"The Italian slap to the transnational elite, Greece and global governance," Takis Fotopoulos
Hier kun je discussieren over "The Italian slap to the transnational elite, Greece and global governance," Takis Fotopoulos.
The formation of parliamentary juntas in Italy and Greece
In November 2011, the transnational elite administering neoliberal globalization, formally institutionalized the parliamentary junta in both Greece and Italy. As the Financial Times put it at the time:
Confronted with turbulence in the provinces, the eurozone has sent in new governors. In place of the wayward George Papandreou, Greece now has Lukas Papademos, former vice-president of the European Central Bank. Instead of the unruly Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has Mario Monti, former head of competition policy at the European Commission.[1]
What the establishment paper omitted to say was that both appointees, together with directors, executives, etc. of transnational corporations, have been members of the Trilateral Commission[2] founded by David Rockefeller in 1973. At that time the transnational corporations were in the process of shaping the informal transnational elite, which was planned to administer the emerging internationalized capitalist market economy. The aim of this Commission was supposed “to foster closer cooperation among the USA, Europe and Japan,” but, in fact, it constituted a main instrument to promote its members to the administration of the New World Order, which was marked by the rise of neoliberal globalization. Furthermore both Monti and Papadimos together with Mario Draghi, who had just assumed office as president of the prestigious European Central Bank, belong “in various degrees,” as Le Monde[3] stressed at the time, to the European branch of the well known Goldman Sachs, one of the main components of the transnational elite!
Although Papademos has already been replaced by the (equally servile to the transnational elite) present tri-partite Greek government, Monti represented the big hope of the transnational elite for keeping Italy under the same restraint as Greece. In fact, just a couple of months ago in Davos, at the annual informal gathering of the transnational elite, Monti was welcomed as “Europe’s savior”. At the time, the fixed media polls, orchestrated by the same elite, were declaring Monti as the favorite to form a government in Italy together with Pier Luigi Bersani. In fact, Bersani is the Italian version of the Greek degenerate Left leader (SYRIZA) Alexis Tsipras, who, like him, does not even think of raising the issue of their countries exiting the EU and Euro, as a way of sorting out the catastrophic economic problems mostly created in both countries (and particularly in Greece), by their entry into the EU. Bersani is secretary of the Italian Democratic party (PD), formed mainly by ex-communists and presently social-liberals. The policies of the Italian Democratic Party and Syriza (which also consists mainly of ex-communists) are similar, although SYRIZA’s rhetoric is much more radical than that of the former, having no qualms about deceiving the Greek electorate that it could ignore the fiscal discipline rules imposed by the European Commission, while remaining members of the EU and Euro!
The austerity policies implemented by Monti for over a year have already caused wide ranging poverty in Italy, which however is incomparable to the disaster that has been induced in Greece. That is why the markets, anticipating the victory of the transnational elite’s favourite duo (Monti/Democratic party), were at the beginning very optimistic about the elections, until the news emerged about Monti’s debacle, who did manage to attract only 10% of the votes and, also, about the corresponding heavy defeat of the Democratic party, which lost 30% of its votes compared to the previous elections.
The Italian people turn against the EU elite
And then came the big slap the Italian people gave to the transnational and European elites: the two major winners of the Italian elections were parties “not approved” by the EU elite. Not only does Beppe Grillo’s fledgling “movement” not waver to ask for a referendum on leaving the Euro (which, if effected, in a country of Italy’s size would inevitably create the dynamics for an EU exit as well), but also Berlusconi’s party has not ruled out this option, being fiercely attacked by the transnational elite for this deadly sin. Thus, more than 55% of the Italian people (and many more if we take into account the record breaking abstention rate) did not hesitate to touch on the real cause of their sufferings, i.e. the EU membership. At the same time, UK’s Independence Party (UKIP), which is explicitly anti-EU, managed to finish in 2nd place in the February 28th Eastleigh By-Election behind the Liberal Democrats who retained the seat, while the Conservatives were pushed into the third place and the Labour Party into a poor fourth place! Finally, the latest Eurobarometer (2012) shows an unprecedented lack of EU citizens’ confidence towards the European institutions and policies. On the other hand, the transnational elite seems that it does not have anything to be worried about as far as Greece is concerned, since SYRIZA, which could well come out as the biggest party in the next general election, keeps repeating like the Italian Democratic party, that it will never raise the issue of Greek exit from the euro, let alone the EU and that it will achieve its aim to stop the catastrophic austerity policies imposed by it on Greece through pressure by a joint front (to be formed!) by the EU’s “PIIGS”!
Of course, all this does not mean that there is now any radical change taking place in Italy, especially if we take into account the composition and character of the two populist parties that came out as the relative winners of this election. Simply, we can say that there is the potential for radical change, which today is absent in Greece. Thus, although the Berlusconi camp represents the interests of the Italian elite and the privileged social groups, these interests do not always coincide with the interests of the transnational elite, because Italy has not ceased to be a country in the European periphery facing serious problems of loss in its competitiveness due to its participation in the EU/Eurozone. Thus, the Italian economy has stagnated in the last two decades, with a growth rate of 1.5% in the 1990s that fell to 1% in the 2000s (versus 2.1% and 1.8% respectively in the Euro area).[4] This means that in Italy, unlike Greece whose production structure has effectively been destroyed as a result of its entry into the EU, a party like the one of Berlusconi would not hesitate to clash with the European elite to protect the interests of the Italian elite. The same applies to Beppe Grillo’s “movement” which, by itself, is completely harmless for the transnational elite, since it is not an anti-systemic party but mainly an anti-corruption party. In other words, it is simply the party of the “Indignados” (like the similar movements in Spain and Greece), which lacking any political project and analysis supporting it, as well as a compatible strategy, only expresses the outrage of the Italian people in a completely disorganized (and therefore controllable by the elites) manner, as was generally the case with such movements in other countries as well (Occupy Wall St. etc.) which simply function as detonators of popular anger.
The main question, therefore, raised out of the Italian elections, which concerns in fact all European peoples, is whether the Italian people will overcome the systemic traps expressed by the parties of Berlusconi and Grillo, as well as the fake dilemmas on austerity policies posed by the European Left (Die Linke), which assume that “good” Left parties elected in EU governments could replace the policies of “bad” Merkel and the rest ―as if neoliberal globalization is just an ideology or a plot, as silly plot theories of the “Left” suggest.[5]
Self-reliance vs. global governance
To my mind, it is only the creation of broad anti-EU Popular Fronts in each country, which could effect the exit from the EU with the aim of achieving economic self-reliance in each country. Re-development based on self-reliance, as I am going to show in more detail in a forthcoming article, is the only way in which peoples breaking away from globalization and its institutions (like the EU) could rebuild their productive structures that have been dismantled by globalization. This could, also objectively, lay the ground for future systemic change, decided democratically by the peoples themselves. To expect that the globalization process by itself will create the objective and subjective conditions for a socialist transformation, as some ‘Palaeolithic Marxists’ believe, or alternatively, that the creation of self-managed factories within the present globalized system will lead to a self-managed economy, as life-style “anarchists” suggest, are both sure ways to lead to the completion of the globalization process, as planned by the elites.
The alternative is too horrible to be contemplated and was graphically described by the arch-Zionist president of Israel, Simon Peres, who celebrated, as follows, globalization in front of a highly enthusiastic audience of the entire Euro-Parliament:
Globalization put an end to racism. It empowers the individual. Global companies do not impose their will upon people. On the contrary, they respect the will of their clients. They can provide scientific know-how for growth. They can assist young people to acquire high education. To create jobs befitting their skills.[6]
And then he went on to describe how the future world based on globalization should be, i.e. the same New World Order as at present, plus a global governance!:
Our global world has no global government. It has become almost ungovernable. We have to look for an alternative. I believe the future ways of governing shall rely on three pillars: National governments will continue to be in charge of the husbandry of the national state. Global companies will invest in research and development. And the individual will enjoy the capacity to govern themselves by knowing the way their brain functions. Science today is more telling than politics. It is universal and borderless. Armies cannot conquer wisdom. Police cannot arrest science. (…) Facing the lack of global governance, we can foster close cooperation between governments and global companies. Facing the dangers which threaten the values for which we stand, we shall fight terror wherever it is, relentlessly.[7]
It is clear therefore, that the transnational elite is already in the process of taking the necessary steps to institutionalize its transnational role. The immediate aim is to pull down the “regulatory barriers” impeding the free exchange of goods and services, initially between Europe and America (in fact, a transatlantic trade and investment deal seems ready to be agreed between EU and NAFTA)[8] and then between this huge trading block and the rest of the world, which will be forced to accept the terms of trade of the former. The ultimate aim is the formation of a vast single deregulated market, controlled by transnational companies, in which social controls over markets to protect labor or the environment will be minimized.
At the political level, this implies that the present informal transnational elite will be formalized or institutionalized in the form of a “world government”. The ideological thesis for this was given by Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times, in a 2008 article,[9] which many commentators have cited as proof of an elitist plot to establish global governance. In fact, neither neoliberal globalization was a plot, as I explained elsewhere,[10] nor will be either the formation of a world government sometime, perhaps in not the too distant future. It is simply the inevitable outcome of the dynamics of the system of capitalist market economy system, which cannot be reversed unless the victims of neoliberal globalization, i.e. the vast majority of the world population, fight for the creation of self-reliant economies and self-governed societies, outside neoliberal globalization, in a new kind of internationalism based on the principles of solidarity and mutual aid rather than the principles of competitiveness and profit, as at present.
[1] Martin Wolf, “Europe must not allow Rome to burn,” The Financial Times (15/11/2011).
[2] see The Trilateral Commission Membership List.
[3] “Goldman Sachs, Le trait d'union entre Mario Draghi, Mario Monti et Lucas Papadémos”, Le Monde (14/11/2011).
[4] World Bank, World Development Indicators 2010, Table 4.1.
[5] see e.g. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Penguin, 2008).
[6] “Full text of Peres speech to European Parliament. President Shimon Peres' at the seat of the parliament in Strasbourg,” Haaretz, (13/03/2013).
[7] ibid.
[8] Max Baucus, “Transatlantic trade deal is a US priority”, The Financial Times, (03/03/2013).
[9] Gideon Rachman, “And now for a world government”, The Financial Times, (08/12/2008).
[10] Takis Fotopoulos, Redesigning the Middle East: the Arab “revolutions”, counter-revolution in Iran and regime change (Clarity Press-under publication).