Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

“Party of business”

It is interesting that, on the surface (but, as I explain below, only on the surface), neither major political party on either side of the pond seems to be making the claim they’re the “party of business.” Not the Conservative and Labor Parties in the United Kingdom, or the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States.

Here’s Chris Dillow on the situation across the pond:

What I mean is that back then, the Tories were emphatically on the side of business, exemplified by Thatcher’s union-bashing and talk of “management’s right to manage”. In the 90s Labour – first under John Smith and then under Blair – devoted immense effort to trying to get business onside via the prawn cocktail offensive.

Elections then were won and lost by chasing the business vote.

Things have changed. In taking the UK out of the EU against the wishes of most major companies, the Tories can no longer claim to be the party of business. And Theresa May’s talk of getting “tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business” and of “unscrupulous bosses” suggests little desire to become so.

You might think this presents Labour with an open goal. It would be easy to present policies such as a national investment bank, more infrastructure spending and anti-austerity as being pro-business.

But there seems little desire to do this.

Something similar is going on in the United States. Neither major party political candidates embraced business during the nominating campaigns or their conventions.

In fact, in his acceptance speech, Donald Trump lambasted big business for supporting his opponent:

Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.

While, last Thursday, Hillary Clinton vowed to overturn Citizens United and challenge key corporate decisions:

That’s why we need to appoint Supreme Court justices who will get money out of politics and expand voting rights, not restrict them. And if necessary we’ll pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United!

I believe American corporations that have gotten so much from our country should be just as patriotic in return. Many of them are. But too many aren’t. It’s wrong to take tax breaks with one hand and give out pink slips with the other.

Both parties, it seems, are trying to court voters who are fed up with business as usual.

But, as I see it, that’s only what’s happening on the surface. None of the four parties is making a claim to be the “party of business” because, below the surface, all four are the parties of business.

What I mean by that is that the common sense of all four parties is the promise to promote faster economic growth and create more jobs and, in the absence of alternatives (such as direct government employment or worker-owned enterprises), that means creating a business-friendly economic and social environment.

Now, the parties may differ about how to create such an environment (e.g., in the United States, lowering individual and corporate income taxes versus using nonprofit foundation contacts to arrange business investments). But they agree on the goal: it’s up to the government to create the conditions for private corporations to use their profits to foster economic growth and job creation.

The result is that, in the current climate—with flat or falling incomes and grotesque levels of inequality—none of the parties wants to openly declare itself the “party of business.” But, they don’t have to, because they are already—all four of them—the parties of business.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

“Has there ever in our history been a more abject, incompetent, stupid, reckless, contemptible government than this? “

 

According to Chris Dillow, there’s a direct link from the Tories’ austerity policies to the rise of racism in England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

His argument is that economic stagnation since the crash of 2008, which has been exacerbated by the economic policies of Britain’s Conservative Party (under Prime Minister David Cameron andChancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne), has led to stagnant or falling living standards for most working-class households. That deterioration, in turn, created a level of discontent that showed up in support for Brexit.

Now, Dillow makes clear, support for Brexit was not in and of itself a form of right-wing extremism. But the campaign against the European Union, and now its victory, have helped to generate anti-immigrant attacks and expressions of racism.

As he explains,

There’s a direct link from Osborne’s criminal economic mismanagement to hate crimes.

You might think I’m going too far here. I’m not. In fact, this is basic economics. Econ 101 says that people respond to incentives. And the incentive to express racist opinions rather than keep them bottled up has increased recently because when politicians express neo-racist ideas, people believe that the stigma attached to being racist has declined. In this sense, the cost of being a low-level racist has fallen – and a fall in costs generates increased supply.

Granted, Cameron and Osborne sincerely deplore such attacks. But that misses the point – that if you dump a pile of shit on your doorstep, you can’t disown the flies.

And, is turns out, that’s exactly what’s been happening in the United States in recent years—with an economic recovery that has only benefited those at the very top and a campaign by and within the Republican Party that culminated in the nomination of Donald Trump. The cost of being an American racist has definitely fallen.

In both cases, in the United Kingdom and the United States, what we’re witnessing then is the sorry spectacle of the creation of “climate in which migrants and ethnic minorities no longer feel safe.”

After Brexit

It’s clear the British referendum on the European Union was a gross miscalculation on the part of David Cameron, who decided to move ahead with the vote in an attempt to placate the nationalist, anti-immigrant forces inside and outside the Conservative Party. And he lost—by much more than any of us expected.

A couple of issues should then concern us.

First, the fact that the 52-48 result in favor of Leave was so unexpected, not to mention mainstream economists’ overwhelming support for Remain, is a reminder to those of us on this side of the pond that supposedly expert opinion is increasingly unreliable and out of touch. So, even though Trump’s numbers currently favor his defeat, and mainstream economists on this side of the pond have been so dismissive of the kinds of issues raised by Bernie Sanders, we should continue to expect the unexpected and do everything we can both to oppose Trump’s election in November and to continue Sanders’s political revolution.

Second, the British vote is just the latest (but not yet final) nail in the coffin of neoliberal Europe. Europe without a real and vibrant Social Chapter was (in Thomas Friedman’s language) only a “golden straightjacket” to protect European and non-European corporate interests. That transcontinental free-market utopia—after the combination of bank bailouts, austerity, and high unemployment, the costs imposed on Greece (and Spain and Portugal), the unwillingness to treat ordinary people’s concerns about open borders and to humanely integrate war-ravaged refugees, and so much more—now lies in tatters.

The real issue, within Great Britain and the rest of Europe, is whether the Left will be able to reassemble the pieces to create a new “social-democratic internationalism”—a politics that attends to both national concerns (like healthcare, wages, and immigration) and internationalist ones (having to do with such things as debt relief, human rights, and global warming). In Britain, that means forming a demos, under the aegis of the Labor Party, consisting of groups of voters who ended up on opposite sides of the Leave-Remain vote—to defend workers’ rights within Britain while maintaining an internationalist concern with the plight of workers in other countries. It’s the kind of politics outlined by both Richard Tuck (who argued for Leave) and James Stafford (who supported Remain).

That’s important because, notwithstanding the title of my post, we’re far from being after Brexit. The process of Britain’s exit from the European Union is just starting. And while the Tories are engaged in their own internecine battle (which, as Boris Johnson steps forward, may even exceed the spectacle that led to Trump becoming the presumptive Republican nominee), with even more fallout for economic and political elites across the rest of the continent, the British and European left-wing parties and movements have an opportunity to imagine and create the kind of social-democratic internationalism the various countries’ working-classes have long wanted and ultimately deserve.