Left Margin

Amid Europe's Crisis - A Surge from the
Left

By Carl Bloice - Black Commentator Editorial Board
BC
May 2, 2012

http://www.blackcommentator.com/470/470_lm_europes_crisis.php

Rest assured. The specter of socialism is not haunting
Europe right now. Francois Hollande is "hardly a rabid
socialist" say the editors of the Financial Times. The
New York Times chimes in that he is a "cautious
moderate on most issues, and certainly not a socialist
in the historic meaning of that term." And, we are
informed by Thomas Klau of the European Council on
Foreign Relations, that Hollande "is neither a
demagogue nor a revolutionary firebrand." But Socialist
or not, the Financial Times editors conclude that the
French Socialist Party presidential candidate "would
channel the government's taxing and spending power to
promote faster economic growth and recovery as a surer
route to long-term fiscal balance," and what with
"austerity's disastrous results sparking discontent in
a growing number of European countries, a Hollande
victory could signal a continental turning point."

Actually, what is happening in France is not a unique
turning point but one of many indicating that winds of
change are blowing fiercely from Prague to Athens, from
Amsterdam to Paris.

With Hollande likely to become the next president of
France," writes Washington Post columnist David
Ignatius, "Europe's hot populist anger is about to
confront the cold austerity measures required by the
euro zone, with a predictable result: a storm that
rattles the foundations of the European economic
house."

This situation is not simple nor without dangers. While
some (even some on the left in this country) are trying
to play it down, European reactionaries are on the move
as well. As could be expected, people seeking simple
answers to their nation's plight are being seduced by
those seeking to scapegoat immigrants, not only from
Asia, Africa or Latin America but from other European
countries as well. The fires of racism, Islamaphobia,
and anti-Semitism are being carefully stoked.

But the main thrust of opposition to the policies that
contributed to the ongoing crisis that falls under the
rubric "neo-liberalism" and the policy of retrenchment
or "austerity" is coming from the left.

Over the past two weeks, Hollande has emerged as the
leading candidate for the president of France; the
center-right government of The Netherlands has
collapsed; the conservative government in Romania
totters, as does the reigning conservative regime in
the Czech Republic. That's on the electoral front;
meanwhile, millions have taken to the streets in anti-
austerity protests.

The major media has pretty much shied away from giving
an accurate picture of the European "left" to which it
refers, beyond its assurance that France's Hollande is
not rabid. But it's worth talking a look.

In Romania, where an election is scheduled for
November, opinion polls indicate the Social Liberal
Union (USL), the opposition left alliance (currently
with 228 seats in the 460 member parliament), has more
than 50 percent support and would most likely win an
election. It is headed by 39-year-old Victor Ponta,
head of the left-leaning opposition Social Liberal
Union (USL). Ponta, who has won medals in basketball
and auto racing, is from the center-left Social
Democrat Party and now serves as interim prime
minister.

Romania has been in recession for the past two years.
Its part in the European austerity drive has been to
slash wages in the public sector and raised sales
taxes. Joblessness is officially only 5 percent in the
country but the worsening economic situation has led to
increased emigration, the population plunging 10
percent over the past decade.

"Romania's example - a ruling center-right party that
has struggled to cling to power through repeated
confidence votes that delay reforms aimed at healing
the economy - may serve as a warning to Czech Prime
Minister Petr Necas," said Reuters last week. His
government is said to have a 16 percent approval
rating.

"The government in Romania became the latest after the
Netherlands to collapse over budget cuts, and the Czech
government could also be not long for this world," said
the UK's Guardian newspaper.

Somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 people took to the
streets last Saturday in the biggest demonstrations for
decades, and the Romanian trade unions have promised
new protests within the next six weeks.

Meanwhile in The Netherlands, opposition austerity
measures resulted in the fall of the government of
Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The country has been in
recession for nearly a nearly a year. The government
resigned after the rightwing Freedom Party - the Dutch
version of France's National Front of Marine Le Pen -
reneged on a previously agreed upon budget deal. Before
leaving office, Rutte was able to secure agreement on a
series of budget measures from five of the parties
represented in the parliament. However, new elections
are scheduled and here attention has increasingly
focused on the leftist Socialist Party.

The Dutch Socialist Party, the emblem of which is a
tomato, says of itself: "In the final analysis the SP
is a campaigning organization capable of mobilizing
thousands - on occasion tens of thousands - of members
and sympathizers to pursue its goals of equality,
solidarity and human dignity. Campaigns express these
principles in concrete ways which improve lives in the
here-and-now, while the SP never takes its eyes off the
prize of a better society and a better world."

"Dutch participation in illegal wars abroad and the
neoliberal onslaught on social rights and public
property at home have formed the focus of the party's
major campaigns in recent years. With energy and
militancy, but also with characteristic humor and
color, the SP has demanded the return of Dutch troops
from Afghanistan, the exposure of the illegal and
unconstitutional maneuvering that led to the country's
support for Bush's war on Iraq, and an end to the
presence of US nuclear bombs on Dutch soil."

"The party has resisted the creeping privatization of
health care privatization and the deregulation of
postal services and energy provision, defended vital
social programs, fought the raising of the pension age
and the reduction of state support to students, and
called for an end to the ideologically-motivated
neoliberalism which prevails both at home and in
Europe."

On April 22, the party, the third largest in the
country, called for "a careful budgetary plan that
avoids destroying the economy through spending cuts and
leaves room for a new beginning, while taking into
account the position of people who did not cause the
crisis, but who have been presented with the bill for
it," adding that whether Hollande in France or the
Dutch Labour Party "will follow through is the
question. It is an important test for the social
democrats."

"Fortunately the real left has also done well, with the
polls giving Jean-Luc Melenchon, the Euro-MP, who is
the presidential candidate of the Front de Gauche, 12
percent of the votes," said the Dutch socialists. "In
the Netherlands, the SP with - according to the polls -
thirty seats, is on its way to the top. Melenchon in
France and the SP in the Netherlands are more badly
needed than ever, in order to keep the social democrats
on the right path and put an end to the austerity
diktats from Brussels."

"The Netherlands has stood steadfastly with the Germans
and has even demanded a little more from Greece and
other highly indebted countries," commented the German
new agency Deutsche Welle. "The fact that the Dutch
government has collapsed over an austerity package to
reduce its own debt is an irony of history."

Disgruntled Voters will also head to the polls in
Greece this weekend. There, left and anti-austerity
parties, including the Coalition of the Radical Left
(SYRIZA), the Center-Left Democratic Left (Dimar), the
Ecogreens (Ikologi Prasini) and the Communist Party
(KKE) are predicted to garner together anywhere between
20 and 35 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, the far right
Golden Dawn party (Chrysi Avyi) is expected to enter
parliament for the first time with over 3 percent of
the vote needed to do so.

With the wrenching economic crisis growing in Spain and
political revolt spreading across the continent, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has continued to resolutely
defend her focus on euro-zone austerity and insists
that the new EU fiscal pact, signed in March, would not
be revisited. The agreement "cannot be renegotiated,"
she declared last week. However, Hollande has pledged
that if he wins the May 6 runoff, he would ask for
changes to the pact that imposes strict new rules
governing budget deficits and social spending. "It is
not Germany that will decide for the entirety of
Europe," Hollande responded, "I will tell her that the
French people had made a decision that envisages a
renegotiation of the pact."

What does all this portend for the United States? As
economist Paul Krugman noted last week, our country has
"never fully embraced the doctrine" of austerity but
has, nonetheless, "had de facto austerity in the form
of huge spending and employment cuts at the state and
local level." For the good part of that observation we
can thank the not-exactly-overwhelming resistance of
the Obama Administration; for the bad part, credit the
Republican Congressional leadership and its allies in
numerous state governments.

"After a period in which Mr. Obama has pushed back with
some success against demands for austerity, the
Republicans are committed to reversing course, at a
time when demand in the US and the global economy is
still weak and the deficit is at a record," writes
Financial Times bureau chief Richard McGregor.

"So we're now living in a world of zombie economic
policies - policies that should have been killed by the
evidence that all of their premises are wrong, but
which keep shambling along nonetheless. And it's
anyone's guess when this reign of error will end,"
wrote Krugman.

In a commentary titled, "The Lesson for Obama of
Europe's Failed Austerity," economist Robert Reich,
wrote, "the president should make it clear he won't
allow government spending cuts to take precedence over
job creation. He won't follow Europe into an austerity
trap of slower growth and higher unemployment. While he
understands the need to reduce the nation's long-term
budget deficit, he should commit to vetoing any
spending cuts until the unemployment rate in the US is
down to 5 percent. Instead, he should commit to further
job-creating investments in the nation's crumbling
infrastructure - pot-holed roads, unsafe bridges,
inadequate pipelines, woefully-strained public
transportation, and outmoded ports."

"Finally, Obama should make sure Americans understand
the link between America's fragile recovery and
widening inequality," continued Reich. "As long as so
much of the nation's disposable income and wealth goes
to the top, the vast middle class lacks the purchasing
power to fire up the economy. That's why the so-called
`Buffett rule' he has proposed - setting a minimum tax
rate for millionaires - needs to be seen as just a
first step toward ensuring that the gains from growth
are more widely shared. He should vow to do more in his
second term."

"But to put any of this into effect, Obama will need a
Congress that's committed to better jobs and wages for
all Americans," says Reich. "He should remind voters
that congressional Republicans prevented him from doing
all that was needed in the first term, and they must
not be allowed to do so again."

The Republicans have repeatedly suggested that the U.S.
could become "another Greece" and well it might if they
get their way and the austerity of budget cuts and
layoffs continue. Only strong popular resistance can
prevent it and an invigorated and united left can, and
should, help bring that about.
______________

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
worked for a healthcare union

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