The accounts, symbols and feelings that we have about national identity were largely imagined, created and popularized in the nineteenth century. The word ‘nationalism’ itself dates from the early nineteenth century and marked the increasing use of national identity in order to make political claims. So to argue that national identity is pre-political is itself a political statement. 

Today's rediscovery of the notion of the commons stems directly from the need to regulate and to explore how to enable the collaborative action of a multiplicity of protagonists who are autonomous and so not governable by simple authoritative mechanisms.

If democracy means rule by the people for the people, it has broken down. At pivotal moments in the past, altering the rules of the political has been a defining trait of the organised left, able to project a new social order out of latent concerns, as well as develop the means to alter the grammar of politics

As citizens lose confidence in democratic institutions, xenophobic populist parties thrive and join their voices to the critique of the state of national and European democracies. Their arguments often coincide with those of liberal or leftist critics, but their goals are radically different

The common denominator of Greece's and Europe's (and the world's) problems is the uncontrolled power of business. Politics has become privatised. On behalf of ‘efficiency’ the defence of the common good was outsourced to business groups. With the result that is unfolding in front of our eyes.