politics for the 99%

Published on Global Research.ca, by Takis Fotopoulos, January 16, 2014.

… 2. Capitalist globalization can only be neoliberal:

The Euro-elites simply cannot afford to lose more of their competitiveness. In fact, the real reason for the creation of EU and later of the Eurozone had nothing to do with the ideals of freedom, democracy, human values and the rest of its ideology, as EU’s history has clearly shown. It was the growing gap in competitiveness (in terms of EU’s share of world exports) during the 1980s, which led the Euro-elites to speed up the integration procedures, which were mostly dormant up to then. 

The EU economic failure was clearly due to the fact that the competitiveness of its commodities was increasing at much slower rates than those of is competitors, particularly in the low cost countries of the Far East.[5] As supporters of the EU and its integration were claiming at the time, only a market of continental dimensions could provide the security and the economies of scale that were necessary for the survival of the European capital in the hyper-competitive global market that was just emerging at the time.

However, despite the high degree of integration achieved by the ‘Single European Act’ in the 1990s, and even despite the creation of the Eurozone, its decline in competiveness continued. Thus, whereas the share of Euro-exports to world exports was 35.8% in 1990, ten years later, it has fallen to 29.7% and by 2010 it has fallen further to 26.3%![6] In other words, within two decades, the Eurozone countries have lost more than a quarter of their competitiveness, measured in terms of their share in world exports. Although the Euro-elites are well aware of the fact that a significant part of their ‘loss’ of exports is in fact due to their de-industrialization­­––because of the move of industrial capital by the TNCs (most of them based in the metropolitan countries including the Eurozone ones) towards the low-cost paradises of China, India and the rest–– this is obviously no consolation to their own workers (and electorates), which benefit very little (if at all!) by globalization!

The present EU policies therefore, are not the result of a conspiracy or a satanic plot of the elites to exploit further the European workers but simply of the fact that the opening and liberalization of markets required by globalization, so that TNCs could expand their activities further, inevitably led to the present neoliberal policies implemented by every country fully integrated into the New World Order. To put it simply, globalization in a capitalist world can only be neoliberal and the rest is mythology adopted by today’s bankrupt world “Left”––apart from the genuine (but diminishing) anti-systemic Left.

3. Competitiveness is the rule: … //

… 6. Concluding remarks:

The crucial, therefore, issue arising is the following one: can a small Euro-peripheral country like Greece afford not to implement the policies of neoliberal globalization today? Or, should, (as the present “Left” suggests), the millions of unemployed and poor wait for a radical change in the balance of forces in the EU and the Eurozone, so that a new pan-European Left government proceeds with the ‘progressive’ reforms suggested by its supporters? Alternatively, should they better wait for a new socialist revolution in order to proceed with genuine socialist policies, as suggested by the dwindling anti-capitalist Left? My sympathies would of course be (as have always been) for an anti-systemic Left, as it is the only one which struggles against its full integration into the system and the NWO. Yet, it is obvious to me that, today,  this Left is no less millenarian than the integrated into the system “Left”, and as such is equally useless to the victims of globalization, who every day lose even more their hope for any better future, many of them increasingly resorting to suicide.

Under these conditions, it is clear to me that only if a country broke away from the internationalized market economy and pursued a policy of self-reliance, it could retrieve the necessary degree of economic and therefore national sovereignty, so that it is the people who will be determining the economic process, i.e. which economic and social needs are met and how, instead of leaving this life-and-death issue to ‘market forces’ and the Social Darwinism they inevitably imply. This, for a country like Greece would imply the need for the creation ‘from below’ of a Popular Front for Social and National Liberation[16] (instead of relying on the professional politicians of the “Left” or of the Right), which will formulate a program for the radical changes needed to achieve the short term aim of restoring full social control on all markets, unilaterally cancelling the Debt and all related legislation imposed by the Troika, as well as a unilateral exit from the EU. Although socialization of the banking system and of the de-nationalized industries, particularly those covering basic needs (energy, water, transport, communication, etc.) will be necessary even at this early stage, yet, the medium-term aim will have to be economic self-reliance, so that the basic needs of all citizens are met through the rebuilding of the economic structure according to social needs rather than according to market demand. On the other hand, the issue of the systemic change, i.e. whether Greece would be in the future a state-socialist society, an Inclusive Democracy,[17] or a radical kind of social democracy, will be determined by the people themselves at a later stage once the present crucial problems concerning their survival have been sorted out..

In fact, Greece will not be alone in such a struggle against the NWO and neoliberal globalization. Not only the peoples in other countries in the European periphery and beyond would follow its example when they realize  that there is a way out of the present catastrophe, HERE and NOW, but also the  peoples who already fight against neoliberal globalization would also join the common struggle against the New World Order of neoliberal globalization. In fact, this struggle is already intensifying from Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, et. al.) up to the Eurasian peoples of the ex-USSR, and the peoples in the Arab countries (I do not of course mean the pseudo-revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt or the engineered insurrections in Libya and Syria),[18] who shed their blood everyday in the struggle for their national and social liberation.

(full long text, notes 1 – 18 and links to related articles).