Samir Amin: “Europa es una ilusión emocional gigantesca” (2012.06.24an)
Nominalismoa nagusi:
Capitalismo de monopolios (sic): elkarrizketan 18 biderrez ‘monopolio’ hitza aipatu eta gero berdin edo txarragoa geratu gara.
Amin-ek (marxista) ez zuen ezagutzen Europar Batasuna (EB).
Utz dezagun bakean Amin bere nominalismoan!
Stuart Holland-ek (marxista) ezagutzen du EB: Stuart Holland – Wikipedia
Aspaldian ezagutu genuen Holland, 1980ko hasieran hain zuzen ere: Uncommon Market liburuaren bidez
In http://nabarralde.eus/hitz-egin-dezagun-independentzia-birtualaz/ (orain dela 10 urte argitaratua):
“Gaur egungo EB estatu desberdinen eraketa da, baita kapital handiaren eraketa ere: enpresa handiek eta banku erraldoiek beren nahitarako sortu eta antolatu dute EB. (Badago oso liburu on bat, orain dela 25 urte plazaratua: Stuart Holland (1980) Uncommon Market. Oraindik ere irakurtzeko merezi du. EBko merkatua ez da komuna, erabat desorekatua baizik.) EB horretan euskal errepublika independentea eratzeko daukagun oztopo bakarra, apartekoa noski, bi estaturi dagokiona da: espainiar eta frantses estatuei. Ez dago beste oztoporik, ez ekonomikorik, ez sozialik, ez kulturalik edo linguistikorik. Arazoa erabat politikoa da. Kontua subiranotasunari dagokio, autodeterminazioari, erabakitzeko subjektuari. Horretaz ez dut uste abertzalea denak dudarik izango duenik (orain dela 10 urte!!! Erabat okertu naiz, orain mandanga da nagusi!!!). Hortaz, ados bagaude horretan, ahalegin gaitezen horren inguruan batzen, bateratzen. Egia da EB hori martxan jartzerakoan, soilik kapitalari begiratu diotenez, europar banku zentralak izan duen politika monetario ia bakarra inflazioari aurre egitekoa izan dela. Ondorioa ezaguna da: langabezia nonahi eta gastu sozialen murriztea.”
Baina Euskal Herrian, sorry Granada honetan marxismoan murgiltzen zirenei (eta direnei!) so egin behar omen diegu. Ez dakit zeren esperoan. Ez dakit zeren zain…
Ala badakit?
Bai, askoz sakonagoa da (eta zen!) S. Holland S. Amir baino.
Alta, Holland ere labur samarra geratu zaigu.
Lekukoa Bill Mitchell, marxismoa ezagutzen duena, baina Granadan erabat ezezaguna dena.
Hona hemen Bill Mitchell-ek dioena Stuart Holland-i buruz:
(vi) Ezkerraren abdikazioa
Stuart Holland Not An Abdication By The Left
(a) The abdication of the Left – redux – Part 1
“… my response to the Social Europe article by Stuart Holland (July 11, 2018) – Not An Abdication By The Left – where he attempts to eviscerate various writers who have dared to suggest that the “social democratic Left in Europe … has run out of ideas” or that “there has been an intellectual abdication by the Left”. He uses his experience as an advisor to Harold Wilson in the 1960s and to Jacques Delors in the early 1990s as an ‘authority’ for his rejection of the claims that the Left has abandoned its social democratic remit. He holds the likes of Delors and António Guterres has shining Left lights. In Part 1, I showed that the view that Delors and Guterres are beacons of Left history and that the social democratic Left has not sold out to the neoliberal orthodoxy (particularly at the political level) is unsustainable. Holland distorts history to suit his argument and is in denial of the facts. (…)
(b) The abdication of the Left – redux – Part 2
“… In Part 2, I trace the argument further by examining the 1993 Delors White Paper, which was meant to be the European Commission’s response to the mass unemployment that was bedevilling the Continent at the time (and remains, by the way) and later propositions that Holland was associated with in relation to Greece during the GFC. They further demonstrate that Stuart Holland is attempting to maintain an indefensible position.
(…)
The Modest Proposal
Finally, Stuart Holland believes claims that the conduct of Syriza during the bailout crises and after is symptomatic of the abdication of the Left is unwarranted.
He argues that he and the then Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (later to be joined by James Galbraith) published several versions of what they called the “Modest Proposal” as a solution to Greece’s problems.
(…)
And then we come to the so-called “Modest Proposal”, put out by economists Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland, which is just a variant of the BBP scheme.
As I wrote in my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – one recalls Jonathan Swift’s satire of the same name, published in 1729, where Irish parents were encouraged to ease their economic travails by selling their children as food to provide culinary pleasure to the rich.
The aim of the ‘Modest Proposal’ was to address four “interrelated” problems: a banking crisis, involving banks that are the responsibility of the national governments, who do not have the currency capacity to guarantee deposits; a debt crisis where nations cannot borrow from private bond markets; an investment crisis, where both the level of investment has fallen sharply and the imbalance between the trade surplus and deficit nations has widened; and a social crisis, with high unemployment, rising homelessness and poverty, and falling incomes.
Like all the ‘hybrid’ schemes, they are motivated by the assertion is that “a Eurozone breakup would destroy the European Union, except perhaps in name” which would pose a “global danger” (Varoufakis et. al., 2013: 2).
Dramatics aside, when assessing the proposal it was hard to see how a scheme that involves no fiscal transfers or changes to the Treaty can provide a lasting solution to the mess.
The proposal would never have solved the inherent problems within the Eurozone, which are defined by the very political constraints that the authors recognise force them to adopt these ‘modest’ proposals, in lieu of more effective and lasting solutions.
Their debt manipulation proposal was similar to the BBP, outlined above.
The obvious question is why bother? The ECB has through its QE programs demonstrated that they can deal the private bond investors out of the equation when it came to setting yields on government bonds.
The ECB can effectively set yields at any level it desires including zero, which means that a Member State can only run out of money if the ECB refuses to exercise its power to buy unlimited volumes of the government’s debt.
The SMP program kept the Eurozone together, but by imposing austerity as a pre-condition for participation, it failed to address the core problem that Southern Europe is in depression and the only way out is for fiscal deficits to expand.
The most direct way forward would have been for the ECB to invoke its OMT facility and facilitate increased government spending.
Varoufakis, Holland and Galbraith (2013: 5) acknowledged that the OMT program “has succeeded in taming interest rate spreads within the euro-zone” but conclude that the implicit threat against bond markets, described above, is “non-credible”.
Allegedly, bond dealers will eventually call the ECB’s bluff and expose the OMT program as a paper tiger. This criticism is without foundation.
How exactly can the private bond markets “test the ECB’s resolve”? (p.5).
The ECB has unlimited euro capacity to purchase all the secondary market bonds it desires.
To think otherwise is hardly progressive or Left. The belief that the bond markets have the power over the state is core neoliberal thinking.
It was also difficult to see the ‘Modest Proposal’ as being consistent with Article 104 of the Treaty if a Member State failed to make payments as agreed. In that case the ECB would have to fund the deficiency, which would be equivalent to offering the prohibited ‘overdraft facility’ to the state.
The ‘Modest Proposal’ would also probably promote perverse bond market behaviour and deliver massive corporate welfare to the investment banks.
The debt policy would see the ECB take bank reserves out of the system in return for ECB-bonds. It wouldn’t take long for the bond markets to work out that they could ask for a premium on the ECB-bonds and the ECB would be under pressure to concede. With interest rates low, the private banks could then borrow from the ECB to buy the bonds, which would pay a return higher than the short-term cash.
Conclusion
I felt the need to respond to the Stuart Holland article because it is a good example of how the progressive, social democratic Left has lost itself in the woods of denial, historical revisionism and plain stupidity.
I know the Europhile Left will be tweeting it and feeling good about it because it provides validation for their own cognitive dissonance.
But as a view of what has happened over the last 40 or so years within the political Left it definitive – completely losing track of reality.”
Bai, argi eta garbi: porrot egin duena Ezkerra da, erabateko porrota gainera: Ezkerraz, hitz batzuk
Nik neuk ez dut ezagutzen marxista bat ere ez Europari, Europar Batasunari hobe esanda, irtenbide sendoren bat proposatu dioenik… Bla-bla-bla eta hitzontzikeria asko bai, besterik ez!
Alta, Granada honetan profeta berri baten zain dago jende asko, bai gehiegi.
Noiz arte horrela?
