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If parties of the left cannot appeal to the working class, what's their use? The 21st century may be the one in which the umbilical link between the main left parties and organized labor is broken in favor of a politics of identity, and a grasping after some form of direct democracy that translates desires and frustrations into instant policies. Lurking over this movement is the fear of such an unsustainable politics producing authoritarian leaders, especially if the economies of the Western states worsen.
The first week of December saw two leaders of the European left - Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy and President Francois Hollande of France - forced to admit defeat and to leave the political scene, their reputations and policies shredded, their parties embarrassed by their very presence. In Italy, Renzi announced his resignation after losing a referendum on constitutional reform. In France, Hollande bowed to his nation's unchanging contempt and announced that he would not seek the presidency for a second time - an unprecedented move in post-World War Two France. He did have some success - job creation recently picked up - but he had fallen into too deep a chasm for rescue by the time a 50,000-plus increase was announced in October.
Hollande, who came in on a rhetorically leftist platform of "hating the rich" was forced to discreetly drop plans to raise their taxes to a marginal rate of 75 percent on annual incomes of more than 1 million euro ($1,075 million). It was French actor Gerard Depardieu who called Hollande's bluff most dramatically - by moving across the border into Belgium. Depardieu remains a working class hero. The president who tried to take money from the few rich to give to the many poor has been mocked from office.
The French president's flip-flop from angry socialist to emollient centrist while the economy stagnated and unemployment rose was a terrible posture to take. He put icing on this sad cake with the revelation that he had insulted a series of friends and allies during discussions with two journalists during the period of his presidency, an act of self indulgent narcissism only possible in one who had lost his bearings. Now, Prime Minister Manuel Valls will be the main leftist contender for the Élysée Palace, seeking to convince voters that his brand of pragmatic, growth- and business-oriented policies will woo the French away from the two present front-runners, National Front leader Marine Le Pen on the far-right and the Republican Francois Fillon on the center-right. Polls presently show Valls with little chance of surviving the first round. That may change, but he will have to claw away from his former boss's legacy.
It won't be easy. Both Valls and Emmanuel Macron, the 38-year-old former economy minister who resigned from the Hollande cabinet in August to run as an independent presidential candidate, are strongly and openly pro-business: so, too, was Hollande, once he had dropped his leftist posture, and his attempts at labor reforms lost him much support among union members who might be tempted by the National Front's wooing of the working class vote. Valls and Macron prefer to speak of freedom rather than job security, seeing their mission as "unblocking France," as Valls has put it, releasing what they believe are the pent-up, over-regulated entrepreneurial classes.
They follow a line laid down by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the two most successful center-left leaders of recent times. Blair was convinced of the need to accept globalization, and of its inevitability."The forces shaping the world," the former UK prime minister said in a 2008 speech, "are so strong and all tend in one direction. They are opening the world up."
Both Blair and Clinton believed globalization was good for the workers; as for a while it was. Ironically, the center-left strategy known as a "third way" between old style socialism and free market capitalism had most success in Germany, where it was adopted by the Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Schroeder strengthened German's already formidable industrial base, though at the cost of fewer secure jobs and for some workers, lower pay.
The major European economy which was slowest to adapt to the new world of intense foreign competition has been Italy - the main reason for its present turbulence. Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister who dominated his country's politics for 20 years, did far too little to reform an economy with islands of high tech excellence, but an ocean of small and middle sized companies unable to compete with foreign rivals.
Thus Matteo Renzi roared into office in 2014, brusquely displacing Prime Minister Enrico Letta, his comrade in the Democratic Party, saying that Italy urgently needed a radical set of policies, that there was not time for elections and parliamentary niceties and that he, Renzi, was the man, at a mere 39 and with no national governing experience, to do it. Calling himself the "rottamotore," or demolition man, he and the small group around him sought to liberalize Italy's labor laws, cut back the bureaucracy, fight corruption, reduce the power of monopolistic corporations and reduce the large privileges of ministers, members of parliament and senior officials.
It wasn't enough to get growth, but far too much for his compatriots. His autocratic, hustling style created enemies - on the right, of course, but also on the left of his own party, and in the amorphous but powerful populist Five Star Movement, co-founded by comedian Beppe Grillo and now bidding to be the next government. Renzi's critics excoriate him for arrogance, ignorance and - in the words of one professor - "brutality." Renzi's proposal to reduce the powers of the Senate - which under the present constitution has equal power with the lower house - was turned down in the Dec. 4 referendum on a high turnout of 70 percent. Sixty percent voted "no" - a result which reduced him to tears.
For all the many mistakes both Renzi and Hollande have made, the larger point is the choice they had. Put briefly, it was between adapting to globalization, or fighting it through canceling trade partnerships, building tariff walls, reducing immigration and bullying domestic producers to bring back production from low-labor-cost countries to their home base. It is the Trump- Le Pen-far-right program.
Going global allowed the third-way leftists to enjoy real success - in the short term. But they were not magicians. Somebody had to lose in the competition against low wage, high tech economies not burdened with much democracy and with a rough way of handling strikes. The victims in this contest turned out to be Europe's indigenous, unskilled and semi-skilled workers and their families. These were the people the left was supposed to protect; in fact, the left was perceived to have done the reverse. The anti-immigrant, anti-trade, anti-free market right now finds itself the repository of the hopes of men and women who see relief in their policies. That they are unlikely to get that relief will lead our societies into ever more stormy waters.
© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.
8 Comments
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sangetsu03
Because the parties of the left are committed to taking from those who have more and giving it to those who have less, in the end, everyone has less, except for the politicians themselves, who get ever richer.
Many businesses, large and small, spend much or most of what money they make for taxes, leaving less to hire more staff, increase wages, or even start a business in the first place. Regulations sold off as good for consumers and for the environment are instead designed for the most part to insulate existing large companies from new competition. This prevents the rise of new, more competitive companies, and increases the prices of goods for the consumers. What good is a safe and economical hybrid or electric car if most people can't afford one?
And many of the "green" initiatives passed to help the environment instead are wonderful schemes for siphoning taxpayer dollars to special interests. Subsidies paid to developers of such projects come from the pockets of the taxpayer, who are already suffering from low employment, stagnant wages, and dimming prospects for the future. The money spent goes into the bank accounts of people like Elon Musk, half of whose vast fortune is made up of state subsidies. In this case, those who have less end up giving to those who have the most. Ironic, isn't it?
The left promises that the state will give people the things they need to live, like a guaranteed job and wage, education, healthcare, and a pension. But many peopled are unemployed, many others work for lower wages, and this is because of the cost of state programs which must be deducted from every euro, pound, or dollar earned. The cost of administering these programs is so great that they have much less to pay in benefits than they otherwise would. The administration costs are so high because vast numbers of highly paid state workers (who always vote for more state funding), and because of the excessive costs of projects associated with these programs (like the building of new structures, purchase of equipment, etc.), which are full of graft-generating fluff.
Were the middleman (state control) taken out of the process, people might find that they could afford to pay for their own education, healthcare, and education, and that there would be more jobs available to provide them the money to do so. If your average American or European put his mandatory pension fund payment into a simple saving account every month instead of paying it into the state pension fund, he or she would have much more money upon retirement.
The greatest of all errors the left makes is that it somehow assumes that the state is neutral and benevolent. They fail to understand that those who run the state are fallible human beings who are as greedy and ambitious as any others. In order for the state to control much of the economy for the sake of those who have less, the state must have much more power than it would otherwise have. And when a great amount of power is given to greedy and ambitious people, they tend to use that power to enrich themselves.
Hugo Chavez is a great example of how this works. He nationalized much of the economy, and in order to give more and more to the people, he took more and more from Venezuela's businesses and employers. He used his popularity and power to change the courts and constitution to keep himself in power perpetually. But in the process, he made himself the richest man in Venezuela. The poor are worse off than before he came to power. After he died, his daughter became Venezuela's richest person.
In the west, the looting of national economies not so blatant, but the people are finding themselves steadily more and more worse off. The leftist politicians, and champions of the people, fly around Europe in the private jets, and spend their holidays on the mediterranean, while the regular people struggle to tread water. It is about time that the people opened their eyes and realized what is going on.
Alfie Noakes
Bit of a strange article from John Lloyd, the Scottish journalist and 1970s Communist turned 1990s Blairite tubthumper.
Blair is the most reviled politician of his generation in the UK for lying to Parliament and dragging Britain into Bush's illegal Iraq War in 2003. He is regarded by many as a war criminal. After resigning completely from politics in 2007 he fled to the United States where he has lived since, earning astonishing sums as an "advisor" and "speaker," protected by his former sponsors from the Bush-era government.
His legacy is shredded. He is regarded as nothing more than a neo-liberal stooge of the American far-right; most certainly not a successful centre-left leader. Margaret Thatcher saw him as her greatest success.
Nothing needs to be said about the Clintons. They are probably even more loathed than Blair, which is quite remarkable.
ArtistAtLarge
Because the parties of the left are committed to taking from those who have more and giving it to those who have less, in the end, everyone has less, except for the politicians themselves, who get ever richer.
The wealth gap in the most powerful country on earth, the U.S., clearly shows the rich are doing ALL the taking. This is not politics nor philosophy, but fact.
SenseNotSoCommon
Are those who have more alchemists?
nishikat
Is this logical? Trump voters are the ones who have less and less no matter what so how can they be the ones who are having money taken from them?
u_s__reamer
The working classes appear to have abandoned the Left because they have fallen victim to the successful social engineering of the "politically correct" ideology of the Right to which governments hand in glove with large corporations subscribe and deliberately prescribe for the populace through education systems and advertizing that result in a dumbing down to the lowest common denominator. Citizens have sold their birthright for a mess of potage and have been turned into mere consumers working themselves to death to acquire the after-tax baubles and bangles with which to dance stupefied by MSM and the culture of Kitsch around the Golden Calf. Serious thought and discussion with the view to creating a fairer society for all have been discouraged by the frenetic pace of modern urban living, but there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the long, dark fifty-year tunnel of rightwing political hegemony as the unsustainable global capitalist system self-destructs. What comes next is, however, problematic if it turns out that the default position of the human animal under severe economic stress is fascism accompanied by racism and scapegoating of the Other. Realistically speaking, we may have to endure a century of further strife as the world works through the accumulated bad karma of the last hundred years.
turbotsat
The government got theirs. The working class didn't. Massive productivity gains since the days of carbon copies, mimeographs, and rows of clerks on high chairs should have resulted in massive cuts to government spending and then cuts in revenues. Did that happen?
I've worked on both sides of the line. People in government work like snails.
The cuts need to be arbitrary and wide-ranging.
On the other hand, you could just admit the government doesn't really care about the opinion of the people, except at voting time.
Wolfpack
The European Left is losing the working class because they have become more interested in international socialism than the welfare of the people they are supposed to represent. Exhibit A is Merkel's importation of one million people from the Middle East bringing with them the problems of the Middle East. Women are being assaulted in huge numbers and Christian symbols defaced. Meanwhile the average person is forgotten and expected to take the brunt of the dysfunction foisted upon them by the elites. The religion of climate change is severely impacting the ability of the working class to provide for themselves and their families. Heavy handed regulation on every aspect of public, private, and business life is alienating people from their governing class. At some point something has got to give.