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Because the center-left already discredited themselves and couldn't give a coherent criticism, while the hard left couldn't step up to take its place.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 03:49:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

the center-left already discredited themselves and couldn't give a coherent criticism,, while the hard left couldn't step up to take its place.

So what goes on? Liberalism a la FDP isn't sustainable. While it's true that Germans have a whole hell of a lot of social safety net to burn before they get themselves into the position that Americans find themselves, it's a possibility.

And this is true basically everywhere. Certainly in the USA. When you have no coherent Left alternative, what happens?

Part of the answer seems to be that initially be that people withdraw from politics. Europe seems to be at where the US was twenty years ago in that sense.

But now in the US, people are reengaged, and still things stall along.

What happens when their is no possibility for change within the given system of politics, and pressures are building up for change within it? Rupture and reformation of a new democratic regime? Authoritarianism? Something else?

I need to get to Hannah Arendt, but I believe that some of Harvey's (the guy behind a brief history of neo-liberalism) more academic stuff gets into how liberalism turns authoritarian when it starts hitting these walls it can't deal with.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:06:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I'm about ready to give up on the Party of European Socialists for a "coherent Left alternative", but where does that leave us? With a European People's Party permanent majority.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:13:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

Ever heard of sewer socialism?

With the creation of the Socialist Party of America, this group formed the core of an element which favored Democratic socialism over Orthodox Marxism, deemphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric and in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health. The Sewer Socialists fought to clean up what they saw as "the dirty and polluted legacy of the Industrial Revolution,"[3] cleaning up neighborhoods and factories with new sanitation systems, city-owned water and power systems, and improved education. The movement has its origins in the organization of the Social Democratic Party, a precursor to the Socialist Party of America.

In this US, the profusion of levels of government means that if you don't win on national level you can fight locally.

I have to wonder whether the Left has to be redeemed at the local level before there can be national Left alone an international Left.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:21:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

should have been a national left let alone and international left.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:58:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

ManfromMiddletown:

Part of the answer seems to be that initially be that people withdraw from politics.

This was the lowest participation in a German federal election, right?

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 06:25:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes. The 77% four years ago was already a record low. Now it's down to 71%.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 07:43:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

WHat is most remarkable is that the social safety nets are in large part the result of the response to the Great Depression. And 80 years later here we are staring at the possibility of a repeat and what do we do? Vote into government people who would gladly dismantle the social safety net.

Not that the Social Democrats haven't been busy doing it for the better part of this decade.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 06:35:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

while the hard left couldn't step up to take its place.

And them being a bunch of unreconstructed commies (in Germany I don't know, at least they're that here at home).

Sucks to be a Keynesian today, with such friends as the hard left, who needs enemies...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:19:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Who are you calling a Keynesian? Not the SPD, I hope...

The thing is, with the Social Democrats having adopted the neoliberal economic consensus since the "Third Way" of 15 years ago, they are part of the cause of the crisis.

At least the FDP has not been in power while the CDU and the SPD implemented its economic ideology so they have some sort of plausible deniability...

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:22:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Who are you calling a Keynesian?
Myself. And you, I guess.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:26:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Does that make us crass?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:38:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Shrill, perhaps. Supposedly.

W(h)ither the Left is well worth a separate diary.

It's the most important question now.

When Keynes is seen as some kind of wacky tripped-out hippy extremist by the so-called Official Left, politics has gone far beyond plain dysfunction into outright suicidal insanity.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:14:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Keynes they know about so they can denounce him. But to me the fact that John Stuart Mill, a well-off mid-19th century English liberal that nobody bothers to criticize because they don't know about him, is noticeably to the left of present-day European Social Democrats has been scaring the bejeezus out of me for some time now.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:18:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Well Keynes wasn't a Socialist, either...

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:23:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

No, he wasn't.

The way Krugman puts it, it's remarkable what the conventional wisdom says about Keynes...

Keynes did not, despite what you may have heard, want the government to run the economy. He described his analysis in his 1936 masterwork, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," as "moderately conservative in its implications." He wanted to fix capitalism, not replace it. But he did challenge the notion that free-market economies can function without a minder, expressing particular contempt for financial markets, which he viewed as being dominated by short-term speculation with little regard for fundamentals. And he called for active government intervention -- printing more money and, if necessary, spending heavily on public works -- to fight unemployment during slumps.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:28:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

Well Mill was friendly towards some sort of socialism, in fact he considred himself a socialist of some sort, if I'm not mistaken. In fact I have the general impression that he can be considered some sort of ancestral influence on British socialism...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:32:05 PM EST
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I did write about Mill's opinions on socialism here on ET.

We are too ignorant either of what individual agency in its best form, or Socialism in its best form, can accomplish, to be qualified to decide which of the two will be the ultimate form of human society.
If a conjecture may be hazarded, the decision will probably depend mainly on one consideration, viz. which of the two systems is consistent with the greatest amount of human liberty and spontaneity.

I believe he correctly predicted the way in which "real socialism" would fail in this respect in the 20th Century by degenerating into totalitarianism.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:41:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Léon Walras was a socialist, too. He was in avour of the nationalization of land and he actively promoted the co-operative movement.

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

by Melanchthon on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 06:50:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Given that Walrus considered himself a gradualist socialist it is highly ironic that he is probably best known today for the neo-classicals who resort to the IS-LM model and invoke Walrus' Law to avoid having to provide a real model of the labor markets. (The assumption is that if the capital and the goods markets are in equilibrium, then, per Walrus' Law, the labor markets must also be in equilibrium.) A socialist who comes to be known for providing justification for ignoring labor markets! Steve Keen has written interesting posts that deal with the subject recently.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 11:15:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

"The time has come," Walras said
"To talk of many things:
Of stocks--and bonuses--and default swaps--
Of green shoots--and CEOs--
And why the market is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."...

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

by Melanchthon on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 12:00:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"The time has come", Herr Walrus said,
"To speak of many things,
Of default swaps and CDOs,
Of bonuses and CEOs,
And why the market is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."...

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 12:44:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Those sweetwater people apparently don't even know anything about Keynes either.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Sep 28th, 2009 at 02:44:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]

But the FDP wants to continue everything which led to the crises, and with new clothing, continue the amalgamation of banking power. Guido and the FDP are the Siemens party.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:51:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Indeed -- the SPD at least made a half-backward on neolib policies since, the FDP wants to run further. I fear for their ideas about the German Railways...

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:56:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

~~for~~

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:56:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

That's why the FDP shouldn't have gained in this election, but they did. What does the German electorate know that we don't?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:01:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

You shouldn't interpret the FDP's percentages on its own terms. A large part of that is CDU voters fed up with having to coalition with the SPD.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:25:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

In fact the CDU and the FDP were fighting over this on election night. (Maybe someone who had the stomach to watch the Elefantenrunde can comment more, I only read it in articles.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:27:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

Plausible deniability.

It's not about whether their policies have been tried or not. It's about them being able to claim that their policies have not been tried. All they need is a sufficiently big fig leaf that their tame newsies can keep a straight face while they pretend to take their insanity as wisdom.

And if you pay your tame newsies enough, "sufficiently big" is very small indeed.

But hey, at least Siemens make trains that actually run. That's still better than what the Italians and Americans have to show for their lunatic far-right parties...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:06:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The social democrats and centre left, having gradually given in to economic-liberal ideas, are all at sea with no analysis of the situation, while the harder left still falls back substantially on what are older views and is unable to appear to offer anything new.

The masses of salary and wage-earners are adrift with no offer of a complete, hope-bearing narrative from the left. Large numbers of them are tempted to take the only ideology in town, and believe that yet more economic liberalism is what's needed to move ahead and reach the good life.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:03:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Maybe they believe it's all downhill from here and each-man-for-himself offers them the better chance to sink or swim, because the alternative is to solidarily sink all together.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:15:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The greens are not doing badly lately, in France. And some branches of their party do offer a quite coherent left wing narrative.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:27:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

For the same reason that Hoover would have had a fair chance of winning in the summer of 1930, had there been an election then and not in 1932.

We haven't seen 20 % real unemployment in Europe yet. When we do (and we will if we keep electing far-right lunatics), there'll be a landslide. Either to the left or to the even farther right.

Our job is to make sure that the neo-Nazis (whatever their guises) are whacked rather firmly over the head whenever they show up. As long as we can do that - and keep doing that - things'll break our way eventually.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:32:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Sadly, I failed that...

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 04:49:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Where there is life there is hope. They haven't taken over the apparatus of the state yet, have they?

And there's always the option of federal intervention if a country goes Mississippi Burning on us. So we have a backstop in the EU that we didn't have the last time around. We don't yet know how effective that backstop would be, and I'd rather we never had to learn, but it's nice to have it all the same.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:04:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

Um, how about italy?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:06:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: German Elections Open Thread (4.00 / 8)

That's not a state, it's non-consensual performance art.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:16:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Sounds like statutory rape...

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 27th, 2009 at 05:45:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]