FINANCIAL WARFARE~~~~~~~>THE WORLD HAS 700 TRILLION IN DEBT AND IS ABOUT TO CAVE IN THERE ARE NO MORE RABBITS TO PULLOUT OF THE HAT WE NEED TO LOOK AT HOW ICELAND FIXED ITS NATION TO RECOVER ITS SOVEREIGNTY monthlyreview.org/2013/10/01/lessons-iceland/ monthlyreview.org/2013/10/01/lessons-iceland/ Lessons from the Icelandic Experience The popular movement in Iceland deserves recognition for its achievements and support as it struggles to learn from its electoral defeat in April 2013. More generally, I believe that the Icelandic experience offers useful lessons for all those working to build movements capable of initiating meaningful social transformations. The first lesson is that countries do not adopt neoliberal policies because of a policy mistake or the takeover of government by extremist elements. Rather it is an expression of a generally shared capitalist desire for bigger profits coupled with the realization that this requires greater market freedom, both regulatory and geographic. The fact that the adoption of these policies may cause a shake-up of capitalist-class relations does not change this conclusion. The second is that expansion generated by neoliberalism contains the seeds of its own undoing. Capitalism is a contradictory and unstable system and the more unchecked are market forces, the faster the economic rise and the more dramatic the economic fall. The Icelandic experience, in particular, offers a frightening illustration of how easily our well-being can be threatened by the machinations of financial interests. The third is that states can effectively intervene in multiple, interconnected markets and achieve impressive results. More to the point, comparing the experience of Iceland with that of other countries makes clear that active state intervention in restructuring and directing markets is the key to a socially desirable response to crisis. The fourth is that crisis alone is not sufficient to deter capitalist interests from their support for liberalization and privatization. In most countries, the same capitalist interests that orchestrated the adoption of the neoliberal policies that generated the crisis remain adamant defenders of the same policies. Iceland was unique in that popular forces succeeded in forcing the responsible government out of office and replacing it with a more social-democratically oriented one. However, the previous governing interests remained in powerful positions and never ceased to agitate for their return to power. For example, the media never ceased to be under Independence Party control; Oddsson, the former Prime Minister, is the editor-in-chief of the leading Icelandic daily newspaper. “Majority opinion in the Independence Party continues to believe that ‘alpha Iceland was hit by a perfect storm from abroad,’ meaning that ‘the crisis was not our fault’ … Polls show that it has succeeded in convincing a majority of the population that the current [Social Democratic] government is somehow responsible for their troubles.”55 The Independence Party and the Progressive Party were the overwhelming winners of the April 2013 elections, receiving over 51 percent of the votes compared with 23 percent for the Social Democratic Alliance and Left Green Movement. The fifth is that social democratic policies, regardless of how successful they may be in defending popular interests during a period of crisis, do not automatically generate support for an agenda of social transformation. One reason is that social democratic parties tend to present their interventions as temporary, made necessary by unusual circumstances. Once stability is regained, capitalist interests are well positioned to argue that such interventions need to be undone so as not to become fetters on expansion. The final lesson is that to advance a meaningful revolutionary process, activists must not only build popular support for expanded public ownership and state capacities to direct economic activity, but they must do so as part of a movement that directly challenges the legitimacy of capitalist imperatives and encourages new visions of social ownership and patterns of production and distribution.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 17:58:25 +0000
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