Say Goodbye to the Unipolar World: The End of Neoliberal Orthodoxy as We Know It

This Sunday two big votes will take place in Europe: Italy's constitutional referendum, and a do-over in Austria of last spring's presidential election. A "no" vote in Italy combined with a win by Norbert Hofer and his far-right Freedom Party will provide further proof of a rising populist tide in Europe that is swamping the old, almost completely discredited governing neoliberal orthodoxy.

An editorial yesterday in The New York Times, "Italy's Turn to Vote," pleads with Renzi to stay on as prime minister (he has promised to resign) if the constitutional referendum fails. The failure of the referendum -- which basically does away with the senate, making it easier to ram through structural adjustments in labor and tax law (the standard neoliberal "Washington Consensus" playbook) -- appears to be inevitable.

A piece in The Guardian yesterday, "Italy referendum: all you need to know about Renzi's crunch vote," summarizes:

You seem to be predicting that Renzi is going to lose. Are you sure?No. But almost all of the available polls show Renzi is behind and the country seems to be fed up with him. You never know, though: a whole host of factors, including a simmering scandal in Sicily about M5S, could diminish turnout for no and hand Renzi a victory. He could also get overwhelming support from up to 4 million Italian voters abroad, which could tip the scales in his favour in a close election. It just seems unlikely.

If he does lose and there is a new election, would M5S win?
There is a strong chance M5S could win based on current polls, but it is not a certainty. The party’s lack of experience could give Italians pause. One senator, Francesco Palermo, thinks that whoever wins – including M5S – would be far to the right of Renzi, putting much more pressure on Italy’s relationship with the EU, and probably leading to big changes in the country’s handling of the migration crisis.

Some of Italy’s biggest banks are in bad shape. How will the referendum affect the banking sector?There is increasing alarm that the political upheaval created by a potential no victory would disrupt plans to recapitalise Italy’s most troubled banks, including Banca Monte dei Paschi of Siena. Shares in Italy’s beleaguered banking sector are down more than 20% since Brexit, in large part because investors are worried about the outcome.

The failure of Renzi is an important moment in the collapse of neoliberalism. Renzi was once the great young hope to reanimate hoary neoliberal shibboleths such as "creative destruction," "competitiveness," etc. (See the Council of Foreign Relation's "A Conversation with Matteo Renzi.") If Renzi loses Sunday, coming at the same time that a lamed Obama vacates the White House and that Justin Trudeau has just approved the expansion of a massive pipeline to transport Alberta tar sands to British Columbia, there will be no telegenic pitchman left to front the neoliberal orthodoxy.

What is to be done?

The elite are desperate. They see no path forward. Europe tucked firmly under the wing of the American eagle is how U.S. global hegemony works. Brexit is a slow-motion crisis for Pax Americana; likewise Trump. The New McCarythism and wails about "fake news" are a "back to the future" Hail Mary to keep the revolting masses fenced in on the neoliberal reservation while the media monopoly hemorrhages ad revenue month in and month out. (The only business model that makes sense for the big daily newspapers is government subsidy.)

The bottom will drop out this spring in France. In a way it already has. The Socialists, who hold their presidential primary in January, are kaput. This means that with the nomination of Francois Fillon last Sunday, the runoff will almost certainly feature two candidates -- Fillon and Marine Le Pen -- who favor ending trade sanctions against Russia.

The U.S. engineered coup in Kiev, part of a strategy to block Germany's Ostpolitik integration of Russian into Europe, can be declared a failure. Say goodbye to the unipolar world.

Five Star Movement + How Much Time Left for the Dominant Paradigm, Six Years or Six Decades?

With Hillary being feted this morning as the likely Democratic nominee for president, it might help to cast a glance elsewhere for hope. Good news comes from Italy.  The Five Star Movement's mayoral candidate in Rome, 37-year-old lawyer Virginia Raggi, is polling ahead after the first round of voting.

At about the same time Syriza was rising in Greece, the Five Star Movement (M5S) was on the ascent in Italy. Led by comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo, the new party seemed like the best hope in 2013 for exploding the Brussels hive mind.

Then Syriza captivated the media and the political left; this, combined with M5S's underwhelming showing in 2014 elections for the European Parliament, moved the party off the front burner.

Now -- after the spectacular failure of Syriza, the diffident performance of Spain's Podemos, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe (Austria's Freedom Party is challenging May's election loss), the triumph of the corporate media behemoth over Bernie Sanders' millennials, and many other disappointments -- besides the Scottish National Party, there seems little to celebrate in terms of elections in the West, other than the Five Star Movement. The Brexit vote coming up is a big deal. But the left is split on whether to stay in the EU or go. (I say go.)

I ask people I know who pay attention to the news the following question -- "How much longer can the dominant neoliberal paradigm last?" Everyone so far has replied, "A lot longer." Tariq Ali agrees.

The basic question as I frame it is "Six or 60?" Does the corporate-dominated predatory capitalist system which is vacuuming up all the wealth to the top of the pyramid and destroying the planet survive for six years, say early to middle 2020s, or six decades, at which time many agree that the effects of climate change -- sea-level rise and acidifying oceans -- will demand a huge, paradigm-shifting coordinated response?

The reason I favor the near-term shift is I can't see how the present system lasts beyond four years. First off, the party system throughout the West is collapsing. Granted, charismatic, rejuvenating leadership championing popular policies could rise from within the discredited mainstream Christian Democrats, Labourites, Tories, Socialists and Tea Party Republicans, but there is zero evidence for this. So sooner rather than later a minor party will rise to the top and lead, successfully or not, in such a way that it will create a fissure in the dominant paradigm. If not a Brexit on June 23, then Marine Le Pen in 2017 or Alternative for Germany. An EU subservient to U.S. global hegemony becomes much harder to imagine.

Secondly, the U.S.-led warfare state cannot keep multiplying and maintaining its many theaters of conflict. The fall of Saigon led to an adjustment and correction in the way that the U.S. conducted war. There was a decade-plus pause and reset. Does the fall of Kabul lead to the same type of timeout? Unlikely. But there is a limit to what the U.S. can manage in the way of mayhem. Already the blow black from its wars in the Middle East  and North Africa is diminishing support for the major parties of Europe.

Below is a helpful primer on the Five Star Movement that appeared a couple days ago on the Europe Online web site. Having kept an eye out for M5S over the last several years, I find it accurate:

No laughing matter: Italy's comedian-led Five Star Movement

Rome (dpa) - Italy‘s Five Star Movement (M5S) is one of the most successful anti-establishment parties in Europe, whose main rallying cries are clean politics, direct democracy, euroscepticism and basic income support for all.

"We are normal citizens like you, and this normality is scary" for the establishment, Virginia Raggi, who topped a first round of elections for the Rome mayoralty on Sunday, said at her closing campaign rally last week.

Founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a stand-up comedian, and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a shadowy internet consultant who died in April, the M5S shot to national prominence after taking a surprise 25 per cent of the votes in the 2013 general elections.

The movement defies left-right categorizations, and shuns alliances with other parties, which it sees as fundamentally corrupt. It is also critical of banks, big corporations, free trade agreements and wants a referendum on Italy‘s exit from the eurozone.

The movement‘s defining characteristic is its reliance on internet consultations among its supporters to select its candidates and political priorities, which are communicated online via Grillo‘s blog.

But critics have accused Grillo and Casaleggio of using the system arbitrarily and quashing internal dissent. Out of the 163 M5S lawmakers elected in 2013, some 37 have either been expelled or have walked out of the party.

In 2014, the M5S hoped for an electoral breakthrough in elections for the European Parliament, which did not come. It won 21 per cent of the vote, against a record 41 per cent for the ruling Democratic Party (PD).

In this month‘s local elections, the M5S led polls in Rome and came a strong second in Turin, but fared poorly in other big cities like Milan and Naples, suggesting that it still has some way to go before building a strong national base.

In the EU assembly, M5S lawmakers have formed the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group with the British eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the German anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The death of Casaleggio, who acted as a behind-the-scenes strategist, has raised questions about the future of M5S, but plans to prepare a younger cadre of party members to take over the leadership have been under way for some time.

After saying in 2014 that he was "a bit tired," Grillo has cut down on campaigning, giving more space to the M5S‘ rising stars, such as lawmakers Alessandro Di Battista and Luigi Di Maio. Tellingly, the 67-year-old comic stayed out of Raggi‘s campaign finale in Rome.

Di Maio, a 29-year-old deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, is seen as the most likely M5S prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections, due within the next two years. Grillo has always refused to run for office.

Mainstream Wins in Austria, But for How Much Longer?

When all the absentee ballots were tallied yesterday, Austria ended up electing the pro-European presidential candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, over the ultra-nationalist Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer. It was close: 50.3% for Van der Bellen, compared to 49.7% for Hofer.

Like the National Front's performance in France's regional elections in December, Austria's Freedom Party wasn't able to follow up an impressive first-round showing by closing the deal with the voters in the final round. The mainstream media shields the status quo and is able to provide the margin of victory in close elections, as Alison Smale hints in "Austrian Far-Right Candidate Norbert Hofer Narrowly Loses Presidential Vote":

The parties of the center left and center right that governed for most of the past 30 years in ever-duller grand coalitions were trounced in the first round of the presidential elections last month, when Mr. Hofer stunned rivals by reaping 35.1 percent, well ahead of Mr. Van der Bellen with 21 percent. 

Sunday’s runoff turned into a cliffhanger as the popular vote was counted and showed an ever-narrowing lead for Mr. Hofer. The Austrian public broadcaster ORF projected that Mr. Van der Bellen would win by just 3,000 votes when the record number of requested mail-in ballots was counted on Monday. 

That projection — and the tone of some of the ORF reporting on the election — was heavily criticized by the Freedom Party. It was not clear if there would be legal consequences, but the party’s attitude illustrated the country’s deep divisions.

The same dynamic is discernible in the campaign against Brexit. Fear of the unknown is amplified. The specter of capital flight is sketched. The Leavers are cast as callous capitalist Bentley-driving playboy real estate moguls (Brit mini-Trumps). But nowhere is heard a sonorous call for a united Europe. Best to avoid the topic of what the European Union actually stands for. The European Dream that was peddled in the aughts turned out to be a grift. There must be a rupture, as Stathis Kouvelakis explains in "What’s Next for Nuit Debout?":

I also believe at a more programmatic level that this is the challenge we’re confronted with at the current moment: we cannot settle for an anti-neoliberal platform listing a set of immediate demands — in reality, a trade unionist–like program. What we need is a real political alternative, identifying the points knotting together the current situation and the class adversary’s own strategy. 

That means, for example, that we must absolutely aim at the end of presidentialism and of the Fifth Republic, but also at the dismantling of the European Union, which is capital’s genuine war machine at the continent-wide scale. Without a rupture with the EU we will never arrive at any solution, as the disaster of Syriza in Greece definitively confirmed.

Bernie Sanders must take his campaign all the way to Philadelphia, and we need a Chicago-'68 type of eye-opener there.

We're at a 50-50 split in the West. Corporate domination of the media adds weight to the status quo half creating the illusion of a majority.

But it can't last too much longer. The status quo isn't anywhere near granting even the smallest "trade unionist–like program" of reform that might buy the rulers a little wiggle room. The direction we are headed promises even more wars, more refugees and less stable employment. The economy coming our way is the gig economy where we compete with robots to do piece work organized by a smart phone app.

We might not be there yet in 2016, but the revolution, some kind of major upheaval, is coming.

Presidential Elections in Austria and the U.S.: There is No Longer a Majority in the Political Center

There is an interesting article, "Long Dominated by Center, Austria Splinters to Left and Right," by Alison Smale about this coming Sunday's presidential runoff in Austria between the far-right Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer and the independent former Green Alexander Van der Bellen.

What caught my eye is the passage that summarizes the vote totals of the two long-ruling, establishment parties in the first round -- the center-right People's Party and the center-left Social Democrats:

The forces that vaulted Mr. Hofer into the spotlight are evident across much of the Continent, where many traditional parties in the center are embattled and voters are signaling increased discontent with politics as usual. Austria could be a test case for how far voters will go to demand change as immigration joins with diminished economic security and resentment of entrenched elites to create a combustible political mix.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front is polling far ahead of the governing Socialists, and President François Hollande’s approval ratings have slumped as low as 13 percent a year before he faces another election.

To Austria’s east, Prime Minister Viktor Orban rules Hungary with an authoritarian touch, and a conservative government in Poland is molding the news media and the judiciary to its taste. Germany is confronting growing support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, and the British referendum in June on whether to leave the European Union is cleaving Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives. That vote could turn on many of the same issues rattling politics elsewhere, including immigration, nationalism and disenchantment with the European bureaucracy in Brussels.

But the disruption has been especially pronounced in Austria, the crossroads of a troubled Continent. Despite having dominated politics since 1945, or perhaps because of that dominance, the two major centrist parties could not muster even a quarter of the popular vote between them in the first round of the presidential contest.

Mr. Hofer won 35 percent. Behind him was the former Green Party leader, Alexander Van der Bellen, with 21 percent. There has not been any polling for the runoff, but all indications are that the race will be tight.

While what is happening in Austria seems astounding -- imagine the Republicans and Democrats unable to achieve 25% between the two -- something similar is in fact happening in the United States, which has a diabolically complex 50-state system guaranteeing that there is no multi-party democracy.

Establishment Republicans -- Kasich, Bush, Rubio -- won a fraction of the GOP vote compared with frontrunners Trump and Cruz. Hillary is good for half the Democratic electorate. So all told, let's say the U.S. political center is polling at 37% nationwide. Not altogether different from situation unfolding in Austria. I'm sure if the U.S. had Muslim war refugees pouring into Penn Station that 37% would be much closer to 25%.

As anti-capitalist protests continue in France, it is no coincidence that Cold War is being repackaged at a time of paradigm shift. The same thing happened in the 1970s when neoliberalism began its ascent and the "excess of democracy" of the 1960s was beaten back. Now that we are being herded into a digital version of the same old "Washington Consensus" structural adjustment, the Russian Bear and Chinese Dragon are coming in handy once again.