[lbo-talk] The French National Front and the future of the eurozone

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Mon Jul 1 07:18:42 PDT 2013


On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:

The continuing financial and economic crisis, and corresponding rise of the European right-wing parties which have exploited it, have increased the pressure on the traditional governing parties to ease up on austerity, or to effect an even more complete Keynesian turn, to preempt their opponents on the right

Only in the minds of hand-wringing socialists is there an actual connection between the crises and the rise of the right/nationalists. As this article < http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-01-30-polyakova-en.html> shows, contra socialist fantasies, economic misery does not automatically breed political turns to the right. It's a lot more contingent and complex than that, further complicated by the fact that some in Europe some rightists/nationalists are more anti-austerity than the left: they actually are *for* Keynesian policies and welfare policies (as long as "real" Europeans are the beneficiaries of course). Governing parties are trying to outflank the rightist parties. If that's on the right or left, I wouldn't pretend to say.

So once again, your dubious political categories ("white working class") and deterministic views on politics fail to describe the political situation, obsessed with monocausal, progressive explanations as they are.



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