Purely personal reflections on the state of politics.

The demise of French greatness and the European Left

The GFC clearly, in my view, demonstrated that the political positions held by both the left- and right-wing governments in the West with respect to economic policy were untenable. Both sides of politics in each major and country adopted versions of market liberalism where the overlap was more dominant than the differences. While the left maintained some emphasis on social policy and the right maintained an emphasis on individual freedom (which was more about corporate freedom than anything), the fact remains that these differences were blurred by the dominance of the free market approach in each of their platforms. It is ironic, that as a consequence of the GFC, the bureaucratic state is more dominant now than it was, especially in the European Union where the political and technical elite interacts with the so-called market to create what has been called the democratic deficit. We now have technocrats in the European bureaucracy, in the IMF, in the World Bank and other multilateral organisations who contrive to implement policies which have allowed the benefits of economic activity to be increasingly diverted to beneficiaries who are at the top end of the income and wealth distribution. Today’s blog continues reporting some of the research I’ve been doing for my next book on the demise of the Left and the subjugation of public purpose in the name of austerity. It seems that we have concentrated on fiscal austerity but the general notion of austerity, which is now the centrepiece of political positions in most advanced countries, goes well beyond just fiscal policy. The response to the recent events in Paris demonstrate how far the state is willing to centralise authoritative controls on the rights of their citizens.

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European Left face a Dystopia of their own making

Last week, I re-read an article from May 1, 2012 by Abraham Newman – Austerity and the End of the European Model – that was published in Foreign Affairs. The article carried the sub-title “How Neoliberals Captured the Continent”. The author is a US political scientist and observed that given the unprecedented austerity that the European politicians have inflicted on their nations with such damaging consequences, the “Tea Party loyalists in the United States should be green with envy”, The hard-line US Republicans don’t go close to their European brethren. The thrust of the article was that independent of the short-term effects of the austerity it “will transform Europe’s political economy in the long term, lending credence to neo-liberal ideas of limited government and loosely regulated markets. The irony of this transformation is that it reinvigorates the very ideas that helped cause the financial crisis in the first place …” This is a theme that I share. It is also a starting point for a very interesting essay I read last week by Slovenian lawyer Bojan Bugaric – Europe Against the Left? On Legal Limits to Progressive Politics – published May 2013. I have been seeking to understand these perspectives more deeply as part of my larger book project concerning the demise of the European left.

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The tale of two nations – democracy dies in Portugal and lives in Canada

The tale of two nations – two monetary systems – two continents – Canada and Portugal. It is reasonable to assume that when voters in so-called free democracies elect members to their parliaments who then freely coalesce across ‘party’ lines to form an absolute majority that they will be given the right to govern irrespective of the ideology they represent and the policies that they have put forward to the voters to win their approval. That seems to happen in Canada. It definitely doesn’t happen in Portugal. The Portuguese President dropped his so-called “bomba atómica” last week when he refused to endorse the coalition of parties that held the absolute majority of seats in the Assembly as a result of the recent national election. He indicated that he would not allow a government that would relax the fiscal austerity and consider exiting the Eurozone. His motivation was that financial markets had to remain appeased. It was an extraordinary intervention and will come back to haunt the nation given that the conservative austerity government will lose its authority as soon as it puts its platform to the new Parliament for endorsement (within the next 10 or so days). Then the nation is in chaos and the President will be compelled to accept the anti-austerity left coalition or something worse will happen. But, happily, in Canada, the election of the Liberal Party is a rejection of the obsession with fiscal surpluses – at least for now.

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Jeremy Corbyn is breaking down the neo-liberal Groupthink

It has been an interesting period watching the various ruses that conservatives are bringing to bear to attack Jeremy Corbyn and, somewhat unrelated, try to justify why the US Federal Reserve Bank should be raising interest rates. I will deal with the latter issue another day. Apparently, the grass roots rise of Jeremy Corbyn to leadership of the British Labour Party is actually a demonstration of the “rise of groupthink” in British politics and “threatens Britain’s membership of the EU – and the United Kingdom itself”. Indeed, more Corbynsteria as the terminology goes. This quietly-spoken British man seems to have a lot to answer for after having the audacity to intervene in the cosy little neo-liberal world of British party politics (Tory and New Labour). But the part that interested me was that the author – who is employed by the lofty sounding but usually disappointing, British-based Centre for European Reform (which gets funding because it is a mouthpiece for pro-European integration) – considers Corbyn has been the beneficiary of a new found groupthink. It beggars belief really.

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Friday lay day – when governments act outside the law they just change the law!

Its my Friday lay day. This week I have written a few (very) long blogs on what I consider to be significant topics. I have been writing on topics that have a direct bearing on what is happening within the British Labour Party over the last few weeks as a way of providing an economic knowledge base for activists who wish to defend their position against the attacks from the Tory-lites (New Labour). Anyway, after a few days of heavy writing I am not going to write much today (in blog space) and will fill this blog up with music, advertisements, promotions and a cartoon. But there is an issue that has come up this week in Australia which goes to the heart of the neo-liberal attack on our democratic rights which I can write about succinctly. The decision by a court to overturn an approval for a coalmine development has caused our neo-liberal government to go into ‘conniptions’ and accuse community groups of being “radical green activists” engaging in “vigilante litigation”. Read on to learn how the neo-liberal way is that when the government is caught acting outside the law to help their corporate business mates the solution is simple – change the law to make it easier for business to bypass acceptable approval processes.

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Mitterrand’s turn to austerity was an ideological choice not an inevitability

As background research to one of my book projects I have been reading a recent biography of François Mitterrand by Philip Short. Its title “Mitterand: A Study in Ambiguity” points to the capacity of Mitterand himself to blow with the wind but only when it suited his sense of personal ambition. Hiding behind his statesmanship was a man with “infinite shades of deviousness, an aesthete and intellectual, a sensualist, a crook”. The story of Mitterrand and his famous turn to austerity in March 1983 is very important to understand because it is used by progressives to justify their ‘austerity-lite’ stances with respect to economic policy. The New Labour politicians that are attacking Jeremy Corbyn’s policy proposals fit into this camp. The ‘left’ narrative is that the demise of Keynesian policy options was inevitable in the face of globalisation of capital and the growing importance of Transnational Corporations (TNCs). But, my argument is that there was nothing inevitable at all about Mitterrand’s poorly contrived shift into austerity. The progressives who advocate the inevitability thesis conflate the development of the TNCs with the emerging dominance of the neo-liberal ideology (which is concoction from economists intent on pushing the textbook competitive free market model with minimal state intervention). The development of the TNCs didn’t undermine the capacity of currency-issuing nation states. That has been accomplished by the imposition of the neo-liberal ideology and is reversible if the politics can be won. That is what I see as Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge – to win the politics. There is plenty of strong economic argument to help him do that.

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Correcting political ignorance and misperceptions

Apparently, voters hate fiscal deficits, associate them with squander and want them to be cut, so that nations can live within their means. Any attempt to run foul of that essential wisdom will come to grief. So all you ‘left’ types – yes, those in the British Labour Party that means you – forget your little grass roots rebellion and confirm to the austerity norm. The UK Guardian article (August 4, 2015) – Anti-austerity message will not win over UK voters, poll shows – reports on a poll conducted internally by the British Labour Party that allegedly “shows Britain’s voters do not back an anti-austerity message but instead believe the country must live within its means and make cutting the deficit its top priority.” If you believe that you would believe anything.

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Jeremy Corbyn must break out of the neo-liberal framing

Two articles in the UK Guardian this week summarise what is going on with the British Labour Party at present. The first (August 3, 2015) – Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aren’t mad – they’re fleeing a bankrupt New Labour – refutes the notions propagated by the previously dominant ‘New Labour’ factions that the Left of the Party are in some way mad, deluded, or otherwise sick. Instead, it argues the Left are part of a new “grassroots political movement” reacting to the bereft nature of New Labour which is without a “clear vision, or a set of policies, or even a coherent distinct set of values”. The second article (August 3, 2015) – Corbyn’s economic strategy would keep Tories in power, top Labour figure says – provides proof of concept. It is written by the Shadow Labour Chancellor Chris Leslie and reflects an abysmal understanding of macroeconomics that only a deluded free-marketeer would dare suggest had anything to do with reality. The article demonstrates that the top echelons of the British Labour Party parliamentary wing are caught in the destructive neo-liberal Groupthink economics that not only caused the GFC but has also led to austerity being the norm for policy makers these days. And there is no doubt that it is a failed doctrine and not worthy of a progressive opposition. The new “grassroots political movement” is reacting sensibly to the intellectual carnage at the top end of their Party and lets hope it is triumphant and purges these ideas from Labour forever. But, first, it must break out of the neo-liberal framing that is pervasive in its first major statement.

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British Labour must escape from its austerity lite prison

I imagine we have all been keeping an eye on the evolving sham that is the British Labour Party election contest. When former leader Tony Blair, who will be forever remembered as being George Bush’s ‘poodle’ when he took Britain into the illegal invasion of Iraq and left a destabilised region, came into the fray urging party members to get a heart transplant if they thought supporting Jeremy Corbyn was an option, things turned really nasty. There has been a plethora of attacks on Corbyn alleging he is part of a sinister, return-to-Soviet control type candidate, an hysterical communist who wants to take Britain back to the dark ages, and more. What it tells me is that the Tories fear Corbyn as a candidate and would prefer the austerity-lite options like Liz Kendell to become leader because they know she won’t cause much trouble. What worries me is that Corbyn articulates a progressive set of values but might not yet have the macroeconomic understanding to defend them against a media attack primed to vilify anything that is not right-wing. British Labour must escape from its austerity lite prison but to do that they have to surround Corbyn with people who understand how the monetary system operates.

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Time to end the human rights atrocity in Gaza

There were three new data and analysis releases in the past week in advanced Western nations (the US, the UK and Australia) that indicate that the policy settings that are in place are not delivering prosperity and should be changed to allow governments more fiscal freedom to stimulate growth. But while these nations continue, variously, to endure the costs that the wrongful policy settings have wrought, a World Bank report issued last week (May 27, 2015) – Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee – allows us to understand a little bit (in numbers and narrative) the terrible (“staggering”) cost of the blockade on the Gaza economy and living standards of the Palestinian people in that region. The plight of the advanced world is nothing by comparison, not that I want to get into a relativist defense of the situation in the advanced world.

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