The Crumbling of the Neoliberal Consensus

It’s not just in the United States that the incompetence of Neoliberal elites and failure of Neoliberal policies is causing it to lose its grip on political power in areas which democracy has not yet been totally stifled. We see it in Britain with the Brexit vote and the seemingly inevitable re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Likewise in France where September is almost certain to bring a violent reaction to Holland’s sell out on Labor Laws.

Other European nations on the brink include Spain, Italy and… Portugal.

Here’s an interesting report from Real News Network on recent activity.

The European Revolt Against the Neoliberal EU

What started off as a financial crisis in Europe has now turned and become a crisis of the eurozone. There has been unprecedented wave of mass strikes, signifying the discontent of the working classes. In Greece, for example, people elected the leftist SYRIZA Party and voted no to austerity debt deal offered to them by the Troika. In France, there has been consistent strikes against efforts to reverse labor rights by the so-called socialist government. Among other interesting developments in Portugal, the people elected a socialist party which vowed to curb E.U. austerity. In the U.K., they voted for Brexit. Some claim that this was due to the antidemocratic neoliberal structures of the European Union.

So what exactly are the limits of the European project? And how does the left seize the moment to build a popular movement of the left across the continent?

The European Revolt Against the Neoliberal EU

Podemos does have this idea–or a part of Podemos says it’s possible to restructure. At the same time, a part of Podemos is organizing what we call Plan B, which is a conference that is gathering a lot of different left-wing activists and intellectuals, left-wing economists to think about exiting the European Union in a coordinated way from the left, and exiting the euro particularly. So Podemos is doing both things, which is exactly what I think the left needs to be doing right now. We need to rethink strategies, and in a coordinated way, preferentially.
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(T)here’s different people from different parties in the European context that are coming together to discuss: what do we need, for example, to leave the eurozone? What kind of policies of reindustrialization would we need? Who could we count on, for example, if there is an exit from one of the Southern European countries? How could this be coordinated with other countries and the left of other countries? And discussing the relation of forces that we’re in today, and try to build a common analysis from the left, as there was a common analysis of the need of reform in the European Union and not leaving it. This is kind of an effort to rethink a new strategy in a coordinated way. And I think this is a very important thing that is happening.