Spain has voted.
People are searching for a new vision. The old, of left and right, all focussed on materialism as the source of meaning, is fading. But as yet the replacements are incomplete.
Confusion is the path of the moment.
I sincerely hope something better will emerge. It's certainly trying to in Spain.
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It’s good to see yet another country ending its relationship with two party politics.
with the end of two party politics, we need a new electoral system. Canada’s new government says it will present recommendations in 18 months for new system of voting. New Zealand made the change but it is small and far away. Australia has the alternative vote and single transferable vote for the Senate, and has done for a long time. Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland all have PR systems. Vested interest wants to hang onto outdated systems.
Well it’s another sign that the TINA ‘consensus’ might well be breaking down and as you suggest, Richard, it will probably be a slow process after 40 years of neo-lib dogma. I was disappointed that Podemos got only 12.5 % given the horrendous level of unemployment amongst the youth but as I witness in this country the realisation that we’ve been scammed by economic myths combined with a vice-like grip on politics by the financial institutions will take time to dismantle -I just hope that change happens a bit quicker before social upheaval chimes in as things get worse and the inevitable next crash happens.
Here in the UK the Corbyn bashing doesn’t seem to show any respite for the ‘season of goodwill’ (The Torygraph onslaught is daily and unrelenting). I think Labour will need to face its internal crisis over the next few years and ditch the Tory-Lite element, I can’t see any other way. Blanchflower/mazzucato et al need to push for the expression of the clear alternatives-we’ll see!
Given that the Telegraph (like the Daily Mail) is a permanently & consistently pro-Tory publication, I can’t see their efforts as being foremost among Labour’s problems. The Telegraph wastes its metaphorical breath preaching to the converted. If anything, that adds to Corbyn’s credibility. What Labour leader would seriously seek the approval of the Telegraph?
Good too to see a lack of complete satisfaction with austerity. Mind you how Spain’s 20% unemployment could ever be remotely acceptable especially when the economy is ‘growing’ – allegedly – is beyond me. If the eventual Spanish coalition finally has done with austerity at least they’ll be able to join Portugal. But it is all painfully slow to watch. The austerity merchants still seem have an easy European majority.
Unfortunately, the results and local analysis appear to suggest that the emergence of separatist movements has distorted the result to the extent that conservative parties have received additional votes from those that oppose the separation. Votes that they wouldn’t have received otherwise.
Its reminiscent of the SNP-related confusion that inadvertently benefited the Tories (though not quite the same).
A good source of information for how the UK could be more democratic in its political process and elections….
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
I’ve noticed a fair bit of talk about Gramsci recently: Paul Mason has described Syriza as a “Gramscian party in a non-Gramscian world” while there was a decent piece by Gary Younge in the Grauniad the other day where he used this Gramsci quote which for me hits the nail squarely on the head:
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” (Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks)
The neo-liberal order is crumbling before our eyes, however what follows remains to be contested and it is by no means certain that it will be a more progressive arrangement, for one thing we can be certain of the 1% who have benefited from the last 40 years will not relinquish their gains without a fight
Agreed
@ Stewart – you’re all too right to be concerned about what will emerge from the collapse of the old hegemony of neo-liberalism – collapse that is indeed full of “morbid symptoms” – witness UKIP, France’s National Front, and Donald Trump- given what ACTUALLY succeeded thecets in which Gramsci was writing and to which he was referring.
This was the era brought about by the clumsy catastrophe of the Versailles Treaty (if ONLY Theodore Roosevelt had been President then, rather than the much-lauded, but actually lethally incompetent Woodrow Wilson, how different things might have been), an era that saw – created, one might say – the Fascist dictatorships of Mussolini and Hitler, and saw also the great Stalinist purges, and the rise of Franco’s Spain; and also the Wall Street Crash andctge Great Depression: decidedly NOT either happy, or desired, developments of the collapse of the old order, but developments of it, nonetheless.
What worries is – Is this class war?
The old Marxist concept of class conflict is still relevant but not in the same way that it was in Marx’s time. In our time I would suggest that there is a parallel, related and equally significant conflict between civil society and corporate hegemony.
In any case, I can’t see the prospect of ‘class war’ as being a worry. It is infinitely preferable to the absurd perception of individual economic agents in a competitive, classless society. That perception (stated or implied) underpins a lot of the assumptions and attitudes that still prevail.
If there is a worry it is not the ‘war’, per se, but the prospects of winning it in a timely manner.
Hear, hear, Marco Fante, to which I would only add two brief points.
The first is that to worry about there being a “class war” falls into the news category of “Queen Anne is dead”, since in Britain there has been a quite savage class war being waged BY the 1% ON the vanguard of the 99% since 1979 – just ask the miners and their ravaged communities.
The second point is to endorse your view about the real divide being between civil society and a corporate hegemony, but adding in the rider that the definition of “working class” has also altered since Marx, and now encompasses anyone who does not really have any significant influence over the sources of wealth and power, beyond having a vote, and having his or her labour to sell = in other words, the 99%.
Good points