Taking out the Trash
personal notes on the several elections
You may comment, but these are my views, I will own them, but don’t tell me I am wrong. I know I could be wrong. (I am a bit of an autistic snowflake and cannot open hate comments.)1 Also, try reading Bill Mitchell’s narrative first. I find despite very different backgrounds and upbringings, I agree with almost everything Prof. Mitchell has to say on macroeconomics.
There is no Grand Thesis in this post, although I offer a narrative — the broad public rejecting whoever is the incumbent neoliberal/neocon, regardless of the logo or flag. But these are my private notes put here on substack for anyone interested to ponder. I cannot hold all the political and geopolitical insanity in my head for long without severe depression, and writing down some thoughts is a release from that maelstrom of FUD. I suggest you might do the same rather than argue against my thoughts.
New Zealand went Tory. Quite the show of popular sentiment against the incumbent neoliberals — which meant by default the other worse neoliberal got elected. Sometimes “the voter” is not so stupid they think there is a big difference. I am also pretty sick of people saying the right-wing neolibs are worse. Yes, they are, but the voter has it correct imho to reject whoever the incumbent is. You giver the other gross side of neoliberal the chance to prove they are no longer neoliberal.
UK showed the same in reverse. Vote out the incumbent neoliberals. My guess is Starmer/Reeves will get booted out too, as they cshould. It is funny this is not a conspiratorial strategy of the working class vote, it is “emergent”. At least it appears, (I am always skeptical of claims of emergence). But the emergence of the voter using a revolving door to cycle through the two neoliberal altenratives until one stops being neoliberal, is a story one could tell.
Weird nut cases like Alex Krainer (seems to grok MMT, then doesn’t, seems to be righteously populist, then isn’t) whom I do not actively dislike, and like to listen to or read for an alternative opinion on occasion, are celebrating Agent Orange’s “victory” as a fresh new morning in ‘Merica. Sounds far too resonant of Reagan vibes for my liking. And waaaay too optimistic. Yes, it is good the broad voting public who got out to wag a finger at the polls rejected Harris/Walz, but there is no bright fresh morning. My bet is the Trump administration 2.0 will sabre rattle with Iran, maybe God forbid go hot with Iran? (unthinkable, but you never know. Never underestimate high powered high test exam score IQ stupidity) and not change much foreign policy Washington consensus at all.
I still wanted Harris/Walz to win just to see if an incumbent neoliberal regime could show a slow transformation to working class populism. Was I hopelessly naive? No. I did nto give them a matchstick’s chance in hell of making a spiritual transformation. But I really did want to have them see the opportunity. I cannot see the Trumpista snowball as rolling around in a colder hell. (Hell is freezing cold, for those not in the know.)
Woke identity politics? I have little to say about this. My brother and sister are right in saying the original idea of woke is good. It is not good to harbor racism and sexism. But whence classism? The media-entertainment-nerducation cartel abused the whole idea and turned it into a weapon to cudgel the working class with and dismiss entire generations of dopey white boys. Those boys may be dopey but that are not idiots. But the dopey white kids were not the target of the cudgel, they were just statistically caught in the crosshairs, the target was anyone in the low income working class, especially the unemployed. No one is born a fascist. Society manufactures them. Most of them are not even fash, they’re just depressed and hopeless, drunk on gaming, reddit and AI delusions. Some by now are even in their 40’s I guess. They are not going away from the polls next time. When you have no hope then voting for Agent Orange is hilarious. How can you begrudge these whities their laugh? They are now not even all whities, judging by voting demographics. (Fact check me here, I don’t analyze the data, just hear bits and pieces.)
Japanese elections tell a similar story. Canada, Australia, too. The EU is a mess, and I cannot tell what the story is there, it is not a democratic union, and I think the revolving neoliberal door emergent phenomenon still applies broadly, but since national governments get depoliticization cover they can always just blame Brussels and Berlin — it is a different dynamic to duopoly single State neoliberalism. In New Zealand we have more than two neoliberal parties, as does Canada. Still no proper working class party alternative. All are, “…but the tax payer dollars! We run out. We no spend. You no job.” Meanwhile, interest rate hikes, ‘cos: Neoliberal central cranker: “We no grok monetary operations. We no comprendo inflation. We like basic income but only for people who already have money in proportion to how much money they already have.”
A lot of liberals got worried about Giorgia Meloni. But is Italy any less neoliberal than before? Neofascism cannot overthrow neoliberalism. That’s the story I am seeing. (Heck, neoliberalism breeds fascism, the fascists love neoliberals, like gamers love liquid cooled GPUs.) Thus the USA is going to have to continue cycling the revolving door until either a Third Party breaks out that is not neoliberal, or some other immaculate miracle conception of a working class movement occurs. (Well, it requires a tonne of community grass roots activism and labour organization, so it would not be immaculate, but it would still seem like a miracle from the standpoint of life in 2024.)
Putin? Xi? Lula? Do not look to them nor BRICS for hope. They cannot break free from the neoliberal constraints either. If they could they’d already have ZERO unemployment and much higher non-inflationary government net expenditures: by investing in real production, not fintec, in fact they’d already have destroyed the completely parasitic financial sector, completely shut down bond trading nonsense — pointless waste of human lives — leaving only commercial banks runing thepaymetns layer and assessing crdit-worthiness.
I place my money on education, not Lula. Not just education of children. Good leaders listen to their people, they learn from them, they are concerned about the plight of the poorest, and will find a way to do something about that because it is injustice (not just because it also makes economic sense!) — finding a way means rejecting fascism and neoliberalism. I rather like the chances for Claudia Sheinbaum and Mia Mottley and similar leadership around the world. They are not completely free of neoliberal biases and apparatchiks yet, but they could be. New Zealand has too many reactionary conservatives in our general population and news media. We’ve got a very, very hard road to tred out of neoliberalism. But hey, at least our conservatives are woke. 🥳 🤣
The transformation will some day happen. The question is when? How many more people will die under the phony battle between neoliberalism and fascism? Two in-bred cousins fighting a potbellied PMC general elitist war by bombing each other’s low income population. Until such spiritual transformation the voter cannot be blamed for taking out the other coloured bin of trash every 3 to 5 years.
Sad that political discourse, which should really be civil in a civilized society, is rife with bitter argumentation. (Not the insane anthropologists “civilization is corrupt we need to go back to village life” mindset.)
https://www.harperwest.co/demanding-civility-narcissistic-gaslighting-abuse/
Hi Bijou / Ghost:
This phenomenon all around the English-speaking (and much of the rest of the) world of two parties / blocs playing 'Tweedledee-Tweedledum', or as George Galloway put it "two cheeks of the same arse" Is not an aberration, It's a design-feature. The convergence is the inevitable outcome of the professionalisation of the left-political class, the continuum of selection of 'new entrants' by the 'old-guard' and the lack of responsiveness to change that the latter engenders.
The USA at least has a limited capacity for 'pre-selection' of candidates by the process of Primaries. I don't claim to understand it, because the idea that a person who's not a party member can register to vote for a candidate in the primaries from a range of names attached to a given party seems weird: what's to stop a hard right-wing voter registering Democrat then voting for a hard-right candidate that's standing on the Democratic ticket (or vise-versa for that matter)? Just a rhetorical question tbh.
At least the U.S. system has the 'advantage' of meaningless party-names. The country is indeed a Republic and also a Democracy (at least nominally). Here in the commonwealth we have to put up with 'Conservatives' that pursue radical neoliberalism, 'Nationals' that pursue global corporate interests at the cost of sovereignty, 'Labour Parties' that work hard in the service of the Party apparatus and the professional public service (PMC, more of which later) that forms almost all of their activist base and part of their financial base (though increasingly supplanted by corporate donors as convergence gains pace), while achieving the minimum possible for people working in non / low-level managerial waged / salaried jobs commensurate with obtaining their vote.
Names are important. As every practitioner of magic (the old name for 'mass-psychology') knows, being able to name a thing is a necessary precursor to controlling it, and maintaining these misnomers is vital to maintaining the useful ongoing public delusions of what these political parties actually stand for, and the vanishingly small size of the elites whose interests they actually serve.
Bijou, a few weeks ago we had a conversation after I used the term 'PMC', which, at the time, you styled as "just another term for white-collar workers, and I guess as an academic, I am one" (apologies for the approximation of your words-that's from memory) I note that in this post you use the term, and in the context I'm not sure if you've moved in your understanding. My understanding of the PMC is specifically that class of managers, usually in government service, that have significant control over the allocation of resources and/or influence on public policy (notwithstanding the general direction is in the domain, at least theoretically, of their political seniors). This class of people is, in fact, quite small. Given that public service personnel make up only 20% of employed persons in NZ, this might only be one percent of the population- not enough to make a political party in their own right.
This class largely came into existence as a result of the expansion of government services into the social realm after WW2, and those changes were brought about or enhanced by 'Labour' and similar social-democratic parties. It was thus perfectly natural that the managers should cleave to those parties. Given that managers have managerial skills, it's hardly surprising that they rose to positions of rank within those parties. However, as they ossified into a class of their own, with their own class-interests, it's hardly surprising that the party that they were now deeply embedded in became moulded to reflect those interests.
Despite the PMC being largely a creature of post-war social reforms aimed at improving the lot of the working class, there is no iron rule that interests will always be shared . Indeed, for centuries the Civil Service was very much the apparatus of the ruling class, shared their interests, and quite often managed to elevate themselves into that class. Thus, as power has shifted incrementally from more-or-less benign government to government on behalf of corporate interests, there has been no ideological barrier to the PMC moving in the same direction- they will always tend to attach themselves to the source of power. They may tell themselves that they are fighting a rearguard action against the worst excesses of corporate power, but fundamentally their interest is self-preservation, so in the present moment the policies of their party are convergent with those of the parties of corporate power. To maintain a semblance of 'difference', they tuck themselves up very snugly just to the left of the actual Right-wing parties and adopt the same policies with the caveat that they will make the same painful and entirely unnecessary changes that the Right ordains, but 'more slowly, more compassionately'.
On the Right, a process similar in outcome occurs, The Right recruits far fewer candidates who have studied PPE, public administration etc. Instead they parachute them in from corporate business a term or two before making them leader. To fill the lower echelons they just get someone who looks good in a suit and has a bit of local cred. to be a 'bum on a seat' and vote for the party whip. As public administration is an entirely different 'kettle of fish' to private business, they instantly find themselves out of their depth, particularly if they wish to defy the advice of their permanent civil service, which they seem to relish as a matter of course. Thus policy comes from 'think-tanks', which have a lot of 'big-picture' ideology, but no knowledge of administration, and to be quite honest, have an agenda to cause as much damage to the institution of government as possible.
Every school dropout that sells second-hand cars or owns a coffee-cart franchise reckons that because they're now 'in business' they must vote National, cos 'party of business, innit?' with no concept that the think-tanks are pursuing policies designed to protect the status and assets of the already-wealthy and establish them as the sole font of political power. Unfortunately a great many lawyers, accountants, engineers etc. who do have the mental capacity to understand the issues do the same because they simply haven't heard the message.
Thus the working class and the small to actually-quite-large-but-not-corporate business owners that rely on their spending-power are entirely unrepresented in our politics. We desperately need a third party to redress the balance.