No, I’m not being sarcastic. I still have little hope for the US, but I am very heartened by what is happening in Europe. The French actions and now the British students rioting. It is, ironically, even more hopeful that the British government wants to try a student for attempted murder for throwing a fire extinguisher off the roof. Next, they’ll be hanging people for stealing chickens. The massive overreaction and the clear double standard, given the war criminals who ran the British government, none of whom have been prosecuted, is the sort of thing which indicates a loss of legitimacy, a loss of legitimacy which often leads to revolution: peaceful or otherwise.
At this point, my best guess is that when push comes to shove in Europe, the left will actually win in most nations. They aren’t wimps, they are willing to fight, they are willing to clash hard with the cops and they are willing to directly attack the interests of the ruling class. Unlike in the US, where the people willing to risk violence are right wingers, in Europe more are on the left wing side.
The economic collapse of the Eurozone, as multiple nations are forced to beggar themselves to bail out bankers and the rich, is similar to what is happening in the US, what is different is that the people in multiple nations are fighting back. I’m hoping the Irish wake up and tell the Eurocrats to go fuck themselves, that the deal of joining the Euro was “we give up a lot of autonomy for a lot of prosperity” but that if they aren’t getting the prosperity, they want the autonomy back. Multiple nations should sincerely threaten to go off the Euro. At this point they are getting economically crushed by being on it and forced to pay off banker’s losses, without the advantages of having their own currency. Right now they are going to take the economic hit they would take by going off the Euro, so they might as well do it.
Odds that the Euro doesn’t exist in 10 years are now, in my opinion, more than 50%. It is not serving the peripheral nations interests, they are being offered a standard of living roughly equivalent to the 50s. (My Eurocrat friends (you know who you are) will tell me this is unthinkable, and won’t happen. We’ll see.)
The pendulum, in Europe, is swinging away from the right. That’s good news.
So, HOPE!
(Oh, as an aside, who cares whether this sort of thing increases or decreases public opinion? Public opinion is irrelevant, all that matters is the costs for the elites who make decisions.)
b.
I left Germany after 16 years of stagnation, in a sense because there had never been a revolution.
Now I am thinking about leaving the US, because there will never again be a revolution over here.
Mary Queen of Scots
Well the left in Europe has experience from their last attempt to take over the world during the 1930’s and 40’s. So they have more experience than the left in the U.S.
Albatross
“Leaving the U.S.” is way hard. The more corrupt these nation states become, the more they close their borders and turn themselves into little prisons. We tried after the 2004 elections to emigrate, and couldn’t get a foothold in any country. I really wish I could get my kids to emigrate before they establish their careers and put down roots in the U.S., because I want them and their kids to have a life of opportunities and education, not what we have here in America: crummy education, mind-numbing TV culture, and an increasingly stratified society.
senecal
I was in France during the strike. The students were most virulent in Lyons, burning cars, etc. I was surprised at how quickly it ended, though. The newspapers daily provided stories about widespread disapproval of the strike based on anxiety that fuel wouldn’t be available for the upcoming holidays, thus supporting Sarkozy in his stonewall stance. So it goes wherever resistance raises its head; the state has many weapons at its disposal, including the press.
In France, though, only one student was arrested as far I could tell. They are much more civilized there, and respect the right of protest. In the US, hundreds would have been roughed up and jailed.
Lex
Is Mary Queen of Scots really trying to suggest that Nazi Germany was leftist?
I would have thought we’d see a higher quality of trolling around here…
Cujo359
I used to think the euro was a great idea. Make one big trading zone out of all those people? Seemed like a sure winner. Silly me.
The trouble is that they still treat each economy as in some way individual, and don’t provide any way of letting those economies run deficits within that zone. New York can run a trade deficit with Pennsylvania, and doesn’t need to worry where it’s going to get the cash. Not so, apparently, with Spain and France.
Unless they find a way around that, I have to agree that the eurozone is going to shrink, at the very least, and maybe go away entirely.
Cloud
(Oh, as an aside, who cares whether this sort of thing increases or decreases public opinion? Public opinion is irrelevant, all that matters is the costs for the elites who make decisions.)
I agree it doesn’t matter directly, because the elite make the decisions, but it does matter if large numbers of people get soured and the movement doesn’t grow. So, the anarchists/vanguardists/whoevers should take care that their “direct actions” related to costs/property are targeted carefully.
Then again, if the press is going to whack you no matter what …
David H.
Right now the Fed is buying billions of long-term treasuries — with what? They’re creating money out of thin air which, if done productively, can be used to employ people & get an economy going in the right direction again.
That is what the Euro zone countries forfeited when they joined — the ability to use fiscal policy to address economic problems. There’s really no way of getting around that. Even if they loosened the deficit requirement, they’d still have to borrow, at usurious rates, to deficit-spend.
Actually using fiscal policy to address economic problems is another matter. Neo-liberals are dead set against it. Since they use unemployment to “fight” inflation, they have no interest in deficit-spending to create jobs.
Once the first country leaves the Euro (I’ll bet on Ireland) then the dominoes will begin to fall. It just takes one to leave & make a little bit of progress. That will be the beginning of the end. And good riddance.
Mary Queen of Scots
Yes. I am stating that Nazi’s are leftists. They believe in central control of the economy. To simplify, they do not believe in the American right’s love of classic liberalism.
To put it another way, Nazis are Communists with personal property rights. Although, the fact that the property is not held by the state means very little as what you can do with that property is heavily regulated and directed by the state.
So yes, they are leftists.
Celsius 233
Human nature being what it is; I see nothing to garner hope in the sense of reigning in governments run amok (too many people benefit from this). My dystopian view of the world sees at best, small communities of like minded free thinkers living minimalist lives in order to live the values not shared by capitalists, politicians, militarists, and people whose minds are imprisoned in dark rooms.
All of this will be brought to irrelevance by the coming environmental catastrophe; water will be the first weapon and it’s already being used and many have died.
Albertde
As an (ex) American, I am now a proud Canadian who left the godforsaken US of A many years ago foreseeing all that has come to pass. I did not want my children growing up as Americans getting the same inferior elementary and high school education full of propaganda that I got. If you study American history thoroughly you will recognize as any aware Canadian knows that there is nothing different about these times, the only difference being that the US elite today are more blatant than they used to be in the recent pass.
Why did I choose Canada? Because English Canada was founded by what Americans call Tories, people who left the US because they didn’t want to live under the regime then being created. And today we see where it has all led to. So Canadians speak pretty much like Americans but thank God don’t think like them!
Mary Q of S, what a line of absolute bs! If as you say the Nazis (and the Fascists in Italy and Spain) were leftists, why did the rich Prussian landowners (Junker) in Germany and the military in Germany, Spain and Italy support them? I think they knew something you don’t know.
Having lived as a young adult in Europe I think the reason the left is more powerful in Europe is not because of what the Nazis did to the Jews, horrific as it was but rather from the memories the elderly have and the stories the young have heard, of the horrors the Nazis and the Italians and Spanish Fascists perpetrated during the reign of terror of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. They know where the Right Wing policies and actions ultimately lead to.
Eureka Springs
Though the recent actions of the French in particular inspired me, I am wondering just how effective they were considering they lost the recent battle to keep the retirement age where it was. Not sure what today’s news of the french government resigning means since Sarko gets to replace them as well?
Am also hoping the multi EU country idea of withdrawing bank funds on the same day in Dec. has some sort of effect at all.
Bernard
The media/newspapers are crucial to whether the strikes will work. sounds like Sarkozy got the media to do his dirty work. If the media can control the real information of what is going on, the strikers won’t now how successful they are and how supported they were by the rest of us.
And they are. It was good to see British people doing something, like the French. we are all in this together.
Cloud
Ms or Mr Celsius: indeed, a crowded inescapable gravity well is a sure recipe for dystopia. In my estimation, the only really-long-term hope would be something like the “Golden Path” in the Dune novels, where the idea is to get humanity on a footing where it can never again fall under a single political-economic hegemony (or a single nuclear umbrella, like our warm fuzzy Pax Americana). Unfortunately, this requires interstellar colonization, which may or may not ever be possible, engineering-wise.
guest
Cloud, you talk as though hegemony is irreversible. When the US runs out of money or resources to continue its hegemony, it’s over. What would another planet solve? The same problems here would go there, and they would not be addressed any sooner because it’s always easier and cheaper (in the short run) to ignore the problems and pretend anyone who wants to change things is a threat. Ask her headless highness up above.
guest
Albertde, it really is embarrassing how bad out edjumacayshins are down here. And there’s nothing *more* embarrassing that listening to a fellow American give a history lesson. Keep that in mind next time you talk about the principled Tories who founded Canada, and how they knew the British Empire would some day be a less evil regime than the American one, or that almost 100 years later Canada might be independent, and much later might not be ruled by reactionary conservatives (for a brief few decades).
Lex
I’m sorry, but “Communists with personal property rights” is just too much. I LOLed.
I’m also under the impression that leftists have pretty much been running Europe since the end of WWII. Did i miss this last time they tried to take over the world?
David H.
The fact that the retirement age in France still went up does not mean the strikes “failed.” If the strikes worked to give people a sense of their potential power should they band together, then that is no failure. You will not win every battle, but if in losing you understand why you lost, the mistakes you made, and better understand the forces allied against you, then that is no loss.
Plus there’s nothing to say that the retirement age can’t be changed again. There seems to be a sense of resignation among some people, in that if you lose a battle you just assume that it’s lost forever. Political outcomes are never permanent.
Ian Welsh
If a left wing government gets in and changes the retirement age back, then they won. If, as David H. says, the French and others take inspiration from this, it isn’t necessarily a loss. It’s one battle, not the war. This is what too many lefties don’t understand, they think each battle is a war. The right wing oligarchs don’t make that mistake, if they lose a battle, they start working on winning the next one and the next one and the next one, planning far in advance.
Celsius 233
Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
November 14, 2010
If a left wing government gets in and changes the retirement age back, then they won. If, as David H. says, the French and others take inspiration from this, it isn’t necessarily a loss. It’s one battle, not the war.
=========================================================
“”This is what too many lefties don’t understand, they think each battle is a war. “””
==========================================================
The right wing oligarchs don’t make that mistake, if they lose a battle, they start working on winning the next one and the next one and the next one, planning far in advance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hmm, is that true? It seems to me the “left” is losing battles and the war along with them.
Looking back, I see a long line of dead bodies: to wit; habeas corpus, crimes against humanity, torture, fraud, theft by corporations, the right to public demonstrations, right to privacy in phone and electronic communications (aka wiretapping without a warrant), extra-judicial executions, trial by jury, extraordinary rendition and a complete lack of accountability on the part of the entire executive branch of the U.S. government to name just a few.
That amounts to a war in my book; the result of many lost battles.
Now, if you want to take the lefties to task for a lack of a spine or missing guts; I’m with you 100%. Cheers.
Ian Welsh
Of course there is a war, but many lefties think each battle is a war, not a battle. It’s like American Indians, they’d win a battle, go home, the US military would then slaughter them, because for the US it wasn’t over.
The fact that the French didn’t stop the change means that a battle was lost, it doesn’t mean the war was lost. The fact that there was serious mobilization including occupying refineries is a big deal. There will be other battles, and it is clear that the ability and willingness of the left to mobilize in France is improving.
Celsius 233
^ Your point is taken. And concerning the French; their government still fears them; unlike U.S. citizens, who fear their government and rightly so. The French will of course fight on, taking their fight to the streets.
As a recovering “leftie” who is now a practicing, radical, “realitic”; I don’t see much interest in constitutional integrity or maintenance of a functional Bill of Rights on the part of everyday Americans.
Even though I left the U.S. nearly a decade ago, what happens there is still important to me because of it’s policies toward the rest of the world; which can’t help but affect me and every other expat; especially Americans. Cheers.
Lex
David H. and Ian both make an excellent point. Furthermore, there exists the real possibility that as the oligarchs keep reaching they will overreach. Such an overreach is as likely to swing a population to the left as much as it likely to crush the working/middle class forever. Of course, the left needs to have leadership and present a serious alternative if it hopes to capitalize on the overreach.
anon2525
The fact that the French didn’t stop the change means that a battle was lost, it doesn’t mean the war was lost. The fact that there was serious mobilization including occupying refineries is a big deal.
Also, the fact that the French gov’t. resigned is not nothing. Had Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Holder, (Arne) Duncan, Salazar, et al. been thrown out of their positions after Nov. 2, we Americans would not consider that to have been nothing. Obama would have had to appoint new people, and with new people, there is a chance for improvement, especially once the new people see the swords hanging over their heads.
anon2525
Also, “Hope!”: Aung San Suu Kyi is free!.
S Brennan
On November 13, 2010 Mary Queen of Scots Self-identified as a troll with:
“I am stating that Nazi’s are leftists.”
Fascism (pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology.[1][2][3][4] Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.[5][6] Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme right-wing political views along with collectivism.[7][8][9] Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right.[10][11][12][13][14][15] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism.
anon2525
Self-identified as a troll…
Don’t feed them — they’re worse than strays.
lambert strether
More hope:
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/german-people-in-unprecedented-rebellion-against-government/