Monday, January 27, 2020

France: The Struggle to Defend the French Pension System

Lisbeth Latham

Since December 5, France has been gripped by ongoing strikes and mobilisations by a coalition of trade unions, high school and university student unions, as well as the gilet jaunes (yellow vests) to defeat the attack by the Macron and the Philippe government on France’s pension system. Whilst the alliance has been able to sustain a period of heightened mobilisations that have put the government under pressure, it remains unclear that the movement is powerful to defeat the attack, and there are serious barriers if the movement is to expand and grow.

Pension Counter Reforms
During the 2017 election campaign, Macron promised that he would look to “reform” France’s pension system. The current attacks both build on the changes to the pension system pushed through by the Sarkozy and Fillon government in 2010, and the failed attacks on the Special Retirement Plans for workers in a number of public services and recently privatised companies, launched in 1995 and 2007. These attacks have been justified on the need to make the pension system sustainable in the face of France’s ageing population (France’s pension system relies on pensions being paid out on the payments of current workers, with excess payments going into an investment fund).

The changes affecting the majority of French workers would increase the age which workers could access their pensions to 64 (in 2027) up from 62 years of age currently (Pivot Age), increase the period of time that workers have to have been working in order to qualify for a full pension from 42 to 43 years, and increase the age at which workers can retire on a full-pension without which working the minimum qualifying years work (Equalising Age).

The Special Retirement Plans refer to 42 different pension schemes received by workers in 15 organisations including rail workers with SNCF (French National Railway Company) and RATP (Autonomous Operator of Parisian Transportation), members of the Paris Opera, lawyers, members of the army, sailors, and the National Police. Workers in these primarily public organisations had had pension schemes (some of them dating back to Louis XIV) that had been in place prior to the introduction of the national pension scheme in October 1945. The Special Retirement Plans, tend to allow earlier retirement – many of these jobs are extremely physically strenuous, provide for workers to receive a higher defined benefit than the standard pensions, and have better indexation (the standard pension is indexed at inflation, whilst the majority of the Special Retirement Plan pensions provide for workers to have their pensions to be indexed with wage increases in their former industry). This attack on these has been justified on the basis of providing transparency and equality to the French pension system and would also secure the financial basis of the pensions in these plans (all of which are in sectors in which there have had significant contraction in employment and so there are substantial more retirees dependent on the pensions than workers contributing to the schemes), with the aim of splitting opposition to the pension reform.

Union Responses
Opposition to the proposed changes have been premised on four major arguments:
First that the changes will disproportionately affect women, who due to the socialised norms around responsibility for child-rearing means that women are more likely to have substantial career breaks and already many French women are unable to qualify for a full-pension prior to reaching pivot age, unions argue that increasing both the qualifying period and the full-pension age will cast greater numbers of women poverty in retirement - currently, women who have children are given credit towards their pension qualification, 1 year per child in the public sector, two-years per child in the private section, the proposed changes would remove this. Women currently receive 29% of the pensions of men, however, the CGT (Confédération générale du travail - General Confederation of Labour) expects this gap to rise to 42% if the current protections for women are removed as proposed.

Secondly, that increases in the pension ages mean that workers will increasingly be unable to retire prior to the onset of the illnesses of old age, and so fewer and fewer workers will be able to have a healthy period of retirement prior to the onset of these illnesses.

Your pharmacist recommends retirement before arthritis
Thirdly, the changes will unfairly impact workers who work in more physically demanding
industries. These workers currently are able to retire earlier, the extension of the pension age will put heavy pressure on the bodies of these workers to be able to work to the new pension age. Whilst the government has pulled back on the removal for some categories of workers, notably police and firefighters, sewage workers, who on average die seven years earlier than other workers and 17 years earlier than managers, will lose their current early retirement. 

Finally, that workers who lose their jobs later in their working lives, who already find it difficult to obtain work, will have to face a longer period of either unemployment or underemployment prior to reaching the pension age.

Convergence of struggles
The present movement draws together separate struggles that have been occurring in France during the Macron presidency. The left has, and the more militant unions have sought to draw together and converge the existing struggles within French society into the pension struggle. This has included pre-existing workers' struggles but has also included movements of students that have campaigned against both fees and the introduction of increased university entrance requirements which has seen thousands of young people fail to gain entrance to university and the introduction of increased student fees for international students and the mobilisation of thousands of university and high school students which has seen schools and universities blockaded and the call for exams to be totally cancelled to allow the full involvement of students in the movement. This process of convergence is not new, and his been an objective of a range of militant organisations since prior to the Macron presidency, and particularly in relation to the emergence of the Front Social and the Nuit Debout during struggle against the El Khomri attacks on the Labour Law and the gilet jaunes as a new force mobilisation which, since November 2018, has drawn into motion sections of the French popular classes that unions and other progressive forces have not been able to mobilise for an extended period of time.

State and Government Responses
In response to the mass movement the state, just as it has to other mobilisation since the November 2015 introduction of the (withdrawn in November 2017) state of emergency following the terror attacks in Paris, has responded with escalating repressive violence. There has been widespread footage of CRS (Republican Security Companies) and Gendarme riot police beating protestors, as well the deployment of a range of “non-lethal” weapons, including explosive tear gas grenades (France is the only European country to deploy explosive canisters in law enforcement) and flash balls, that has seen a steady rise in the number of people who have been maimed at protests.

In addition, the government has sought to manoeuvre in the hope of dividing and blunting the movement. The tactic has been the announcement of the “temporary” withdrawal of the first phases of the increase in the Pivot Age, that had been scheduled to begin in 2022. A withdrawal that is based on finding an alternative way of saving €12 billion “in order to secure the system by 2027” - the government has proposed a conference on January 30 to identify alternative mechanisms to make savings in the pension system. The “concessions” have primarily been aimed at the conservative unions, particularly the CFDT (Confédération française démocratique du travail - French Democratic Confederation of Labour - the largest French confederation when measured by the number of members and second-largest in employee representative bodies) and UNSA (L'Union nationale des syndicats autonomes - National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions, which is the second most popular union within both the SNSF and RAPT), who have responded positively to the concessions, with CFDT general secretary Berger calling the withdrawal of the 2022 Pivot Age phase-in date a victory for the CFDT and called on CFDT members to desist from participating in strikes and mobilisations against the pension reform. However, the more militant unions have rejected the overtures of the government, arguing that legislation is not amendable and that it should be withdrawn. The CGT, in a January 11 statement said, “that debate on the Pivot Age is simply aimed at winning the support of certain unions”. Léon Crémieux, a militant in SUD Rail, the trade union Solidaires union within the SNSF and RAPT, and leader of the NPA (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste - New Anticapitalist Party), argues that the conference is a trap which “ is going to close quickly since this conference will only be able to put the “pivotal age at 64” back in the frame, forcing retirement two years later, or lengthening the number of years worked necessary to retire (43 years today)”. SUD Rail, in a statement on January 24, said it would refuse to meet with the government and would continue to mobilise its members until the withdrawal of the bill. 

 The current movement has significant weaknesses
Despite significant public support, opinion polls suggest that support for the movement has reached peaks of 65%, however, the movement has failed to not only meet that level of support but the size and breadth of the major working-class mobilisations of the past three decades.

This has meant that the current movement is substantially bigger and longer-lasting than the peak of the counter government movements of the last decade, but the movement is substantially smaller than the big movements against government attacks against the working class of the last three decades, particularly the movements of 1995, 2003, and 2010. In 1995, the movement was primarily within the public sector, and was not directly supported by the more conservative unions particularly the CFDT, but were driven by the CGT and FO (Force ouvriere - Workers Force) - however, the more militant unions were able to draw much broader layers of the working class, including significant sections of the CFDT’s membership and support base, into motion. 2003 the movement against the first employment contract, which focused on the employment rights of young workers,, was primarily driven by mobilisations by students and education workers. The 2010 movement to defend the pension system, peaked at mobilisations of 3.5 million, and seven mobilisations of more than 2 million across eight weeks, in addition there indefinite strikes in a number of industries particularly oil refining which resulted in widespread fuel shortages. However despite the larger size of these earlier movements, they at best achieved partial victories, and in the case of 2010 movement, it failed totally and demobilised on the promise that a future Parti Socialiste (PS) government would repeal the changes - which the PS government never attempted to do, instead it introduced new attacks on the unions and France’s working class. Defeats which have contributed to the current inability of the movement to spread.


At the same time the ability of the movement to sustain itself and force the government to offer “concessions” has given hope that perhaps the movement can outlast the resilience of the government or potentially capital. Importantly, the movement has been expanding, the more than 200 mobilisations across France on January 24, drew an estimated 1.3 million people onto the street up from 800, 000 on January 16. At the centre of the struggle has been the strikes within the SNCF and RATP with 45 days of strike action which ended January 24. This strike was initiated by the militant union federation within both SNCF and RATP, and was primarily built on the back of the September strike within RATP against pension reform. Other key areas have been the depth of the struggle within France’s cultural institutions particularly the Paris Opera, which has been on strike and performing at the mass demonstrations in Paris, the Louvre, and the French National Library, the blockading of oil refineries which occurred between January 8 to 11. On January 24, the CGT stated it was seeking to initiate discussions with workers in those workplaces not yet on strike, to draw them into action. This is occurring through the holding of general assemblies of workers and at the workplace and municipal level. Whilst the inability to draw the more conservative unions, particularly the CFDT consistently into the movement is a real weakness and break on the movement’s potential to mobilise, it potentially could be a strength, as it reduces the influence of the CFDT on the movement and government cannot rely on the CFDT’s sudden withdrawal from the movement, which happened in 2010 after the pension changes were passed, to undermine and demobilise the movement. This has the potential to place considerable additional pressure on the government, as it is less likely, compared to 2010, that the movement will simply evaporate following the passing of any legislation. Added to this, with the splintering of the PS in the wake of the 2017 presidential elections, it is hard for more conservative forces to advocate an electoral solution to addressing the assault on pensions.

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The current national intersyndicale which brings together the CGT, FO, CGC-CFE (Confédération française de l'encadrement - Confédération générale des cadres - CFE-CGC), the trade union Solidaires, FSU (Fédération syndicale unitaire - Unitary Union Federation), FIDL ( Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne - Independent and Democratic High School Federation), MNL (Mouvement national lycéen - National High School Student Movement), UNL (L’Union nationale lycéenne - The National High School Union), and UNEF (Union Nationale des Étudiants de France - National Union of Students of France) has called for three further days of mobilisation on January 29, 30, and 31. These days of mobilisation will be an important test as to the direction of the movement’s inertia.



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Saturday, November 2, 2019

France: On November 10, in Paris, we will say STOP to Islamophobia!

More than fifty personalities call to protest on November 10 in Paris against the stigmatization of the Muslims of France.

For far too long, Muslims in France have been the target of speeches sometimes coming from political "leaders", invective and polemics relayed by certain media, thus contributing to their growing stigmatization.

For years, the dignity of Muslim women has been thrown into disrepute, designated to the vindictiveness of the most racist groups that now occupy the French political and media space, without being measured by the seriousness of the situation.

For years, the acts against them have intensified: whether they are discrimination, repressive projects or laws, physical assaults on women wearing headscarves, attacks on mosques or imams, even the attempt to murder.

The attack on the Bayonne mosque on 28 October is the most recent manifestation of this and the state services know that the terrorist threat against Muslim places of worship is great.

It was necessary for this violence to spring up in the eyes of all, through the humiliation of a mother and her child by a National Rally councillor at the General Council of Burgundy-Franche-Comté, for everyone to realize what associations, academics, personalities, trade unions, activists and beyond, inhabitants, have rightly denounced for years: Islamophobia in France is a reality. Whatever the name is, this is no longer a question of debates of ideas or criticism of religions, but of a form of explicit racism that targets people because of their faith. Today we must unite and give ourselves the means to fight it, so that Muslims will never again be subjected to such treatment.

Since speeches and declarations of intent are no longer enough, because the time is serious: on November 10th in Paris we will walk to say:

  • STOP to the racist speeches that pour on our screens all day long, in the general indifference and complicit silence of the state institutions charged with combating racism.
  • STOP discrimination against women wearing headscarves, causing them to be phased out from all spheres of society.
  • STOP to violence and aggression against Muslims, who gradually find themselves dehumanized and stigmatized, making them potential terrorists or enemies from within.
  • STOP to abusive denunciations up to the highest level of the state against Muslims whose only harm would be the real or supposed membership of a religion.
  • STOP to mass surveillance devices that lead to the outright criminalization of religious practice.
The consequences, especially for sacked employees and destabilized families, are disastrous and can no longer be tolerated. This criminalization comes at the expense of the fundamental freedoms and the most basic principles of equality that are supposed to guide our country.

We Muslims or not say STOP to Islamophobia and many of us will say it together on November 10th in Paris.

We call on all organisations, all associations, all collectives, all federations of parents of pupils, all political parties, all personalities, all media, all people in solidarity to join this call and to respond to the march on November 10th.

The fundamental freedoms of all are at stake. The dignity and integrity of millions of citizens are at stake. It is a matter of our unity to all, against racism in all its forms, which today once again threatens France.

An appeal initiated by Madjid Messaoudene (municipal councillor  from Saint-Denis), the Collective against Islamophobia in France, the Adama Committee, the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), the Muslims Platform, the National Union of Students of France (UNEF), The Libertarian Communist Union

First signatories: Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the entire parliamentary group France Insubordinate (LFI); Benoît Hamon and Generations; Esther Benbassa, Senator from Paris European Ecology-The Greens (EE-LV); André Chassaigne, MP, chairman of the Democratic and Republican Left group; Elsa Faucillon, MP Communist Party of France; Olivier Besancenot, NPA; Laura Slimani, municipal councilor from Rouen, National Director of Generations; Leïla Chaibi, MEP LFI; David Cormand, National Secretary of EE-LV; Stéphane Peu, MP PCF; Azzédine Taibi, mayor of Stains PCF; Younous Omarjee, MEP; Manon Aubry, MEP; Philippe Martinez, General Secretary of the CGT; Jerome Rodrigues, Yellow Jacket; Assa Traoré, Adama Committee; Aurélie Trouvé spokeswoman for Attac; Myriam Pougetoux, UNEF; Marwan Muhammad, author and statistician; Caroline De Haas, feminist activist; Nora Hamadi, journalist; Aida Touihri, journalist; Edwy Plenel, journalist; Rokhaya Diallo, journalist and director, Pierre Jacquemain, editor-in-chief of Regards; Taha Bouhafs, journalist; Alain Gresh, journalist; Pouria Amirshahi, editor of Politis; Dominique Vidal, journalist and historian; Eric Fassin, sociologist; Julien Salingue, PhD in Political Science; Etienne Balibar, academic; Sylvie Tissot, sociologist; Ludivine Bantigny, historian; Vincent Geisser, political scientist; Genevieve Garrigos, feminist, human rights activist; Mathilde Larrère, historian; Laurence De Cock, teacher; Arié Alimi, lawyer; Fianso, artist; Mathieu Longatte (Hello Sadness); Vikash Dhorasoo, former football player, Oxfam sponsor and president of Tatane; Unitary Trade Union Federation; Solidarity Trade Union; Anti-fascist action Paris Banlieue (AFA); Michèle Sibony and the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP); United Front of Immigrant and Working-Class Neighbourhoods (FUIQP).

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Saturday, September 7, 2019

France: Impose another future - Solidaires' call for strikes and mobilisations September 20 and 21

The mobilizations of September may seem scattered. They respond to different issues. We believe that conditions must be created to converge them to create a sufficient balance of power. To bend the government and the bosses and propose alternatives for another future.
Several dates of mobilizations and sectoral strikes will take place in September: in the urgency all over France, September 13 at the RATP, September 16 to the public finances ... All are the fruit of the struggles against regressive policies of this government: attacks all in the same vein, public service cuts, the removal of civil servants, the deterioration of working conditions, etc. Yellow vests will also resume. The "solutions" of Macron have not extinguished the social anger that persists despite the repressions at work. Climate change and pensions are part of the battle to build another alternative.
FOR CLIMATE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE! STRIKE AND MANIFESTATIONS OF SEPTEMBER 20 AND 21!
Solidaires calls on the 20th to strike and demonstrate, to be with students, high school students, college students who are mobilizing for their future and ours. Participate in events, rallies, events, public debates, at the initiative of young people! On September 21st, new marches and disobedience actions will take place all over the country and yellow vests will also be on the street!
Let us hear our voices:

  • for other transport and energy policies: to provide access to efficient public transport all over the country
  • for local public services (schools, hospitals, access to water) ...)
  • for an environmentally friendly agriculture and the end of pesticides that pollute nature and endanger populations.
OUR FUTURE, OUR PENSIONS! STRIKE AND MANIFESTATION ON SEPTEMBER 24!
Solidaires brings clear claims that go against a point system: it will impoverish retirees and will gradually switch to expensive private insurance systems!
We reject this system and claim:

  • A starting age to 60 years maximum, and less in case of hardship,
  • a replacement rate of 75% and at least the minimum wage,
  • that effective equality between women and men finally be implemented!
The question of funding is the one the government wants to bury:
prosperous capitalism for the benefit of some (50 billion euros paid back to shareholders of French companies in the first half-six-months), exemptions from employer contributions, tax choices, fraud and tax evasion still favour the same, and that is why
a radical change is necessary, for the climate, for the public services, for social protection!
Let's fight to impose other choices, for another future

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Monday, July 29, 2019

Denmark: Red-Green Alliance announces victory push pass consent-based rape laws

Lisbeth Latham

On July 14, Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance or Enhedslisten (United List) announced that the governing Social Democrats and Social Liberals parties in Denmark’s Parliament had agreed to pass consent-based rape laws, this follows the agreement to support the new laws made by the Conservatives and Liberal parties in March. The announcement marks a significant and further step in shifting Scandinavian rape laws away from being based on violence and coercion and towards questions of consent.

As the Enhedslisten statement said, “sex without consent isn’t sex”.

[text reads: "A victory for Unity List Consent-based rape legislation A step in the right direction”

Enhedslisten had unsuccessfully sought to change Denmark’s legislation in November 2018, when the then governing Conservatives, Liberals, Liberal Alliance parties had refused to back the change supported by all of Denmark’s left and centre-left parties. The changes which will define sex without explicit consent as rape. In doing so it becomes just the tenth EU country to do so, and the second Scandinavian country after Sweden introduced similar laws in 2018.

The Local on March 12 pointed out, the new laws would shift the burden of proof onto alleged perpetrators to demonstrate that consent had been given and that the survivor was in a state to give consent. At present survivors are required to demonstrate that the accused is proved to have had sex with somebody who tried to, or was unable to, stop the act. The changes are expected to significantly lift the potential for rape convictions and make complaint processes easier for survivors.

While changing the legal framework regarding is important in challenging sexual violence it’s insufficient and much work still needs to be done around towards attitudes around sexual activity which see access to another person’s body as a right.

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Lisbeth Latham is a contributing editor to the Irish Broad Left

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Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Neoliberalism is dead, long live neoliberalism!

By Lisbeth Latham
Originally published by Irish Broad Left
July 10, 2019
Neoliberalism is a term which has entered the left lexicon over the past three decades, although in different countries it can have other analogous terms. While it is a term that the left has embraced, the right, and the advocates of what is commonly referred to as neoliberalism, deny it exists as a phenomenon, instead arguing that it reflects the conspiratorial nature of the left.

Contrary to these positions I argue that there is a usefulness in conceptualising neoliberalism as a distinct response to the capitalist crisis, and that it is not only the hegemonic response to capitalist crisis but that its proponents use crises to deepen and strengthen its hegemony. Moreover, because significant sections of the governmental left have embraced neoliberalism, challenging neoliberalism is central to not only rebuilding left alternatives but to challenging the rise of the far-right internationally.

Why does capitalism experience crises?

Capitalism is the only economic system in the history of humanity that is driven by a need to expand and take over pre-existing social relations. It is also the only economic system in which economic crises are characterised by the production of too much use values (at least in the early period of the a crisis). Marx postulated that the primary underlying driver of an economic crisis is the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. Adding to this general tendency is the anarchic character of the capitalist system, where individual capitalists seek to maximise their own profits by shifting investment to areas of higher rates of profits, which leads to a series of additional crises, specifically crises of overproduction and crises of over-accumulation.

The rate of profit is profit (or surplus value) over the sum of constant capital and variable capital. Political economists dating back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo argued that it was an undeniable fact that there was a tendency of the rate of profit to decline; however, they believed it remained unclear what the mechanism for this decline was. Marx, in Volume 3 of Capital, argued that this tendency was driven fundamentally by profit (i.e. surplus value) being derived from labour.

Therefore, increases in constant capital (an increase in the organic composition of capital – for example, factory machinery or the value of the goods and materials required to produce a commodity) would reduce the amount of labour power involved in production and thus overtime would result in a reduction in the amount of surplus value being extracted in comparison to the total constant and variable capital involved in its production.

Crises of overproduction

Overproduction simply means that too many goods – of either a single category or multiple categories of goods – are being produced to be sold and generate sufficient profits. Since the earlier period of laissez faire capitalism when markets were generally expanding, this is the normal state of affairs. In the US auto-industry, for instance, the industry operated at 75.9 per cent of capacity in the first quarter of 2019.

A crisis occurs, however, when the production and sale of goods is no longer able to produce a profit, or at the very least a sufficient profit which can lead to individual companies, or whole industries collapsing. Such collapses, while a disaster for individual capitalists or corporations and the thousands of workers who are employed by them, creates opportunities in the economy to remove excess capacity from circulation and reduce competition.

Crisis of over-accumulation

Over-accumulation crises occur when the level of capital accumulation in the system reaches such a point that there is too much capital in circulation for significant levels of capital to be profitably invested or reinvested in production, or at least increases the appeal of capital investment in financial speculation rather than in investment in new capital goods.

Overcoming a crisis of over-accumulation requires either the destruction of significant amounts of capital, such as through war, a major recession with widespread bankruptcy, the opening of new markets to create expanded demand, or via the development of new technology – opening new avenues for capital investment. In all of these circumstances, the relief provided cannot and will not be permanent.

Throughout the history of capitalism there have been a range of responses to capitalist crises, particularly large-scale crisis such as recessions and depressions. In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and resulting Great Depression, then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with a range of governments in advanced capitalist countries, embraced Keynesian responses, which focused on what Roosevelt referred to as “pump-priming” – i.e., public expenditure on infrastructure, much of which was subsidised by using the unemployed as a cheap labour source.

The Great Depression Such measures were essential in overcoming the impact of the Great Depression, and they undoubtedly ameliorated some of the worst levels of poverty unleashed by the depression. But there are two important points to remember: the first is that in many countries the Great Depression unleashed significant levels of class struggle, including both the unemployed and the employed – with this struggle resulting in the victory of fascism at the domestic level in Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain – and with the emergence of social democratic governments in a number of countries for the first time.

In response to an increasingly combative US working class, exemplified by the West Coast maritime strike, the Teamster strikes in Minneapolis, and the Toledo Auto-Lite strike – all of which occurred in 1934 and are seen as key drivers of industrial unionism in the US – Roosevelt’s second New Deal in 1935 had specific measures seeking to limit the level of violence in the class struggle with formal mechanism for union recognition (Preis, A. 1964. Labor’s giant step: Twenty years of the CIO. Monad Press, New York).

The second point to note is that many economies did not truly recover from the Great Depression until the second world was, where the massive investment in armaments, mass conscription, and the destruction pf capital goods fed economic growth, and massive profits, this was particularly the case in the united states where the majority of unions, particularly in Stalinist lead unions, made no strike pledges to help support the war effort (ibid).

Expansion of capitalist accumulation

In the wake of World War II, the environment was set for the rapid expansion of capitalist accumulation. These were the massive destruction of capital goods wrought by the war, and the opening up of new markets as more and more imperial colonial powers broke up under the pressure of anti-colonial national liberation struggles.

At the same time, the growth in confidence of the working class, along with the enhanced standing and expansion of the Soviet Bloc through its role in the defeat of fascism in World War II – placing whole swathes of Western Europe at risk of being ‘lost’ to capitalism – despite the efforts of the Soviet leadership to maintain the division of Europe as agreed between Britain, the US and the Soviet Union at the Yalta Conference.

In this context the US government launched the Marshall Plan to massively boost the rebuilding of capital in Western Europe and Japan. In addition, there was pressure to expand social services and public welfare provisions. These steps lay the foundations for the long post-war boom in Western Europe and the US, which was also prolonged by imperialist spending on their militaries as part of Cold War and hot wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The 1973 oil crisis

However, the long boom held within it the roots its own demise, which were exacerbated by other dimensions. These were the absolute limits of expanding markets via the collapse of European colonial empires; the rebuilding of capital in the wake of the destruction of World War II leading to greater capitalist competition and reduced opportunities productive capitalist investments; and growing US deficits due to the cost of the Vietnam war.

In addition, more and more markets were either removed or became more restricted from access to imperialist capitalism as a consequence of national liberation struggles and attempts to build their own national economies. These developments led to a growing stagflation crisis, where both inflation and unemployment grew. This meant that the international capitalist system was vulnerable to further shocks to the economy as the long boom came to a close. Of particular importance were the 1973 OPEC strike and subsequent oil crisis and along with global decline in the demand for steel, exacerbating pressures of deindustrialisation, particularly in the US.

Insurgent neoliberalism

In response to these challenges, a wave of conservative economist and social theorists began to gain a greater hearing among governments for their alternative model for saving capitalism. These groupings, commonly referred to as neoliberals, have their origins in a serious of meetings that founded the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) in 1947.

Although not having a clear economic doctrine, it represented a political project to reassert capitalist class power and defeat the growing strength of the working class and its organisations the trade unions and the social democratic and communist parties. During its early existence neoliberalism sought to construct a international thought collective represented by a range of national and international think tanks, and seeking to influence and take over university economics departments transforming their positions into increasingly common-sense and thus hegemonic responses to economic crisis.

The ‘Chicago Boys’ make their mark

The first experiments with the implementation of neoliberalism came in Indonesia and Chile following the respective coup d’etats in those countries in 1966 and 1973. In Indonesia, following the establishment of Suharto’s New Order regime, which had been supported in its smashing and mass slaughter of the country’s communist and nationalist left, orchestrated by US intelligence services (particularly the CIA), moves were made to remove barriers to investment by capital from the US and other imperialist nations.

In addition, the Indonesian economy was actively carved up between US corporations. Despite these changes that enabled the expanded imperialist exploitation of Indonesian natural resources and labour, investment processes were extremely corrupt, with investments requiring joint ventures – with domestic Indonesian capital generally with connections to Suharto’s family and the cronies around him.

The extensive level of poverty within the country, exacerbated by the opening up of the economy, also meant that the state was forced to provide a significant level of subsidisation of basic goods to enable much of the population to survive – essentially state subsidies for social reproduction in order to allow the imperialist extraction of super-profits.

In Chile, following the September 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government – carried out by the Chilean armed forces with the backing of the US government (pictured) – there began a program of both mass repression and economic transformation.

During the coup and its aftermath tens of thousands of people were murdered and terrorised, and a further 200,000 people (six per cent of the population) were forced into exile. At the same time, the ‘Chicago Boys’ – academic and graduates from the University of Chicago’s School of Economics, including “Nobel Prize” winner Milton Friedman – were brought in to reshape the Chilean economy. The impact of this transformation saw significant reductions when comparing, wages and social spending when comparing 1970 to 1989:

  • Wages decreased by eight per cent. 
  • Family allowances in 1989 were 28 per cent of what they had been in 1970. 
  •  Budgets for education, health and housing had dropped by over 20 per cent on average.
At the same time, Chile was seen as an economic miracle in comparison to other parts Latin America, with consistent growth in the economy, and lower levels of unemployment than in other Latin American countries. This helped neoliberals to assert ‘common-sense’ truths that private companies are more efficient than governments in delivering services; that higher profits leads to more jobs; and thus lower wages lead to more jobs. 

Neoliberalism bites in the global south

With these ‘successes’ neoliberals were in a position to push for the application of neoliberal solutions to economic difficulties facing both economies of both the imperialist centre and the global south. These changes were pushed by both the victory of openly neoliberal politicians such as US President Ronald Reagan and British PM Margaret Thatcher, and in the case of Australia, France, and Germany social-democratic (or more accurately social-liberal) governments.

In these countries the attacks were pitched as necessary to maintain competitiveness, the rejection of social goods, and general social responsibility for the collective good – and the assertion, in Thatcher’s words, that “there is no alternative”. In many global south countries, resistance to change came from governments, who were unwilling to go as far as demanded, then the levers of international financial institutions as such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organisation (WTO), which sought to tie loans and bailouts to deregulation and privatisation of countries’ resources.

These institutions routinely operated on a gaslighting framework where the people whose economies had failed under the strain of neoliberal restructuring were told that the problem was not the changes that was enabling corporations to extract billions in profits from the countries for little return, but rather that that their economies had not been restructured enough and the recipe for their situation was more and more privatisation and deregulation.

Can neoliberalism be defined?

So what is neoliberalism? There is no definitive prescription of what neoliberalism consists of, which is why its advocates can so readily dismiss its existence.

Neoliberalism began as a small intellectual society founded at Mont Pèlerin in 1947, initially heavily influenced by the ideas of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, but similar societies and think tanks were established globally. These organisations sought to take over and influence university, institutional, and governmental economics programs, forming what Philip Mirowski refers to as the “neoliberal thought collective”.

These interlinking bodies do not so much articulate a coherent policy doctrine as seek to build and inculcate policy discussions with neoliberal ideas, which may well be at odds with each other, but have the effect of co-opting and subsuming the language of other movements, but also creating a situation where people are presented with not a choice between neoliberalism or an alternative solution, but simply varying forms of neoliberal solutions – which both, in George Lukács’ view is an articulation of the power of neoliberalism as a hegemonic discourse, but also reinforcing Thatcher’s dictum that “there is no alternative”.

Neoliberalism as a response to capitalist crisis

Neoliberalism constitutes a political project aimed at weakening the political power of the working class, asserting the political power of the capitalist class and seeking to establish profitable avenues for capital investment (Harvey, D. 2007. “A brief history of neoliberalism”. Oxford University Press, Oxford.)

Key features of neoliberal projects include:

  • Increasing barriers to the movement of workers – which results in increasingly constrained rights and marginalisation for migrant workers (this includes open calls to movement being linked to migrants’ wealth); 
  • Prying open more aspects of social life for capital investment – privatisation and ownership of water, for example, exemplified by the 1999-2000 water wars in Cochabamba, Bolivia, between the community and the the Nestlé corporation; 
  • Opening of government services to capitalist competition, whether through direct privatisation; corporatisation; “public-private partnerships”; 
  • Access by government agencies or the introduction of “voucher systems” to enable government subsidisation of the entry of private capital into the provision of social services; and at the same time, deregulating costs. This is often articulated in terms of enhancing consumer “choice”;
  • Reduction in government spending, primarily premised on the justification of the need to reign in deficits, although this has rarely been achieved (throughout the neoliberal decades the US’s budget had regularly been in deficit). 
  • Instead reductions occur primarily as a consequence of declines in government income via the narrowing of the tax base to be more heavily reliant on working people, and a redirection of government spending away from social spending on the working class and the promotion of worker-funded retirement funds – which both reduce government responsibility and make massive levels of capital available for speculation on capital markets. For example, the Australian Superannuation Funds amounted to $AU2.8 trillion in funds at the end of the March Quarter of 2019 . 


    Weakening the strength and power of organised labour 
    The outsourcing of work occurs both within public services and in private companies, often posed as leading to cheaper costs, Outsourcing works to undermine the bargaining power both of the outsourced and non-sourced workers, but tends to have higher overall costs due to the labour hire companies’ own need to provide their own work materials.<

    The tying of wage increases to productivity increases has resulted in a significant shift in the share of GDP to profits away from wages, as workers are forced to work increasingly hard to see their wages maintain pace with inflation.  

    The shifting the cost of the reproduction of labour onto the working class has occurred through a range of mechanism including:
    • Shifting the burden of paying for the state apparatus via increased taxes on workers and the reduction taxes on capital; 
    • Reducing spending on social services – via either total elimination of services or means-testing services.

    The 2008 crisis and beyond 

    The 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent Eurozone crises, with the accompanying response by governments have been seen by some as signalling the death of neoliberalism. However, as Mirowski and others would argue, the responses to these crises instead reflect a deepening of neoliberalism – in that they have resulted in the efforts of saving capitalism being carried on the back of workers, while international capital has largely been free to continue to reap massive profits and pay out dividends and bonuses even as they were receiving public subsidies to survive. 

    In response to the global financial crisis (GFC), the US government bailed out banks and financial institutions to the tune of $US4.6 trillion. This was bankrolled by US taxpayers. The US and other governments facilitated banking consolidation to “save the system” – handing billions in assets to surviving major banks. 

    In response to the failure of the “big three” US auto manufacturers, the then Obama administration provided a bailout of $US80.7 billion. This bailout was premised on the tearing up of workers’ collective agreements with demands that workers make significant concessions on their working conditions in order to keep their jobs. 

    In Europe, Ireland’s opening up of the purchase of non-performing loans to cheap purchase by vulture funds has driven up housing prices in Dublin at a time of acute economic decline. We also continue to see – in the face of the imminent destruction of our planet – continued refusal and obfuscation by governments and by capital to take serious action to slow and hopefully stop action to combat climate change. The US and Australian governments in particular continue to subsidise the fossil fuel industry . 

    Factors behind the growth of the far right

    The past three decades have seen a growth of the far right in a wide range of countries, which has coincided with a decline and weakening of the left. This shift has been partly premised on deindustrialisation of certain economies and the erosion of the welfare state, which left-wing parties have at times been responsible for, particularly when in government coalitions with right-wing forces.

    This has resulted in understandable anger and frustration among sections of the working class and the petite bourgeoisie – anger which the right has demagogically sought to direct into anger at marginalised communities, which it blames while at the same time cynically supporting many of the attacks on working people. 

    In France for example, Marine Le Pen’s National Front – now National Rally – has sought to court a range of marginalised communities, including Jewish, Islamic, and Queer communities by painting itself as the only force capable of protecting them from “marriage equality” and Islamic fundamentalism respectively. 

    Part of the growth of the far right can be explained by the reality that the interests of capitalist class are not homogeneous – the capitalist class is made up of fractions that reflect different interests within its own class. The far right reflect interests of capitalist class fractions that would benefit from a more nationalist framework. Moreover, the far-right in a range of countries have a long history of supporting policies that are not in the interests of working people or the petite bourgeoisie. 

    This includes support for:
    • deregulation and privatisation; 
    • cutting of legislation which limit pollution; 
    •  cuts to social security; attacks on working people. 

    Left demands opposing neoliberalism

    Despite this record, the far-right has taken advantage of the complicity of social-democratic and other left parties in the implementation of neoliberalism to seek to present themselves as the only opponents of austerity and the dislocation of the working class. This includes seeking to cynically accuse social democracy and the left more broadly of abandoning workers for support for multiculturalism and the support of other marginalised communities – causes that the left are more likely to support, but which is totally unrelated to the implementation and support for neoliberalism. 

    In response to this challenge, it is important that the left is seen as putting forward proposals that address the needs of working people without giving ground to attacks on marginalised communities. Such demands would include:
    • In the event of mass foreclosures government should protect owner-occupiers; 
    • Ensuring our demands are around universal provision of services rather than accepting means-testing for access; 
    • Ban redundancies in profitable companies; 
    • Job creation through limiting overtime and reducing working hours with no loss in pay; 
    • Support for a universal basic income – but it must be set at a level which is liveable, and there must be strict controls on rent/commodity prices to ensure that it is not simply consumed as increased profits; 
    • Ending of speculation and separating retail banks from investment banks; 
    • Caps on wage ratios between senior managements and the lowest-paid workers; 
    • Lifting company tax and personal income tax threshold for higher-income earners to fund an expansion of social services; 
    • Reabsorption of outsourced social services back into the government – to facilitate collective bargaining and improved wages for workers in these vital and essential services; 
    • Legislate to require companies operating in a country to at minimum comply with that country’s standards when operating in other countries; 
    • Legislate to enable workers the option of creating co-operatives in companies facing closure or sale; Give workers veto rights on restructuring plans. 
    • While such demands seem unrealistic in the context of more than 30 years of retreat and defeat globally for progressive movements, it is important for us to consistently challenge neoliberal hegemony and to always, to quote Che, “be realistic and demand the impossible”.
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    Lisbeth Latham is a contributing editor to Irish Broad Left. You can follow her on Twitter @grumpenprol.

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    Thursday, June 13, 2019

    Our mental health system is broken

    Lisbeth Latham

    Yesterday, I arrived home from a month in hospital. Today, I opened an invoice from Ambulance Victoria for ~$1200 for the cost of transporting me from my home to a public hospital, where they tried to discharge me, because “they didn’t think it was in my interest to be hospitalised”, “they didn’t know what was in my interest, but hospitalisation wasn’t”. It had been my fifth trip to an Emergency Department this year, the previous four, including the one the day prior had been “unsuccessful” despite telling the nurse, “if you send me home I will kill myself”, however this visit, unlike the previous four, was “involuntary” as when I rang the mental health triage and was told “you refused assistance yesterday”, I hung up saying “I will just kill myself then”. So, they called the police and an ambulance was sent because while me saying “I’m really scared I will hurt myself and need help” failed to elicit the support I was seeking, the hanging up provoked a response, of two police cars and an ambulance.

    The $1200 was a shock, I don’t have to pay it, my insurer will, but if I wasn’t insured or wasn’t a member of Ambulance Victoria, I would have been hit with a $1200 invoice because the system failed me when I asked politely, and only responded when I escalated.

    To add insult to injury, once I was admitted to hospital, I was told very quickly that there was nothing they could do for me because the public system is not equipped to deal with people with borderline. I would need to go private if I wanted assistance that would help me. Which was something I was able to do, at a cost of ~$16, 000 to my insurer, but millions of people in Australia do not have that option. Our system is broken, it fails people who desperately need help and just rejects them and adds insult to injury.

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    This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

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    Wednesday, June 12, 2019

    France: NPA's Olivier Besancenot calls on all anti-capitalist forces to "act collectively"

    Tuesday, June 11, 2019
    Pierre Duquesne
    l'Humanite

    "I would be annoyed to make the umpteenth unitary call," warned Olivier Besancenot. Yes but here it is: the radical left resembles, in the aftermath of the Europeans, a "field of ruins". This is why the spokesman of the Parti Nouveau Anticapitaliste (NPA) on Sunday called "all those camps the resistant to Macron and to the far right" to act and to be heard "together". He invites the militants of France Insoumise, the Lutte Ovrière, the libertarian organizations, the Générations, the Communist Party, the anti-fascist organizations, the ecologists, the district militants, the syndicalists and all those who find themselves "intuitively in a space both anti-capitalist and internationalist policies" to "collective action". "What we miss is not a captain, a coach. It is to act together, " urged the spokesman of the NPA. As for the RN (National Rally [Marine Le Pen's new party]), "the worst enemy of the working class", its strength is explained above all by "the weakness of the left forces".

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    Revitalising Labour attempts to reflect on efforts to rebuild the labour movement internationally, emphasising the role that left-wing political currents can play in this process. It welcomes contributions on union struggles, internal renewal processes within the labour movement and the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

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