In my post last week (Wow, France... Why can't we do that here?!??), I asked, as the title suggests, what prevents the kind of broad, committed, collective action that we're seeing in France from happening here in the United States. This is especially perplexing, given that their strike is about opposing the raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62 - whereas here our retirement age is already later than that, our college tuition rates promise a lifetime of debt, our health care system is all sorts of effed up, our hours are longer, our vacations shorter, our social safety net far less comprehensive. I could go on.
I started to answer my own question, discussing the mechanics of how collective action and protest have been negatively branded here, so as to effectively inoculate many people against participation. In response (over at Daily Kos), Pesto asked:
The $64,000 question WRT inoculation is why it hasn't worked as well elsewhere. It's not as if multinational corporations in France never considered trying to break French workers' solidarity or willingness to shut the economy down to win what they want. They certainly understand the basic concepts of propaganda that have worked so well in the US. But whatever they've been trying in France hasn't been working very well.
Big question. Where to begin? Well, why not start with Lady Gaga? More specifically, let's start with CNN's utilization of Lady Gaga as a cultural intermediary in their "coverage" of the strikes:
World update: Strikes force Lady Gaga to postpone shows
France strike - Some 200 demonstrators blocked France's Marseille-Provence airport for more than three hours Thursday as strikes and protests continued across the country. The action comes ahead of a final vote on the country's Pension Reform Bill. Pop star Lady Gaga postponed two Paris shows this weekend because of "the logistical difficulties due to the strikes," her website said.
Do you ever look at newspaper articles about worker and student strikes in countries like France or Greece or Argentina-you know, the kind of activity that shuts down the whole country-and think to yourself, "Holy shit, that's what I'm talkin' about! Those people know how to protest!?"
Well, I sure do.
Not to glorify any particular tactic for it's own sake, but geez, the spirit of collective action and common purpose that's displayed in those moments-let alone the negotiating power it awards to grassroots movements, unions, and progressive political parties-is something that sometimes, um, feels a little lacking here in the good old U.S. of A.
So what are you waiting for. Go ahead. Try that here. See how many people you can turn out. See where it gets you.
Likely. not. very. far.
We have a situation here. We're stuck in a Catch 22. As a society, we presently seem to be inoculated against the means necessary for our own collective advancement. (If you're at the top of the plutocratic order, now's the time to congratulate yourself on a brilliant system.) And I'm not talking about any one particular style of collective action or protest - we're not France or Greece or Argentina, and I don't particularly want us to be. I'm fully ready to embrace an all-American style, and I would settle for whatever kind of collective action (within ethical and strategic limits) powerful enough to challenge entrenched power and privilege. Is that such a tall order?
What do I mean, we're "inoculated?"
I'm glad you asked. Have you ever heard someone say something like, "I'm not an activist or anything," or they look at you like you're from Crazy-ville (or they simply don't engage) when you start talking about the protest you went to?
Think about the word protest for a minute. Seriously. Stop. And think about it. Notice. What comes to mind with the word? Now try it with the word activist.
I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else. It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.
By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, "How much moral outrage can one person muster? There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don't blame you." I won't lie, I handed a few out myself. Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, "complete lack of solidarity" was striking.
An interesting reversal of the usual pattern in news coverage is going on here - there is almost no mention in the lefty blogs of the most notable mass uprising in a developed country in recent history - the French peoples' shutdown of their nation over the proposal to raise retirement ages. The story is actually getting more coverage in the mainstream media - over 1,100 articles by Google's count (see this article from the Guardian - great picture: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...
I haven't been following the story as much as I could have either. It's just curious that our 'hope and changy' web outlets aren't covering this as an amazing example of a union- and people-powered movement to assert their power in the face of the oligarchy. We lefties occasionally acknowledge that we want and need the same thing here, but we're not learning any lessons from the French when we could be. What does this say about us as a 'movement'?
Algeria's World Cup soccer team is a strange thing. Most of the players weren't actually born in Algeria, and many of them don't speak Arabic. In fact, an astonishing 17 of the 23 players on the Algerian squad were born in France - children of Algerian immigrants, who chose to play for the country of their parents instead of the country of their birth.
France's national team could use some help. Their team, which in 2006 advanced to the World Cup finals, imploded this summer in a spectacular manner. France failed to advance past the first round and did not win a single game; in total, France's prestigious squad scored one goal. Without the leadership of Zinedine Zidane, another son of Algerian immigrants, French soccer has struggled.
France has also struggled, like many continental European countries, to integrate its large population of non-white and often Muslim immigrants.
This is what resistance to the Catfood Commission should look like.
There have been repeated government efforts in the past to slash French workers' pensions. They have repeatedly been defeated with mass mobilizations playing a key role. Now, the finance-induced Great Recession is being used to back the most serious effort ever to roll back French workers' benefits. Workers are not taking it lying down.
French Unions Strike as Sarkozy Pension Debate Starts
September 07, 2010, 12:17 PM EDT By Gregory Viscusi
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- French unions struck nationwide as lawmakers began debating President Nicolas Sarkozy's bill to raise the retirement age.
Transport workers walked off the job last night, and most schools, post offices and government offices were closed today. A total of 1.12 million people marched in protests in 137 cities across the country, the Interior Ministry said, while the CFDT union put the number at 2.5 million.
Sarkozy has vowed not to compromise on the key plank of his pension proposals, which would lift the retirement age to 62 from 60. The bid to shore up the retirement system may calm bond investors and rating services in the wake of Europe's sovereign debt crisis....
Under the bill parliament is considering, the age at which full benefits can be tapped will rise to 67 from 65. The government has said it's willing to negotiate over allowing earlier retirement for some hardship jobs and for people who began their careers as teenagers. Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement has a 101-seat majority in the 577-member lower house....
Taxes Sought
Unions and the Socialists say taxes on capital and on high earners should be increased.
"Sarkozy cannot force people to work longer, making them pay more, while having a tax policy that favors the well-off," said Jean-Luc Combe, a 55-year-old civil servant in a Paris suburb, marching in the capital. "If the pensions system needs more funds, he cannot only force workers to pay more. It's unfair, he should also tax capital. He did not negotiate this, he imposed it."
On June 24, the last strike against the pension reforms, unions estimated 2 million protesters while the police said they counted 800,000.
The scope of the strike was impressive, particularly its impact on the transportation sector:
A few weeks ago, this one came out from McDonalds that sparked some debate on its message:
Now, this one from Orangina (no embed) involving a humanoid male-looking mountain lion shaving- yes, shaving- while his male lover walks up to him and strokes his face. It's apparently not going to air.
If this is a trend, I'm all for it, but it is kind of odd where it came from.
This is the third part of a series on Communism in Western Europe; this section focuses on Italy in particular. The previous parts can be found here.
The Italian Communist Party (PCI) formed in 1921, as a break-away faction of the socialist party. In many respects, its early years were similar to those of the PCF. Like the French Communists, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) fared poorly in national elections, winning less than five percent of the popular vote. Its time to grow, moreover, was cut short by Benito Mussolini's dictatorship; he outlawed the party in 1926.
In another parallel to their French colleagues, the Italian Communists (PCI) fought fiercely against the Nazis during WWII and won major acclaim for their efforts. After the war, the PCI took part in the new government, playing a major role in writing the new Italian constitution. As in France, however, America's Marshall Plan curbed their influence; to gain access to U.S. aid, the Italian government kicked out the Communists. They would never again hold power in Italy.
This is the second part of a series on Communism in Western Europe; this section focuses on France in particular. The last part can be found here.
In France, the Communist Party was founded in 1920 by revolting members of its socialist party, then called the French Section of the Workers' International (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO). Their new party initially did fairly poorly, only one of the numerous parties out there. In 1928, for instance, the Communists (PCF) won 11.26% of the vote.
Nevertheless, by 1936 - the depths of the Great Depression - the Communists (PCF) were making gains. Then came WWII - the best thing that ever happened to the PCF. Out of all the parties in occupied France, the Communists fought the Nazis hardest and suffered the most for it. They earned the nickname le parti des 75 000 fusillés - the party of the 75,000 executed people - and immense popularity.
This is the first part of a series on western communism. The second part can be found here.
A mentor once told me not to study communism, because it was a dead system, and studying something dead is worthless.
In defiance of this sensible advice, I will be presenting two dead communist movements: the communists in Italy and the communists in France.
Most Americans have never heard about these two parties. For good reason: France and Italy were staunch allies of the United States in the Cold War; it does not seem as if they were remotely communist.
But, for decades, the communists in Italy and France commanded millions of votes and a powerful political machine. Their strength remains a fascinating, little-noticed part of history.
Here are how the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français: PCF) and the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) performed:
There are several patterns here that apply to both parties, and several patterns unique to each country. (Note: The French line after 1956 indicates Communist performance in the first round of legislative elections, whereas the Italian line indicates Communist performance in elections to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. France has a two-round election system; Italy has two chambers in its Parliament. All statistics cited afterwards relate to these specific criteria.)
I will be exploring French patterns in the next post.
It is often the case that Americans in general, and people on the left in particular, will decry the makeup of our political system, directing much of their anger at the current two-party system, and our 'checks and balances'-based Federal government. Often, the European model of Parliamentary government elected via proportional representation will be offered up as an alternative. While this system does have some obvious advantages, and in some ways is more democratic than ours, in this diary, I intend to show that it has other flaws that can be quite undemocratic.
What Is A Parliamentary System?
First, before we begin, I should explain exactly what a Parliamentary system is. For this, I will take as a model a government with at least four strongly-disciplined political parties elected to sit in a Parliament. What will be described below is relatively close to the system that exists or existed in the Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, the French Fourth Republic, pre-'90s Italy, and the German Weimar Republic*, along with many other examples. In these systems, the main components of the government has are; a head of state (usually a monarch**, the monarch's representative***, or an independently elected head of state****), a Parliament^, and an executive (essentially, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the executive agencies under the control of the Cabinet). The primary distinction between a Parliamentary system and a Presidential system like that of the United States is that within a Presidential system the executive is primarily accountable to the Head of State, while in a Parliamentary system the executive is primarily accountable to the Parliament.
What About Accountability?
Now, how does this accountability play out? Well, the most obvious way that this happens is the mechanism of the vote of no confidence. The essential meaning of the vote of no confidence is that a Prime Minister and her/his Ministers (from here on, we will just call them the government) can be removed by a simple majority vote of Parliament. As a result of this, no government can exist without at least an unwillingness of a majority of Parliament to vote against them.
If all of the parties holding positions in the government form a majority in Parliament, then you have a majority coalition forming the government. Otherwise, it is a minority government. The latter case has been the tradition in Sweden, where you typically have had the Social Democrats holding 40% of the seats in their parliament, the Riksdag, but were unwilling to form a coalition with the Communists, which would have been necessary to form a majority government. Instead, they would merely count on the Communists to not vote against them in a no confidence vote. On the other hand, for the past two terms, you have had minority Conservative governments in Canada, as the three center-left parties' reservations about each other have prevented them from coming together to remove the Conservatives from power.
Follow me below the flip to investigate the problems with Parliamentary government.
I watched McCain give a speech in Florida where he pushed his regular piece about the safety of nuclear power... and his complaint that Obama will consider it,but has a problem with spent fuel. And then he said that the French recycles their waste and "we always want to be like the French" and he laughed.
McCain's whopping 4% support is far les than the 10.44% support Le Pen received in the first round of the French Presidential elections last year. It is identical to the support for the Revolutionary Communist League candidate, Olivier Besancenot.
So, there you have it. In France, John McCain is less popular than fascism, and about as popular as revolutionary communism. I'm sure he will do a good job repairing our relations with other democracies around the world.
