Left Margin

Austerity Meets Resistance and the Democratic Will

By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board
Black Commentator
May 17, 2012

http://www.blackcommentator.com/472/472_lm_austerity.php

The economic elites on both sides of the Atlantic have
suddenly seen their plans for the future run into a
volatile foe: democracy. I say sudden because who would
have thought, say five years ago, that an aroused
popular will would be shaking the foundations of the
political order from Los Angeles to Bucharest? Said
elites do have plans. They are intent on - amongst
other things - using the current economic crisis to
dive down wages, curtail public spending on things like
healthcare and education, compel people to work more
years before retirement and reduce social benefits
available to the elderly and the poor. It's been called
the Berlin Consensus, which University of Missouri law
and economics professor, William K. Black, writes rests
on "austerity today, austerity tomorrow, austerity
always" and is "a road map to ever greater inequality."

Then, along came Occupy and the mass protests in the
streets of Europe calling attention to the gross
inequalities the system has already produced. Now this
year, resistance to the cutback schemes began to take
the form of protest at the ballot box.

"Europe is experiencing a process of political
renewal." the editors of the Financial Times declared
last Friday. "Voters in Greece, Italy and, to a lesser
extent, France, are understandably turning away from a
disconnected political class and looking for those
offering new ideas and solutions. This sentiment is
acute among the young, whose opportunities have been
damaged by the crisis and feel particularly excluded
from political discourse."

At the moment there is dismay and consternation in
European political circles, particularly in Germany
where government policies have been most in tune to the
interest of the big banks and other multi-national
financial institutions. For months now, we have been
told repeatedly that the political conflicts on the
continent were characterized German resentment toward
the neighboring nations to the south which were viewed
as irresponsible and undeserving supplicants. Then came
Sunday's election in state of North Rhine Westphalia,
which includes the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf,
Essen, and the industrial Ruhr region. There, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU)
suffered a humiliating electoral defeat. At once it
became clear that the program of economic austerity her
government has attempted to foist off on less-well-off
European countries won't fly too well at home as well.
Merkel "will face a harder time securing backing for
her austerity policy at home, at a time when resistance
to it is building across Europe," said Der Spiegel.

"While CDU politicians sought to label the SPD-Green
government as irresponsibly profligate, calling it `pro
debt', campaigners for the coalition made a point of
holding election rallies in disused swimming pools and
derelict recreation facilities to emphasize the result
of decades of under-investment and neglect in the
state, which suffers from high unemployment and
declining industry," wrote Kate Connolly in the
Guardian.

"Rejecting the conservatives' hard-line platform of
more austerity and finger-pointing, German voters
instead voted for the Social Democrats, for a platform
of more spending and, shockingly, for more debt," wrote
Robin Wells in the Guardian Monday. "This caps a series
of defeats in state elections for Merkel and makes it
increasingly clear that her government is in serious
jeopardy."

Meanwhile, across the continent the democratic revolt
continues in earnest. In Poland, the Solidarity union
and other labor organizations are threatening to cause
havoc at the European football championships next month
in Warsaw to protest a government decision to push the
retirement age up to 67 years. Last week, as the
parliament was voting to approve the measure,
demonstrators rallied outside the building blocking
traffic. News reports say they set fire to pictures of
government officials and a huge Prime Minister Donald
Tusk in effigy. Voter sentiment continues to move
leftward in The Netherlands and also in Sweden where
Ewald Engelen, a professor of financial geography at
the University of Amsterdam, told the Financial Times,
"The lower-educated, more vulnerable parts of the
electorate are sensing that these austerity policies
are breaking down the last bulwarks that protect them
from globalization, all in the name of saving the
euro."

Meanwhile, Ireland's May 31 referendum on the EU fiscal
treaty could well be an important indication of the
democratic response to austerity there as well.

"The recent election results in France and Greece are a
massive blow against the failed policies of austerity
in Ireland and across Europe," says Sinn Fein's deputy
leader Mary Lou McDonald. "`A "no" vote in Ireland on
31 May will strengthen the hand of all those arguing
for jobs and growth."

"Sunday's regional German elections offer a small ray
of hope. Merkel's party received a thrashing in North
Rhine-Westphalia, home to nearly one in five Germans,"
economist Wells wrote in the Guardian. "Rejecting the
conservatives' hard-line platform of more austerity and
finger-pointing, German voters instead voted for the
Social Democrats, for a platform of more spending and,
shockingly, for more debt. This caps a series of
defeats in state elections for Merkel and makes it
increasingly clear that her government is in serious
jeopardy.

"Perhaps, just perhaps, German voters are waking up.
And therein lies the possibility that the euro can be
saved."

"The next 100 days promise to be the most important in
a generation for Europe," wrote columnist Guardian
columnist Will Hutton this week. "Unless Germany can be
persuaded by, primarily, the new French president, but
also by the grim march of events to change tack fast,
there is now a 50/50 chance that euro membership could
be reduced to a cluster of small states around Germany.
A series of uncontainable bank runs and financial
collapses could not be handled by the current
structures. The result would be a European depression
from which Britain would not be immune. It is the one
part of the world to which our exports are currently
rising."

The implications of the European voter revolt are being
noticed here on this side of the pond as well.

It's funny how a dramatic political crisis can focus
the mind, how things like the Occupy movement and the
European voters' revolt can shift perception - even the
public expression - of the powers-that-be in politics
and the media. For instance, the editors of the Los
Angeles Times now maintain that they have "long argued
that faster growth is crucial to solving the U.S.
budget problems." Well, they haven't actually made that
case very forcefully or urgently. But now, they say it
"may" be a "good idea to mitigate the harsh spending
cuts with stronger economic growth." Why? Because, "If
the political turmoil in Europe derails the hard-won
agreement over a rescue plan for Greece and other
teetering economies, the result could be an even deeper
recession that spreads across the continent, if not the
total collapse of several countries' economies. Such a
turn of events would inflict pain around the world."

American Prospect publisher Robert Kuttner recently asked if
the fall of French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy would
"help Democrats learn what he never could?" "Democrats
should consider Sarkozy's fate a cautionary tale - and
a call to action. If they rally around the cause of
growth, jobs, and optimism, the nation will benefit and
they'll be rewarded at the polls," he concluded. As
Campaign for America's Future's Richard (RJ) Eskow put
it, "When it comes to Democrats these days, you've got
to fight for their party against its right."

"The United States economy is doing better than most of
Europe. But the austerity debate continues here, too,"
said the New York Times following the French election.
"So is there a warning for House Republicans who have
endorsed Representative Paul Ryan's draconian budget?
And for Mitt Romney, their party's presumptive
presidential nominee? Controlling deficits is
important, but too much austerity too soon will stall a
recovery, or worse, and wreak havoc on lives. Europe's
grim growth numbers prove that. And voters in Europe
have figured it out."

"There has always been a gap between public policy and
public will, but it just grew astronomically,"
Professor Noam Chomsky writes in his new book Occupy.
"You can see it right now, in fact. Take a look at the
big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on:
the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is
not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn't really
much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There's a
deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As
far as the deficit is concerned, the public has
opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public
overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy,
which have declined sharply in this period of
stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited
social benefits.

"The outcome of the deficit commission is probably
going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could
provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to
a dagger pointed at the heart of the country."
_______________

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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