(not quite the Russian civil war is it) and the more radical elements of the left are focused on anti this and anti that. Anti fascism. Opposing the far right. But you can't win and gain political power IMO purely through being against stuff... you have to suggest and inspire and offer solutions and ideas no matter how challenging the situation. And right now I feel uninspired to vote because I don't hear any of this being articulated.I know you weren't talking about a break up of the EU, but my point is that the rise of the far right is not caused by EU membership in itself, and a situation where the EU did not exist would probably make it worse. A divided Europe would become more economically irrelevant and full of client states for either US/Russia/China competing amongst each other to attract investment.I wasn't talking about a break up of the EU though was I? I was talking about the disengagement of the British political class and other key elements of British society from what is happening around us, locally and globally. Particularly in Europe. Even the ones that proport to be proud Europeans and love the EU. Do they actually read European newspapers? Are they actually following what's happening? Did you know the main newspaper at the European Commission was and probably still is... the Financial Times. One of the reasons that Brexit was such a blow is that British neoliberalism and its trajectory has been a guiding inspiration to EU institutions.
As for the 'rightward turn' that's open to interpretation. Certainly it's a failure of the left to articulate ideas and to attract public imagination. People's anger and frustrations have been better captured by more right wing parties since the 2008 crash but that's not the whole story is it? Rise of Corbyn. More radical left wing governments in Greece and Spain too.
Socialist ideas are hugely popular... to the extent even right wing and populist parties have adopted them in order to gain votes. In the UK for example the NHS, trains and public transport, nursery care and education for free, stopping arms sales to criminal regimes like Israel, limits to rent rises and rebuilding social housing, stopping sewage pumped into rivers to increase corporate profits and stopping tax avoidance for the largest companies while workers pay stagnates. To name a few.
But I turn on the radio and the Labour party is talking about banning energy drinks. And other lefties are talking about rejoining the EU because things are just too tough
www.project-syndicate.org
www.politico.eu
I agree with you on the whole... The"problem" with the greens is that it's one member one vote and from what I understand policy is broadly set by the conference. It's a shame that lessons of Corbyn in 2019 haven't been learned by the membership... If still rather an imperfect democratic party than the zero democracy alternatives of other main parties
I think where Syriza baulked was not following the will of the people (in referendums) and returning to the drachma. They had the approval of the vast majority to try that Democracy needs deepening and every time it is reneged on its a disaster.I know you weren't talking about a break up of the EU, but my point is that the rise of the far right is not caused by EU membership in itself, and a situation where the EU did not exist would probably make it worse. A divided Europe would become more economically irrelevant and full of client states for either US/Russia/China competing amongst each other to attract investment.
It would also become more technologically backwards - one major reason the US is surpassing Europe economically is it basically has a monopoly on cloud services and most European enterprises are paying US tech companies (especially Amazon, Google, Microsoft) for cloud services and hosting. I think people underestimate how economically significant Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft Azure are these days. E.g. Spotify is one of the rare European tech companies but it is all hosted on AWS so a large part of Spotify's expenses are paying US tech companies - no wonder Silicon Valley is awash with cash but Europe is relatively broke. A lot of the UK public sector expenditure will also be towards these kind of services, not sure how much exactly but it is significant.
On top of that Big Data also enables AI. China is the only country with a major cloud infrastructure not dependent on the US so that is why US and China are leading in AI.
The long term economic ramifications of this are significant - one reason why German car exports are starting to decline is because they are struggling to compete with American cars (Tesla) and Chinese cars which have connections to cloud services. There will be other effects further down the line.
Is Europe Deindustrializing? | by Yanis Varoufakis - Project Syndicate
Yanis Varoufakis argues that the problem is bigger than factory closures, as the automobile and green-energy sectors show.
The fact is that the new technologies which will define the coming century are based on economies of scale. The EU remains ineffective and inadequate, but at least it is capable of attempting to do something. There is a thus far unsuccessful attempt to develop an EU cloud service - but it is highly unlikely that any individual European country would be able to develop their own cloud infrastructure.
Inside Gaia-X: How chaos and infighting are killing Europe’s grand cloud project
The initiative, meant to boost Europe’s cloud services, is failing to fix the problems it was intended to solve.
IMO one reason why the left has failed despite false dawns like Syriza is that it isn't really possible for an anti-capitalist movement to succeed in one country which is integrated into the global market.
The USSR was only able to build an alternative system because it was an agrarian nation and barely part of the world economy so it effectively build an alternative industrial system from scratch, and also it was large enough and rich enough in resources to need little from global markets. I'm not saying the USSR should be a model but the integration of everything into the world economy today is also why even moderate social democratic policies we saw in the post war era are politically impossible today.
Syriza found their hands were tied once in power - but might it have been different if they controlled the ECB and had allies in power around Europe? I think of course it would have. This is why Varafoukis quit Syriza and tried to start his Democracy in Europe Movement, which seems to have basically fizzled out for various reasons, but I think it had the right idea.
So I largely agree with what you say about the left's failure to articulate a vision and being stuck as being against things, but left wing opposition to the EU strikes me as the most egregious example of this. I don't think it is possible to articulate a serious socialist vision today without it being an EU-wide movement.
Not saying the Green rejoin attitude is a serious socialist vision, but it is still something the left should support with the caveat that we want to reform the EU and that we can only transform the UK as part of a continent-wide transformation.
Oh.
Guess wrong button pressed when moving them. I'm sure the mods will fix it eventually but it's friday night.
Postal vote received yesterday and I posted it today. I didn't trust the pre-paid envelope so I paid 20 quid for tracked mail.
The current "SDP" is nothing to do with Owen. Believe they are the third party to use the name and are Eurosceptics unlike the origanel lot.
unfortunately there seems to be little liberalism in relation to trans issues anywhere.
They're right-wing duplicitous counts, so they're not that dissimilar.
