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Is There a ‘Socialist’ Revival in America?

April 4th, 2008
By WILLIAM KERN

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Het Parool, The Netherlands

Is the United States now embarked on a path toward a more ‘Socialist’ future? Given the crisis in the credit markets and the decline in the value of the dollar, that is the inevitable conclusion of Alexandre Adler, one of France’s foremost historians and strategic thinkers - often characterized as a French ‘neocon.’

In what will be an uncomfortable read for many Americans, Adler writes for France’s Le Figaro, “Is socialism, which was banished from minds and hopes by the collapse of the Soviet system some years ago, rising again out of the spectacular transformations taking place at the center of global capitalism, the United States itself?

Adler goes on, “The outcome of the current crisis will result in such a reinforcement of the state’s freedom of action, that past nationalizations will look like nothing but small potatoes.”

In regard to the U.S. presidential election, Adler concludes, “If we assume a certain stabilization of global markets and the maintenance of the same fiscal policies, we will also see an increasingly extensive redistribution by the state, including a considerable expansion of social security benefits. … The reader will understand that this is Obama’s program, which comes at the end of an economic cycle where, according to recent statistics, salary increases for Blacks and Whites since 2001 have been less than 2.8 percent and less than 1.2 percent, respectively.”

The Chronicle of Alexandre Adler

Translated By Kate Davis

March 29, 2008

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (France)

Here’s a provocation. Not a gratuitous one, but one that has some grounding: Is socialism, which was banished from minds and hopes by the collapse of the Soviet system some years ago, rising again out of the spectacular transformations taking place at the center of global capitalism itself, the United States?

Several factors, in fact, are emerging and simultaneously coming into play to challenge the foundations of the way Americans live and produce. Remaining faithful to the theory of Marx, we will start with the infrastructure.

Pressed by the imperial necessity of saving the financial system - which hasn’t been this vulnerable since 1930 - FED chairman Ben Bernanke just took the historic decision to socialize the losses of commercial banks. Up to now and to curb panics of global dimensions, the central bank [the FED] only gave loans to banks of deposit [savings banks]. Today, the necessity of saving the entire banking system not only requires a state guarantee for the past investments of investment banks, it also requires the Federal Reserve to loan these commercial banks money for its newer and riskier operations, without which the entire machine threatens to come to a screeching halt.

It must be understood that the financial slight-of-hand now in force has created such imbalance between the equity of major financial institutions and the outstanding loans that they have already incurred, that the state must be transformed into the creditor of last resort, in defiance of the entire doctrine of the free market.

Americans, we know, are much less doctrinaire when it comes to themselves than they are toward their Latin American partners, for example. The outcome of the current crisis will result in such a reinforcement of the state’s freedom of action, that past nationalizations, like that under [former Socialist President François] Mitterand [in 1981] will look like nothing but small potatoes. In effect, under the threat of an impending catastrophe, the FED has become the owner of virtually all of the most dynamic financial institutions, mainly the investment banks, where the debt incurred by the Treasury Department is equal to the strategic equity of the banks.

And the second major turning point ahead: fiscal restraint. Even if in the months ahead, everything possible is done to permit the system to be maintained, it is finished, given the level of decline in the dollar and the mistrust of international financial markets, which is what finances the America’s external budget deficit.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing foreign press coverage of the unfolding financial crisis.



This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 4:52 am and is filed under Socialism, Columnists, Bush Administration, Newspapers, Newsweek Blogitics, France, Budget, 2008 Elections, Money/Finance, Political Cartoons, Cartoon Commentary, Barack Obama, History. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    For there to be "socialist revival" in America there would have to have been a "socialist moment" in the past., can't say I remember it.
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    Don-Quijote,

    You may want to look back at the 1930's when the government began deciding who could sell milk and want the price had to be to see the last time socialism was tried. You should also look at the economic planners who were in the Roosevelt Administration during World War II. It took the Democratic Party decades to get over the idea that a slow, lumbering government could actually plan a government for the long term.

    Of course, it would take someone in France to talk about the government taking over the economy during the same week that the a report on the absolute failure of large, inner city schools to educate more than a few of their students.
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    You should also look at the economic planners who were in the Roosevelt Administration during World War II.

    You mean the guys who prevented Communism, Socialism & Fascism from taking root in the wreckage of the Capitalist System and then went on to win WWII.
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    Don,_Q

    Considering that a large portion of the world ended up Communist after WWII, I would not crow about their success. They took the U.S. economy and turned it into a command economy for a few years. Then they spent the next thirty years believing that they could do the same thing during peacetime. Look at the number of state support monopolies that existed after world war II. Look at how the ICC tried to determine who could compete in the transportation market place. Look at the cities like NYC that will have the legacy of rent control due to socialist wannabe economic planners.
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    SD - Hitler should have won over Stalin??
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    Rudi,

    Where did I imply that? don_q implied that the socialist wannabes of the U.S. keep communism from taking hold whereas it really did take hold in large parts of the world after World War II. I guess Don_Q was taking about the Marshall plan but the long term effects on the free market economies of the Marshal plan is debatable.
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    Arguments about socialism vs capitalism vs 'free' markets customarily commit a basic error. They select snippets of history and carefully extract the items from it to support their argument.
    Socialism didn't arise out of thin air, it was a reaction to what was in place but was cruelly failing to meet the needs of the people. It was born out of a sense of injustice. When implemented, socialism failed to grasp the flaws within its own system, and the pendulum swung once again. in the oppostie direction.
    There is always a backlash, when things are out of kilter,

    Things have been out of kilter in the US for some time now. The mistake made has been the failure to acknowledge and address that this is so, exactly the same mistake socialist regimes have made/

    So, whether someone is a disciple of socialism or free markets, if you don't like the opposite of what you're preaching, then avoid a backlash by dealing with the negaive consequences in a temely fashion.


    The economic and political systems that arise are a continuum. a tug pf war between the elite and the masses When conditions are out of kilter, there is unrest and upheaval, and the pendulum swings again.
 
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