The Democratic Party Debacle and the Demise of the
Left-Center Left: A Worldwide Trend
James Petras
Introduction:
The November 2, 2010 electoral debacle of the Democratic Party in
the US cannot be solely ascribed to the failed policies of President Obama, the
Congressional leadership or their senior economic advisers. Nor is the demise
of what passes for the American “center-left” confined to the US – it is a
world-wide pattern, expressed in countries as diverse as Greece, Portugal,
Spain, Great Britain and Japan.
The central question is why the left-center left governing parties
are everywhere in crisis and will be for the foreseeable future?
The Left-Center Left: Past Winners, Present Losers
In the past leftist parties had been the beneficiaries of
capitalist crises: Incumbent conservative regimes, which had presided over
economic recessions or had been held responsible for military debacles, were
ousted from power by leftist parties prepared to make large-scale, long-term
public investments, funded by progressive taxes on wealth and capital, and to
impose austerity programs on the rich and wealthy.
In contrast, today the left/center-left (L-CL) regimes preside over
crisis-ridden capitalist economies and administer regressive socio-economic
policies designed to promote the recovery of the biggest financial and
corporate enterprises while rolling back wages, social programs, pensions and
unemployment benefits.
As a result, the L-CL has become the prime political loser in the
current economic crisis, reaping hostility and rejection from the great mass of
its former working class and salaried supporters.
Wherever the Left has been elected in recent years, a deep
polarization developed between its electoral base and the governing party
leadership. Nowhere has the Left dared to infringe on the power and
prerogatives of the very capitalist class of bankers and investors, who caused
the crisis. Instead with perverse and reactionary logic the Left- Center Left
parties have wielded stated power through the treasury to refinance capital,
through the police and judiciary to repress labor and through the mass media to
justify its regressive policies (especially via anti-‘chaos’ hysteria).
In Greece, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist regime (PASOK) has fired tens
of thousands of public employees and its tight fiscal policies have raised
unemployment from 8% to 14%. It has increased the age of retirement, reduced
pensions and welfare provisions and raised fees for public services, while
foreign and domestic bankers, ship owners and overseas investors have benefited
by accumulating property and distressed enterprises on the cheap.
Similar polices have been adopted in Spain and Portugal where
public employees’ salaries and jobs have been slashed, pensions and welfare
payments have been reduced, job security has been deregulated and employers are
free to hire and fire as never before.
Prior to the British Labor Party’s defeat, after more than a decade of
promoting wild unregulated financial and real-estate speculation leading to the
economic crash, the Labor leadership was planning massive layoffs and cuts in
social programs.
In the United States, Obama and the Democrats were elected, on the
basis of their promises to redress the grievances of the workers and salaried
employees, who had been battered by the collapse of Wall Street. Instead, the
White House poured trillions of tax dollars to rescue the major banking,
financial and speculative institutions responsible for the collapse while
unemployment and underemployment has climbed to over 20% and 10 million
homeowners lost their homes through mortgage foreclosures.
Why the L-CL Deepens the Crises
Over the past 30 years the L-CL parties, which were once identified
with working class interests and welfare reforms, have become deeply embedded
in managing the capitalist system - going so far as to promote the most
parasitic and volatile forms of speculative capital. As long as capitalist
profits grew and speculative investments grew, the L-CL regimes believed that
sufficient tax revenue would accrue to allow for a degree of social spending to
pacify their popular voting constituency. The L-CL parties systematically
eliminated the last traces of a socialist, social welfare or redistributive
alternative.
The L-LC political leadership was unwilling to envision an
alternative to their promotion of the policies of big corporate and banking
interests as they led to financial crisis. When the big crash of 2007-2010
took place, the entire leadership of the L-CL was so deeply embedded in the
institutions, policies and practices of the leading private financial
structures, that the only solution they were capable of proposing was to
sacrifice the public treasury in order to restore capitalist leaders and
speculative institution to profitability. In other words, the U.S and European
L-CL parties were prepared to jettison over 50 years of social advances. The
past ties to their working-class voters, trade union allies, public employees
and pensioners were severed, none were spared. The only interest that mattered
to the L-CL parties was to restore conditions for profitability to benefit big
overseas and domestic investors.
This economic recession has forced the L-CL parties to give up any
pretext that they could satisfy bankers and public employees, corporations and
workers, investors and pensioners. The crisis revealed the profound distance
separating the working class from the political leaders of the L-CL.
The savage class austerity measures, repeatedly imposed on the
working class every 3-6 months, in contrast to the vast and repeated subsidies
to capital, reveal the true vocation of the current L-CL regimes. There was
never a question of choice: From their entry into the government and from
their leading economic appointments, to their subsequent agreements with the
world’s leading banks, it has become obvious that the Papandreous (Greece),
Socrates (Portugal), Zapatero (Spain) and Obama (USA) regimes were prepared to
use the full power of the state to sacrifice labor to save capital.
Consequences of L-CL Policies and Practices
From the start, the L-CL parties decided there was everything to
negotiate (and concede) with the bankers and nothing to negotiate and
compromise with Labor. The recession was too profound, capitalist interests
and institutions were “too big to fail”, and labor was, in the eyes of the L-CL
parties, too expendable: ‘Let them march and yell in the streets’.
Unemployment and under-employment climbed to double digits everywhere. The old
arrangements of accommodation between the trade unions and the L-CL parties
came under intense pressure everywhere (except in the US and UK) from the
workers in factory assemblies, the offices of the public employees, and among
the pensioners in the senior centers.
Repeated general strikes broke out in France, Spain, Portugal,
Greece and Italy. The L-CL regimes absolutely refused to make any concession
to the workers. The crises and austerity policies became the base for a real
class war: The Left-Center Left regimes were determined to roll back over 50
years of working class advances. The general strikes were defensive battles to
protect hard won advances in decent living standards. Workers everywhere in
Europe recognized the abominable working and welfare conditions in the US,
where trade unions have become doormats and the millionaire trade union bosses
continue to use union funds to bankroll the Democrats and protect the
bureaucracy’s privileges and wealth.
Conclusion
The Left-Center Left regimes are paying a high electoral price for
sacrificing the working class in order to save the bankers: Obama’s recent
electoral defeat is only a forerunner of future losses for the Spanish, Greek,
Portuguese Socialists and other L-CL regimes. Their austerity policies have
led them to ‘fall between two chairs’: They alienate workers and strengthen the
capitalist class, which already has its own “natural” conservative capitalist
parties. The “hard right” everywhere is advancing, sensing the debacle of the
center-left as an opportunity to deepen and widen the frontal assault on labor
rights, social welfare and any semblance of legal protection.
Faced with this assault, the main defense of militant workers in
Southern Europe is the general strike, (totally absent for over a century in
the US). But even so, given the ferocious backing of all of Europe’s (and the
US) ruling classes for the regressive austerity policies, it is becoming clear
that the positive experience of massive class solidarity is not enough. Greece
has had half dozen general strikes. France has been shut down by a nationwide
strike. Spain has more to come. But their L-CL rulers continue slashing and
burning workers rights and living standards now and for years to come.
What will it take to stop and reverse this capitalist juggernaut? It is
clear, that the L-CL parties, as we know them, are part of the problem and not
the solution. Will new working class parties and movements emerge that can
combine mass general strikes with challenges for state power? Will the rising
power of the electoral right lead to a parallel rise of the left?
As of today, little or nothing of a left-right political
polarization appears on the horizon in the United States where most of the
union and social movement leaders are tied to the Democratic Party. In
contrast, in Europe, particularly in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain,
extra-parliamentary mass struggles will continue and perhaps intensify, raising
the specter of possible popular uprisings as conditions continue to deteriorate
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