 2019a: 37). Ultimately, the expectation is that wider participation will result in better quality services. ‘Both public service users and workers have great ideas about how to improve public services. Co-production is “simply the recognition that services can and are modernised and reformed every day through the

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interaction of staff and users”’ (We Own It 2019a: 49). Building up a new institutional structure of this type, of course, costs money. Nevertheless, considering that £56 billion have been paid out in dividend payments to shareholders since privatization (We Own It 2019b: 6), it is clear that there is money available from within the water sector itself not only to lower consumer bills and increase infrastructure investment, but also to ensure wider participatory, democratic institutions. Unfortunately, with the Conservative Party electoral victory in December 2019 the implementation of these plans had to be shelfed for now.3 It is a municipality in Catalonia, which is pushing plans further by experimenting with their implementation in practice. Most recently, the city of Terrassa has embarked on an ambitious strategy with setting up a Water Observatory (Bagué 2019). Private corporations have dominated water services in Catalonia. The Agbar group, a subsidiary of Suez, services about 70 per cent of the population and is, thus, the dominant private company. In recent years, re-municipalization has gathered pace mainly thanks to the fact that concession contracts in ninety municipalities will have expired by 2025 (Planas 2017: 144–5). The municipality of Terrassa decided in July 2016 to bring water back into public ownership, which came into effect in December the same year after the end of the seventy-five-year long concession. The innovative moment of these developments is, however, not simply the  fact of re-municipalization, but the way of how water activists and social movements have engaged in a process of designing a new model of managing the city’s water services. Initiated by the Citizens Parliament of Terrassa, the Terrassa Water Observatory was established after lengthy negotiations in Spring 2019. ‘The nature of its work is to consult, advise, deliberate and make proposals, and it is able to carry out studies and produce reports and recommendations on water management’ (Planas and Martínez 2020: 156). The composition of the Plenary, the highest governing body of the Observatory, includes representatives from political parties, the municipal government, technical service staff, businesses, community groups, trade unions, the education as well as university-based research groups, and, thus, ensures broad participation in water management (Transnational Institute 2020: 7). Of course, the Observatory faces a number of challenges. ‘The first is the conflict between the autonomy of part of the management structure and the hierarchy of municipal government responsibilities. The second is to guarantee the co-production of public policy and collaborative governance in a public service. The third is the weakness linked to disagreements between social groups due to different ways

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of understanding social mandates’ (Planas and Martínez 2020: 160). Clearly, this is a live experiment and the outcome is yet unclear. Only time will tell, whether the Water Observatory will meet these challenges. Nonetheless, Terrassa points to a potential way forward. The local Water Observatory represents a space for co-producing political processes, creating a system of governance, all driven by the question of how we can guarantee the human right to water. The whole effort is based on the collective image of water as being essential for life. Inside the Observatory, activists discuss how they can organize best social participation in water management. Re-municipalization in Terrassa is not only a technical issue, it is also a democratic one (Interview No.54). In turn, participation empowers citizens. Who knows, this may trigger a process, which may lead to similar development in other areas. As I learned during my field research for this book, a well-structured, efficient public sector service such as water instils tremendous pride in one’s own profession. ‘I am proud to work for a company, which has as its main objective the provision of a high quality, affordable service to Naples’ citizens’, says my interviewee, an engineer of the water company ABC (Interview No.47). While showing me the wider infrastructure of water services in Athens, another interviewee casts his eyes over the large water aqueduct ensuring the supply of five million citizens in Athens with high quality drinking water. There is a clear sense of pride about what can be achieved from within a public company (Interview No.40). It is this kind of commitment combined with social objectives, which public companies nurture and which makes public-public partnerships based on public sector values so important unlike the profit-driven public-private partnerships, capital proposes. While there is no blueprint of how a new form of democracy should be designed, experiments of the type in Naples, Grenoble, Paris, Zaragoza and Terrassa, in which trade unions, municipalities, public water managers and citizens groups from across the social factory are working together, can help to explore new democratic ways of managing water and sanitation successfully for all. The shift from a focus on the commons to discussions over how to democratize the delivery of water as a public service should not necessarily be regarded as a move away from radical transformation. ‘Strengthening the democratic, public character of water services is fundamentally at odds with the currently dominant neoliberal model of globalisation, which subordinates ever more areas of life to the harsh logic of global markets’, concluded Bélen Balanyá and his colleagues already in 2005 (Balanyá et al. 2005: 248). It is the Irish case of struggles against the introduction of water charges,

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which exemplifies best this transformative dynamic of democracy. As outlined in Chapter 6, the Irish community groups questioned representative democracy and started experimenting with alternative forms of decision-making. They frontally challenged the representative nature of our liberal democracies, which ultimately provide the political institutional setting that is internally related to neo-liberal economics and thus sustaining the dominant mode of exploitation and surplusvalue creation. Based on her detailed personal engagement with a whole range of local community groups, Madelaine Moore counsels us against romanticizing these experiments. As always, experiments can work, but they can also go wrong. ‘Linked to their overall rejection of leaders and formalised organisation, many of the Says No groups had a lack of internal accountability processes and many fell into problems of unchecked power’ (Moore 2020: 221). What remains important, however, is this realization that working through representative democratic institutions is highly problematic, if you want to pursue fundamental change. When it comes to solving economic, political and social problems associated with global capitalism, there is a new political creativity related to experimenting with forms of participatory democracy, which has potentially transformative implications (Sotirakopoulos and Sotiropoulos 2013: 453). Unsurprisingly, it was the squares movement in Greece, another forum for experimenting with new forms of democracy, which provided space for the development of water initiatives. K136 was born in the square around the White Tower in Thessaloniki, SAVE GREEK WATER was an initiative coming out of the squares movement in Athens. Whenever people come together and aim to determine their own future, alternative possibilities are concretized. It is in these moments of collectively developing alternatives within and beyond capitalism that activists and social movements demonstrate their ability to create knowledge in processes of popular learning-in-struggle.

Conclusion: Open-ended struggles over the future of water Capital, of course, does not give up. Driven by the unceasing pressure towards constant expansion to find new profitable investment opportunities in order to overcome crises, there are constantly renewed attempts at privatizing water. While individual, affected water companies oppose re-municipalization on the ground – see, for example, the campaign by Aigües de Barcelona, mainly controlled by Agbar-Suez (Popartan et al. 2020: 1423–7) – there is no wider

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international, co-ordinated strategy by private water companies against re-municipalization (McDonald 2019b: 355–6). Rather, private companies and their representative organizations engage with dominant discourses about human rights and sustainability and push for publicprivate partnerships in order to secure profitable market opportunities. The global investment bank and financial services firm Citi, for example, engages willing academics to produce dubious studies about the apparently positive results of attaching a price to water. Unsurprisingly, they conclude that ‘properly managed pricing mechanisms can be an excellent policy instrument for managing the demand for water and for recovering costs’ (Citi GPS 2017: 83). While such research does not reflect anything in reality but is at best in line with artificial economic models, it justifies the commodification of water and, thus, the possibility of making a profit from trading with water. Equally, Water Europe, including Suez and Veolia among its TNC members and Coca Cola as a large water user plus a host of technology companies, heavily lobbies for what it calls a Water-Smart Society driven by the latest digital technology. It references the UN Sustainable Development Goals, while at the same time listing as one of its key objectives ‘boosting the European water market as well as the global competitiveness of European water industries’ (Water Europe 2017: 5). There are even references to new inclusive, multi-stakeholder governance models including also user participation mechanisms, while focusing on ‘opening up new markets based on the value in water’ (Water Europe 2017: 25) and ‘boosting the market for providers of water technology solutions’ (Water Europe 2017: 26). Elsewhere Water Europe (2019) published a report together with the UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme on how Europe can assist in meeting the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development especially in relation to Goal 6 ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’. The report emphasizes the importance of governance structures and multi-stakeholder partnerships including public sector officials, NGOs, civil society and private sector companies. It even mentions positively the ECI as an example of a successful awareness raising activity. Ultimately, however, the report asserts that ‘water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good’ and confirms that ‘complete achievement of the 2030 Agenda would create at least US$ 12 trillion in market opportunities’ (Water Europe 2019: 16, 30). While lobbying and the provision of ‘research’ is one face of the private water industry, the relentless pushback against democratic decisions that counter privatization is the other. As we have seen in this book,

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although an overwhelming majority of Italian citizens rejected water privatization in the referendum in 2011, the referendum results have never been fully implemented. While further privatization is no longer mandatory, hardly any support is provided for re-municipalization. The second referendum question was never translated into law. Instead of a guaranteed remuneration of investment, the new rule now talks about full cost recovery including the finance required by water companies for borrowing from banks. At the European level, to date the Commission has refused to institutionalize the human right to water. In Greece, the privatization of water has been back on the agenda since the third bailout agreement in July 2015. The recent victory in the Council of State against the transfer of water company shares to the Superfund is encouraging, but still needs to be confirmed. Finally, in Ireland today activists brace themselves for a renewed attack on water, while publicprivate cooperation in infrastructure projects continues. This summary cannot disqualify the successes of the water struggles covered in this book. Nevertheless, it serves as a warning against leaning back and being satisfied with what has been achieved. This even more so as the global challenges on sustainable water resources remain as prevalent as ever. The picture Maude Barlow (2007: 5–21) painted fourteen years ago is still relevant today. Our surface water is increasingly polluted, our ground water depleted, glaciers continue to melt if they have not disappeared altogether by now, urbanization, deforestation and desertification linked to climate change continue putting pressure on humanity’s fresh water resources. Inequality between Global North and Global South remains vast. High technology applications such as desalination are part of the problem, not the solution. Hence, the struggle for preserving public water has to go on. One innovative way of doing so is Maude Barlow’s Blue Communities project. ‘To become a Blue Community, a municipality must: 1. recognize and protect water and sanitation as human rights; 2. protect water as a public trust by promoting publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services; and 3. ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and at municipal events.’ (Barlow 2019: 76) The project started in Canada in 2009, from where it spread to Europe including Bern as first European Blue Community in 2013 and Paris in 2016, followed most recently by Brussels in November 2019. Bern added a fourth principle: ‘to promote public-public partnerships rather than

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public-private partnerships in the global South’ (Barlow 2019: 92). This principle was picked up by the German Blue Communities in Marburg, Munich, Berlin and Augsburg. Importantly, as we learned in Chapter 5, the Blue Community initiative also provided activists in Thessaloniki with a way of continuing their struggle against privatization. In 2018, EYATH became a Blue Community ambassador and the city a Blue Community. In Ireland, a number of city councils are currently exploring the possibility of becoming a Blue Community. On its own, the Blue Communities project is unlikely to turn around the current capitalist mode of production. Nevertheless, it provides people with an opportunity to engage in concrete grassroots action, accomplishing something in the here and now (Barlow 2019: 114). In sum, water struggles will continue to play a crucial role in finding alternatives to capitalism. Public water services are often the first step towards a broader appreciation of public services. If water is treated as an essential public service democratically managed or understood as a commons, why should not other services such as refuse collection, public transport, education or health be treated likewise? After years of private mismanagement, re-municipalization of waste services in Norway driven by workers and local union branches is a good example in this respect. ‘In the case of Kragerø, the first municipality to take back its waste services, fees for residents have been reduced by 14 per cent while waste collection workers are enjoying higher wages and pensions alongside more permanent contracts and support in gaining official diplomas for their skills’ (Transnational Institute 2020: 5). In turn, revaluation of public services can stimulate further transformation. As the British campaign organization We Own It states, Public ownership of public services is just one part of the jigsaw. Creating a more democratic economy is a bigger task. It will mean a number of alternative models of ownership. It will mean community wealth building across the country. It will mean unleashing cooperatives. It will mean public platforms ‘owned and controlled by the people’. It will mean tackling the vast inequality of housing and land distribution across the UK. (We Own It 2019a: 5)

Finally, water also goes beyond its immediate importance in that it highlights the problematic of continuing inequality at the global level, when it comes to access to clean water and sanitation. As long as countries in the Global South are forced to prioritize the re-payment of

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debt over the provision of basic services, progress towards the human right to water remains blocked. Thus, ‘no serious plan to alleviate the water crisis can ignore the poverty of the global South and the role of debt repayment in that cycle’ (Barlow 2007: 31–2). In short, water as a vital source of life is crucial in its own right. Democratic public management of water, apart from securing this vital source, can additionally form the basis of much broader transformations at municipal, regional, state and global level. We have seen in this book how the attractiveness of water as a profitable investment opportunity increased after the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. As I complete writing this book in July 2020, the economic fallout of COVID-19 is not yet fully visible. Nobody can doubt, however, the future struggles over who pays for the crisis. There may well be another push for water privatization as a way of moving wealth from individuals to large corporations. As water activists know, capital always comes back to renew its privatization attempts. The water movements covered in this book are currently less active, many activists are exhausted. Nevertheless, the residues of resistance are still present and provide the basis for rapid mobilization when needed to defend water, when needed to defend life!

Notes 1 See https://www.suez.com/en/who-we-are/a-committed-group/ supporting-the-right-to-water-and-sanitation; accessed 11 June 2020. 2 See https://www.veolia.com/en/news/Human-Rights-SDGs-CEO-GuideHuman-Rights; accessed 11 June 2020. 3 For a detailed discussion of potential public alternatives to privatization, see Whitfield (2020: 339–469).

B I B L IO G R A P H Y Interviews Interview No.1: Deputy General Secretary, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU); Brussels/Belgium, 23 January 2012. Interview No.2: Two representatives of the Secretariat, Italian Forum of Water Movements; Rome/Italy, 25 March 2014. Interview No.3: Co-ordinator for Welfare State policies, Funzione Pubblica – Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (FP-CGIL), Italian public services trade union; Rome/Italy, 26 March 2014. Interview No.4: Co-ordinator for wider networks, Confederazione dei Comitati di Base (Cobas), Italian rank-and-file trade union; Rome/Italy, 26 March 2014. Interview No.5: Member of National Council, ATTAC Italia; Rome/Italy, 27 March 2014. Interview No.6: Member of National Co-ordination Group; Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), Italian rank-and-file trade union; Rome, 27 March 2014. Interview No.7: Researcher on Italian water movement, Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso; Rome/Italy, 31 March 2014. Interview No.8: President of the Arezzo Public Water Committee; Florence/ Italy, 2 April 2014. Interview No.9: Co-ordinator of International Section, Italian Forum of Water Movements; one of the ECI ambassadors at EU level; Florence/Italy, 2 April 2014. Interview No.10: Co-ordinator in Tuscany for questions related to water, Legambiente Toscana; Florence/Italy, 3 April 2014. Interview No.11: Members of the Arezzo Public Water Committee; Arezzo/ Italy, 4 April 2014. Interview No.12: Co-ordinator of the Turin Public Water Committee; Turin/ Italy, 7 April 2014. Interview No.13: Researcher on Italian water movement, University of Turin; Turin/Italy, 7 April 2014. Interview No.14: President, Italian Committee for World Water Contract (Comitato Italiano Contratto Mondiale sull’Acqua, CICMA); Milan/Italy, 8 April 2014. Interview No.15: Deputy General Secretary, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU); Brussels/Belgium, 6 May 2014. Interview No.16: Referent, Water Committee of the region of Apulia/Italy; Interview via Skype, 6 June 2014. Interview No.17: Officer responsible for water economy since June 2013, ver. di; Berlin/Germany, 17 November 2014.

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Interview No.18: Officer responsible for water economy until June 2013, ver.di; Berlin/Germany, 17 November 2014. Interview No.19: Director, Section of macroeconomic co-ordination, DGB; Berlin/Germany, 18 November 2014. Interview No.20: Representative of Common Goods in Citizens’ Hands (Gemeingut in Bürgerhand, GIB) and Representative of Berlin Water Table (Berliner Wassertisch); Berlin/Germany, 19 November 2014. Interview No.21: Director, Alliance of Public Water Providers (Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft, AöW); Berlin/Germany, 20 November 2014. Interview No.22: Officer responsible for water questions, Grüne Liga/ Germany; Interview via Telephone, 27 November 2014. Interview No.23: President, Lithuanian Industry Trade Unions’ Federation; Interview via Skype, 12 January 2015. Interview No.24: President, Trade Union of Energy Sector Workers of Slovenia; Interview via Skype, 15 January 2015. Interview No.25: General Secretary, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU); Brussels/Belgium, 18 December 2017. Interview No.26: Co-ordinator of the Turin Public Water Committee; Turin/ Italy, 28 December 2017. Interview No.27: Political Education and Community Organiser, Unite; Dublin/Ireland, 26 February 2018. Interview No.28: Local community activist; Dublin/Ireland, 26 February 2018. Interview No.29: Member of the anarchist Workers Solidarity Movement; Dublin/Ireland, 27 February 2018. Interview No.30: Local community activist; Crumlin, Dublin/Ireland, 28 February 2018. Interview No.31: Scholar activist, Maynooth University; Dublin/Ireland, 28 February 2018. Interview No.32: Member of Irish Parliament, Socialist Party/Solidarity; Dublin/Ireland, 1 March 2018; Interview No.33: President of the EYATH Water Workers’ Union SEEYATH; Thessaloniki/Greece, 16 April 2018. Interview No.34: President of Proskalo; President of BiosCoop 2018 and member of K136; Thessaloniki/Greece, 16 April 2018. Interview No.35: Leading member of SOS te to Nero; Thessaloniki/Greece, 16 April 2018. Interview No.36: Leading member of K136 and Proskalo, environmentalist and social solidarity economist; Thessaloniki/Greece, 16 April 2018. Interview No.37: Lawyer, responsible for Thessaloniki water movement lawsuits to Council of State (Constitutional Court); member of SOS te to Nero and Svolou neighbourhood project; Thessaloniki/Greece, 17 April. Interview No.38: President of the EYATH Water Workers’ Union SEEYATH, follow-up interview; Thessaloniki/Greece, 18 April 2018. Interview No.39: Activist of Water Warriors; Thessaloniki/Greece, 18 April 2018.

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Interview No.40: Leading member of trade union SEKES, Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP); Athens/Greece, 19 April 2018. Interview No.41: Leading member of SAVE GREEK WATER (SGW); Athens/ Greece, 19 April 2018. Interview No.42: Academic working on cooperative law also in close cooperation with K136 in Thessaloniki; Athens/Greece, 20 April 2018. Interview No.43: Leading members of Arezzo Public Water Committee; Arezzo/Italy, 28 May 2018. Interview No.44: Representative of the Secretariat, Italian Forum of Water Movements; Roma/Italy, 29 May 2018. Interview No.45: Co-ordinator for wider networks, Confederazione dei Comitati di Base (Cobas), Italian rank-and-file trade union; Roma, 30 May 2018. Interview No.46: Academic and water activist; Naples/Italy, 31 May 2018. Interview No.47: Worker, responsible for Engineering, Research and Development, Acqua Bene Comune (ABC), public water company in Naples; Naples/Italy, 31 May 2018. Interview No.48: Representative of the Naples Public Water Committee; Naples/Italy, 1 June 2018. Interview No.49: Academic researcher and activist on European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Skype, 16 November 2018. Interview No.50: Policy Staff, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) and leading member of European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Skype, 5 September 2019. Interview No.51: Leading member of Eau Secours 34 water movement in Montpellier/France and member of European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Skype, 7 October 2019. Interview No.52: Leading member of Serbian water movement defend the rivers of Stara Planina (‘Odbranimo reke Stare planine’), Serbia and member of European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Zoom, 30 October 2019. Interview No.53: Leading member of Berlin Water Table (Berliner Wassertisch), Germany and member of European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Skype, 31 October 2019. Interview No.54: Leading member of Terrassa water movement/Spain; Interview via Skype, 8 November 2019. Interview No.55: International Co-ordinator, Italian Forum of Water Movements and member of the European Water Movement (EWM); Brussels/Belgium, 28 November 2019. Interview No.56: Leading member of water movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina and member of the European Water Movement (EWM); Brussels/Belgium, 28 November 2019. Interview No.57: President of the EYATH Water Workers’ Union SEEYATH and member of the European Water Movement (EWM); Brussels/Belgium, 29 November 2019.

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Interview No.58: Leading member of Cork water movement/Ireland and member of the European Water Movement (EWM); Brussels/Belgium, 30 November 2019. Interview No.59: Leading member of Water is Life (Aigua És Vida), Barcelona/ Spain and member of European Water Movement (EWM); Brussels/ Belgium, 30 November 2019. Interview No.60: Director of EU Affairs, Food & Water Europe/Food and Water Watch and member of the European Water Movement (EWM); Interview via Zoom, 16 December 2019. Interview No.61: Leading member of SOS te to Nero, Thessaloniki/Greece; Interview via Zoom, 24 June 2020.

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INDEX Alternative World Water Forum 54, 58, 80, 154 Austria 80, 82, 87, 89, 93 Barlow, Maude 6, 17, 48, 122, 152, 154, 160, 168, 175–7 Belgium 80, 84, 88 Bhattacharya, Tithi 17–18 Blue Communities 122, 152, 175–6 Brenner, Robert 32 Britain 32, 37, 45–6, 126, 147, 170, 176. See also UK We Own It 170–1, 176 capitalism 1–14, 17, 26, 29–40, 42, 3, 67, 76–7, 93–4, 103–5, 156–8, 161–3 accumulation by dispossession 6, 10, 41, 160–1 capitalist accumulation 17–20, 23, 30, 38, 40–2, 89, 131, 135, 163 declining rate of profit 38, 42, 65 industrial revolution 32, 37 necessary labour 12 organic composition of capital 33, 103–4 primitive accumulation 161 enclosures 32, 161 slave labour 37 slave trade 37 sphere of production 9, 17, 40, 83, 108, 111, 156, 120 sphere of social reproduction 10, 17–19, 38, 41–3, 56, 76, 83, 89, 98, 108, 111, 143, 156–7 structuring conditions 2, 8, 12–13, 24–5, 29, 33, 36, 38, 52, 65, 70, 76, 80, 89, 93, 104–5, 114, 161 surplus labour 11–12 surplus value 12, 17, 20, 29–30, 32–5, 39–41, 45, 48, 103, 105, 161, 163 uneven and combined development 36, 68, 103–5

Catholic Social Doctrine 58, 152 cheap nature 20, 38, 41–4, 49, 100, 135, 157. See also economic crisis, cheap nature fix class struggle 8, 13–24, 36, 98, 157–9 class 8–11, 13–18, 20–1, 38–9, 41–2, 44, 46, 107, 129–30, 141–3, 148, 151, 158 class fraction 14, 22–3, 39, 89 transnational capital 4, 13, 22–5, 39–40, 43–9, 94–7, 115, 166 Cochabamba, water war 1, 52, 55, 80, 153–4 commons 14, 26–6, 32, 37, 58–9, 77, 85, 111, 123, 147, 151–2, 155, 158, 160–6, 172, 176 Detroit Water Brigade (DWB) 144, 155 direct/participatory democracy 14, 58–9, 61, 74, 77, 108, 111, 143, 145, 147–8, 163–73 referendum 2–3, 24, 49–52, 55–6, 59–65, 68, 70, 72–3, 76–7, 79, 84, 87, 100, 111, 113–15, 117, 119, 121, 146, 149, 151–6, 164–5, 167–8, 175 economic crisis 29–30, 38–41, 43, 49, 67, 93, 102 cheap nature fix 43, 49 financial fix 40, 42 (see also financialization) social fix 41–2 spatial fix 39 technological fix 39 European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) 2–3, 24, 29, 68, 77, 79, 81–92, 98–100, 113, 121, 155–6, 169 European Social Forum (ESF) 54, 79, 85 European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) 131 European Union (EU) 1–2, 4–5, 9, 23–5, 28, 36, 49, 52, 65, 68, 77, 80–2,

208

Index

86, 89–100, 102–7, 112, 114–16, 120, 125, 127–8, 131, 151, 157, 166–7 Drinking Water Directive (DWD) 91–3, 99, 151 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 65, 93–5, 102–4 European Central Bank (ECB) 25, 68, 94, 96, 106, 114, 125 European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) 2–3, 24, 77, 79–93, 97–8, 100, 111–13, 121, 125, 137–8, 144, 151, 153–7, 166–7, 174 European Commission 2, 25, 27, 68, 79–82, 90, 92, 94–9, 106, 117, 124–5, 151, 175 European Council 95 European Economic and Social Committee (EcoSoc) 91–2 European Parliament (EP) 2, 90–2, 100, 113–14, 117, 120–1, 136, 151, 155, 166 Eurozone 1, 25, 41–2, 64, 66–7, 76, 93–4, 96–7, 101–2, 104, 106, 125, 129–31, 134, 167 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG) 95 Troika 25, 94, 96, 106, 110, 114–16, 118, 125, 127, 134, 141, 148, 167 European Water Movement (EWM) 5, 79, 85, 98–100, 113, 121, 155, 166 Federici, Silvia 31, 42, 161 feminism 15–20, 31, 86, 157 ecofeminism 19–20 Social Reproduction Theory 17–19 Ferguson, Susan 17–18 financialization 40–3, 45–6, 48, 50, 94, 135. See also economic crisis, financial fix Finland 80, 93 Foster, John Bellamy 19, 26 n.2 France 29, 32, 44, 88, 99 Germany 80, 82, 84, 86–7, 89, 99, 102–3, 129, 170 Alliance of Public Water Providers (AöW) 82, 84, 91 Berlin Water Table 4, 83, 86, 99, 113, 144, 157, 168, 170

German services trade union (ver. di) 83, 86 Greece 1–3, 25, 28, 36, 49, 67, 80, 87, 91, 94, 97, 101–24, 128, 135, 137–8, 144, 146, 151, 153, 164, 166, 173, 175 ADEDY (Civil Servants’ Confederation) 112 EYATH (Water Supply and Sewerage Company, Thessaloniki) 101, 109–10, 112–14, 117–22, 124, 156, 176 EYDAP (Water Supply and Sewerage Company, Athens) 101, 109, 10, 112–14, 117, 120–2, 124, 151, 156, 166 GSEE (General Confederation of Greek Workers) 112, 120 HCAP (Hellenic Company for Assets and Participation) 116–17 HDADF (Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund) 110 (see also TAIPED) Initiative 136 (K136) 110–11, 113, 118–20, 123, 164–6, 173 New Democracy (ND) 105, 108, 112, 114, 153, 167 OME-EYDAP (EYDAP Federation of Workers’ Union) 112, 120, 156 PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) 105, 108, 112, 115, 119–20, 122, 153, 167 Save Greek Water (SGW) 112–13, 116–17, 120, 173 SEEYATH (trade union of EYATH) 99, 109, 112–13, 117, 119–22, 153, 156, 158, 166 SEKES (water sector trade union, Athens) 112–13, 120–1, 153, 156 SOS te to Nero 111, 113, 117, 119–20, 122–3, 157 SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) 109, 114–16, 118–22, 144, 167 TAIPED 110, 112–14, 117, 121, 124, 151 Harvey, David 4, 13, 33–5, 40–1, 161 historical materialism 7, 8, 11, 13–17, 21, 161–2

Index social property relations approach 32, 37–8 world-systems theory 31 Hungary 80, 87–8 incorporated comparison 3–4, 7, 52, 77, 121, 144, 156 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 5, 25, 45, 94, 106, 125 Ireland 1–3, 25, 28, 36, 88, 94, 125–50, 153, 155, 157–8, 166–7, 175–6 Fianna Fáil 148 Fine Gael 127, 141, 148 Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) 131–2, 142–3, 148, 157 Mandate 136–7, 139, 142–3, 156 Sinn Féin 137, 140, 142, 145, 148 Socialist Party (SP) 132–3, 136–7, 139–40, 142, 145 Socialist Workers Party (SWP) 132–3, 136–7, 139–40, 142 Unite 131–3, 136–7, 139, 141–3, 156, 158 Italy 1–3, 16, 24, 26, 28–9, 36, 49, 51–78, 79–80, 82, 85, 87, 91, 103, 105, 111, 120, 135, 137–8, 146, 153, 155, 157, 164–7, 169 Acqua Bene Comune (ABC), public water company in Naples 73–5, 155, 165, 172 ACLI (Christian Association of Italian Workers) 55, 57 AEEGSI (Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity, Gas and Water) 63, 69 AGESCI (Association of Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts) 55 ARCI (Italian Recreative and Cultural Association) 55, 57 ARERA (Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste) 63 ATTAC Italia 54–5, 57, 60 CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) 55–6, 58, 156 CICMA (Italian Committee for World Water Contract) 54–5, 57, 82 Cobas (Italian rank-and-file trade union) 55, 57–8, 156

209 Democratic Party (PD) 62–3 Five Stars Movement (M5S) 63, 155, 71–3 Forum of Water Movements 2, 24, 51–73, 76–7, 81, 99, 113, 155 Forza Italia 60, 78 n.2 FP-CGIL (Italian Public Services trade union) 56–7, 60, 71, 83, 156 Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) 62–3 Lega (Nord) 60, 72, 78 n.2 Legambiente 55, 60, 83 USB (Italian rank-and-file trade union) 55, 57–8, 156 WWF Italia 55, 60

Lithuania 80–1, 85–6 Luxembourg 80 Marx, Karl 12, 18, 30–1, 33–4, 37, 41, 161 Moore, Jason 18–20, 26 n.2, 30–1, 42–3 neo-liberalism 1, 3–4, 8, 22, 27, 30, 39, 42, 44, 49–50, 66–8, 73, 76, 81, 85, 93–4, 96–7, 108, 122, 131, 141, 149, 159, 167, 173 authoritarian neo-liberalism 96–7, 106–7, 167 neo-liberal restructuring 4, 8, 10, 55, 67, 76, 81, 93, 97–8, 105–6, 132, 151, 165 Netherlands 35, 80, 82 political ecology 7 Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) 28, 81 re-municipalization 1, 29, 48–9, 60, 63–4, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 79, 111, 165, 168–75 Romania 88, 106 Salleh, Ariel 19, 20, 26 n.2 Scandinavia 88, 129, 131 Slovakia 80 Slovenia 80, 85–7, 98, 117 social factory 16–18, 56, 81, 83, 85, 89, 98, 111–12, 114, 121, 135, 143, 146, 152, 154, 156, 172

210 social movements 2, 7–10, 13–15, 20–1, 56, 60, 81, 83, 85–7, 89, 95–8, 111, 123, 129, 156–7, 163, 171, 173 learning-in-struggle 14, 61, 111, 148, 173 Spain 5, 32, 67, 80, 87, 103, 108, 128, 144, 168 Agbar 5, 98, 168, 171, 173 Aigua és Vida 99, 168 Canal de Isabel II 87, 168 Terrassa Water Observatory 5, 152, 171–2 state, form of 23–4, 36, 65, 70, 79, 89–90, 93, 95, 97, 107, 125, 129, 166–7 strategic selectivity 23, 68, 93, 95, 107, 163, 166 Suez 5, 29, 44–5, 49–50, 53, 69, 82, 88, 97, 100, 109–10, 112, 159, 171, 174

Index Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) 98 Transnational Institute 28, 171, 176 UK 4, 28, 44, 81, 88, 150 n.4, 157, 176. See also Britain United Nations (UN) 1, 7, 79–80, 91–2, 107, 154, 159–60, 174 Veolia 29, 44–5, 49–50, 53, 69, 82, 88, 97, 100, 134, 146, 159, 168, 174 water as a human right 1, 53, 61–2, 77, 80, 82–3, 89–91, 117, 122, 140, 151–2, 154–5, 158, 160, 166 Water Europe 28, 97, 174 water grabbing 5–7 Wood, Ellen Meiksins 11, 32 World Bank 5, 44–5, 55 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 5, 105

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