Thursday, July 16, 2015

Paul Craig Roberts — Greece Is Just The Beginning: The 21st Century 'Enclosures' Have Begun

The post is pretty excoriating, even for PCR.
All of Europe, and insouciant Americans and Canadians as well, are put on notice by Syriza’s surrender to the agents of the One Percent. The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled.
This former Reagan Administration official is sounding more radical that Michael Hudson.
What we see here is the impossibility of peaceful change, as Karl Marx and Lenin explained.
How the worm turns.

This is really an amazing post. Some people are going to be upset.

Zero Hedge
Greece Is Just The Beginning: The 21st Century 'Enclosures' Have Begun
Paul Craig Roberts

10 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

You're right, this is shrill even by PCR standards. But I can't argue with anything he said. These are the times that try men's souls.

Matt Franko said...

Clinton led the dismantling in the US In the 90 s... Europe is now catching up.. the ROW never had it in the first place....

Anonymous said...

The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled.

I don't think so. This kind of analysis is incredibly off the mark. Many of the northern European countries who are most hostile to Greece have very, very good social welfare systems, and don't seem to be changing them very fast at all. Finland has a better social welfare system than Greece, for example.

The northern European opposition to Greece does not at all reflect some kind of division between "neoliberal" vs. "social welfare" models. Rather it primarily reflects a difference between "neat and tight" social democracies that are more well-managed, less corrupt, more productive and more organizationally efficient and effective collectors of taxes versus a loose and inefficient Greek governing system filled with lots of casual corruption, a less productive economy, rampant tax cheating and government agencies that don't work well and function as wasteful absorbers of national revenue.

When you hear Bernie Sanders extolling the European social model, who is he talking about? The Nordic countries! Certainly not the dysfunctional Greek system.

So let's stick to the main issue here. The problem isn't that the Greek system isn't in need of significant reform. Nor is Greece defending some kind of plausible "socialist" alternative against the neoliberal onslaught. The problem is the stupid German-EU recovery model for Europe according to which the best way to reform countries is to starve them of the revenue needed for any kind of government action whatsoever and to contract their economies.

Dan Lynch said...

@Dan Kervick, the right has taken control of Finland and has embraced neoliberal austerity and deregulation. As their trade surplus shrinks they will be forced to become more austere unless they escape the Maaschrict straightjacket.

Sweden joined the neoliberal club years ago. Norway is still enjoying oil revenues that support its welfare state but its oil revenue won't last forever and already the austerity cuts have begun.

Scandinavia could cut their social spending in half and still be a better place to live than the U.S., but they're headed in the same neoliberal direction as the rest of the Western world.

John said...

"I don't think so. This kind of analysis is incredibly off the mark. Many of the northern European countries who are most hostile to Greece have very, very good social welfare systems, and don't seem to be changing them very fast at all."

Here in the UK the welfare state is under extremely severe attack by all the major parties except the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. As usual, Labour play a double game: they talk about defending the welfare state but undermine it at every turn by excusing themselves with the get-out-of-jail-free card that they are not the party of the unemployed but of the employed. Labour's outsourcing of public services to robber baron-style private companies (from 1997 to 2010) was denounced by the hard right within the Conservative party as extortionate cronyism. In Labour's case, they talk right but walk hard right. Labour's interim leader has announced that Labour should not oppose any of the ruling Conservative party's plans to take an axe to the welfare state. The pace of change is almost unprecedented.

Ignacio said...

Dan there has been a trend towards "neoliberalization" in northern Europe too (including Sweden and Norway). Most of the northern Europe social model (including Germany, which had a very cohesive and resilient model a few decades ago) has been degrading over time.

OFC we are not yet at US levels of idiocy/incompetence/corruption when it comes to things like universal healthcare, but we are slowly getting there. And the EU has been a fantastic vehicle on transferring power to the urban elite class and financier centres of power while dismantling the social-democratic European model.

There are also several issues that have to be dealt with, for example northern European are raw materials exporters in things like oil, maintaining a surplus in their current accounts, they are much more cohesive and smaller societies and (until now) had controlled emigration. Compare this to southern Europe: deprived of any meaningful raw materials productions, larger societies and with huge migratory pressure from the South (and even from within, from old north/central Europe population).

And then you got countries like the Baltic states, which swallowed huge misery and austerity while keeping their pegs and are poorer than Greece, being asked to participate on Greek bailouts.

Ignacio said...

I think there is something evil going on in the western elites thinking, my gut tells me that they are deeply Malthusian and this rationale is driving most of their decision-making in the end as they don't see any other alternative.

I'm almost sure is not really a matter of finance and money, but a genuine view of scarcity collapsing the current system in the future hence forcing poverty on people and 'down-shifting'. OFC this is all more evil when it comes from the left (even if the view was genuine they should be inclined to share the burdens).

Sound like conspiracy theory, but this has been resonating in many policy-making circles and think-tanks for very long time.

Anonymous said...

Dan there has been a trend towards "neoliberalization" in northern Europe too (including Sweden and Norway).

I agree Ignacio. The pressures of the global financial crisis have put all those systems under political stress. And there is no doubt that part of what the EU is trying to do in Greece is force more privatizations. The left in Europe has been trying to fight back to preserve those social democratic systems. But did Podemos come to the defense of Greece? No.

Random said...

"loose and inefficient Greek governing system filled with lots of casual corruption, a less productive economy, rampant tax cheating and government agencies that don't work well and function as wasteful absorbers of national revenue.

When you hear Bernie Sanders extolling the European social model, who is he talking about? The Nordic countries! Certainly not the dysfunctional Greek system."
Ah, so there is no tax evasion or corruption in the City of London? Deutsche Bank?
Load of bigoted nonsense.

Tom Hickey said...

I think there is something evil going on in the western elites thinking, my gut tells me that they are deeply Malthusian and this rationale is driving most of their decision-making in the end as they don't see any other alternative.

I'm almost sure is not really a matter of finance and money, but a genuine view of scarcity collapsing the current system in the future hence forcing poverty on people and 'down-shifting'. OFC this is all more evil when it comes from the left (even if the view was genuine they should be inclined to share the burdens).

Sound like conspiracy theory, but this has been resonating in many policy-making circles and think-tanks for very long time.


True and I have heard it stated outright. "We got there first. (read as "We won.") Screw the rest of them." These people really believe that all the oil is "our" oil. The US doesn't have global military bases and fast-response strike forces for nothing.