By Roberto Savio Inter Press Service
[IPS news agency]
March 29, 2010
http://other-news.info/index.php?p=3335
ROME, Mar (IPS) The victory of the right in January's
elections in Chile has stirred reflections on the crisis of
the left. Of the 15 countries in Europe that had leftist
governments in 1992, only five do today, and of these three
-Portugal, Spain, and Greece-presently find themselves in
grave financial and social difficulty. For people under
fifty, it is hard to grasp how deep the roots of this crisis
go. The solution does not seem to be a quick one.
It should be remembered that since the end of the Second
World War and the creation of the UN, we have seen an
extraordinary process of political modernisation built on
constitutional foundations: social justice and democratic
participation. Economic expansion was accompanied by a major
process of reform, in particular agrarian, and the expansion
of labour rights and health and employment protections.
At the global level, the UN General Assembly adopted in the
1970s a declaration on the New International Economic Order
which postulated "global social justice" and recognised the
Third World's right to participate equitably in the world
economy. In this period, the values of human development
were the basis of political debate. A North-South dialogue
was inaugurated involving 22 heads of state, with a first
summit held in Paris and a second in Cancun in 1980,
attended by the newly-elected Ronald Reagan - a man
uninterested in international justice but very interested in
trade.
Reagan introduced the famous slogan, "Trade, not aid". And
with his allies, like British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher, he began to change the course of history. In the
1980s the World Trade Organisation was created outside of
the UN system, which was targeted by a campaign to
delegitimise it as a forum for international decision-
making.
Then came the replacement of the New Information Order and
the New Economic Order with the so-called Washington
Consensus, which imposed a single neoliberal orthodoxy as
the basis of international economic relations. At the same
time, Reagan and Thatcher undertook a focused assault on the
power of labour unions, beginning a liquidation of state
social services that continues to this day.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The claim was made that what
had been defeated was not an enemy -the Soviet Union- but
rather the entire opposition to capitalism. Neoliberal
author Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached
"the end of history", because from that point on there would
only be capitalism and continuous growth, unrestrained by
noxious regulation.
After the death of communism, the death of ideology was
proclaimed. The new orthodoxy eliminated all differing
opinion. The market was exalted as the best regulator of the
economy, society, and culture.
In the face of this colossal lie, the left, in Europe
especially, sought to be as unobtrusive and ahistorical as
possible, remaking itself according to the styles and the
collective imagination of the moment. In general, it split
into two groups: "widows" and "virgins".
The widows of the left, except in ex-socialist countries,
withdrew from politics. The virgins, in contrast, began to
speak of the end of ideology and to espouse pragmatism. "You
have to be pragmatic," was the slogan of the 90s.
Many words were dropped from the political lexicon, which
did not help the virgins: social justice, solidarity,
transparency, participation, progressive imposition, etc.
But pragmatism has a major flaw: without a conceptual
framework, it becomes a mechanism that undertakes only that
which is possible, and therefore what is useful. Which means
it is not pragmatism but utilitarianism.
Politics then focuses its energies only in administrative
goals, without a larger social vision and without a defined
set of values. It is a left without an identity, locked into
a chronic polemic with the right over personal and
administrative questions.
At the same time as this transformation was taking place, a
more significant economic change was occurring. After the
abolition of banking regulation decreed by Bill Clinton in
1989 and during the neoliberal binge of the G.W. Bush
administration, there was an explosive creation of new
unprecedentedly high-risk financial instruments. The real
economy of goods and services became subservient to the
financial sector, which grew twenty times faster. The
relation between politics and economics underwent a drastic
change. Production ceased to be the primary economic
referent. And with finance completely globalised and
unregulated, the national arena and its laws and
institutions began to grow inconsistent.
In the current debate, the old terms have been captured to
use in a new Cold War. Republicans are attacking Barack
Obama as a socialist. Similarly, Italian premier Silvio
Berlusconi denounces the opposition as communists.
And the left?
The left finds itself without the terminology to identify
itself with the people. It can no longer speak of social
justice, solidarity, equality, or redistribution without
being accused of communist nostalgia. In Italy, the
situation is so extreme that the Labour Ministry is now
referred as the Ministry of Welfare, without a peep of
objection from the left, which doesn't want to appear too
leftist.
The list of concessions made by the left in the countries of
Europe would fill volumes. In the United States, after the
exceptional election of a black man as president in a
massive popular vote, we now see that Obama was accompanied
into office by the old economic team that was responsible
for the current crisis. This blocks any possibility for
reform of the bankrupt financial system, which has created
hundreds of millions of new poor and will probably suffer
another collapse in the not-so-distant future if reform is
not forthcoming.
Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that the winners
when the Berlin Wall fell are the losers today as the other
wall (Wall Street) falls. How can a young European who has
not lived through this stretch of history grasp the paradox
Stiglitz points to and believe that a left without any
identity could be the road to a society different from that
of today? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)
[Roberto Savio is founder and president emeritus of the
Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.]
