The European Left Gains Ground
Elio Delgado Legón
HAVANA TIMES — Since 2008, when the economic crisis began in the United States and immediately spread to the rest of the capitalist world, analysts have been insisting that this is not a passing phenomenon but rather a structural crisis within capitalism, a crisis we won’t be able to overcome by applying the same neoliberal formulas that gave rise to it in the first place.
Euro zone countries, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund insist on the need to apply the same policies and, naturally, the results are more of the same: a deepening of the crisis, greater unemployment, more widespread homelessness and more suicides. No one sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
The crisis, of course, only affects the workers, the poor, because the rich (and the bankers in particular) have become richer thanks to it – the billion-dollar bail-outs that some developed countries have destined to ruined banks and governments have ended in the pockets of the richest and have had no effect on the crisis.
These bail-outs have had no effect on unemployment figures, which continue to be alarming, as in the case of Spain, where they have risen to more than 20 percent, in general, and to more than 50 percent among the youth.
As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining, and neo-liberal policies have served to awaken people. We are already seeing the results of this.
In Greece, after suffering so-called austerity measures for several years, the people have placed a left-wing party in power which is doing everything possible to heal the wounds caused by neoliberalism, removing the austerity policies and applying new fiscal measures against tax evasion and corruption. Many analysts claim these will be successful and move the country forward.
In Spain, the left-wing party Podemos (“We Can”) emerged from the Indignados (the indignant) movement. According to the polls, the party is the leading candidate for the next elections. Faced with this situation, Spain’s current president, Mariano Rajoy, is panicking and attacking Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, accusing him of having promised the people something he knows he can’t deliver.
Rajoy has also entered an alliance with Portugal to create difficulties for Greece. I fully expect the European Right to place as many obstacles in Tsipras’ way to make him fail in his attempt to secure dignity for his people, but I am sure he will be successful in his efforts.
Later this year Podemos’ will be on the ballot in Spain. The initiative which will have to work hard to revert the highly critical situation that the government of Mariano Rajoy has brought about under Brussel’s guidance – but there is no going back in history and the Left will continue to make progress in Europe.
Movements in other countries will follow in the footsteps of Greece and Spain, and this is the fear of the European Right, which is intent in continuing to apply its backward policies and on placing all imaginable obstacles in the way of the Left. No one, however, can be fooled so easily now and the Left will continue making strides, until it has won this battle.
Yeah, I get that all the time .
It doesn’t bother me at all.
The way I see it, Everything will unfold as it will.
Que sera, sera .
But understanding the validity of Moore’s Law and what fall from that , I feel that I have a very good idea of what the future will be like and when that future will be here .
It’s much sooner than most believe is possible…but, not only entirely possible to those who understand Moore Law but inevitable and much sooner that those tied to linear (as opposed to the actual exponential nature) progress in technologies .
Sorry , too complicated.
Suffice to say, the future is both better than you can imagine and that golden age of humanity is no more than 30 years off.
IMO IMO IMO IMO
All we have to do is wait.
It will happen whether you believe it or not and it won’t hurt you to be pleasantly surprised when you get to live to be a few hundred years old.
And… btw …I was and still am a huge science -fiction fan BUT since reading about what is actually going on now and what is coming in the fields of AI and human-level computing which did not even exist in any real fashion in the minds and stories of the sci-fi writers of the 30s-70′,
I find the science in the science -fiction to be really primitive.
Okay , definitely not beaming people from place to place.
That’s maybe 35 years from now.
….is this that part where I cue the Star Trek theme music?
Elio, last time I looked every country you mentioned had elections with choices and in many cases
extreme counter views and goals. How about Cuba? I’d venture to say that if there was an election in Cuba, and you had Fidel Castro vs. Major change candidate, and it was a a fair election, Castro would be 25% plus or minus 5% and the opposition the rest. Please prove me wrong!
It’s the International Communist Conspiracy all over again.
How frightening for the capitalists and the imperial United States.
First , a bunch of Latin American countries votes left and now two countries in Europe have taken leftward swings in their DEMOCRATIC elections .
What’s an Empire to do.
So many countries that need invading or interventions and we’re so damned busy with the Middle East.
It has to really annoy the GOUSA when there are democratic elections to overthrow and they have to devote their time, money energies to fighting jihadists and making believe that Iran is a threat to anyone except perhaps Sunnis.
Hey Cubaqus , get used to elections going to the real left .
It is the wave of the next decade or so and IMO it’s height will coincide with the collapse of free enterprise capitalism .due to the inexorable move toward automation of all workplaces as AI becomes smarter than humans in eight years .
Some supporting information:
IBM has plans for a 100 petaflop array in about a year.
Under Moore’s law computer speeds double every 18 months ( or less as more resources are poured into the race) so within that 8 years we will see a computer that can think faster than a human .
After that the doubling will accelerate greatly as super-human intelligence is used to develop what now would be considered the stuff of science fiction and will be way beyond what we can think up.
If it’s too complicated for easy consumption . you need just remember that Moore’s Law is valid (and will continue to be because silicon chips are all that are needed to get us to the human+ levels of AI after which the machines will devise the next paradigm). .
and that human intelligence is rated at 1000 petaflops ( a petaflop is a quadrillion Floating Operations per Second .) and we’ll achieve that in less than eight years .
It sounds counterintuitive and it is.
But it is the reality of the exponential nature of the rate of development , the constant doubling that will rocket humanity past our race’s infancy as all the years prior to the coming golden age of humanity will seem and make it all happen. .
The future is better than you think.
and wasn’t it Yogi Berra who said ” The future ain’t what it used to be” ?
It is actually putting Greece on a path of self destruction and in Spain the leaders are exposed as being handsomely paid by Iran and Venezuela.