For those of us who have been predicting that the Euro would be a calamitous failure since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, mostly because the currency union was organized around the most extreme crackpot theories of neoliberalism, the summer of 2014 has brought a moment of high schadenfreude as the last giant of the Eurozone—Germany—has finally stumbled over its contradictions. Predicting the downfall of neoliberalism was hardly the act of great genius. Those ideas have been discredited at regular intervals since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Neoliberalism has often been called Classical economics because it is in fact the product of pre-industrial thinking. This time around, they tried to dispense with this obvious contradiction by claiming that we had somehow entered into a post-industrial world. Pre-industrial?—Post-Industrial? It didnt make a lot of difference because what it really meant was that the concerns of those who would and could create the real economy were NOT going to be heard. The folks who were going to hog the podium were the gamblers, charlatans, liars, usurers, and other predators who had figured out how to steal everything in sight playing games with electronic money. Because it is based on pre-industrial assumptions, neoliberalism can also be accurately described as neo-feudalism. And the new Leisure Classes might argue that after a period of the excesses of industrialization, a little feudalism might be a good thing (complete, I gather, with all the charming features including slavery, child labor, and the right of the first night.) The only problem with that thinking is by hogging the electronic money, the predators have foreclosed on a meaningful response to problems like Peak Oil and climate change. Those problems simply cannot be solved until money gets into the hands of the makers and doers who can actually change and rebuild the real economy. When the predators stop snorting blow off hookers butts and start getting in the way of necessary progress, they have been transformed from mildly amusing to lethally dangerous. At that point, the guillotine argument starts making sense. When rich guys start throwing their financial muscle behind denying the reality of Peak Oil or climate change, the time has certainly come to at least consider violent opposition to their utterly crazy world-views. These people live in very comfortable bubbles—they probably will not consider changing their course until they feel personally threatened. At least, that is the POV of the increasingly angry and dispossessed middle classes around the world. As a lifelong pacifist, I am not endorsing marching around with Lloyd Blankfein or Timmy Geitners head on a pike.* The preferred response is to put them out of business. Finance simply MUST be run by people who understand that first the real economy must flourish. Of course, if someone like Blankfein could make THAT happen, not only should we allow him to survive, the makers and doers would happily cast his likeness in bronze. *This model of revolution actually has a name: the Jacobin doctrine. Thanks, Walter Lippmann.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 19:02:40 +0000
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