The end of Europe’s right-wing winter? - by Owen Jones

 For those who hoped the biggest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s would lead to a new wave of left-wing politics, the three-and-a-half years since Lehman Brothers went under have been a depressing experience. The right dominate Europe. Neo-liberalism should have been left on the ropes by the financial catastrophe: instead, it was handed its greatest opportunity yet.

I was in Portugal last November, and leading businesspeople and economists were entirely candid that the crisis made it possible to introduce policies – such as privatization, the slashing of taxes on the wealthy, and the repealing of workers’ rights – that were not possible in normal times.

In hindsight, expecting an automatic boost for the left was always a bit optimistic. As the global economy tanked, there was no coherent left with a mass base that could have benefited from the aftermath. The ‘left’ – as traditionally understood – had been all but wiped out as a significant political force on a global scale: largely, because of the rise of the New Right, the acceleration of globalisation, and the triumphalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Even leftists who abhorred Stalinist totalitarianism appeared discredited: after all, it was ‘The End of History’, as Francis Fukuyama put it. ‘It’s time to say: We’ve won, goodbye,’ as US neo-conservative Midge Decter put it in 1990, summing up the mood of the time.

But has the first round of France’s presidential election finally punctured the European right’s hegemony, bolstering the confidence of an embattled left? It’s an answer that needs a hell of a lot of caveats, that’s for sure.
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Daily Times - The end of neo-liberalism? — Joseph E Stiglitz

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The end of neo-liberalism? — Joseph E Stiglitz

The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called “Washington Consensus” in favour of privatisation, liberalisation, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation. For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top. Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well.Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy. Note EU-Digest: Joseph E Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict