It is a sad day for international socialism. The government of Cyprus is negotiating a 17.5 billion Euro bailout for its banks. No self-respecting communist party should stand for this.
The current governing party of Cyprus, AKEL, or the Progressive Party of Working People, is an avowedly socialist party. Pretty obviously not a socialist initiative to bailout private bankers who made bad investments in Greece. Ideally the AKEL party would use this money to take nationalize the banks, or at the least to assert administrative control. Unfortunately this bailout will be funded and controlled by the European Union. This in of itself is a betrayal of AKEL's platform, as the party is moderately Euroskeptical When the parliament voted to join the European Union, the AKEL voted in favor, but expressed reservations. The deal also requires that the government privatize assets in order to raise money and cut future costs. It is unknown how deep these cuts will be in the final deal.
Looking at this from a theoretical perspective, forced liquidation of assets was almost inevitable. For those of you who haven't read much about the practice and implementation of Neoliberalism, I would recommend David Harvey's book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. In short Neoliberalism in practice forces governments to transfer wealth from public ownership to private ownership. Over the short term this stimulates growth, but is not sustainable as it has rapid loss in marginal returns. Neoliberalism in Europe has been limited by the strength of socialism and workers movements. A European Union imposed liquidation is a way to avoid this problem and impose Neoliberal policies without the consent of the governed. On a broader note, the destruction of socialism in those few countries where it still exists is inevitable Small scale socialism cannot exist in the broader context of world-capitalism.
A sad, but inevitable, end for the Socialists of Cyprus.
I always felt that Euroskeptisicm was all-or-nothing, with true Euroskeptics actively resisting joining the EU (like UKip). That AKEL voted to join the EU disqualifies them from being labeled Euroskeptics, I think.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what's with the Neoliberal bashing??
There are two major strains of Euroscepticism, the most known being the type advocated by European Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament. AKEL is part of milder Eurosceptic tradition that questions individual policies and a more deeply integrated Europe. There parties are generally part of the European Conservatives and Reformists or the European United Left-Nordic Green Left blocs, although there are more Eurosceptic parties in the first group.
ReplyDeleteIts not really Neoliberal bashing so much as acknowledging the reality of its practice. What I outlined above is explicitly the policy pursued by Neoliberal economists.