Reading Politics in a Time of Crisis – A view from the Left.
By Duane Campbell
As we know, the economic crisis of 2008-2012 disrupted the
U.S. economy. The crisis was much worse
in some of the peripheral countries of Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal,
Ireland, and Italy among others), and even more destructive in under-developed
regions of African and Asia.
Spanish political leader Pablo Iglesias Turrión has written Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the Future of European Democracy,
published in an English translation by Verso Books. Iglesias provides a
critical summary of the crisis that began in the U.S., and spread to much of
the world causing political upheavals and leaving misery, starvation, and
massive migration in its wake.
We can learn much from reading Iglesias about this crisis in
Spain and other countries and economies,
including how the crisis led several
social democratic political parties in Spain, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere in
Europe to collaborate with right-wing movements to impose austerity on the
people. This collaboration led to the
collapse of many social democratic
political parties, the rise of
authoritarian right-wing parties,
and now the rise of a new left. A
similar process led to the collapse of social democratic parties in Brazil,
Argentina and Mexico. Currently in
Mexico the formerly left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) is working
with the right-wing National Action (PAN) party while a new left –the National
Regeneration Movement (“MORENA”) may well win this summer’s presidential
elections.
Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor, is one of
several leaders of Podemos (Spanish for “We Can”), a party of democratic
socialism and populism that was born in 2014 and currently commands almost 21 %
of the vote in Spain. In just 4 short
years, it became the second largest party in Spain while the traditionally left
Socialist Workers party (PSOE) collaborated with a conservative government to
impose austerity and lost much of its membership.
Iglesias’ and Podemos’ analysis of the economic crisis
beginning in 2008 is that New York and London became the financial capitals of
the world. In the U.S. , the financial
sector itself became the most powerful political force- a group he calls the
Party of Wall Street:
“The Party of Wall Street is a Leninist party in its way: it
is a class party with an international vocation. This party represents those
who inhabit the penthouses of the economic system. It is the party that
encouraged the selling of subprime mortgages that left millions of Americans
homeless. Under the Secretary of the Treasury
and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, it is the party that brought off a ‘soft’ coup d’etat in Washington and forced the American
government to inject billions of dollars into the banking system. It is the
party that Angela Merkel belongs to; the party that controls the European
Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund; the
party that imposes structural adjustment programs on developing countries and
swingering cuts on the countries of southern Europe[...]The party has been
flourishing well before the 2008 crisis, always keeping to a very precise
political line: to consolidate the power of finance” (Chapter 3)
According to Iglesias, the Party of Wall Street brought
neoliberalism to the U.S. and Europe and
used its power to promote an unstable expansion of credit, while
combating wage increases, trade unions and the existing welfare programs. The
Party of Wall Street used the rhetoric of promoting free trade and privatization,
and its political program was above all else a class project designed to
establish and extend the power of financial elites. The neoliberal projects are directly and
closely connected to globalization of finance and the control of the economies
of core nations.
I myself have been teaching a course here in California on
our economic crisis since 2011, and
Iglesias’ descriptions of the
processes that the rich used to loot the U.S. and eventually the world
economy are well-developed and supported
by substantial research in the U.S. His
arguments about the Party of Wall Street moves those of us on the left beyond
the endless debate about what stance left parties should take toward the
Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
This debate continues while we need to move on to organizing
for power. Meanwhile, a proto-fascist
Donald Trump and his retinue have been elected, and have unleashed a reign of
terror on the undocumented. They have proposed austerity and budget cuts in
child care and health care that will lead to the deaths of many. Their assault on organized labor is in the offing.
The issue is not good Democrats vs. bad Democrats and
fascist Republicans. As Iglesias writes, the problem is the Party of
Wall Street and how it must be defeated.
The party of Wall Street carried out a financial coup In the U.S. in
2008-2010. The financial disease then spread
to Europe. U.S. and European banks and
financial houses converted their financial losses to “citizen debt” to be paid
by government austerity programs:
“ American taxpayers were forced to hand over their money to
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and other fraudsters of the same ilk.
… the disease spread, and outlying
European countries soon found themselves in similar predicaments. Countries
like Greece, Ireland and Spain, have de-industrialized their economies in favor
of tourism, services and construction and allowed financial institutions to
pump up property bubbles, now bailed out their own banks… Just as in the U.S.,
bank debt was converted to citizen debt, which ordinary people would have to
pay off in the forms of cuts to public services and ferocious austerity
measures. (Chapter 3)
The party of Wall Street convinced European banks that the
existing welfare systems and union policies were too expensive, initially in
Greece, Spain and Italy. The effects of
government imposed austerity have been horrifying: pension cuts, high
unemployment, cuts to health and education systems. “In Spain by the end of 2013, there were more
than six million unemployed, a third of whom received no state assistance, and
youth unemployment reached 60 per cent.” (Chapter 3) Austerity policies not
only failed to produce growth, they have plundered the economies and created
desperate situations for the young and the unemployed.
Perhaps more important than Iglesias’ view of the economic crisis from Spain is the
way he and a new left responded- a left that became Podemos.
Spain, of course, is different than the U.S. It has a fascist past and it is an
economically dominated member of the European Union. It is often called by the media a member of
the European “periphery” or “south” as if it should not be considered a member
of the Global North any longer. Spain
historically had a socialist government of PSOE, which participated in the
government responding to the crisis of imposed European austerity.
Podemos was formed in 2014 based in significant part on the
prior protests of 15-M (the “May 15” movement based around protests in May of
2011) against inequality, corruption, and massive unemployment. In the elections on May 25, 2014, Podemos
received some 7.9 % of the national vote and elected 5 members of the European
Parliament. In elections in December of
2015, Podemos received 21 % of the vote and gained 69 out of 350 seats in the
Spanish parliament. Since 2015 the formerly
leftist PSOE party has been substantially repudiated for participating in the
imposition of neoliberal capitalist policies of bailouts and tax cuts for the
rich, and austerity for the great majority.
Social-democratic parties across Europe are facing similar defeats,
including most recently the Socialist Party of France.
Led by Iglesias and others, Podemos has created a new form
of struggle based in large part on the ideas of people working in the tradition
of Gramsci. In Politics in a Time of
Crisis, Iglesias reviews the histories of Marxism, and of Leninist parties
and social democratic parties in Europe- and where they failed. He asserts
that a first problem was that the conservatives were winning elections in part
because the majority did not participate.
Iglesias argued that since the broad mass of people were not
engaging in politics through the existing parties, the left had to go where the
people were. This was a war of ideology
and of position. In addition to local
movement organizing, Podemos established a nationwide, web-based television
program, “Tuerka,” to advance a left analysis of the crisis.
With over 25 % unemployment, and over 50% among the young,
the people knew there was serious problem.
The critical issue was to explain the crisis in common language so that
potential voters could understand the role of the existing parties- the Party
of Wall Street, in looting the economy, and the alternatives to this party.
Podemos created a new kind of open, participatory party not
weighted down by the corruptions of the past, including corruptions of the
established parties and labor union officialdom .
As in the U.S., the banks and the rich recovered, the poor
and the working class did not. And, in
Spain as a de-industrialized country as a consequence of EU policy, the impacts
on the lives of the working class were more severe, including a rise in hunger
nationwide.
The banks were robbing the people. The debt in Spain was
private bank debt that the government accepted to placate the Eurozone under
threat similar to that of economic war imposed upon Greece.. Conservative governments and social
democratic parties collaborated to destroy the Spanish and European social
welfare state—including its labor rights—as they did in Greece:
“The central strategy of Podemos was to occupy the centrality
of political discussion: “in Gramscian
terms in this war of position was to create a new common sense that would allow
us to occupy a transversal position at the heart of a newly reformulated
political spectrum.” (Appendix II)
Podemos offered the population a left perspective in terms
all could understand, and, they became the left. It was not that Podemos organized a new
left. The conditions and events created
space for a resistance, and Podemos created the formulation. They did not create a left- the left existed.
It previously lacked some explanatory power because economists, news media, and
politicians were funded by
capitalists and locked in old
categories, not addressing the clear and immediate dangers of the economic
crisis. The old left lacked credibility,
since it was often collaborating with conservatism to impose austerity.
Podemos recognized that the economic crisis was a political
crisis. It was created by the Party of
Wall Street, and it could best be resolved by gaining control of the government
through the expansion of democracy not by endless debates about Keynesian or
post Keynesian economics.
The economic crisis, of course, is not limited to Spain, nor
is the engagement of formerly social democratic parties into the Party of Wall
Street. Iglesias offers many useful
insights including comments of the problems of the “infantile” left, and
problems of institutionalizing a movement.
But, first, we have to recognize that the issue is about power and that
the broad working class can seize power.
The chapter History:
the Future Has an Ancient Heart,
provides a detailed recounting of recent Spanish political history and the
struggle for democracy since the Monarchy of the 1900’s. The history is important since it was often
determinant in shaping the PSOE and the competing labor union federations. I am confident Spanish readers found many
insights there.
Political conditions differ in the U.S., in Mexico and other
places. Bernie Sanders faced a dominant
2 party system and a presidential government.
Spain faces a multiparty system and a parliamentary government. Mexico is currently in facing the collapse of
the prior social democratic opposition – the PRD- and the rise of a citizen’s
movement somewhat similar to Podemos in Morena. The critical election will be in July of
2017.
Despite the differences in how our political systems
structurally operate, perhaps we can learn from Iglesias on how a broad-based
popular movement was created by movement leaders and activists, rather than an
electoral party centered around individual candidates.
I heartily recommend
reading Politics in a Time of Crisis.
There is much we can learn by reading Iglesias’ insights about Spain, Europe,
and political organizing. The author
offers valuable insights and examples for those of us seeking to create a left
in the U.S. that can achieve power – as opposed to a left that talks primarily
to itself.
And then, we will
have to write our own story.
Duane
Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at
California State University Sacramento, a union activist, and past chair of
Sacramento DSA. He serves on the Immigrant Rights Committee of DSA’s Anti
Racism Working Group and as an editor of the Democratic Left blog.
