The Washington Post failed to mention that the Socialists’ declining fortunes are the result of anti-worker austerity programs.
Both the Washington Post (1/22/17) and New York Times (1/22/17) had pieces about declining support for the left in France and the rise of a nationalist right in both Italy and France. Both pieces attributed the rise in support for the right to people losing from globalization, implying that this is some impersonal process that is causing these people to be losers.
In fact, the losers are suffering because of the insistence of the European Union that its members pursue austerity policies. These policies have led to almost a full decade of near-zero per capita GDP growth in France and a drop of more than 10 percent in per capita GDP in Italy. There is nothing inevitable about these policies; they are conscious choices of the political leaders in Europe.
It is incredible that both the Post and Times would neglect to mention the role of austerity in hurting workers. The disgust with elites is understandable.
Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (1/23/17).
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The losers must have to suffer bt 10% is too much. It is not affordable
How do you know this? Why would workers embrace a rightist philosophy that is detrimental to their self-interest? Is it possible that the cause was cultural– the fear of diluting one’s heritage because of massive immigration? Racial and religious intolerance have often trumped (pun intended!) economics. Look at how rural white voters in the south eagerly embraced the GOP one the Voting Rights Act was enacted. Certainly, austerity exacerbates this cultural angst, but we would be foolish to underestimate race and religion as drivers.
More likely the case that austerity is the root cause, and it opens the door for the right to use cultural issues as a wedge.
When things are going well, when living standards are rising, it’s hard to get people excited about culture wars. But when things are getting worse (and it’s the relative change, not even so much the absolute state of affairs), then people naturally look to politicians to find solutions to the worsening state of affairs.
Those solutions don’t have to come from the right. In fact, if there’s a credible left alternative, the voters will gladly embrace it, as with FDR, or the old social democratic European parties. But lately those parties have sold out to the doctrine of neoliberalism. It doesn’t matter who gets elected; the policies of neoliberal austerity march on. So if the Socialists don’t stand for anything, then what’s the point of voting for them?
And that situation, in turn, opens the door for demagogues an false populists of the right to come in and say, “Your problems are due to illegal immigrants.” If it’s between that and the same failed politics that have brought people only hardship and misery, people are willing to try it.
Exceptional argument, I agree on every point.
There is no sound position for joining the ranks of your enemy, unless you’ve been duped into thinking you have no alternative. And, it may not have been the planned outcome of the EU elites to render large populations of working people financially strapped. But, this is what has occurred, when legislation to provide some real protections to this segment was never conceptualized by the authors seeking to create the European Union; whom were primarily bankers and their attorneys. The ethical forethought to ‘checks and balances’ pertaining to human beings; was inconsequential to making vast fortunes at their expense.
Since their plan lacked a humane element, this austerity crisis was inevitable when the economy nosedived. The elites were never going take a dram of responsibility for a crisis they brought about. Ordinary people would be blamed for their nation’s decline. It was in the fine print.
How is the right detrimental to their self-interest? And by inference, how is the left not detrimental to their self-interest in this case specifically?
I think the case here is that the French socialist party, the SOCIALIST party, chased the workers into the arms of the right when Valls gutted the labor laws. If you want to talk about the worker’s self-interest, first you have to know what their self-interest really is.
The same issues of neoliberal austerity that caused politics to be upended in the US, are driving a very interesting electoral season in France. And you have the same sorts of characters -Le Pen is very much in the mold of a Trumpian demagogue, and like Trump she has adopted some of the anti-austerity rhetoric of the left in recent months. But because French politics in general is to the left of our own, she’s well to the left of Trump on economic issues.
Of course there are interesting differences, because of the multiple parties and runoffs both in primaries and in the general.
The main center right party already had their primary, and the prohibitive favorite, the inevitable nominee and the man most establishment politicians considered the next president of France, Alain Juppe, lost in spectacular fashion to Fillon. Juppe was often compared to Hillary Clinton, but he was more like a Jeb Bush in many ways. Fillon, for his part, managed to win by appropriating LePen’s cultural platform. Also following LePen, he adopted a more conciliatory stance toward Russia because there’s a growing realization that the Obama-administration’s Russophobic obsession is stupid and counterproductive. But importantly, he differs from LePen in that he’s all in with the austerity program.
The “left,” such as it is, is divided between Melanchon from the “hard left,” a breakaway Socialist named Macron who is a young and pretty face on the disastrous neoliberal policy of President Hollande, and whoever wins the Socialist primary. That’s either Valls, another corporate “Socialist,” or Hamon, who’s playing Bernie Sanders to Valls’ Hillary Clinton.
Currently, the polling says that LePen will come in first in the general, followed by Fillon or Macron. But in the runoff she loses badly to either of them. Whoever wins the Socialist primary, according to current polling, won’t even be in the runoff. Macron’s chances go up, however, if Hamon wins, because he won’t have to compete with Valls for the 25-30% of the vote that still believes in neoliberal austerity.
At least that’s what the conventional polling says. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and make two predictions that are completely contrary to current polling.
1. If Hamon wins the primary, I think he surprises everyone and actually wins a spot in the runoff, and then goes on to win the general. The polling doesn’t show it now, but that’s because his party is intellectually bankrupt. It stands for nothing. With Hamon, it will actually stand for something, and people may give it another chance.
2. If Valls wins, then Macron or Fillon will go on to the runoff, but they will not win in a landslide against LePen. LePen actually becomes an attractive candidate against either austerity-monger. She’s moderated her culture war rhetoric, she’d be the only anti-establishment candidate (and a soft anti-austerity candidate). She’ll surprise everyone by making it close, as she should under that scenario, and may even win.
Hey Greg, writing skills and the rarest of qualities these days, awareness of what’s going on. You should get paid to write this stuff.
Thanks for the compliment! I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually care about what’s going on in France.
Lots of people are, thank you.
It’s both austerity and corporate globalization that are responsible for the rise of the far right (along with the collapse and betrayal of the left). This can be seen insofar voting percentages for the French extreme right and Lega Nord in Italy started rising significantly way before 2008. For example, Le Pen herself was polling more than 30% of the vote in 2002 in her district of the North of France region that was economically devastated by the closure of coal mines and outsourcing of steel production. I speculate (I haven’t read them) that the issue with these articles is more about media now pretending that outsourcing was somehow motivated by robotization (nobody’s fault) rather than driving down labor cost.
HD – yes, the trendy statement that ‘oh technology has caused most of the job losses, not globalization’ that I see (even from some liberal sources) just doesn’t sound convincing when you see entire LOW-tech industries (textiles, shoes, etc) fleeing to low-wage countries, and then hear about the occasional fire in one of the sweatshops that kills hundreds in some SE Asian country where emergency exits are locked or welded shut – – – obviously not a ‘high-tech’ situation if they can’t afford sprinkler systems/smoke alarms. Many times these factories are setup in countries that are incapable of supporting high-tech. It’s a simple matter of manufacturers going to a low wage country that offers the least ‘restrictions’ (read: worker’s rights, safety, govnmt regulations, etc) that has a shipping port nearby. China’s highest minimum wage is currently ~$2.55 USD, based on the Yuan=~$.15 (per this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China ) and they’re one of the better ones, but some of the textile factories there still have ‘suicide nets’ on the taller mills to prevent suicide attempts from being successful. Other countries are even worse. This was all just a profit making push by the top brass/Republicans (and ‘triangulating Bill Clinton’) that makes all the workers in the high wage countries like the US compete with poor, desperate individuals in foreign countries. And of course once these US workers lost their jobs, there goes a lot of US tax revenue as well as increases in the drug use in the depressed areas (ie; heroin in the midwest ‘heartland’).
I think (only half-facetiously) the only short term solution is for the defense industry giants (Raytheon, McDonald-Douglas, et al) to buy up the small factories/industries throughout the US and then these industries/plants will be protected, as the defense industry contractors currently experience (where they’ve opened ‘defense’ plants in virtually all 50 states to setup a constituency that will clamor anytime there’s talk of reducing excessive military spending). We can protect armament makers, but we can’t protect other industries, whose loss threatens our ‘national economic security’??
@Paul:
“diluting their heritage”.
Um, you know there have been Arabs in Spain and France for thousands of years?
And how about them Nazis bringing in all those Soviet “Turks” to turn Soviet Central Asian Republics against Moscow during World War Two?
You know, the Italians, Romans really, invaded and occupied much of what is called England.
And though they share an alphabet, do really think that the Irish see the English as the same people?
The point being there have been ethnic types from all over all over Europe for 2000 years.
Now, want to stop north Africans from fleeing North Africa, stop France, and the UK and the USA from overthrowing stable governments there.
Yes ‘austerity’ is driving working people to flip right. Yes, it seems irrational to acquiesce to the very people whom gave you hard financial challenges to begin with. But, the people behind globalization, are highly clever and simply pull out the ‘divide and conquer’ playbook, insuring a Stockholm syndrome result, in order to maintain power and grow their portfolio. People are merely chattel in their view.
Globalization has obliterated unions. All a company must do to get the new contract approved, is ‘suggest moving operations’ to another state or country. The family with mom and dad both working at the XYZ Corp., have no choice but to agree to pay cuts and loss of benefits. None at all. I’ve seen companies get every concession demanded and still give their employees the ‘middle finger’ as they board the plane for China.
Globalization, austerity, it’s hideous methods and outcomes, showcase the ethical and moral failures of capitalism.
Dean Baker
Austerity, Not Globalization….
Are you out of your mind?
Cause and Effect:
Austerity….happens AFTER Globalization
Globalization – An amazing new intervention to funnel wealth to the 1%
There is no “rise of the nationalist right” in Italy. The Italian Right has never been weaker and more divided since Berlusconi entered politics in 1994.
It works like this: English-speaking journalists notice a trend in the US and the UK and assume that the rest of the world must work the same way, just because they have too little imagination to think otherwise.
Hence all news from the rest of the world must be deformed to fit their thesis.
Populism in Italy is much older than globalisation, and right now it leans more to the left than to the right.
yep the Times and Post are wrong, xenophobia and islamophobia aside, the reason the National Front gets soo much support at least in France is because they actually sound more Socialist and anti-imperial then the current Socialist Party or the Republican (French) Party and like much of the right-wing populism they appeal to that anti-globalization attitude while their solution is simply tough immigration policy as opposed to doing away with extreme free markets.