Why Millions March in France, but Not in the US

[marmar]

from Truthout:



Why Millions March in France, but Not in the US
Thursday 09 September 2010

by: Rick Wolff | MR Zine | Op-Ed


The basic issue is the same there and here. Capitalism generates another of its regular, periodic crises, only this one is really bad. It begins, as often happens, in the financial sector where credit invites the competition-driven speculation, the excess risk-taking, and the corruption that explodes first. But precisely because the non-financial rest of the economy is already on shaky feet -- resulting from the growing economic divides between the mass of workers and the corporate profiteers -- the financial breakdown is spread by the market to the entire economy.

The basic response is the same there and here. Governments serve their masters. This means borrowing trillions (from those masters with the money to lend) in order to bail out their other masters: the failed banks and other corporations who threaten to take whole national economies down with them. The government bailouts "work." That is, they temporarily help banks, insurance companies, desperate corporations, and investors to avoid total collapse. But the bailouts also cost governments massive new budget deficits paid for by massive additional debt obligations to their lenders.

The basic dilemma today is the same there and here. Lenders to governments threaten to stop lending or even to pull their loans unless governments guarantee that they will pay interest on all their new debts as well as repay them. The guarantee that lenders everywhere demand is the same: governments must set aside funds -- by either raising new taxes or cutting government payrolls and spending -- that will go to the lenders.

The next step is different there than here. In France and across Europe, the governments' response to their masters' demands is called "austerity": painful added costs and lost public jobs and services impacting chiefly the mass of working people. In contrast, in the US, Obama "opposes" austerity, especially in Europe, because he has hopes that an export boom might lead the US out of its economic crisis. Europe is the chief buyer of US exports, and austerity there would inevitably reduce their purchase of US output. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/why-millions-march-france-but-not-us63123

[mike r]

1. Also, because the French have a fine institutional memory:

[onehandle]

2. Ah... Madame Guillotine.

Here in the U.S., we let billionaires bus morons to rallies in support of all billionaires.

[leveymg]

3. America also had mass opposition movements and rallies, until 2008.

The crisis probably couldn't be happen as quietly here if the Democrats hadn't been welcomed into power by Wall Street and the corporate elites. The problem is that America's left has been coopted.

Our mass mobilization potential has been neutralized by the party in power that serves the same global elite interests. Only, it's "our" government, so we can't really act up against it's austerity policies.

Quite a dilemma for us. Brilliant strategy and timing by them.

[readmoreoften]

4. +1

[leftstreet]

6. +1

Very well said

[Juche]

5. I don't know why personally

In many other countries there are mass movements for left wing policy, here in the US the tea party is the current mass movement. It is very disappointing.