Introduction
The European parliamentary elections
witnessed a major breakthrough for the right-wing parties throughout the
region. The rise of the Right runs from the Nordic countries, the United
Kingdom, the Baltic and Low countries, France, Central and Eastern Europe to
the Mediterranean.
Most, if not all, of these emerging
right-wing parties mark a sharp break with the ruling neo-liberal, Christian
and Social Democratic parties who have presided over a decade of crisis.
The ‘new Right’ cannot be understood
simply by attaching negative labels (‘fascist’, ‘racist’ and
‘anti-Semitic’). The rise of the Right has to be placed in the context of
the decay of political, social and economic institutions, the general and
persistent decline of living standards and the disintegration of community
bonds and class solidarity. The entire existing political edifice constructed
by the neo-liberal parties bears deep responsibility for the systemic crisis
and decay of everyday life. Moreover, this is how it is understood by a
growing mass of working people who vote for the Right.
The so-called ‘radical Left’, usually
defined as the political parties to the left of the governing Social
Democratic parties, with the exception of SYRIZA in Greece, have failed to
capitalize on the decline of the neo-liberal parties. There are several
reasons that account for the lack of a right-left polarization. Most of
the ‘radical Left’, in the final account, gave ‘critical support’ to one or
another of the Labor or Social Democratic parties and reduced their ‘distance’
from the political-economic disasters that have followed. Secondly, the
‘radical Left’s’ positions on some issues were irrelevant or offensive to many
workers: namely, gay marriage and identity politics. Thirdly, the radical
Left recruited prominent personalities from the discredited Labor and Social
Democratic parties and thus raised suspicion that they are a ‘new version’ of
past deceptions. Fourthly, the radical Left is strong on public demonstrations
demanding ‘structural changes’ but lacks the ‘grass roots’ clientelistic
organizations of the Right, which provide ‘services’, such as soup kitchens and
clinics dealing with day-to-day problems.
While the Right pretends to be
‘outside’ the neo-liberal establishment challenging the assumption of broad
powers by the Brussels elite, the Left is ambiguous: Its support for a ‘social
Europe’ implies a commitment to reform a discredited and moribund structure.
The Right proposes ‘national capitalism’ outside of Brussels; the Left proposes
‘socialism within the European Union’. The Left parties, the older
Communist parties and more recent groupings, like Syriza in Greece, have had
mixed results. The former have generally stagnated or lost support
despite the systemic crisis. The latter, like Syriza, have made
impressive gains but failed to break the 30% barrier. Both lack electoral
allies. As a result, the immediate challenge to the neo-liberal status
quo comes from the electoral new Right parties and on the left from the
extra-parliamentary social movements and trade unions. In the immediate
period, the crisis of the European Union is being played out between the
neo-liberal establishment and the ‘new Right’.
The Nature of the New Right
The ‘new Right’ has gained support
largely because it has denounced the four pillars of the neo-liberal
establishment: globalization, foreign financial control, executive rule
by fiat (the Brussels troika) and the unregulated influx of cheap immigrant
labor.
Nationalism, as embraced by the new
Right, is tied to national capitalism: Local producers, retailers and
farmers are counterpoised to free traders, mergers and acquisitions by
international bankers and the giant multinationals. The ‘new Right’ has its
audience among the provincial and small town business elite as well as workers
devastated by plant closures and relocations.
The ‘new Right’s’ nationalism is
‘protectionist’ – seeking tariff barriers and state regulations to protect
industries and workers from ‘unfair’ competition from overseas conglomerates
and low-wage immigrant labor.
The problem is that protectionism
limits the imports of cheap consumer goods sold in many small retail shops and
affordable to workers and the lower middle class. The Right ‘dreams’ of a
corporatist model where national workers and industries bond to oppose liberal
competitive capitalism and class struggle trade unions. As the class
struggle declines, the ‘tri partite’ politics of the neo-liberal right is
reconfigured by the New Right to include ‘national’ capital and a
‘paternalistic state’.
In sum, the nationalism of the Right
evokes a mythical past of harmony where national capital and labor unite under
a common communal identity to confront big foreign capital and cheap immigrant
labor.
Political Strategy: Electoral and
Extra-Parliamentary Politics
Currently, the new Right is primarily
oriented to electoral politics, especially as it gains mass support. They
have increased their share of the electorate by combining mass mobilization and
community organizing with electoral politics, especially in depressed areas.
They have attracted middle class voters from the neo-liberal right and working
class voters from the old Left. While some sectors of the Right, like the
Golden Dawn in Greece, openly flaunt fascist symbols – flags and uniforms – as
well as provoking street brawls, others pressure the governing neo-liberal
right to adopt some of their demands especially regarding immigration and the
‘deportation of illegals’. For the present, most of the new Right’s focus
is on advancing its agenda and gaining supporters through aggressive appeals
within the constitutional order and by keeping the more violent sectors under control.
Moreover, the current political climate is not conducive to open
extra-parliamentary ‘street fighting’ where the new Right would be easily
crushed. Most right-wing strategists believe the current context is
conducive to the accumulation of forces via peaceful methods.
Conditions Facilitating the Growth of
the Right
There are several structural factors
contributing to the growth of the new Right in Europe:
First and foremost, there is a clear
decline of democratic power and institutions resulting from the centralization
of executive - legislative power in the hands of a self-appointed elite in
Brussels. The new Right argues effectively that the European Union has
become a profoundly authoritarian political institution disenfranchising voters
and imposing harsh austerity programs without a popular mandate.
Secondly, national interests have been
subordinated to benefit the financial elite identified as responsible for the
harsh policies that have undermined living standards and devastated local
industries. The new Right counterpoises ‘the nation’ to the Brussels
‘Troika’ – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the
European Commission.
Thirdly, ‘liberalization’ has eroded
local industries and undermined communities and protective labor
legislation. The Right denounces liberal immigration policies, which
permit the large-scale inflow of cheap workers at a time of depression level
unemployment. The crisis of capitalism combined with the large force of
cheap immigrant labor forms the material basis for right-wing appeals to
workers, especially those in precarious jobs or unemployed.
Right: Contradictions and the
Double Discourse
The Right, while criticizing the
neo-liberal state for unemployment, focuses mainly on the immigrants competing
with nationals in the labor market rather than on the capitalists whose
investment decisions determine levels of employment and unemployment.
The Right attacks the authoritarian
nature of the European Union, but its own structures, ideology and history
pre-figure a repressive state.
The Right rightly proposes to end
foreign elite control of the economy, but its own vision of a ‘national state’,
especially one linked to NATO, multi-national corporations and imperial wars,
will provide no basis for ‘rebuilding the national economy’.
The Right speaks to the needs of the
dispossessed and the need to ‘end austerity’ but it eschews the only effective
mechanism for countering inequalities – class organization and class
struggle. Its vision of the ‘collaboration between productive capital and
labor’ is contradicted by the aggressive capitalist offensive to cut wages,
social services, pensions and working conditions. The new Right targets
immigrants as the cause of unemployment while obscuring the role of the
capitalists who hire and fire, invest abroad, relocate firms and introduce
technology to replace labor.
They focus the workers’ anger
‘downward’ against immigrants, instead of ‘upward’ toward the owners of the
means of production, finance and distribution who ultimately manipulate the
labor market.
In the meantime the radical Left’s
mindless defense of unlimited immigration in the name of an abstract notion of
‘international workers solidarity’ exposes their arrogant liberal bias, as
though they had never consulted real workers who have to compete with
immigrants for scarce jobs under increasingly unfavorable conditions.
The radical Left, under the banner of
‘international solidarity’, has ignored the historical fact that
‘internationalism’ must be built on the strong national foundation of
organized, employed workers.
The Left has allowed the new Right to
exploit and manipulate powerful righteous nationalist causes. The radical
Left has counterpoised ‘nationalism’ to socialism, rather than seeing them as
intertwined, especially in the present context of an imperialist-dominated
European Union.
The fight for national independence,
the break-up of the European Union, is essential to the struggle for democracy
and the deepening of the class struggle for jobs and social welfare. The class
struggle is more powerful and effective on the familiar national terrain –
rather than confronting distant overseers in Brussels.
The notion among many radical Left
leaders to ‘remake’ the EU into a ‘Social Europe’, the idea that the EU could
be converted into a ‘European Union of Socialist States’ simply prolongs the
suffering of the workers and the subordination of nations to the non-elected
bankers who run the EU. No one seriously believes that buying stocks in
Deutsch Bank and joining its annual stockholders meetings would allow workers
to ‘transform’ it into a ‘People’s Bank’. Yet the ‘Bank of the Banks’,
the ‘Troika’, made up of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and
the IMF, set all major policies for each member state of the European Union.
Un-rectified and remaining captive of the ‘Euro-metaphysic’, the Left has
abdicated its role in advancing the class struggle through the rebirth of the
national struggle against the EU oligarchs.
Results and Perspectives
The Right is advancing rapidly, even if
unevenly across Europe. Its support is not ephemeral but stable and cumulative at
least in the medium run. The causes are ‘structural’ and result from
the new Right’s ability to exploit the socio-economic crisis of the neo-liberal
right governments and to denounce authoritarian and anti-national policies of
the unelected EU oligarchy.
The new Right’s strength is in
‘opposition’. Their protests resonate while they are distant from the
command centers of the capitalist economy and state.
Are they capable of moving from protest
to power? Shared power with the neo-liberals will obviously dilute and
disaggregate their current social base.
The contradictions will deepen as the
new Right moves from positions of ‘opposition’ to sharing power with the
neo-liberal Right. The massive roundups and deportation of immigrant
workers is not going to change capitalist employment policies or restore social
services or improve living standards. Promoting ‘national’ capital over
foreign through some corporatist union of capital and labor will not reduce
class conflict. It is totally unrealistic to imagine ‘national’ capital
rejecting its foreign partners in the interest of labor.
The divisions within the ‘nationalist
Right’, between the overtly fascist and electoral corporatist sectors, will
intensify. The accommodation with ‘national’ capital, democratic
procedures and social inequalities will likely open the door to a new wave of
class conflict which will expose the sham radicalism of the ‘nationalist’
right. A committed Left, embedded in the national terrain, proud of its
national and class traditions, and capable of unifying workers across ethnic
and religious ‘identities’ can regain supporters and re-emerge as the real
alternative to the two faces of the Right – the neo-liberal and the
‘nationalist’ new Right. The prolonged economic crisis, declining living
standards, unemployment and personal insecurity propelling rise of the
nationalist Right can also lead to the emergence of a Left deeply linked to
national, class and community realities. The neo-liberals have no
solutions to offer for the disasters and problems of their own making; the
nationalists of the new Right have the wrong -reactionary – answer. Does
the Left have the solution? Only by overthrowing the despotic imperial
rule of Brussels can they begin to address the
national-class issues.
Post-script
and final observations
In the absence of a Left alternative,
the working class voters have opted for two alternatives: Massive voter
abstention and strikes. In the recent EU election, 60% of the French
electorate abstained, with abstention approaching 80% in working class
neighborhoods. This pattern was repeated or even exceeded throughout the
EU – hardly a mandate for the EU or for the ‘new Right’. In the weeks and
days before the vote, workers took to the streets. There were massive
strikes of civil servants and shipyard workers, as well as workers from other
sectors and mass demonstrations by the unemployed and popular classes opposing
EU-imposed ‘austerity’ cuts in social services, health, education, pensions,
factory closures and mass lay-offs. Widespread voter abstention and
street demonstrations point to a huge proportion of the population rejecting
both the neo-Liberal Right of the ‘Troika’ as well as the ‘new Right’.
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JAMES PETRAS ON AXIS OF LOGIC
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