MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Stop the Robbing, Fight for Redistribution
By alex.foti
Red Correa wins on first round in Ecuador, Sigurdardottir, socdems and green lefties win in Iceland: the crisis is having seismic political consequences everywhere starting last year with Obama, but also with the third cloning of Berlusconi to power: the bifurcation produced by the Great Recession can go either left or right, there’s nothing in between. Although the financial press would like to tell us that centerleftists are sprouting everywhere because they’re more easily manageable by the wealthy, the Third Way is buried and taxing the rich is gaining momentum, as finance is once again a dirty word. Oh boy, don’t we need those trillions for women, young families, temps, students, immigrant workers and the unemployed, instead of helping haughty bankers, brokers, money managers, hedge and private equity funds? This is a demand crisis: put money in the pockets of people, not in the coffers of banks!
What’s numbing is the transfer of huge fiscal resources to corrupt bankers who are hoarding money, while jobs are lost and livelihoods are cut. The protests should be immense, but the left is in disarray, caught between recent acceptance of neoliberalism and the harking back to lost traditions of 20th century socialism and communism. Only radical movements have produced significant innovation, first with the antiglobalization movement, now propelling a precarious and/or immigrant youth into the streets of EU cities to fight the crisis by fighting the law and smashing banks. Europe has been on fire in winter and early spring from Balkans to Baltics from the Egean to the Atlantic; as recently as early April in two crucial hubs of europower such as London and Strasbourg. Now the wait is on to see what will happen on MayDay, traditional day of anarchist agitation and socialist protest that to this day catalyzes riots and parades from Berlin to Milano, from Tokyo to Toronto (see for instance, http://www.euromayday.org and check http://www.indymedia.org sites for news)
GO LEFT, O EUROPE, TURN LEFT, O WORLD! (a bit emphatic, admittedly)
PS …And have a good MAYDAY wherever you are! GR.info econ crew
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