Yves here. Michael Husdon spoke last week on Real News Network about the EU parliament elections, and after his interview, provided some additional, pithy remarks on his website. As he did, I’m starting with his latest thoughts, and then including the interview proper, which includes important background on the EU parliament election significance and results.
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.” Cross posted from his blog
Reflecting on this topic, I add:
The US press and newscasts make it appear that Europeans have voted against poor immigrants and foreigners. What they voted against wasthe super-rich, the oligarchy. The “foreigners” being opposed include the United States insisting on drawing NATO into its wars in Libya,Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – and now, subsidizing Ukraine to confront Russia. The “nationalist” parties voted against the EU constitution written by the oligarchy to favor the banks against labor. It is a neoliberal constitution that prevents governments from running budget deficits of more than 3% of GDP – except of course to bail out banks and bondholders. It centralizes foreign policy in a US- and NATO-appointed bureaucracy of “technocrats.”
The US press characterized Sunday’s May 25 vote opposing this bureaucratic circumventing of democracy as a vote against “democratic Europe.” This is an Orwellian description of what happened.
Already in 2005, France and the Netherlands rejected the EU constitution. The EU’s response was to impose the right-wing Lisbon Treaty by fiat, not permitting any vote on membership. When Greek Prime Minister Papandreou sought a referendum, he was quickly replaced by a technocrat. Likewise in Italy, when Prime Minister Berlesconi sought a referendum, he was quickly removed by an EU “technocrat.”
This is not democracy. It is oligarchic extremism. And yet the anti-EU voters seeking to recover power for their national governments to run budget deficits to lower the unemployment rate below its current 10.5% is called extremist.
The underlying issue on May 25 was whether voters would support more economic austerity and privatization sell-offs. It is obvious that they didn’t.
They also didn’t want a new Cold War with Russia, or yet more contributions to NATO to support US unipolar world. So when the nominally Socialist parties joined with the right-center to support more financial austerity, and centralization of Eurozone policy in the hands of unelected bankers, they suffered a resounding defeat.
Neocons and neoliberal pundits have tried to focus on the “poison” message of the right-wing parties. But the real story is the inability of the left to provide an alternative.
A century ago the socialist, labor and social democratic parties had an economic program. It included progressive taxation, taxation of land and natural resources, and public infrastructure investment so as to prevent monopolies from occurring. This included a public banking system.
Today, the left wing has reversed all these policies. Tony Blair led the British Labour Party to make a right-wing run around the Conservatives, even to the point of privatizing railways and the Public/Private Partnership giveaway to the City of London. In America, Bill Clinton abolished Glass Steagall and deregulated derivatives trade. Then Barak Obama achieved what a Republican president could not have done: He is leading the fight for the Trans-Pacific Partnership to dismantle financial regulation altogether, along with public environmental regulation. He has escalated the Cheney-Bush military policy seeking to grab foreign oil and gas resources, most recently in Ukraine where Secretary of State Kerry’s and Joe Biden’s families have taken a kleptocratic position in that poor country’s gas resources.
So where is the left?
Today’s political situation is much like 1968, when George Wallace – a “southern cracker” – was the only candidate talking about economic policy and urged withdrawal from Vietnam. He was shot.
The vote against what Marine LePen calls “the Brussels Monster” was against the capture of the EU bureaucracy by NATO neocons and neoliberals opening the immigration floodgates to what threatens to be a wave of “Ukrainian plumbers” and other refugees from America’s most recent attempt to tear up a nation Syria-style, Libya-style or Iraq-style. The vote also was against the TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
But stock markets soared, because the pro-US and pro-austerity parties are still on top, especially in Italy where the right-wing Democrat party won behind Renzi, and Germany’s Christian Democrats in support of Merkel.
So all one can say is that the Euro-Parliament elections provided a dress rehearsal for the national elections coming up. Only a renewed assertion of national governments can oppose the bad pro-austerity EU constitution. If it cannot be rewritten and if the euro cannot be reformed to promote growth instead of austerity, then there is little reason for labor and industry to support it.
Michael Hudson says that the nationalist parties will not challenge austerity in Europe despite widespread discontent with economic policy.
ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Anton Woronczuk in Baltimore. And welcome to another edition of The Michael Hudson Report.
Now joining us is Michael Hudson. Michael Hudson is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His two newest books are The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents.
Thanks for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON, PROF. ECONOMICS, UMKC: Good to be here.
WORONCZUK: So, Michael, let’s talk about the EU parliamentary election results. What were the main political issues surrounding the elections? And how did the different parties fare?
HUDSON: The main political issue is that unemployment is over 10.5 percent in Europe. But the European Parliament has no power over the domestic policy that’s dictating austerity. That power is in the hands of the bankers, who are imposing austerity and unemployment. The Euro-Parliament also has no power over foreign policy. That’s in the hands of a NATO-linked bureaucracy.
So the nationalist parties in France, England, Denmark and other countries are saying, wait a minute, we want a real government that can use a central bank to restore employment by running a budget deficit. The European Lisbon Treaty won’t let us do that. We want a government that’s not going to contribute to NATO to go to war in Afghanistan and Libya and Iraq, and now maybe Ukraine. We want to spend this money at home, because we’re in a depression.
Newspapers call this a victory of the right, but the right only got 25 percent overall. So they will simply be cut out of Euro-policy making by the center-right parties in line with the social democrats. So the most important result isn’t so much the rise in the right, but that voters have lost faith in the left, or what still call themselves “Socialist” and “Labour” parties. They’ve become pro-austerity parties whose plan is mainly to cut taxes and pro-privatize public assets to balance government budgets. The result is that throughout Europe there’s been a rejection of these parties that call themselves socialist.
The reason is clear enough. Ever since Tony Blair sort of made a right ring run around Thatcher and out Thatcherized the Conservatives in England,you’ve had “New Labour” doing much what the Clinton-Gore-Obama “New Democrats” have done in the United States. They’ve taken the lead in urging austerity and kindred anti-labor policies.
It’s as if there’s no memory at all of what socialism advocated a century ago – to increase government spending on industry subsidies, and to promote higher living standards by public education, public health and so forth. The once-socialist parties have been co-opted by the right-wing, so there really isn’t any party that’s having an alternative to the current austerity that’s just tearing Europe apart.
The real increase in voting was nonvoters: people voting with their backsides rather than voting for nominal socialists, conservatives or the so-called right-wing. None of these parties have an alternative to the austerity neoliberal neocon economic model that is being operated out of Brussels.
The two parties that do have an alternative did quite well: Syriza in Greece, and Spain’s Podemos (“We Can”) party, which was just created a few months ago and already polled third. Spain’s opposition Socialists failed to unseat the existing right-wing party, because voters obviously found that they don’t really have any alternative program at all. And in Greece, the former governing Socialist Party of Papandreou has now shrunk to near invisibility. Syriza’s success shows that indeed populations do want what traditionally was called a socialist alternative.
WORONCZUK: You said earlier that the EU Parliament doesn’t really have any influence over some major national policies, like banking policy and foreign policy. What powers does it have?
HUDSON: Very little. It has the power to say yes; yes, please; and yes, thank you to the bankers and the neoliberals when they insist on more unemployment; when they say, we’ve got to tighten money against inflation, we’ve got to basically squeeze labor, and we’ve got to bail out the banks so that the banks can pay the bondholders. They don’t really have the power to say “No” to any of this, because it’s not really the kind of a parliament that you’d have in a nation state.
A real nation state is defined as controlling the money supply, which the EU Parliament doesn’t do, the power to declare war, which the European Parliament has relinquished to NATO, and the power to set taxes. There is no real eurozone tax system. The taxes that are being supported are taxes that fall only on labor–the value added tax and the income tax, and they’re charging labor for the Social Security and the health taxes.
So the fact that the parliament has so little power is what is leading the nationalist parties to say, “Wait a minute, if Europe isn’t going to have these powers, if only nation states have the power to say this, then let’s withdraw from the eurozone and let’s create a nation state that can do what governments are supposed to do – pull us out of the depression, subsidize industry, and make us grow again like we did before the eurozone and the euro came in to being.”
WORONCZUK: Talk about this co-option of the political left by the right-wing parties. How did this happen?
HUDSON: Many people, especially in Italy say, well, the Americans have a National Endowment for Democracy (meaning oligarchy). And the Americans have been subsidizing the most right-wing leaders within the socialist parties. So in England you had Tony Blair saying that the way to get votes for the Labour Party is to move to the center and to out-Thatcher Thatcher, to actually become an anti-labor party. I guess you could say what has happened is a lack of economic theory to counterpoise to the neoliberal theory that imposes austerity, and the theory that giving money to the banks will all trickle down. The socialists becametrickle-down theorists.
When a few socialists have raised their hands and said, wait a minute, maybe we ought to have a referendum on this, they’ve been very quickly removed–for instance, in Greece, when the socialist Papandreou said, Let’shave a referendum on whether to repay all of Greece’s creditors, he was removed within a week. And in Italy, when Berlusconi said, Let’s have an Italian referendum on the euro, he was quickly removed. So there’s a feeling that the eurozone bureaucracy has turned into an oligarchy that’s not democratic it all. You could say that the people who are called anti-democrats and extremists in reality are democratic, because they’re saying, “No” to the oligarchy. They want to protect the democracy from the oligarchic takeover that’s occurred out of Brussels.
WORONCZUK: Do you think the SYRIZA gains in Greece are going to offer a challenge to this, the neoliberal governance, throughout the EU?
HUDSON: Yes. To me, that’s the best result of all of this. In practice, in the European Parliament, the fact that the opponents of neoliberalism are only 25 percent means that they’re going to be ignored. The election will have zero effect on what the European Parliament actually does, because they cansay, “We’re in the majority, we don’t have to give you anything at all.” That’s what happened in the Baltics to opponents of neoliberals.
So in terms of actual political policy making, all the SYRIZA victory means is that they can show the people, “Look, we’ve done it here, we can win; now we need a national election, and if youelect us as a national election, we will then stop paying the foreign debts and we’ll try to make the Greek economy grow again so that you don’t have to emigrate in order to find work.”
WORONCZUK: Much of the press coverage of the election results have focused on what’s happened in the U.K. and what’s happened in France, Germany, and Greece. What about theBaltic states? Is anything interesting happening there?
HUDSON: Well, the U.S. coup in Ukraine frightened the Baltic voters. One politician from Latvia told me yesterday that most Latvians didn’t vote, because they weren’t going to vote for austerity. But the pro-austerity newspapers said that Russia is about to invade, and urged Latvians to vote for the neoliberal parties supporting austerity, or else the other parties – especially Harmony Center, which has mostly Russian-speakers – might invite the Russians in. So you had the usual saber-rattling about Russia as a means of supporting the right wing. Harmony Center only got 13% (compared to nearly a third of the last national election vote).
The strategy is like the old McCarthyite mudslinging in the United States, calling everybody who opposes unemployment, neoliberalism and the austerity “communists” – or in this case, pro-Russians. So many Latvians were panicked into supporting the right wing.
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Back here in the U.S., we’re about to be treated again to elections offering evil, really evil, and less evil.
And the same old song and dance from the Democratic Party.
http://www.popularresistance.org/the-democrats-new-fake-populism/
The views of millions of Americans can’t, and won’t, be represented by candidates that either party will l support, if not actively oppose or smear, is that a form of voter suppression?
And people wonder why voter turnout is so low.
The elites came here to Brussels last week and it was business as usual. Results were downplayed. Cameron squaked a bit but the elites were only concerned with who would best take care of German interests at the EP president and Commisioner level. Only people from small, powerless countries get elected to these positions. We are still very nationalistic after all and cannot allow powerful nations like Germany to hold these undemocratic, butler roles.
The UK may cut itself loose from the EU but don’t on anyone else going so far. It will be business as usual.
“Squaked?”
Is that a portmanteau for “squawk” and “quaked”?
It’s a perfect description. I I love it, and am incorporating into my working dictionary immediately , even if it has, as the Urban Dictionary defines it, overtones of “a slang word for having received sexual acts from a lesbian.”
Or is that perhaps possible?
I live in Brussels as well and have some friends who are fairly senior people in the EU. I have warned them for years about what was coming. Their response is that they will never allow any sort of takeover by the “fascists”, democratic or not. After reminding them how similar they sound to brain-dead republicans who call Obama a “communist”, that if they try to stamp out a democrat movement then there will eventually evolve an anti-globalization insurgency in Europe. So we are in the very early days. Overthrowing neo-liberal globalization will be neither easy nor bloodless.
And remember, large countries like France can imagine going it alone; but the reality is that many smaller European countries cannot, and so to survive in a global environment of large players, Europe as a whole (minus the rump UK) needs to follow Marine Le Pen’s policy of nationalism (protection against third world salary competition) and Keynesian economics. This way the lower skilled jobs that have fled southern Europe, to the third world, can, through tariff protection, be coaxed back to the EU’s Mediterranean areas.
It sounds like Europe is about one or two stages ahead of the U.S. citizens regarding recognition of the U.S. oligarchy that is in absolute control of this entire nation. The elites took full control when G.W. Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court and Obama who campaigned for change got into office and has done nothing but pick up where Bush left off and clearly taking his orders from ‘the man behind the curtain’. At this point neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are representing ‘We the People’, thus we have no voice in this government of the elite. However, people are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors and fairly soon the average man on the street is going to see it all very clearly, that is when there will be a major surge, dare I say revolution to take back our government and restore our democracy. However, you are right, such a mission will be extremely difficult and undoubtedly bloody.
The tyranny of these oligarchs that have taken the entire world must be over thrown at all costs.
Projecting the European election into the US politics makes the main argument of the post rather shaky. Right wing, and even some left wing, surge opposes symptoms rather than causes. Or, the vote will hardly be against the 1%. It will be against the government and immigrants.
We have to see the Front National for what it is: a rebellion against neo-liberal globalization. And given that the US sees itself of the global hegemon and is pushing neo-liberal globalization on all fronts; this is also a rebellion against the power of the United States. So it is exceedingly unlikely that any such movement will rise in the US. At best on the right there are some clusters of paleo-conservatives who understand the dangers of globalization (Pat Buchanan has been preaching about the dangers of “free” trade and open borders for decades). On the left, ever since Cesar Chavez became marginalized, there is no longer any sort of working class left that is hostile to both free trade with poor countries and mass third world immigration.
But the key to Marine Le Pen’s success is that not only is she anti-globalization; she is also supports strong Keynesian economic policies. If we switch back to the situation in the US; there are very few paleos who support a Keynesian approach. On the left there are plenty of Keynesians; but none who also combine the critical anti-globalization element. The fact is Marine Le Pen is the closest any major political figure is to the MMT ideal (although not perfectly) yet for the most part (Billy Blog excepted) she never gets a mention by MMT supporters.
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I’ve often imagined, and recently I read someone else comment, that Marine Le Pen was just a huge joke the oligarchs were playing on the masses. Here was a candidate that preaches to perfect solution to neo-Liberal globalization but all the oligarchs had to do is pull some facile racist and fascist strings and the masses would shirk away and continue on the road to poverty by bouncing between the standard right and left versions of the mainstream neo-liberal parties.
It is early days, the Front National formula of anti-Globalization combined with Keynesian economics needs to be duplicated in other European countries. For example UKIP is neither anti-globalization nor is it Keynesian. A whole lot of work remains to be done.
From above:
“Only a renewed assertion of national governments can oppose the bad pro-austerity EU constitution. ”
I agree. BUT why, with the past history, would anyone expect that to happen? It would be radical change. Take Ireland, for instance, where nationally, the 1% always find a way to game the system and negate the real wishes of the population. Seems to be the same record in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc. In addition, once there is a real threat to the Game Plan the 1% will get busy diverting their opposition and buying them off.
As for Nigel Farage in England, a City Boy, he will build his power and then cash in for the highest offer which, of course, will come from the 1% and the City he loves so much. The only change from him is he may stop drinking his PHOTO-OP bitters and move on to fine wines.
“Only a renewed assertion of national governments can oppose the bad pro-austerity EU constitution. ”
The national governments make up the council, which appoints the commission. The EU structure is just doing what they demand, what they can’t get away with at home.
I can’t see any established parties putting country before the important work they are doing through the EU.
Vivisection is the method and the goal.
The EU is the sayer of the law and they labour to complete the house of pain.
An old Swedish commie take on Marine LePen and Front National
(google translation)
[…]
“Marine Le Pen 16 January 2011 was elected Chairman of the National Front. She is indeed her father’s daughter but represents and represents another generation. Born Aug. 5, 1968, a trained lawyer, attorney and after divorce single mother in self-chosen living apart relationship. Thus one with which many French women are now self-identify.
She is not only knowledgeable, prompt in reply and with strong and sympathetic appearance in conversations, meetings, debates, radio and television appearances, but she relate directly to what had been the traditional French leftist values: republicanism, the Unitary State of the Revolution, laicismen ( the special French konfessionslösheten), the tradition of 1789 /, 1793. Well, now to the liberation anniversary celebrates her “Résistancen” and the program it was for 1944. The French Revolution Marseillais singing at her meetings. Anyone who can understand French would do well to listen to her performances. (Especially when she, as in Moscow in summer 2013, knowingly speaks extremely clearly.)
She is not a socialist, does not relate to either Marx or Blanqui, or even Jaures. She is deliberately anti-liberal. She thereto French nationalists also affected France’s role in Africa or the necessity of a separate and entirely of Frenchmen led nuclear defense. But her statements are logical and the “Left” is traditionally understood. In foreign policy, it means a properly speaking gaullistisk policy: breaking the U.S. desire for world dominion, out of Europe, out of NATO, close cooperation with Moscow, Beijing (and Berlin) and maybe with a future Eurasia. She fights the economic and cultural neo-liberalism. Mature French communists I have spoken with feel that 90% of her requirements are those they once stood. This applies to the liberation from Washington’s dominance and the EU supranational aspiration of the people of France to the banking capital pious. Specifically she attacks such as the liberalist railway overdue, the United States attempts to cultural hegemony over France, monopoly capital dominant role in French politics and other traditional issues “left” set before its parties imploded.
“The Left”, the French as well as international, ongoing continuous attacks on the National Front is understandable, given the party’s background and history but also counter-productive and based on a lack of analysis of the political reality.”
[…]
https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffib.se%2Fdebatt%2Fitem%2F4212-jan-myrdal-om-franska-valet-och-front-national&edit-text=&act=url
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Well, the 28 nations that now compose the EU voted for a EU Parliament with highly limited powers. The Elite have read the results, digested the results and told most of those concerned with this neoliberal Frankenstein monster to “fuck off.” I can say this based on the fact that Junker will become the new EU President, which to put it bluntly is a disaster for the European Union masses, but wonderful news for the EU Elite.
Given the EU’s inability to countenance radical change of its institutions, its denial of democracy and democratic outcomes, its desire to be a whore of the USA, and its absolute inability to recognise it is detested by vast swathes in many EU member states, I’d say its number is up.
As a Brit and pro-European, I find it strange that the European ideal espoused after WWII for a peaceful and prosperous Europe has been abandoned in favour of being arse fucked by large multinational corporations, corporations who pay the Brussels whores and many national Government whores hugs fees and kickbacks.
The imposition of Junker has brought to the fore how corrupt the EU is, how much its in the pockets of large corporations and a ghastly ruling elite, and how much it needs putting out of its misery.
If the EU is unwilling to change then I for one henceforth will be campaigning for the UK to leave this monster from a traditional leftwing perspective, and the UK Labour Party up until the late 198’s was always sceptical of
the EEC project, seeing it as a corporate anti democratic entity. Seems like my old chums have been proved correct – which is nothing to actually shout about, I’m ashamed of this outcome, but the last thing we need is more-US influenced foreign policy and economic tripe rammed down our throats.
I want a free prosperous Europe, one that mirrors the hopes and aspirations of the majority of Europe’s citizens, not a corporatist monster in league with the USA.
For us in the U.S. the best thing Europe can do for the American people is to tell the USG to f-off and do it loudly. This might help us change our leadership–every bit counts.
Europe rose up in protest against the EU — here’s your guide to the new rebels
British Troy (right wing) EU “sceptic” (extremist EU”hater”) Daniel Hannan.
Note the last paragraph is from a conservative British Tory.
The problem for the American people is the fallout overtime of its national loss of power around the world. The national power of the US government and its policy is the determining factor of most other nations foreign policies and many other weaker nations internal politics. The resentment of the world over the imposition of Uncle Sam’s will is long standing: Yankee Go Home! Of course, we are in more countries than ever before with our military. But two major failures of military power first in South East Asia when we fled Viet Nam in defeat and most recently, the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates an absolute loss in power over the world as a whole. The capacity to project the military globally to enforce political policy and economic markets well integrated into US government plans is shrinking. At the same time our absolute power has failed, we also are losing power relative to China, which has grown economically if not yet with its military, to be our equal. As other emerging economies grow stronger, we lose our capacity to influence them diplomatically, through treaties of friendship and trade as well as in cooperation with foreign national security establishments, such as Pakistan.
And finally, the Europe we liberated and nurtured since WWII has grown beyond our command. No relative loss of world power can speak louder to the decline of American hegemony than the disillusionment of the European people who know us the best, and who we have the least to fear as a threat. There is a long standing resentment against American success in world affairs, and against American people, and not only the powerful policy makers and billionaires. Europe has carved up the world for over 500 years and now has to stand with its hands at its side waiting for its cue from Washington DC or Wall St. While not wanting to declare war on us, there is certainly no shortage of willful dreams of a Europe that makes its own destiny, decoupled from American political veto. A Paris, Berlin, Moscow Axis is not out of the question for many Europeans. It would an independent alliance of some sort, but the key to equation is America is out of the critical decision making which would put American approval far down the list from where it is now.
De Gaulle kept France on an independent path for as long as he could, and that position is well understood in Europe and America. Putin can be seen in similar light, though roundly condemned by Americans as a madman. Was De Gaulle a madman for his war with Algeria or his war after being bled dry by the Germans with taking back Viet Nam to its former colonial status? America paid the bill for the French so they could afford to fight and when they no longer wanted to commit their men to war, we paid the bill to send our own men to fight to keep Viet Nam and its rubber and rice resources. The Europeans know one another better than they know us, they live next to one another and have much in common. America is stretching the relationship to the breaking point and the European people are rejecting their governments integration into the global economy on American terms. They want European terms.
“fight to keep Viet Nam and its rubber and rice resources.”
Or, more importantly as indicated by the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the oil and gas reserves that were initially thought to be in the South China Sea, then thought not, but apparently in this instance, the war mongers were correct, and there are indeed huge reserves below the seafloor.
In any U.S. foreign policy debacle, don’t follow the dollars, follow the petroleum/natural gas.
“fight to keep Viet Nam and its rubber and rice resources.”
Or, more importantly as indicated by the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the oil and gas reserves that were initially thought to be in the South China Sea, then thought not, but apparently in this instance, the war mongers were correct, and there are indeed huge reserves below the seafloor.
In any U.S. foreign policy debacle, don’t follow the dollars, follow the petroleum/natural gas.
Energy has an effect on U.S. wars but it is secondary to money–wars have been fought, including Vietnam more for the military industrial complex than anything else. Careerism in the military was a factor in Vietnam but less so in subsequent wars–today the U.S. military is more dovish (except the Air Force) than during the Vietnam era.
Paul Sir,
No offense, but your comment that the USA liberated Europe is highly offensive to me and those surviving Brits, Commonwealth soldiers and members of the Soviet Union’s armed forces who actually did liberate Europe.
First and foremost, until the D-Day landings of 6th June 1944 the UK and its Commonwealth Allies had more men actually in the field than the USA and we the Brit’s had been at it since September 1939, rather than January 1942, which is when the USA began mobilising.
All loans and aid extended to the Allies, particularly the UK came with huge strings attached, the most irksome of which was a continued US presence in my Country – one which is anathema to me. And to top it all off, even the Atomic bomb would not have been a reality without the preparatory work we in the UK undertook prior to the launch of the Manhatten project. Do read some British history on the period in question, particularly with regards one Ernest Bevin who after the war fought a rearguard action to maintain the UK as a world power, this despite the fact that nearly six years of total war had virtually bankrupted us – Bevin being a canny operator who was opposed to talk of a federalist Europe, a federalist Europe the USA was actually trying to ram down Western Europe’s throat.
Well, we certainly weren’t going to liberate Europe, then keep it like a conqueror. So, we took the British empire instead, Except for India, China and Egypt. We kept Egypt safe from re-colonization for trade purposes. No one thinks the Russians liberated Europe. Certainly, they did most of the fighting and dying in WWII, the point being, they did most of it within the Soviet Union. They did not do most of the liberating, unless you forgot your man Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech. Hardly a liberation. Furthermore, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia,Slovakia Finland, all German allies, even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops that fought for the NAZIs under German command. So, give credit where its due, the Soviets liberated Poland. I’ll even throw in the Baltic states. As for Russian and UK troops, you’re talking to a man from Philadelphia where the Frankford Arsenal produced over 3.5 billions bullets for the war effort, where my uncle and mother worked, along with the Navy Yard and other ship yards and ports that sent out men and material. That was almost every shot that was fired in all of WWII by Allied Forces. Along with all of my uncles, father and farther-in-law and every other father on the block, I did not have to read WWII as much as history, though I did, I lived with the people who fought it from Bataan and Tokyo Bay to The Battle of The Bulge. Yes, you got ripped off by the American business men, but at least you were still alive to get ripped off. On the whole, it was better than being 6 feet under, or living behind the Berlin Wall. And I think your resentment bolsters my main point that Europeans would like to go down their own path with Americans if and when it suits them and not because they are compelled by an overbearing and arrogant leader that you would more often than not have little to do with anymore.
Paul,
I’m not too sure what history or economic history they teach you chaps in the USA, suffice to say, a huge part of my own post grad studies involved State Department documentation from 1942 onwards in relation to Europe and what the thinking was after the war had come to a conclusion.
Further, and hailing from South Wales, where I lived, and indeed across the entire nation, the UK economy was placed at the disposal of war materials as of September 1939 – something our German friends did nor do until matters took an unexpected turn in the Soviet Union in 1942.
Newport, Cardiff and Bristol were heavily bombed, with Bristol being important to aircraft production where Cardiff, Newport and Ebbw Vale were all important to coal and steel production – a few few miles from where I lived was a Royal Ordinance Factory built under a mountain side, it too was a target for German bombs, as was my own Railway town – which had massive shunting yards. On the who actually fought side, both my grandfathers were coal miners and neither picked up a rifle, many other relatives fought in Burma, North Africa and Mainland Europe prior to Dunkirk and with the D-Day landings.
Again, and please don’t belittle, the UK and Commonwealth stood alone to face Germany and its allies from May 1940 to early 1942. And if you think USA arms supplies to the UK were charity, please think again, you guys raked it in, from both the UK and from the bloody NAZIS’s – see IBM, see Brown Brother Harriman’s see many instances of war profiteering.
Now, although British, we are not allowed to go all jingoistic in teaching history or economic history, we usually teach a warts and all history. Now its a fact that the USA came out of WWII as the last man standing, one with gold flowing out of all orifices – try sating that in the UK under the 1945-51 Labour government – we had austerity, but also managed to launch a welfare state, a national health service and still commit huge resources to our military – which is where my rub come in, because the USA wanted atomic weapons all to itself and banned atomic research cooperation with any of its allies, we in the UK went it alone and were able to successfully develop atomic weaponry, and the reason for this under the 1945 Labour Government was quite simple, the UK did not wish to be an arse-wipe to the USA or the Soviet Union.
As for European unity after WWII, as stated, Ernest Bevin’s views were not in line with those of the USA or the Euro federalists, many of whom were French, and have a guess what, we distrusted the French greatly in the aftermath of WWII due to the large number of Communists in the French government.
I could go on, but as stated most reference material I’ve used is official US State Department documents and UK Foreign Office documents, many of which could not be viewed when i was actually studying the period in question due to the “50 year rule”, hence one’s reliance on memoirs and official US and French papers.
Paul,
i did actually write a large riposte to this post of yours, it was lost in the ether as they say when the site went down for a few moments – suffice to say, and as someone who as studied the topic area in depth at a Post Grad level, my point of view is at odds with yours – I’ll just add, where I live, we were bombed, with one bomb falling in the school playground I actually attended – my one teacher was there when it happened – you chaps were never bombed, apart from a few Jap balloons. Also, i had friends of my father who were in Burma, not mentioned by you, and associates who were forced to build the little railway their Japanese hosts wanted them to build.
Numerous neighbours and relatives fought in Europe, North Africa, Malta, Cyprus and numerous other places. As for armaments manufacturing, I’m from South Wales, so think steel, coal and indeed armaments themselves as a ROF was a few miles away from where I grew up, it still exists today.
No one is saying the USA did not sacrifice, its men certainly did, but it bloody well profited greatly from both the UK and its allies and the Germans and their allies, Still, that’s Capitalism and Empire building I suppose!!!
Paul and Christopher, you might be interested in this:
A Serious Case of Mistaken Identity
The U.S. is not the ‘indispensable nation,’ as a growing WWII mythology would suggest. June 22, 2000, By Benjamin Schwarz literary editor of the Atlantic Monthly
Well, I am not as advanced as you, without graduate degrees or studies. But, I believe when I said we took the British Empire instead of say, Italy and further, that you were ripped off by American business men, that is admission of fault in how badly your country was treated by the American government and all those who stood to profit off the spoils of your former colonies. That caused your nation an irreplaceable fortune. There. Is that clear enough? And it was this treatment that would make the European elections, which is original point of this post, a little clearer to Americans.
Europe, Great Britain in particular are treated as the junior partner and are over ruled by Americans culturally, financially. Civilians are forced to live with the American military bases on their soil and find themselves dragged into wars that the War Party of America starts, causing casualties for their military fighting American wars. Hence, a long standing desire by many Europeans to have an independence from going along with American initiatives, no better exemplified than by Charles De Gaulle of France who always sought out a French position, a European position without the consideration of what would Washington think. That is the main point.
Europe would like to be the center of its destiny, even if it takes them away from America.
As far as the centrality of roles played in WWII, we were allies for a reason, we couldn’t begin to accomplish what we did by ourselves. Not America, Not the UK, Not the USSR. I think the touchiness has more to do with Hollywood, and the American media, in particular the Greatest Generation title given to the men and the women in America by Tom Brokaw. He unashamedly pronounces them the greatest not just for America, but for any society anywhere. I feel that way about my father and uncles and all of the men of my family and friends. But that emotional tribute is not history, it is a personal expression of love.
Max Hastings, a British WWII correspondent wrote a book about WWII, “ARMAGEDDON” in part to counterbalance the overlooked, meaning underwritten, under filmed, under exposed in the media and the class room, just what the burdens the USSR endured, and for how many years in fighting on the Eastern Front of the war. We know just how large it looms for Russians, Ukrainians and other groups in the USSR as the NAZIs moved across towards Moscow. In the introduction, the touchiness of Hastings about the iconography of popular, best selling American authors is revealed in his denouncing the writing of someone like Stephen Ambrose as monument building, and not the writing of history. If you have seen “BAND OF BROTHERS” you will see a monumental tribute to the American fighting man. “SAVING PRIVATE RYAN”, a fictional account, but again, a tribute to the Greatest Generation is another example of an American cultural product from Hollywood that dwarfs any war movie up until that point. And of course, the viewpoint is strictly American, as if Tom Hanks and Matt Damon personally fought their way to Berlin and rounded up the remaining Third Reich for war crime trials. These images are so powerfully crafted and broadcasted by the American media as to drown out the scholarship that is the hall mark of history, turning the war into a soap opera drama with guns and violence and tear inducing patriotism replacing the sex.
Max Hastings goes onto say as much in his piece on American history films, such as the bio of Abe Lincoln that came out a few years ago.
“Why can’t we British make patriotic films like Spielberg’s blockbuster? Lincoln is an unembarrassed hymn to America”, says MAX HASTINGS
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271614/Why-British-make-patriotic-films-like-Spielbergs-blockbuster-Lincoln-unembarrassed-hymn-America-says-MAX-HASTINGS.html#ixzz33R1rheBK
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So, let’s stay focused on the European elections where the population across the various nations of Europe are rejecting the neo-liberalism of the standard parties. That is history unfolding before us right now. The path of austerity as the terms for help by the IMF or Brussels is not a choice the people want to choose for themselves or have chosen for them by the technocrats appointed under the direction of American foreign policy experts and economic advisers. Now, Americans are not coming to liberate but defenestrate.
Europe rose up in protest against the EU — here’s your guide to the new rebelsBritish Troy (right wing) EU “sceptic” (extremist EU”hater”) Daniel Hannan.
Note the last paragraph is from a conservative British Tory.
IMO both the oligarchs and the nationalists are right wingers, but on different left/right axes.
What we are seeing are the social right wingers voting out the economic right wingers, while the lefties on both axes are trying to organize their cats.
Honestly i keep thinking about the prelude to the American civil war, as the Europeans nationalists seem similar to the “states rights” people that ended up forming the confederacy.
I really appreciate hearing Michael Hudson’s incisive analysis of the recent European elections, but he leaves me with a nagging question: in the unlikely event that a true political left emerges and democratic elections are able to return national sovereignty to one or more European nations, creating jobs and returning economies to growth, what then? Infinite growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet, as Mr. Hudson surely knows.
Don’t we need to figure out how to build healthy economies that are NOT based on the growth imperative? I’m not talking about stumbling around in sack cloth, but rather pursuing and developing policies such as those advocated at http://www.steadystate.org and by the late Margrit Kennedy in her books “Interest and Inflation Free Money” and “Occupy Money.”
Yeah. If our fake problems don’t kill us first, that’s the problem that will really absorb our effort and attention. Key to this is training ourselves and each other to muddle through in large democratic organizations. Any system less than that threatens to blow the world for the sake of some narrowly specialized interest. In Jared Diamond’s Collapse the island society of Tikopia gives us a model. “All” we have to do is create ways to scale it up by a factor of three million or so.
What fake problems? We have so many real problems, from no jobs to crumbling infrastructure–not to mention the global warming deniers–that nobody wants to confront them. Do you really expect our corrupt Congress to democratically solve anything without European-style mass protests egging them on?
Those are the fake problems. They come from deluded decisions about how to direct our efforts. They look important until you compare them with the question of what the earth has for us to live on.
This is undoubtedly what we need to do. It is also pre-censored from anything we can vote for and hear ‘politically discussed’. I spend a lot of time ‘stripping’ natural language to converse with machines. Deep questions on why humans have so little logic emerge. Michael talks about a ‘propaganda of fear’ – we tend to think of such constructions as dark operators we need to expand natural language with before we can get to machine formalisation. The green case is so entirely obvious to some of us, yet translates to others as ‘Utopian drivel’. Meantime, they have ‘democratic practice’ as a protest fascist vote, easily funded and propagated through MSM.
Well, I’ve never heard an MMT-er propose abolishing interest or creating a steady-state economy. If any of them has, and I just missed it, please let me know.
Warren Mosler: The Natural Rate of Interest Is Zero
??? You mean doctors should reduce selling their services? Farmers should reduce selling their food? Bricklayers should reduce building houses? Roads shouldn’t get built? Musicians shouldn’t be creating more music? Or artists, paint? Or teachers, teach?
The macroeconomic term for increasing these goods and services that citizens provide as the population increases is called growth. What we do when we purchase these goods and services from a macroeconomic point-of-view is called consumption or sales. Growth and consumption (sales) are not pejoratives, but measurements of the prosperity in a society, again, another constitutional goal.
The purpose of a healthy economy is to provide for the comfort and care of its citizens, to promote ( as the Constitution says) the general welfare of the people. It is not here to serve financial indices, which we have fallen prey to over the last three decades. Financial services account for 40% of our GDP (sales), the indication of an appalling dereliction of duty by the ones legally charged with making sure this doesn’t happen: Congress.
So the answer to your question is no.
Carla, you’re confusing growth as macroeconomists define it with stuff. And so is Suzuki on that website you linked to. The purchase of unnecessary consumer goods has nothing to do with growth in the sense that macroeconomists mean.
“So in terms of actual political policy making, all the SYRIZA victory means is that they can show the people, “Look, we’ve done it here, we can win; now we need a national election, and if youelect us as a national election, we will then stop paying the foreign debts and we’ll try to make the Greek economy grow again so that you don’t have to emigrate in order to find work.””
How will SYRIZA do this when they don’t control the euro.
They want to stay in the E.U and Eurozone. They have nothing to negotiate with. It is either do what they are told or leave and since they don’t want to leave it will be much of the same for the Greek people.
This is a little old I will just put this here if anyone is interested. It is about Professor William Mallinson
who lives in Greece and tried to stand for parliament for the EPAM party but was not allowed to due to him been a University lecturer.
EUROPEAN ELECTIONS AND DISCRIMINATION IN GREECE
williammallinson.blogspot.com/2014/04/european-elections-and-discrimination.html
I no longer believe democracy as useful concept as we generally use it. One can think of plenty of analysis of democratic nations as fascist in reality (e.g. David McGowan’s ‘Understanding the F-word’ on the USA as a fascist society). We have all had neo-liberalism up to the gills, but aren’t facing up to the need for a new constitution. Turnout in the EU elections in the UK was 32% and UKIP (we ain’t racist or fascist ho ho ho) took a third of the third voting. In qualitative terms we have little idea on what so many not voting means, or why people did vote the way they did. MSM is so parochial to the power-interest village it can’t even find the questions to ask. Coverage of the EU elections was dire. We didn’t even discover Labour performance in key Westminster marginals was very good until a poll by the Conservatives was revealed. The whole experience was one of non-explanatory presentational gimmicks. I don’t remember any policies being discussed, just a puce frock offensive to the eye. One notices more of what isn’t there (like Michael Hudson and sensible ideas on money and unemployment) in the coverage, which flirts past like an advertising jingle in slow motion.
Once again, Truman’s line about a voting option between GOP and GOP-LITE is still applicable.
Truman was dead wrong. The elections of Carter, Clinton, and Obama prove it.
Much of this resonates with a passage from Robert Reich’s Aftershock in which he imagines a future synthesis of left and right in the U.S.:
” The platform of the Independence Party, as well as its message, is clear and uncompromising: zero tolerance of illegal immigrants; a freeze on legal immigration from Latin America, Africa and Asia; increased tariffs on all imports; a ban on American companies moving their operations to another country or outsourcing abroad; a prohibition on “sovereign wealth funds” investing in the United States. America will withdraw from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund; end all “involvements” in foreign countries; refuse to pay any more interest on our debt to China, essentially defaulting on it; and stop trading with China until China freely floats its currency.
Profitable companies will be prohibited from laying off workers and cutting payrolls. The federal budget must always be balanced. The Federal Reserve will be abolished.
Banks will be allowed only to take deposits and make loans. Investment banking will be prohibited. Anyone found to have engaged in insider trading, stock manipulation, or securities fraud will face imprisonment for no less than ten years.”
The imagined Independent Party sounds very dumb, very reactionary and very unimaginative. Also, where is a proposed Postal Savings Service and the abolition of government deposit insurance? ***crickets***?
Stop trading with China?!! Hahahaha good luck with that.
Profitable companies will be prohibited from laying off workers? Good luck with that. I’m lefty as hell and it still raises my hackles. I can’t imagine how pissed conservatives would be.
Farage/UKIP looks to fight Labour from the left!
http://tinyurl.com/qyyu7kt
scraping the flat tax, no tax on minimum wage, sudden talk of social mobility and a plan to launch revamped domestic policies in the Labour Leaders constituency!
pass the popcorn…
The RNN transcript is not accurate. FYI. which is their fault, not nakedcapitalism’s.
First: after spending many summers in Paris, it is hard for me to think of LePen’s daughter as a positive force. I believe she espouses the same knot-headed policies as her father. I will ask my French friends.
Second, and this is something I know about, having lived through it: the writer seems to regard George Wallace as a sort of Joan of Arc. He was not the only other man in the race. Much liberal support went to Eugene McCarthy (I voted for Hubert Humphrey, because I would have done anything to keep RM Nixon from getting elected). Robert Kennedy was also in the race until he was killed. George Wallace was an abominable racist, the lowest common denominator of vile emotions. If he espoused any useful views, it was by accident.
Third: I am glad that the elections went against the EU. Paul Krugman, sometimes mentioned disparagingly in this blog, has repeatedly pointed out that the austerity programs do nothing but increase human misery, and maybe the humans are getting tired of torture.
Yves, please ask your host to reset the clock. It is 21:21, and the time stamp says it is May 12, 14:01.
And the article goes on to say that what people who vote for them are after is controlling their money supply.
Not from what I see. A vote for UKIP is first and foremost a vote against Islamification and immigration. That is what the people in the places I visit tell me, and I talk to people at all levels. When they are voting UKIP, this is why.
The vote has always been there, but the BNP and National Front thoroughly alienated it by their crude and very un-British approach, and their outright racism. My perception of the UKIP vote is that its people who are not racist in the sense that they are fine with individuals of any race religion or creed on a personal basis. They are however nationalist and localist, if you can coin such a word, in not wanting their country or their neighborhoods to change culturally without their being consulted first – and in thinking that the process has gone too far for their comfort already.
You may think that is not a legitimate position – that people should welcome wholesale change in their local shops, schools, churches, and that they should not attach so much importance to the ethnic and cultural characteristics of their local places where they live. There is some truth to the view that sometimes localism is a cover for, or coexists with, downright racism, though off the football stands that is becoming increasingly rare in England now.
But to think a UKIP vote is about the money supply? Well, one can only say try visiting provincial cities in England and talking to people. They will tell you quite soon enough and very clearly.