It’s Eve. The hollowing out of the meaning of traditional political labels, which Michael Hudson describes below, is due to a persistent and very long-running campaign to move American values to the right. It cannot be overstated that the shift in where the center was perceived to be was not organic, but the result of a well-funded, time-bound campaign, spearheaded by effective propagandists like Milton Friedman, and codified in the 1971 Powell Memorandum. Thus, the old mainstream support for the New Deal was not just marginalized, but even a term that once focused primarily on economic positions, such as positions against capital and labor, was now bent to focus on social issues (rather than social safety nets), conveniently obscuring the big issues of guns and butter.
The author is Michael Hudson, a research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a fellow at the Levy Institute for Economics at Bard College. His latest book is The fate of civilization.
The crushing defeat of the neoliberal, pro-war British Conservative Party by the neoliberal, pro-war Labour Party on July 4th raises the question of what exactly the media means when they talk about elections and political coalitions across Europe in terms of centre-right and centre-left traditional parties being challenged by nationalist neo-fascists.
The political differences between European centrist parties are minor, as they all support neoliberal cuts in social spending, rearmament, austerity and deindustrialization along with support for US and NATO policies. The term “centrist” means they do not advocate any changes to economic neoliberalism. Hyphenated centrist parties are committed to maintaining the pro-US status quo beyond 2022.
It means allowing American leaders to control European politics through NATO and the European Commission, the European version of the American Deep State. This passivity is putting European economies on a war footing, with inflation, trade dependency on the US, and European deficits resulting from US-backed trade and financial sanctions against Russia and China. This new status quo has shifted European trade and investment away from Eurasia and towards the US.
Voters in France, Germany and Italy are turning a blind eye to this impasse. All incumbent centrist parties have recently been defeated, and all of the defeated party leaders ran on a pro-American neoliberal platform. Steve Keen describes the centrist political game as follows: “The party that comes to power implements neoliberal policies. In the next election it loses to its rival, who also comes to power and implements neoliberal policies. It loses again, and the cycle repeats.” The European elections, like this November’s US elections, are primarily protest votes, with voters having no choice but to vote for populist-nationalist parties promising a break with the status quo. This is the continental European equivalent of the UK’s vote to leave the EU.
The AfD in Germany, the National Rally of Marine Le Pen in France, and the Brothers of Italy of Georgia Meloni are portrayed as nationalistic instead of following the NATO/EU Commission, and as crushing and destroying the economy, especially by opposing the war in Ukraine and isolating Europe from Russia. It is because of this stance that voters support them. There is a public rejection of the status quo. The centrist parties call all nationalistic opponents neo-fascists, just as the British media calls the Conservatives and Labour centrists and Nigel Farage a far-right populist.
There are no “left” parties in the traditional sense
The old left parties have joined the centre and become pro-American neoliberals. With the exception of Sarah Wagenknecht’s party in East Germany, the old left has no neo-nationalist counterparts. The “left” no longer exists in the way it did in the 1950s when I grew up. Today’s Social Democrats and Labour parties are neither socialist nor pro-labour, but pro-austerity. The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats are not even anti-war anymore, but support war against Russia and Palestine, and espouse neoliberal Thatcherite/Blairite Reaganomics and an economic break with Russia and China.
The Social Democrats, who were on the left a century ago, are pushing for austerity and cuts in social spending. The rule limiting the national budget deficit in the euro zone to 3% means in practice that shrinking economic growth is used for military rearmament, mainly with US weapons, at 2% or 3% of GDP. This means a fall in the exchange rate for the euro zone countries.
This is not conservative or centrist. It is far-right austerity policies that squeeze labor and government spending, once supported by left-wing parties. The idea that centrism means stability, maintaining the status quo, is self-contradictory. Today’s political status quo has squeezed wages and living standards, polarized the economy, turned NATO into an aggressive anti-Russia, anti-China alliance, driven national budgets into the red, and led to further cuts to social welfare programs.
What was once called a far-right party has now become a populist anti-war party.
What is called the “far right” supports policies that were once called “left” (at least in campaign rhetoric): anti-war and policies to improve the economic situation of domestic workers and farmers. The economic situation of immigrants has not improved. And, as in the case of the old left, the main supporters of the right are young voters. After all, they are bearing the brunt of falling real wages across Europe. They perceive that their path to upward mobility is no longer the same as it was in their parents’ (or their grandparents’) time in the 1950s, after the end of the Second World War. Back then, there were far fewer private mortgages, credit card debts, and other debts, especially student loans. Back then, anyone could buy a house, provided they had a mortgage that absorbed only 25% of their wage income and that self-amortized over 30 years. But today, households, businesses, and governments are forced to borrow increasing amounts just to maintain the status quo.
The old division between right and left is no longer relevant. The recent rise of parties described as “far-right” reflects widespread public opposition to US/NATO support for Ukraine against Russia, and especially to the impact of that support on the European economy. Traditionally, anti-war policy has been the preserve of the left, but Europe’s “centre-left” parties follow (often in secret) the pro-war “leadership” of the US. This is presented as an internationalist position, but it has become polarised and US-centric. European countries have no independent voice.
In a radical departure from past norms, NATO has transformed from a defensive to an offensive alliance in line with US attempts to maintain unipolar dominance in world affairs. Joining US sanctions on Russia and China, emptying its own arsenals and sending weapons to Ukraine, and trying to weaken the Russian economy have strengthened rather than hurt Russia. The sanctions acted as a bulwark for Russian agriculture and industry, leading to investment to replace imports. But the sanctions have hurt Europe, especially Germany.
The Global Failure of Western Internationalism Today
The BRICS+ nations are expressing the same political demands for a break with the status quo as their Western counterparts: Russia, China and other key BRICS nations are working to resolve the legacy of debt-ridden economic polarization that has permeated the West, the Global South and Eurasia as a result of US/NATO and IMF diplomacy.
After World War II, internationalism promised a peaceful world. The two world wars were blamed on nationalistic conflicts. These were supposed to end, but rather than ending conflicts between nations, the Western version that spread with the end of the Cold War saw an increasingly nationalistic United States locking out Europe and its other satellites against Russia and other nations in Asia. The so-called international “rules-based order” is an order in which US diplomats set and change the rules to reflect US interests, ignoring international law and demanding that US allies follow US Cold War guidance.
This is not peaceful internationalism. It is a US unipolar alliance leading to military aggression and economic sanctions, isolating Russia and China, or more precisely, isolating its European and other allies. from Without the trade and investment that was once seen with Russia and China, these allies have become more dependent on the United States.
What in the 1950s seemed a peaceful and even prosperous international order for Western countries under US leadership has turned into an increasingly assertive US order that is exhausting Europe. Donald Trump has announced his support for protectionist tariff policies against Russia and China, as well as Europe. He has promised to withdraw funding from NATO and fully cover the costs of European countries restoring their depleted military forces by purchasing mainly US-made weapons, but US-made weapons have proved to be less effective in Ukraine.
Europe will remain isolated. Unless non-center parties step in to reverse this trend, European economies (and America’s economy as well) will be caught up in today’s domestic and international economic and military polarization. So what is fundamentally confusing is the direction in which today’s status quo under center parties is heading.
Supporting the US move to dismantle Russia and then do the same with China means joining the US neoconservative movement to treat both countries as enemies, which means imposing trade and investment sanctions that impoverish Germany and other European countries by destroying their economic ties with Russia, China and other designated US rivals (and therefore enemies).
Since 2022, Europe has supported America in its fight against Russia (and now China), ending what was the basis of European prosperity. Germany’s former industrial leadership in Europe and its support for the euro exchange rate are coming to an end. Is this really “centrism”? Is it a left or right policy? Whatever you call it, this radical global rift is isolating Germany from trade and investment with Russia and causing Germany to deindustrialize.
Similar pressure is being exerted to decouple European trade from China, resulting in a widening trade and payments deficit between Europe and China. In addition to increasing reliance on US imports after previously low-cost purchases from the East, the weakening of the Euro (and Europe’s seizure of Russian foreign exchange reserves) has caused other countries and foreign investors to liquidate their Euro and Pound reserves, further weakening the currency. This threatens to raise the cost of living and doing business in Europe. “Centre” parties have brought economic contraction, not stability. Europe has become a satellite state of US policy and its hostile policy towards the BRICS countries.
Russian President Putin recently said that the break in normal relations with Europe is irreversible for the next 30 years or so. Will an entire generation of Europeans remain isolated from the world’s fastest growing Eurasian economy? This global fragmentation of the American unipolar world order allows anti-Euro parties to present themselves not as extremists, but as trying to restore Europe’s lost prosperity and diplomatic independence – in a right-wing, anti-immigrant way, of course. They are the only alternative to pro-American parties now that a true left no longer exists.
