Political crisis is spreading like a forest fire through
Europe following the inconvenient intervention, for the ruling classes that is,
of millions and millions of voters in Britain ,
France , Greece and now Italy .
A rejection of austerity has produced the rare ousting of
an incumbent president in France ,
the overwhelming rejection of austerity parties in Greece ,
a hammering for the ConDems in Britain
and in Italy
huge success in local elections for a new movement led by a comedian.
The 5 Star Movement, led by Beppe Grillo, a tussle-haired
comedian who wants Italy
to quit the euro, made some stunning advances. In Parma , it knocked Silvio Berlusconi's PDL
which had previously ruled the city, into fifth place, winning 20% of the vote.
"We are an epic change. And this is just the beginning.
The parties are melting into a political diarrhoea. The citizens are taking
back their institutions," Grillo said in a YouTube message.
This concerted rebuff for the old political order has had an
immediate impact on European capitalism’s cherished project, the single
currency. With bankrupt Greece
unable to form a government in time to meet bail-out conditions, its ejection
from the euro is a distinct possibility.
Jason Conibear, director of the global foreign exchange
specialist Cambridge Mercantile, said of the election results: "There's
every chance the euro will go into freefall in the weeks ahead against all the
major currencies…Whether it was right or wrong, until the French and Greek
elections this weekend there was at least a script. The script of austerity has
now been torn up and the sovereign peoples of Europe
are starting to ad lib."
In another eurozone country, Spain , the slump in the economy has
left banks on life support and needing a bail-out sooner rather than later.
Whether the Spanish state can find the resources for this operation is an open
question. Industrial production has fallen by 7.5% in a year and one in four
workers is unemployed.
Right round Europe , the
massed voices of voters through the ballot box express a clamour for change. The
political class, old and new, have tried to embrace the movement. In Greece , Alexis
Tsipras, leader of the second most successful party, the united left bloc
Syriza, declared:
“The people of Europe can
no longer be reconciled with the bailouts of barbarism.” He added: “We want to
create a government of leftist forces in order to escape the bailout leading us
to bankruptcy ... We're not going to let in through the window what Greek
people kicked out the door.”
Such a government seems an impossibility, however. And
unless Greece
meets its EU/IMF loan obligations, it may not be able to pay public sector
salaries next month.
In France, president-elect Francois Hollande pledged to
“finish with austerity” after defeating Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political party,
the UMP, is facing a break-up as a consequence of his ousting. But Germany ’s
chancellor Angela Merkel has told Hollande there can be no going back on the
fiscal pact agreed by eurozone states.
Although voters have spoken in dramatic terms, solutions to
the crisis will have to be found outside of the parliamentary arena. For
example, Hollande’s “growth” policy is not an option because the global
capitalist economy is in a period of great contraction. This has a momentum of
its own that is more powerful than any policy adjustments that might be made.
The parliamentary state, however democratic it appears, is
actually part of the problem. It has all
but merged with corporate and financial power. Effectively, we live in a corporatocracy not a democracy.
Voters around Europe have
demonstrated their potential to challenge for power itself rather than being
content with rearranging the deckchairs. In every country, the electorate has
to become a thing for itself rather than an object for others to use and abuse.
Helping to build this self-awareness with the aim of putting Europe ’s
bourgeois elites out of their misery, is the challenge.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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