Neoliberalism

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As night fell in France, sighs of relief resonated through the French political class. The “Republican Front”– put together by the center-right and center-left coalitions — had saved the day.

Not more than a few minutes after the results filtered in and after the last fateful prayers were made, pundits both from the left and the right were quick to claim credit for the magical solution that had salvaged French democracy and French republicanism from the totalitarian threat of the Front National.  A cacophony then ensued, a mix of apologies made by the French political elite, a promise to change fundamentally the way things were done and politics in general, while at the same time offering no clues whatsoever to how that might be done.

One of the crispiest mea culpas of the night came from none other than Emmanuel Valls, the current socialist prime minister of France. In his allocation he said, as he has said at every occasion in the past week, that “there would be a radical change in French politics and especially within the Socialist Party.” The question that must be asked is what change does “change” entail?

Front National leader Marie Le Pen (image: Al Jazeera)
Front National leader Marie Le Pen (image: Al Jazeera)

Looking at the past decade of French politics, from Chirac to the 2007 election that put Sarkozy in l’Élysée to the Valls government, the difference in policy between the three governments, between “center-right” and “center-left” are almost indistinguishable. The past 15 years of French political life has been dominated by the securitarian psychosis.

Securitarinism is a socio-pyschological defense mechanism that uses the façade of security to hide a deep sectarian withdrawal that has been occurring within the prominently white de-industrialized communities of France. The withdrawal is a direct consequence of the disorientation that successive brutal reforms, carried out by both the political left and the political right, have caused. They have eroded the neuralgic center and the symbolic cartography that French working class communities had of themselves and their immediate environment.

There’s a startling correlation between the topology of the deindustrialization processes and the topology of the growth of the FN vote share. The French northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais is the prefect example of this distressing pattern. Once a working-class bastion of the French left with traditionally strong workers movements, it was hit hard by the French industrial down-turn and outsourcing. Today, it is the region where the FN has seen its most spectacular implementation.

The sectarian withdrawal that has occurred in many traditional working class communities in France isn’t solely the result of the economic downturn or of economic ultra-liberalism, although they are among the main causes. Another primordial reason is the implosion of traditional left-wing mass organizations and their mutation into agents of the same securitarian tradition, embracing an ultra-liberal and neoconservative unorthodox agenda, a conglomeration of all political stripes into a unified thread of the extreme-center.

The securitarian trend has been embodied by pretty much every single minister of the interior, the equivalent of our Minister of Public Safety, for the past few decades. This securitarian drive has taken control over every aspect of French political life.

In fact both ex-President Sarkozy and the current prime minister Valls, one a nominal socialist and the other nominally an ultra-liberal conservative, both used their passage through the hallways of the French ministry of the interior as launchpads for their ascendant political careers. Valls in many ways emulated the “Sarkozy blueprint” of being an overtly outspoken and outlandish minister of the interior as way to fast track his political stardom.

The state of emergency that has been imposed on France since the attacks of last month is yet another chapter of the securitarian regime. It has completely taken control of the entire French apparatus, an apparatus that was already predisposed to stifle any form of dissidence.

In reaction to the uber-militarization of French society, the fabrication of a perpetual state of war by the French political elites and the deconstruction of all the societal structures at the foundation of the French republican experiment, the right-wing FN appealed to the most sectarian impulses of the most marginalized and impoverished sections of the French population. Where left-wing movements are no more, a frenzied populism, a forced marriage between a rampant xenophobic rhetoric of economical nationalism and anti-liberalism and desultory social Keynesian economical theory, has filled the void.

For the past few decades the French republican experience has been missing in action. Last night after the ecstatic champagne flow, the final ce n’est qu’un aurevoir of a moribund elite, dried out Marianne, the allegory of the values of French Republic could still be heard cringing. The mortal blow that the FN was supposed to have dealt to her bosom didn’t occur; only for her defenders to stab her in the back, while they murmured the words: égalité, liberté, fraternité!

* Featured image: Xavier Bertrand of the center-right Les Republicains speaks after defeating National Front leader Marine Le Pen in northern France’s Nord-Pas-de-Calais (source: ibtimes)

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A specter is haunting democracies throughout the world. A barely visible cloud, an entangling nebula is settling in throughout large swaths of modern political rhetoric. Many pundits and opportunistic spokespeople are saying that the Ghost of Ideology from days long past is speaking from beyond the grave, and that it has resurrected and is walking among us again.

But, surely the question we must ask ourselves is, “Did ideology ever die in the first place?”

Ideology — as a word — is used for the most diverse purposes nowadays. It can mean almost anything in the current state of world affairs. Ideology is seen as the equivalent of a political agenda or religious dogma; thus, the religious extremism of ISIS and the “neo-fascistoid” elements of Greece’s Golden Dawn or  France’s Front Nationale become conflated. Ideology has also become individualised; ideology is not a systemic development anymore, but rather a personal one. Individuals can build their own ideologies.

On the other hand, we apparently live in a “non-ideological” world. Modern day apostles have announced, in a very Nietzschean manner, “Ideology is dead”.
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At the same time, ideology has been “democratized” to the extent that it doesn’t mean anything anymore and has been declared irrelevant in the context of the advent of a non-ideological world.

Ideology can only be understood as a system of symbolic representations. It is, first and foremost, the articulation of a world-view through symbols. For instance, the current dominant global ideology of neo-liberalism uses growth, free trade, free markets, free enterprise and representative democracy as its symbols.

For many contemporary commentators, ideology was buried under the ruins of the devastation it created. From this vantage point, the death of ideology marked the end of a century of ideological struggles, which brought about war, famine and misery to most of mankind. The bi-ideological, and bipolar struggle that defined the Cold War is over. Capitalism is triumphant, all is well, ideology is dead, good night and good luck!

President Bush and President Gorbachev

But it is exactly when you think that you are roaming through the desert of ideology, exactly when the absence of ideology is supposedly self-evident, that is exactly when you’re submerged in ideology. You’re in the thick of it and can’t get out.

In his most recent public interview broadcasted on French national television 2 weeks ago, Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed his intention of reentering the French political scene. During the one hour interview Sarkozy made the case for a new “non-ideological” political movement that would move beyond the drawn fault line of left versus right. For Sarkozy, the main problem with the current Socialist regime was its ideological stance. I couldn’t disagree more. If anything, with the nomination of Manuel Valls as prime minister and his relentless grab for power, the Socialist government has proven that they too abide to this logic of a so-called non-ideological stance.

The problem with this discourse is that ideology, far from having disappeared from the French political scene, has, within the past few years, reinvigorated itself and has become so omnipresent that it now appears to be invisible, even non-existent. And this, because the majority of the French population has internalized the dominant ideology of austerity as being the ultimate truth — as has the majority of human beings on this planet.

In reality a non-ideological stance doesn’t exist. The political project to move beyond the ideological dichotomies of left versus right, of liberalism versus socialism — in the economical sense — doesn’t amount to anything more than a mirage of wishful thinking. Sarkozy is ideology at its purest form.

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Protesters against austerity in France

The left — read here socialists — might have abandoned their ideological attire, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t ideological. In many ways socialist parties throughout the European Union have shedded their social vision and have become another one of those -isms without a suitable prefix. Within this new political dimension of fluid -isms, the driving force is the market and the free circulation of capital, better known as austerity. Differences are non-existent, but one ideology clearly reigns all mighty.

This abandonment of ideology by left-wing movements has allowed extreme-right movements to fill in the void and appear as alternatives. The story is the same throughout Europe, but also with the Tea Party in the US, the Reformists here in Canada, and Modi in India. These neo-nationalist and neo-liberal movements may take various forms, specific to the context to which they belong, but their raison d’être is the same, to fill in an ideological void.

Sarkozy can proudly parade his “non-ideological” message, and he will encounter no dignified opposition, because the ideologically left-wing alternative is dead — if it isn’t dead, then it’s in tatters. From the ruins of this ideological surrender, we must strive to rebuild an alternative dialectic; the ontological survival of the “Left” depends on it. The battle against neo-liberalism and the rise of neo-fascism is, first and foremost, a direct assault on their symbolic mobilizers: The key words, like growth and jobs, that are at its symbolic foundation. Only though this deconstruction can come the construction of a true alternative. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that an alternative ideology be built from the ideological ruins of the Left’s upcoming self-destruction.

A luta continua.

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The month of March 1871 French society was rocked by two astonishing events; first the crushing of the French army at the hands of the Prussians, which resulted in the fall of the regime of Napoleon II and consequently the armed uprising of the laborious classes of Paris against a French political elite that had failed them, and a German invading elite that would oppress them.

Fast forward to February 2014 Ukraine, more specifically Kiev was the epicentre of what appeared to be a repeat of the Orange pro-western, pro-Europe, pro-NATO revolution. Things didn’t go according to plan after this, and within a matter of weeks the “revolution” was hijacked by neo-Nazi, fascistic elements which had been it’s brute force and backbone since its onset. In response to this, several towns (notoriously Donetsk) declared themselves autonomous communes or people’s republics, not to be ruled by the pro-Russian oligarchy that had failed them or by the hollow promises of the pro-Western elites with their fascist tendencies.

Unfortunately media coverage for the most part is oblivious or willingly hides this aspect and paints the Ukrainian conflict in an antiquated mini Cold-War proxy war scenario between the evil Russians and the Free World, A.K.A. the West.

But these popular revolutions are the most interesting development within the Ukrainian conflict and they are the true un-manipulated essence of the Maidan revolt. Very quickly a popular revolt against austerity measures, the over-concentration of wealth and power, economic inequality and social injustice was turned into a pro-Western revolt, to serve the interests of a European Union that were searching for a diversion from the quagmire of austerity.

The main reason why the western media outlets have made no mention of these uprising is obvious: it’s because of the labouring masses of Donetsk. Throughout eastern Ukraine, people are fighting the same fight as are millions of unemployed, battered and toiled western workers. They wouldn’t want to give them ideas, now would they…

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Within the first weeks of the “pro-Russian” uprisings, as the main media outlets like to label them, the citizens of the newly founded Communes took immediate action to bring under their management the main industries that were now within their jurisdiction. On the other hand the newly elected government in Kiev with the sanction of the Ukrainian oligarchs of which the tycoon Rinat Akhmetov — a billionaire that made his fortune through the exploitation of the miners of the Donbass — called on the “occupying” miners to put an end to their illegal “strike” and self-determination or suffer the consequences.

During that time, neo-Nazi elements of the Ukrainian nationalistic extreme right started their campaign of intimidation and consolidation of power, targeting organized labor and ‘communists,’ taking control of several important portfolios within the newly established Kiev government. The culminating point of this vast campaign of terror was the infamous burning of the trade union house of Odessa that resulted in the death of 23 people. The Ukrainian fascist community was in ebullition, celebrating the deaths of the “Russian terrorists.” The international community – the West – was silent.

For the past few months, the Ukrainian government has been on the offensive against its own people, declaring an all out war on the people’s republics that have sprung-up throughout the east of Ukraine. With diplomatic and tactical support from the West, the region has been carpet-bombed resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent civilians.

In another context, lets say the Balkans in the 1990s, this would have pushed the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union to condemn and take action either on the ground or through economical sanctions against the Kiev regime for their violation of human rights and their blatant disrespect of the people of eastern Ukraine’s right to self-determination. Then again, self-determination is only acceptable when it serves the purposes of neo-liberalism and the will of the free-markets.

Through this context though the idea of self-determination has been put to test and is being shaped little by little, self-determination becomes more than just a right tied to a people through an ethnic or cultural link. It mutates and becomes an undeniable right for every human being to be able to control the means of production of their well-being, thus making the industry revolve around the will of the people instead of the bestial urge of profit.

Many parallels have been drawn since the dawn of the Ukrainian conflict with the horrors of WWII and some with the one-hundredth anniversary of the WWI. In reality the conflict that is in motion before us isn’t between great powers, it is a conflict that stems from uncontrolled, unbridled capitalism that generates poverty, conflict and chaos. It is a struggle to tame the flow of capital, to domesticate and subdue, rendering it a fertilizer for the whole of humanity.

And this is exactly the point Piketty misses within his most recent work Capital in the 21st century. Unfortunately we have gotten to a point of no return, where inequality is too great to be tamed with a globalized tax on financial transactions, as long as neo-liberalism prevails many more Ukraines are on the horizon.

PS: This article is dedicated to all of the Ukrainians that have lost their lives in the fight against fascism and that have fought to have a dignified life.

A luta continua.

NewsPolitics

It’s that time of the year again, the time for review of the year articles, the top 10s of 2013, the political winners and the political losers. Unfortunately this article is not going to take such a clear cut stance, but it will make reference to one of the most important tends in this past year, the rise of the socialist alternative.

2013 most certainly could go down in the memories of progressives, radicals, rabble-rousers and revolutionaries as just another dull year within an infinite sea of rampant victorious capitalism. Some might say, as always amazing movements were bread in these past 365 days but none of them gave birth to anything of substance.

And such could be said of almost every year since Fukuyama, oracle in chief of the new world order, announced the  end of history. For Fukuyama and the neo-liberal guard, the fall of the wall of Berlin and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc coincided with the ushering in of a new age, a never changing age of relentless growth and prosperity, an age in which any alternative to capitalism was dead in the egg.

From the onset, Fukuyama’s divination seemed quite fragile. It foresaw a utopia on earth, but never answered the question, for whom?

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Was this the end of history? Some think so, but is that changing in 2013?

Certainly since 1989 the rapid growth of global capitalism is due to the erasing of almost every from of regulation: regulation of the financial markets or regulation of trade. In this new world the main enemy is any barrier to the complete freedom of multinationals and corporations.

In pure economic terms there is no doubt that these past decades have been fabulous for the GDP and NASDAQ and all their siblings within the family tree of economic indicators. The wild 90s and 2000s were la belle époque, but not the end of history.

For its proponents and ardent defenders the end of history was not, in any way shape or form, the end of inequality or the dawning of a more just world, quite to the contrary. For those that crafted the doublespeak rhetoric of the end of history, it literally meant that, like it or not, capitalism was here to stay. The only alternative, communism, had crumbled and thus from now on consumerism was a synonym for freedom, capitalism was liberty and inequality was the natural way of things.

On the other hand any “alternative” to the new modus operandi was thrown into the dustbin of history alongside “communism” (insert here Stalinism). Any movement that spoke of a greater redistribution of wealth or fought for the defense of the social welfare state – or as Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it, the right to an adequate standard of living – was trash.

For the neo-liberal elite, the welfare state is seen as the final frontier, a regulation of society at large that must be abolished under current standards. Thus ‘left-wing’ movements, be they social-democratic, socialist or any other alternative tendency, have been struggling for relevance in this new age and some have chosen the path of least resistance and decided to implement the norms and dictates of the end of history, somehow thinking that this would make them relevant again.

Hand in hand with this loss of relevance goes the alienation of many groups in society that have lost for faith in the democratic system in its entirety. A democratic system that offers no substantial alternative breeds in itself disaffection and apathy, slow is the death of democracy as we know it.

Michelle Bachelet during the most recent presidential election in Chile
Michelle Bachelet during the most recent presidential election in Chile

And yet the 2008 crisis has planted the seeds of something new. The world has been rocked by popular discontent voiced in different ways, in very different parts of the globe. And the year 2013 was no different with continued uprisings in Europe against austerity –the dismantling of the welfare state through brutal “structural adjustments”– uprisings in Turkey against the privatization of public spaces, here in Canada protests, led by First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities, erupted against environmental degradation for short-term profit.

But most importantly, 2013 was a year in which many struggles gained concrete victories amidst great aversion.

In Chile, Camila Vallejo, Gabriel Boric, Giorgio Jackson and Karol Cariola, leaders of the student protests that have rocked the country since 2011, were elected to parliament. Vallejo was elected on a communist ticket and that party, after the last legislative elections, has the biggest percentage of seats since the time of Salvador Allende.

Still in Chile, Michele Bachelet was reelected to the highest position in the country with a whopping 62 percent of the vote, the biggest percentage for a presidential candidate in the history of the Chilean left. Madame Bachelet was elected on a platform to continue to roll back the reforms that were ushered in under the military junta of Pinochet and to implement universal free post-secondary education.

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From Kshama Sawant’s twitter, campaign for 15 dollars minimum wage

One of the greatest victories of 2013 surprisingly had for a backdrop the United States of America. For the first time since the great depression, a major American city elect an openly socialist candidate to office.

Kshama Sawant was elected bringing to the center stage of American politics the struggle for a living wage instead of a minimum wage, rent control and higher taxes for the wealthiest. The victory of her grassroots movement is the embodiment of the Socialist Alternative that in 2013 started to dawn.

In Europe, splinter left-wing groups that offer a true alternative to the neo-liberal status-quo championed by center-center right and center-center left wing political parties are on the rise. Syriza the ‘radical’ left-wing coalition of several left-wing political parties is now given the lead in the polls. Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras, has been endorsed by the European left to lead a new anti-austerity coalition in the upcoming European elections.

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Syriza founding congress picture by Eleanna Kounoupa Creative Commens on Flickr

Here in Montreal, Projet Montreal more than doubled its seats in city council and has become, for the first time in history, official opposition. A coalition of progressives from all walks of life and Quebecois left-wing political tendencies has shown the way for left-wing movements to link social movements and grassroots politics to a prominent place on the political spectrum.

For these reasons the year that is now coming to end was a very fruitful one in which the alternative to this current system of savage capitalism grew in an extraordinary manner, and announced the return of history.

For this reason we have much to look forward to in 2014.

A Luta Continua

NewsPolitics

As this year draws to a close, we see a spike of nearly five percent of foreign temporary workers admitted to Canada over the course of 2013. 125 000 foreign temporary worker permits were issued this year in comparison to the 119 000 issued in 2012.

Since the mid-1970s, the foreign temporary worker program (FTWP) has not ceased its rapid climb in acceptance rate of foreign temporary workers. The accelerated acceptance rate of the FTWP, backed by corporate Canada and successive Liberal and Conservative governments, is publicly justified by a need to keep Canada economically competitive on the international scene.

This has been the rhetoric and the words used by the political and corporate elites to justify the complete deregulation of the Canadian labour market since the mid-1980s and also the continual expansion of the FTWP into all sectors of Canadian life. Through the expansion of FTWP, anti-union and anti-labour lobbies throughout Canada have seen the stagnation of Canadian wages and the power of organized labour hit a wall, from which it may not fully recover. Profits have skyrocketed and business continues as per usual.

What these anti-union and anti-labour lobbies have essentially advocated for is a growing gap between the rich and the poor in Canada, an increased pressure on the Canadian working-class, the disappearance of the living wage, growing unemployment particularly among youth and the deregulation of the Canadian job market. All of these factors continue to upload a neoliberal vision: global division of labor between the skills-based rich in countries from the north and a manual labour-rich south, what can also be described as the triangular trade of the 21st century.

Throughout the past two decades, many have spoken of the highly skilled professionals and academics that are immigrating from developing countries toward the fully industrialized north. It is a brain drain.

migrant workers federation

On the other hand, there is the continual delocalization of many industrial jobs from northern markets towards southern markets, where wages are lower and the tax environment friendlier. In essence, outsourcing for multinational and corporate interest.

Both brain drain and outsourcing have serious consequences on the global economy. The brain drain deprives developing countries of necessary skill sets to tackle the challenges of post-colonization and outsourcing ravages communities throughout the Western world and still does today.

The form of globalization in which we must live today poses no solution for the inequity that weighs in favor of the rich and the most powerful of this world. Well, inequity is the fuel that allows globalization to continue unheeded on its destructive path.

In the past decade we have seen the surge of a new phenomenon called insourcing through the rapid growth of the FTWP. Insourcing, as opposed to outsourcing, is the use of  ‘cheap’ labor when there is lack of manpower to get this or that project completed.

There are many historical examples of insourcing in Canadian history, one being the exploitation of Chinese workers to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Chinese families at the time received no compensation for members of the family that were killed, nor were they always notified of the death itself. Although Chinese workers were promised enough money to send home to their families in China, this dream sadly rarely came to fruition.

With a history like this housed in Canadian public memory, one would think that Canada would learn from these mistakes and make sure they never happen again. Yet, that very same treatment is reserved for foreign temporary workers throughout the country today. At the end of their contract, temporary workers do not even reserve the right to reside on Canadian soil.

In recent years cases of abuse and discrimination have come to light, all of which are proof of violation of labour laws. This has put pressure on the Conservative government to create stricter guidelines for the program. The government now obliges employers to pay foreign temporary workers Canadian minimum wage and pay a user fee.

Fundamentally, FTWP is a program that is based on discrimination and will only breed more discrimination. The FTWP creates a double standard, one for Canadian residents and citizens and one for the Other, creating a second class of workers, that is a reserve force that is inexhaustible in which individuals lose their rights and their dignity.

A capitalist’s dream come true, the FTWP allows those in power to strip individuals and nations of not only their product, but their capacity for trade. To the Canadian government, these workers are disposable.

Any worker that comes to Canada and works for the betterment of our collectivity deserves to be treated in the same regard as any other worker on Canadian soil. There should be no class distinction made among workers; we are one.

To protect the hard-won battles of organized labour throughout the years, we must also struggle with foreign temporary workers. FTWP should not be a centerpiece of Canadian immigration policy, but a program that helps foreign workers who have no intention of staying while they are here and helps those who do wish to remain in Canada make the transition.

“Good enough to work here, good enough to stay” a Canada that respects itself, that upholds the principals and values enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would honour such an ideal.