Socialism USA : Why are Americans warming to socialism? Because capitalism has failed them-by Arwa Mahdawi

The S-word is something of a red herring – what many voters want is a change from the dismal status quo, writes Arwa Mahdawi

Read more at:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/why-are-americans-warming-to-socialism-because-capitalism-has-failed-them

Globalization: Will The Coronavirus End Globalization? - by Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp

Narratives provide the storylines through which people make sense of the world. Actors strategically deploy narratives to advance agendas, telling stories about what or who is to blame and what should be done. When it comes to the coronavirus, multiple narratives are emerging. Instead of adopting a common frame to understand this threat, actors are doubling down on their existing critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, using the coronavirus to show how right they were all along.

Instead of trying to advance a dominant narrative about what the pandemic means for globalization, we think it is time to start developing mental models to understand what the different perspectives are, how they can be integrated and what trade-offs this might involve. This approach permits us to provide a more three-dimensional understanding of the problem. We’ve identified at least seven major storylines that are competing for attention in explaining what the virus means for economic globalization.

For right-wing populists like President Donald Trump, the coronavirus vindicates concerns about the need to protect the country’s borders and to keep foreigners—and their diseases—out. The threat is portrayed as foreign, and the response is to build walls and stop flights. According to this narrative, globalization accelerates the threat. As Aurélia Beigneux, a politician from France’s right-wing National Rally, warns: “The free circulation of goods and people, immigration policies and weak controls at the borders obviously allow the exponential spread of this type of virus.” Hyperconnected global cities might be towering forces economically, but they are also entry ports for infection. Living in a “flyover states” is, for once, an enviable position.

For left-wing populists like U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the crisis has made it abundantly clear that the country needs free health care and paid sick leave for everyone, right now. They focus less on the foreign threat—how the virus arrived in the country—and more on domestic problems—how inequality in shared social and economic structures means that people are not properly treated, permitting the disease to spread. Lack of health care, high insurance premiums, and minimal sick-leave entitlements mean that it is harder to get people to self-isolate and get tested, which will hamper containment and increase fatalities. Perhaps universal healthcare is a national security issue.

o security actors who have long been worried about America’s overreliance on Chinese imports, the coronavirus reinforces concerns about the fact that over 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in U.S. medicines are produced abroad, mainly in China and India, including over 97% of antibiotics. According to this geoeconomic perspective, the pandemic demonstrates why America needs to be more self-reliant when it comes to making essential products like penicillin. The hit Australia has taken with respect to its top services exports—education and tourism—also raises concerns about concentrated dependence. When Chinese students comprise 70–80% of the international student body of some universities, making up over 20% of some university budgets, grounding planes from China has significant economic effects.

Capitalist reformers criticize the myopic focus of multinational corporations on bolstering shareholder value in a way that has led many to focus on short-term efficiencies over long-term economic resilience. The “just-in-time” approach to manufacturing, in which manufacturers do not keep a large inventories of materials but instead order them to arrive shortly in advance of assembly, is highly vulnerable to supply chain shocks. Automakers globally have had to stall production after supplies of components from China were disrupted. This crisis therefore proves the need to shorten supply chains and build in more redundancy into manufacturing processes to ensure greater resilience.

Political observers view the coronavirus as a perfect illustration of the advantages or flaws of authoritarianism or democracy—pick your poison. Those inclined to criticize Chinese authoritarianism point to that government’s early attempt to silence doctors who were raising the alarm about the virus. Others point to the advantage that the Communist Party enjoyed in dealing with the virus, when the government used lockdown orders and technological surveillance to rapidly contain the virus’s spread. Conversely, while some celebrate the West’s freedom of speech, others point to the dillydallying of Western democracies in effectively curtailing these risks—with Italy and now the United States being cases in point. The coronavirus will have longer term implications for debates about liberal versus authoritarian capitalism.

Globalists view the coronavirus as a global threat that shows the common plight of humanity and the need to work together. Viruses don’t discriminate; nor should we. Instead of hoarding medical masks through export controls, countries should work together to ensure that all states have sufficient medical supplies. This is a time for global action and for all people and countries to come together. Countries should encourage scientists from around the world to work together to find a vaccine, rather than resorting to “sicken-thy-neighbor” export bans on medical supplies. Here, the goal is global cooperation to enable the continued flow of people, goods and ideas.

Read more at: Will The Coronavirus End Globalization? - Barron's

USA: The Trump Administration war against socialism will fail

Trump’s war on socialism will fail

Read more at: 

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBTq0PA?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

USA: TRUMP HAS TURNED AROUND THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM - GIVE TO THE RICH AND SUCK THE POOR AND MIDDLE INCOME EARNERS DRY

Trump offers socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else

Read more at: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/trump-offers-socialism-for-the-rich-capitalism-for-everyone-else?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

SOCIALISM: Most Americans don';t have a clue what Socialism stands for, including President Trump

Trump may be too late. Socialism has already arrived in the United States by Don Pittis

Read more at: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-socialism-canada-1.5010033

Capitalism, Marxism. Populism and Socialism : Richard D. Wolff on the Changing Tides of Capitalism and Socialism - by Creston Davis

In a captivating article by Truthout we read - "Nearly 30 years ago, many capitalists were celebrating what political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the "ultimate victory of the VCR": where consumerism sank communism. However, they failed to calculate the effects of this consumerism on the environment. They also failed to predict how the public would start to tire of a situation in which a very small percentage of capitalists are reaping all the benefits while the rest of us are sinking deeper and deeper into debt, poverty and powerlessness".

"Public dissatisfaction with the status quo began to spread in new directions in 2008, feeding into the global Occupy movement in 2011, and mass support for Bernie Sanders today. People are enraged; we feel doped, scammed, cheated".

"An increasing proportion of the population is becoming receptive to the messages of the professors, activists, clergy, artists and other community organizers who have long been dismissed as "too radical," while the capitalist machine roars on and on. Dr. Richard D. Wolff has long been warning the US public that the capitalist machine is one of the biggest scams in history, and now it's finally becoming clear to the general public".

"I sat down with Professor Wolff -- who recently retired from his post at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and who runs the nonprofit organization Democracy at Work -- to find out more about his work".

Question by Creston Davis: Professor Wolff, can you tell us about your own experiences as an economist who was trained in the elite Ivy League towers of American academia?
Richard D. Wolff:

"In the 10 years I spent from the day I entered Harvard to the day I left Yale, in the years in the Ivy League, I got credentialed to be a professor of economics, which is what I've done all my adult life. I learned what is now called "mainstream economics" and essentially, that's all I learned. Because it was the height of the Cold War when I was studying at university, the way the elite American institutions handled the problem of the Cold War was by pretending there was no economics other than "mainstream economics," which is a celebration of capitalism".

"Mainstream economics" is divided between two strands: The first and primary one is the pure celebration of capitalism, which is called "neoclassical economics" for historical reasons. And the secondary strain, which admits that capitalism has some problems, but don't worry, they're easily fixed. This strain is called Keynesian economics because it explains how, in the face of the complete collapse in the 1930s, a society can get itself out of this catastrophe.".

Question: Do you openly claim to be a Marxist?

" I don't shy away from the term "Marxist," but the truth of it is, I insist on not shying away just as a kind of pushback against the mind-numbing narrowness of an American academic economic dogma, which is, to this day, unable and unwilling to confront and to cope with reality".

Question: Do your colleagues know Marxism?

"My economic colleagues -- many of whom are anti-Marxist or indifferent to Marxism -- what these two camps share in common is that they don't know a thing about Marxism. It's not their fault; they are smart, but it's been the cultural asphyxiation of open-mindedness in American academic culture that makes them unable to think that way and which gives me the wonderful opportunity to compare how the different approaches deal with the problem.

So I know how mainstream economics does it, and I know how Marxian does it, and can look and see, and pick and choose, and pull these things together, whereas my colleagues can't do that. I can talk to them about neoclassical and Keynesianism, but they can't talk to me about Marxism. It's as if we didn't speak the same language. So it's very peculiar. Nevertheless my approach to the problems of American capitalism is starting to gain a larger readership as consciousness begins to shift ".

Question: What are some trends that we are witnessing as a result of ignoring other ways of seeing the world?

"Back in 2008, with the catastrophic collapse from which most people haven't recovered, it's clear to see that, "Oh my God! We've got a system that's troubled!" That's why you have a Jeremy Corbyn [as] head of the Labour Party in England; that is why you have a Bernie Sanders blowing away the dismissal that he would get 2 to 3 percent of the vote, if that! Despite the media exclusion of him, more than it's ever justified, he keeps winning ".

Question: How would you explain this?

" I mean, it's amazing what [Sanders has] been able to do, and it's a sign ... it's the audience that's changed as it has for me. I go all over the country; I speak in a lot of places and the demand for my talks -- which, five years ago, was virtually nothing -- [now] is very high. It's a completely different world, for me ... [due to a] change in the mentality in the American people. Suddenly, I'm in high demand; I do this weekly radio program broadcast in over 50 stations now across the United States and it's growing ".

Question: You'll be teaching a seminar, "Capitalism and Socialism in the 20th Century," that focuses on your work in July at The Commons in Brooklyn, New York. What are your objectives in teaching this course?

"The 20th century was one comprised of a cataclysmic struggle between two opposing ideologies: capitalism and socialism.... Toward the end of the century, around 1989-1990, one of these two ideologies, socialism collapses. The Soviet Union implodes, Eastern Europe follows in its wake, and in China some basic changes begin to manifest in terms of direction and orientation. China's shifts were made so that it could become popular and competitive in the new world order, which is globalized, unabated capitalism. Capitalism won, end of story".

"What that period and what this history shows us is that whatever else one has to say, something about the 20th century experiment with socialism, particularly in Russia and China, wasn't sufficient to sustain itself. They fell apart not by being overwhelmed by a military defeat ... rather, at the end of the day, there's something inherent in that form of socialism that didn't work. And so, starting in 1989, this implosion led to a series of deep questions and criticisms inside the world of socialism to explain what happened".

"Questions such as "What did we do wrong?" "What can we do differently?" "What was valuable in what socialism achieved despite its collapse?" "What was repugnant or didn't work in socialism?" And these sets of questions have produced, in the period between 1990 and 2016, a horizon of self-criticisms coupled with new directions for socialism in the 21st century".

"Yes, in the wake of capitalism's defeat many philosophers -- and we're talking even atheist Marxists -- started turning to the deep stories of religion in Judaism, Christianity and other religions including paganism in the early 1990s. They did this both as a way to preserve narrative in the wake of capitalist anti-intellectualism, and also as a way to create new forms of resistance to nihilistic capitalism. In the latter, the robust indeterminate meaning of existence was reduced to how much you owned materially. It was as if, in the face of socialism's defeat, capitalism's answer to the question of meaning for all human existence was found in the appallingly simple question: "How much money do you have?"

"This is why my course will be examining not only the history of socialism and capitalism in the 20th century but also how those ideologies no longer work and are shifting dramatically. It's imperative to know history and the history of economics to understand our options for creating a better future".

"This can be seen in two ways: First, for those people who paid attention to socialism, they observed things in terms less of a failure and more of an emergent dynamic shifting in light of these self-criticisms, new priorities and directions. Number two, capitalism also discovered to its own surprise that the great "victory" of 1989-1990 of capitalism itself turned out to be of short duration. By 2008, capitalism that had claimed itself to be the "great victorious system" collapsed and cannot find a way to recover as a whole. Of course, the corporate side of capitalism recovered via the taxpayers bailing Wall Street out".

"Among the meaningful signs of change are [that the] Greek government is now run by socialists, the Portuguese government is now run by an alliance of communists and socialists, and the [UK] Labour Party is now being run by Jeremy Corbyn, and to everyone's surprise, Bernie Sanders is even more wildly successful under the banner of "democratic socialist" who may win 50 percent of the vote within the Democratic primary largely owing to the independent voters who are able to vote in Democratic open primary elections. And no one believed this was possible in the United States, including Sanders himself ".

Question: In Spain you have Podemos' recent victories too.

"Podemos is having gains and the traditional socialist parties no longer have the traction they once had. In France and in Germany, the democratic socialist parties are all falling apart. So you see classic socialism fading rapidly, and the same is true of capitalism. Capitalism, with its inherent injustices, is speeding into a stone wall, and everyone's staring at the wall but doesn't know what to do, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights".

"So it's clear to many that both capitalism and traditional socialism are in deep trouble and are changing, and if you look at capitalism, it's extreme inequality and extreme instability with the crash of 2008 and all that happened and the prognoses that 2016-2017 are going to be down years again indicates that we are at a nodal historical point.... This new century's struggle will be between a changed capitalism and a very changed socialism with likely very different outcomes".

Note EU-Digest:  See also the full bio of Professor Richard David Wolff in Wikipedia

In the context  of the above interview of Dr. Richard David Wolff it is probably also interesting to note that it indirectly also highlights the reasons for the emergence and election of Donald Trump as the President of the USA.  One could probably define the Trump emergence as a right-wing attempt to capitalize on what appears to be a populist uprising around the world. 

As the Chinese saying goes: ""we are living in interesting times".  

EU-Digest









 
 
 




Read more: Richard Wolff on the Changing Tides of Capitalism and Socialism

America is ready for socialism! Massive majorities back Bernie Sanders on the issues — and disdain Donald Trump - by Paul Rosenberg

Donald Trump is throwing the GOP primary into chaos by channeling the GOP’s id, spinning out wild fantasies of the Mexican government deliberately sending a flood of rapists and murderers across the border.

But Bernie Sanders is disrupting Hillary Clinton’s coronation on the Democratic side by channeling the party’s soul, with a specifically issue-based focus.

In a way, both men are vividly illustrating a basic asymmetry that runs through American politics—between left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican—which was first comprehensively described by public opinion researchers Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril in their landmark 1967 book, “The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion,” and which political scientist Matt Grossman discussed in a recent Salon interview. Free and Cantril found that half the population was ideologically conservative, in the sense of preferring a smaller, more limited government, while about two-thirds was operationally liberal, in the sense of wanting to spend more on specifically identified government programs.

Subsequent research has intensified this division. Conservatives win by making broad, sweeping appeals, which can often have little relationship with the facts (Iraq’s WMDs, “voter fraud,” global warming denialism, etc.). Liberals win by focusing on how to fix specific problems. Thus “government spending” in general is seen as a negative, but spending on most specific programs is strongly supported. The pattern is clear: The more practical the question, the more liberal the answers. That’s just how U.S. politics works.

Trump takes the conservative side of this formula to an extreme, making broad, ludicrous false claims in his narcissistically self-confident manner. What’s grabbing headlines now are his false claims about illegal immigrant crime, but he remains completely detached from reality regarding Obama’s citizenship as well—an act of broad stigmatization that also typifies conservative thought. When NBC’s Katy Tur brought up his birtherism, Trump treated her with disdain: “Well, I don’t know. According to you it’s not true.” When she responded straightforwardly, “He released his birth certificate,” Trump doubled down on the disdain, “You know, if you believe that, that’s fine. I don’t care. It’s an old subject.”

Bernie Sanders is the exact opposite of Trump. As a proud self-described democratic socialist, he willingly makes himself a target for the kind of demonization that Trump hands out like candy, and he responds to attacks—actual and potential—by doubling down on policy specifics, where he correctly feels he’s on very firm ground. In a recent interview with John Nichols in the Nation, Sanders sketched out his response to such attacks, which are now routinely leveled indiscriminately.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, often criticizes President Obama, incorrectly, for trying to push “European-style socialism,” and McConnell says the American people don’t want it.

First of all, of course, Obama is not trying to push European-style socialism. Second of all, I happen to believe that, if the American people understood the significant accomplishments that have taken place under social-democratic governments, democratic-socialist governments, labor governments throughout Europe, they would be shocked to know about those accomplishments. One of the goals of this campaign is to advance that understanding….

How many Americans know that in virtually every European country, when you have a baby, you get guaranteed time off and, depending on the country, significant financial benefits as well. Do the American people know that? I doubt it.

Do the American people even know that we’re the only major Western industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee healthcare for all? Most people don’t know that. Do the American people know that in many countries throughout Europe, public colleges and universities are either tuition-free or very inexpensive?

Read more: America is ready for socialism! Massive majorities back Bernie Sanders on the issues — and disdain Donald Trump - Salon.com

Britain - France's best-selling economist Piketty says Labour better for UK

Best-selling French economist Thomas Piketty on Wednesday said he supported the Labour Party in Britain’s parliamentary elections, claiming the gap between the rich and poor has grown in recent years under the Conservative government.

I think the Labour Party is in a better position than the Conservative Party to promote growth – and equitable growth – with more investment in education and in public services,” Piketty told reporters on Wednesday.

Piketty, whose best-selling book on global inequality “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has made him one of the most talked-about economists on the planet, also said he feared Prime Minister David Cameron’s Tories would lead Britain out of the European Union.

“The Conservative Party’s policies with respect to the European Union strike me as very populist and very dangerous,” Piketty told members of the Anglo-American Press Association in Paris in reference to Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum on exiting the EU in 2017 should he be re-elected.

Read more: Business - France's best-selling economist Piketty says Labour better for UK - France 24

The Cooperative Movement - On The Rise Around The World

A cooperative is a business, not some kind of Communist egalitarian invention.  Co-ops range in size from small store-fronts to large Fortune 500 companies. In many ways, they're like any other business; but in several important ways they're unique and different.

The cooperative movement is on the rise, but Government support is essential for the cooperative movement’s progress. In Italy, for example, the movement is enshrined under Article 45 of the 1947 Italian Constitution and the Basevi Law of 1947, which, “provided co-ops with special tax treatment to encourage their self-capitalization and by creating the concept of ‘indivisible reserves’ for the benefit of all (i.e., future generations of employees and the community).”

Unfortunately still the most difficult barrier of all for the cooperative movement to be accepted is the widely publicized myth that corporate or individual-focused capitalism is the only feasible business method out there.

Today cooperatives are one of the most important and alternate solutions to the abusive and out-of-touch corporate pyramid system that places a few at the top and the majority at the very bottom. 

Fortunately the signs and sounds that people want a different and  more fair economic system are becoming louder every day around the world.

Yes indeed, change is in the air when it comes to a new and fair way of doing business – even in the United States, the powerhouse of traditional capitalism.

One of the many reasons why co-ops are becoming more and more popular is also because today  people spend so much more of their lives, energy and focus as uninvolved workers, rather than as active and participating shareholders.

When you join a co-operative, the main attraction is its democratic participative nature. What this means is that the people  that work in a business or factory, set-up as a cooperative, also own it and are motivated not by profit, but by service-to meet their members’ needs and to provide affordable and high quality goods or services; elect their own board of directors from within the membership, who take the decisions; share the profits and obviously also the losses; pay taxes on income kept within the co-op for investment and reserves. Surplus revenues from the co-op are returned to individual members who pay taxes on that income. 

Cooperatives can also also be highly effective and profitable in providing rural services and needs, such as: electricity, telecommunications, credit and financial services, housing, food, hardware and building supplies. 

It certainly is an idea whose time has come.

EU-Digest

Venezuela Chavez wins 3rd re-election in tightest race yet - by Frank Bajak

President Hugo Chavez

President Hugo Chavez put to rest any doubts about his masterful political touch in winning a third consecutive six-year term after a bitterly fought race against a youthful rival who has galvanized Venezuela’s opposition.

The state governor who lost Sunday’s presidential vote, Henrique Capriles, had accused the flamboyant incumbent of unfairly leveraging to his advantage Venezuela’s oil wealth to finance his campaign as well as flaunting his near total control of state institutions.

Capriles also narrowed Chavez’s margin of victory to his smallest yet in a presidential contest. This time, the former army paratroop commander who led a failed 1992 coup won 55 percent of the vote against 45 percent for Capriles, with 98 percent of the vote counted.

In 2006, Chavez’s margin of victory was 27 points.

Nevertheless, the populace endorsed once again Chavez’s stated aim of converting Venezuela into a socialist state.

Read more: Chavez wins 3rd re-election in tightest race yet - News - Boston.com

A return to stability in France - Michel Rocard

 France has now conducted its ninth presidential election under direct universal suffrage. And, for the first time in 17 years, after three consecutive defeats, the left – embodied in the Socialist candidate, François Hollande – will return to Élysée Palace. Indeed, the first implication of this unquestionably significant election is that it confirms a return to stability.

France is the largest country in Europe to have so much trouble finding its balance. Its revolution in 1789 initiated a long period of profound instability, featuring two empires, three monarchies and five republics. The French have gone through 13 constitutions in less than 200 years.

At 54 years old, the current Fifth Republic is the second longest-lasting regime since the revolution. At times, there has been talk of a Sixth Republic, which would address limited but real concerns and difficulties. But voter turnout in the latest presidential election (80 per cent in the first round, and 81 per cent in the second round) leaves no doubt: the French current system is strong, and that the French are attached to it.

In fact, Mr Hollande’s victory was underpinned not by a leftward shift among the electorate, but by voters’ rejection of Nicolas Sarkozy. Indeed, the result represents a stunning and historic defeat: during the Fifth Republic, three sitting presidents – Charles de Gaulle, Mr Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac – have been re-elected after their first term in office. Only Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, weakened by the long decline of Gaullism, was not.

Read More: A return to stability in France - timesofmalta.com

France's socialism is not what the Tea Party thinks - by E.J. Dionne

Can a US Republican primary in Indiana have even the remotest connection to a presidential election in France? Richard Mourdock, the tea party giant-killer who defeated Sen. Richard Lugar last Tuesday, clearly thinks so.

Mourdock’s success is decisive proof, if any more was needed, that the US  Republican Party has lurched far to the right of where it once was. Lugar was regularly described in the course of his re-election campaign as a “moderate.” But he is not a moderate, and never has been. He is a conservative who happens to be civil. Lugar earned a lifetime rating of 77 percent from the American Conservative Union. If being more than three-quarters to the right puts you in the “middle” of the political spectrum, it’s a very skewed measure.

Mourdock is all about slashing government spending without regard to the impact of the cuts on the economy or on those who need government help. He cast his campaign as a battle against “the nightmare of ever-growing government” that would turn the United States into a “Western European-style nation.”This gets us to the irony: Right now, it’s conservatives who want to follow the Western European path of austerity that voters in France and Greece rejected last weekend. The Obama administration, by contrast, has chosen a distinctly American path that kept austerity at bay. As a result, the American economy has climbed out of the Great Recession more quickly than most of Europe. 

Read more: E.J. Dionne | France's socialism is not what the Tea Party thinks | The Courier-Journal | courier-journal.com

A French lesson for Obama - by Tim Mak

Progressive bloggers on Monday pointed to the election of a Socialist, Francois Hollande, to the presidency of France to suggest that austerity measures in Europe weren’t working – or pleasing the electorate there – and that similar policies wouldn’t be effective in the United States.

“Austerity pushers across Europe and the U.S. recoil in horror at the news, knowing that Hollande will soon add more proof that they’ve been full of crap all along,” wrote Bill at the Daily Kos.

Progressive bloggers on Monday pointed to the election of a Socialist, Francois Hollande, to the presidency of France to suggest that austerity measures in Europe weren’t working – or pleasing the electorate there – and that similar policies wouldn’t be effective in the United States.

“Austerity pushers across Europe and the U.S. recoil in horror at the news, knowing that Hollande will soon add more proof that they’ve been full of crap all along,” wrote Bill at the Daily Kos.


Read more: Blogs: A French lesson for Obama - Tim Mak - POLITICO.com

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.
For more: The end of Europe’s right-wing winter? | | Independent Notebook - A selection of Independent views - Blogs

Dambisa Moyo: without change US will almost certainly become a socialist nation -

Dambisa Moyo is that rare type of person – an economist who makes waves. Her first book, Dead Aid, angered many in the charity sector by arguing that foreign aid has harmed Africa and should be phased out.

Her second, which is published in London on Thursday, accuses America and other Western powers of squandering their world economic dominance through a sustained catalogue of fundamentally flawed policies
.

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead goes so far as to predict that the US will be a “bona fide socialist welfare state” by the latter part of this century. “Indeed, if nothing else changes it from its current path,” writes Moyo, “it is almost certain that America will move from a fully-fledged capitalist society of entrepreneurs to a socialist nation in just a few decades.

“The trouble is, it won’t be just any socialist welfare state... the US is on a path to creating the worst and most venal form of welfare state [poorly developed and designed] – one born of desperation from many years of flawed economic policies and a society that rapaciously feeds on itself.”


Note EU-Digest: Sensationalism sells and Ms. Dambisa Moyo her new book does not seem to be an exception to that rule. 

For more: Dambisa Moyo: without change US will almost certainly become a socialist nation - Telegraph

UPI.com: Walker's World: Europe's dying Left (not able to benefit from present Economic Crises)- by Martin Walker

For the complete report from UPI.com click on this link

Walker's World: Europe's dying Left (not able to benefit from present Economic Crises)- by Martin Walker

France's giant BNP Paribas bank, which took more than $5 billion in state funds to help it through the financial crisis, provoked a political storm when it revealed last week that it was handing out more than $1 billion in bonuses to its staff. But the attacks came from the center-right government that backs conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, more loudly and more effectively than from the divided and squabbling opposition Socialist party. It is a strange irony that Europe's traditionally powerful left-wing and social democratic parties seem unable to benefit from the most severe crisis of capitalism since the 1930s.

The beneficiaries of this process -- Europe's conservatives -- are far from complacent. They know they are also vulnerable to populist appeals on unemployment, globalization and swollen bonuses for "fat cat" bankers. They also fear the emergence of new coalitions against them, the kind of "progressive alliance" of the Left and Greens that formed the German government from 1997 to 2005.

BBC NEWS: European voters punish the left

For the complete report from the BBC NEWS click on this link

European voters punish the left

Centre-right parties have done well in elections to the European Parliament at the expense of the left, according to exit polls and initial results. The parliament's 736 seats are up for grabs. Preliminary figures suggest the lowest-ever turnout, at 43.39%. The European Socialists will have 155-65 seats, down from 216 in 2004. The centre-right European People's Party (EPP) is expected to get 263-73, down from 282.

The Socialist worker: May 1 - The story of May Day - by Elizabeth Schulte

For the complete report from the SocialistWorker.org click on this link

May 1 - The story of May Day - by Elizabeth Schulte

Elisabeth Schulte tells the history of May Day, a socialist holiday founded to honor the Haymarket Martyrs and celebrate international workers' solidarity.Although May Day was founded to honor a U.S. labor struggle, few workers in this country typically know its origin, because the history is largely untold. This has changed, however--since the mass immigrant workers' May Day marches that began in 2006.

Note EU-Digest: A current Rasmussen poll shows that only 53% of Americans believe that the capitalist way of life is better than the socialist. With the election of Barack Obama, socialism is becoming the in thing with a lot of people, especially the younger generation. Adults under 30 are almost evenly divided in the Rasmussen poll; 37% opt for capitalism while 33% prefer socialism, a staggering 30% remain undecided. Those in their 30’s are more supportive of capitalism with 49% favoring the free enterprise system. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism over socialism with only 13% saying that a socialist government is the right way to go. People also tend to put their money where their mouth is; those who invest are 5 to 1 in favor of capitalism while only 40% of those who don’t invest their own money favor the capitalist system. Not surprisingly, 25% of those who do not invest favor socialism. Once again, no big surprise, but those who favor capitalism or socialism are divided in a partisan way as well. Republicans favor capitalism by an 11-1 margin, while democrats are much more divided on the issue; 39% say they favor capitalism while 30% favor socialism. Amazingly, Rasmussen conducted the same poll in December of 2008; the results were astonishingly different. Just four months ago 70% of those polled preferred a free market economy. There also seems to be a major misconception between the term Socialism and Communism. Conservatives have the tendency to put the two in one wrapper.

The American Spectator : Wrestling With Capitalist Pigs - by Philip Klein

For the complete report from The American Spectator click on this link

Wrestling With Capitalist Pigs - by Philip Klein

"It was in the early part of this decade that I first wrestled with the phenomenon of capitalist pigs. In the public sphere, the wealthy businessman is constantly under attack. He is the cartoonish villain in movies and the scapegoat for opportunistic politicians. But I grew up in a household that celebrated individualism and entrepreneurship. In my family, the businessman was the Randian hero who, purely in pursuit of his own self-interest, invented new technologies, spurred productivity, and generated wealth for the economy—while envious looters and parasites tried to tear him down and bleed him dry.

However, working as a financial journalist from 2001 to 2004 forced me to reexamine this view when a wave of corporate accounting scandals rocked Wall Street, and the arrogance, stupidity, and corruption at a number of large American corporations and at the highest levels of its financial institutions made for an embarrassing display. I began to ask myself: how will I be able to defend capitalism from those who seek to destroy it when actual capitalists are behaving so indefensibly? This is a question that free-market conservatives are now forced to grapple with on a much larger scale in the wake of the collapse of the financial markets." If conservatives err by allowing their ideological commitment to capitalism to make them place too much trust in the actual capitalists, liberals make a mistake by not recognizing that government regulators are also susceptible to corruption, conflicts of interest, and poor judgment.

EURweb.com - BETWEEN THE LINES: Nationalizing Banks and Industry: A Lesson In Why Capitalists Hate Socialism - by Anthony Asadullah Samad,

FRor the complete report from EURweb.com click on this link

BETWEEN THE LINES: Nationalizing Banks and Industry: A Lesson In Why Capitalists Hate Socialism - by Anthony Asadullah Samad

"Free Market" enterprise is based on the notion that open markets and the competition derived from competing ideas for consumer patronage will create a market balance (equilibrium) that will produce a stable economy and wide prosperity. There is also a flawed theory that social conditions in the markets, like poverty, homelessness, even economic subjugation and socio-political discrimination caused by racism will self-correct in competitive and robust economic environments. Capitalists think money solves everything when it is actually the cause of many social and economic societal ills.