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by afew
Thu Jun 7th, 2007 at 09:25:39 AM EST
Daniel Cohn-Bendit goes back over the defeat of the left in the French presidential (with no doubt the prospect of more to come in the parliamentary), in an interview for cultural magazine Télérama. After pointing out, as we have here, that Sarkozy took over his party completely well in advance of the election, while Royal's bid came too late and at the price of conflict with other would-be candidates, he says she was also hampered on the policy side:
| De façon générale, ses cent vingt propositions étaient plombées par une vision socialiste française, keynésienne, fondée sur l’investissement public. Or, le seul keynésianisme qui peut fonctionner, c’est au niveau européen, parce qu’il faut éviter les distorsions de concurrence entre les pays membres. Mon mot d’ordre, c’est : Keynes à Bruxelles ! C’est de là que doit partir l’investissement public si l’on veut régler le problème crucial des transports et de l’énergie. | | Overall, her 120 propositions were bogged down in a French socialist vision, Keynesian, based on public investment. But the only Keynesianism that can work is at the European level, because we have to avoid distortions introduced by competition between member states. My watchword is: Keynes in Brussels! That's where public investment needs to come from if we want to settle the crucial problems of transport and energy. |
He goes on to discuss the future of the left in France: he sees it as a coalition of three poles, Bayrou's centre (freed from the right, which is still imo a long-odds bet), the social-democrats, and the ecologists. (The non-social-democrats in the PS seem to disappear in the wash, and the "anti-liberal" left, says Dany, doesn't want to govern anyway, so let them get on with organising demonstrations...) He says les Verts are mired in leftism:
| Durant toute la campagne européenne de 1999, on a fait de moi un affreux libéral, parce que je me définissais comme « libéral libertaire ». Personne ne voulait comprendre ce que le libéralisme a apporté politiquement à la démocratie. On est dans une société contradictoire : on fête les écrits de Claude Lefort, de Castoriadis, de ces déconstructeurs du marxisme qui ont réinventé autour de la pensée de Hannah Arendt une idée de la liberté et de la démocratie, et à partir du moment où on appelle ça par son nom, le libéralisme politique, ça devient une horreur...
Il y a aussi beaucoup de confusion entre les termes : libéralisme politique, ultralibéralisme, économie de marché?
En ce qui concerne l’économie de marché, les Verts ne comprennent pas qu’ils y ont intérêt ! Si on est contre le nucléaire, il faut déconstruire le monopole d’EDF. Comment ? Par la concurrence des marchés. La concurrence a été le seul moyen de faire entrer en Allemagne les énergies renouvelables dans le circuit de distribution électrique. | | Throughout the European campaign of 1999, I was made out to be an awful (economic) liberal, because I defined myself as a "libertarian liberal". No one was willing to see what liberalism has contributed politically to democracy. We're in a contradictory society: we acclaim the writings of Claude Lefort, of Castoriadis, of these deconstructors of Marxism who reinvented around Hannah Arendt's thinking an idea of freedom and democracy, yet as soon as we call that by its name, political liberalism, it becomes pure horror...
There's also confusion between the terms: political liberalism, ultraliberalism, market economy?
Take the market economy, the Verts don't realise it's in their interest! If you're against nuclear, you have to deconstruct the EDF monopoly. How? By market competition. Competition was the only way to get renewables into the German grid. |
Need I say I've always liked Daniel Cohn-Bendit (voted for him in 1999), and think he's done excellent work at the EP. And a lot of what he says makes sense (Keynes in Brussels...) But he also strikes me as having a decidedly rightist Third Way approach to the way to renew the French left (he cites looking at what Blair has achieved as a plus in this interview), and his discourse around "liberalism" is, well... He's playing on words. As the interviewer tries to point out, only to be ignored.
But there's stuff to chew on there. Public investment in Brussels to handle transport and energy problems, but market competition to get renewables into energy circuits...
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