-> SNETNEWS Mailing List BREAD AND CIRCUSES * - Part 1 The off-year elections are behind us, and we cannot help but draw certain parallels with other advanced Welfare states in Europe. Having seen the failure of collectivist economies in the former Soviet Union and the East Bloc, and particularly the dramatic differences between the economies of East and West Germany, one would be inclined to think that the way shead to market economies would be the obvious choice, at least in the West. The economic turn-around in Britain under the Tories, which made the UK the most competitive market in Europe, arguably triggered the move to the right in Italy, France, Sweden and others. That this effort was to be extremely short lived on the Continent was a lesson that American politicos, particularly Republicans, failed to consider. THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA There will no doubt be reams of articles on the election attacking the conservative wing of the party whose Contract with America swept so many to victory in 1994. We predicted in our December, 1994, issue, "reform attempts would simply be swallowed up in legislative and bureaucratic inertia." Indeed, the Contract was alright with the establishment as long as nothing was actually done. But when freshmen Republicans began to push an agenda of true welfare reform, the party leadership panicked and began to play dead. In due course, efforts to scuttle the Department of Education, enact universal tax relief, prevent the socialization of medicine and other reforms were abandoned. Having failed to follow up on the Contract, the only successful Republican strategy in 40 years, the Republicans seemed totally confused by the "reform program" of the "New Democrats", who, headed by Bill Clinton, appeared to steal the thunder from the stalled Contract with a socialist version of their own. Mr. Gingrich (a member of the Council on Foreign Relations) got his come-uppance from the establishment through his book deal scandal, which cost him a $300,000 fine and neutralized his leadership. Since then he had been ineffective in leading his House majority in the advancement of any real Republican agenda. "THE NEW DEMOCRATS" What had so confused Republicans would have been abundantly clear if they had taken the trouble to look abroad. John Major, upon inheriting the prime ministership from Margaret Thatcher, almost immediately began to abandon the conservative programs which had kept the Tories in power for eighteen years, particularly, the issue of European Monetary Union (EMU). If any European nation could successfully stand alone against the threat to national sovereignty posed by EMU, it was insular Britain, whose economy was vibrant while those of Continental nations were moribund. It was probable that the ineffectual Major, in seeking what is euphemistically called the "centrist" position, guaranteed the demise of the Tories. What Clinton and the "New Democrats" had achieved by stealing the rhetoric of "free trade" in the Americas (NAFTA), the "New Labour" candidate Tony Blair used to advance Britain toward EMU. We have postulated that New Democrats, New Labour in Britain, and Neo-socialists on the Continent, after viewing the economic collapse in the former Soviet Union, have realized that the immensely inefficient Welfare states of the West, with their burdensome national debts, their current accounts deficits, their continuing trade imbalances, their overinflated credit markets and their falling paper currencies, are in severe decline-with which they must come to terms if they are to preserve their power bases. (This is the explanation for the attacks against industry in the United States-tobacco, gun manufacturers, and even automobile companies; hundreds of billions must be extorted from the private sector to shore up the sagging Welfare state.) What it amounts to is that neo-socialists of whatever stripe, rather than abandoning the proven failure of Welfare state ideology, plan to streamline it more along the lines of a multi-national fascist dictatorship. To do this, they must adopt the rhetoric of the establishment right, which has never championed the dismantling of the Welfare state, only improvements in its efficiency. This is where the confusion sets in-both New Democrats and New Republicans want essentially the same thing, and conservative Democrats and Republicans who have the only viable alternatives, are pilloried as destroyers of the "social safety net". THE LABOR BACKLASH Karl Marx, the father of Communism, an intellectual like all revolutionaries, who nevertheless dress in workers' clothing (Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.) understood perfectly that they needed bodies to flesh out their revolutions. These could not come from the estates which Marx wanted to overthrow-the aristocracy and the church, so they had to come from the least educated, working class, who could be easily confused and exploited through the tortuous path of Marxist dialectics. Having promised workers of the world if they united in a struggle against nineteenth century authority they would achieve a "Workers' Paradise" on earth, and that afterward the Marxist state would simply "wither away", the Communists established the most repressive government and launched the bloodiest century of all time, killing tens of millions of its own citizens and herding millions more into the gulags. In Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck invented the mechanism of the modern Welfare state in 1882-83 by bribing those same workers to support his government with promises of state medical, old age and pension insurance-social security. Today, German workers receive the best benefits package in the world, including extended paid vacations and accommodations at popular resorts, early retirement options, allowances for eyeglasses, shoes, etc., as well as a shortened work-week. Not far behind the Germans are the French and Italians. When the "conservative" Italian government, faced with the near collapse of the economy, dared suggest reforming state pensions, 800,000 workers and sympathizers gathered in Rome to protest even speaking of it. The government fell in October 1997, and now Italy is run by a coalition with the "Reformed Communist" party. France also took a turn to the right when it became clear the economy would not long survive unless the Welfare state were reigned in. Discussions among government leaders to make farm subsidies, the highest in Europe, more realistic resulted in herds of cattle being driven through Parisian boulevards, general strikes by truckers, the deliberate blocking of the Channel Tunnel and the blockading of petrol stations. In June, 1997, the government was replaced with socialist Lionel Jospin, who, during the campaign declared that France should not have to reduce its budget deficit (therby trimming subsidies) as a condition of EMU membership. It was this progression of labor backlash in England, France and Italy which led us to predict months before the recent German elections that the leftist SPD would win. The bottom line is that the Welfare states, no longer able to keep their promises to the "proletariat", must embark upon real welfare reform, yet when they even raise the issue, organizations of workers, welfare recipients, and the elderly, still beguiled by Marxist promises, return far-leftists to government in the forlorn hope that "bread and circuses" can continue indefinitely. In a manner of speaking, this is what happened in the US by-elections just passed, and it is a preview of what to expect in the year 2000, where the liberal media has already picked the establishment Republican governor of Texas, George W. Bush, to run against establishment Democrat Al Gore. THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE WELFARE STATE The question is, having turned their backs on politicians with the courage to point out the impossibility of continuing government give-aways, when those living on subsidies witness the bankruptcy of the Welfare state and are forced into a lifetime of austerity and servitude to the likes of the IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank and other global financial institutions, what will they do? When the credit bubble collapses, massive unemployment results, and government benefits run out-having committed the ultimate absurdity of voting themselves into serfdom, will they acquiesce quietly, or will they finally admit that the Marxist-Bismarckian Welfare state is a fraud and demand free markets, non-interventionist governments and sound money? We don't begin to know, but we sense that the first few years of the 21st Century will provide the answer, for the attempt to socialize world markets in order to preserve their power base will necessitate that internationalists openly abandon their traditional working class supporters. Without the workers' votes they cannot survive the election process, and therefore they will be forced to rely on appointed super-councils to govern in place of elected national leaders. They fail to see that this renders them irrelevant. (to be continued) _____________________________________________ * From THE HARD MONEY INVESTOR, December 1998 issue, Hal Bryan, Editor Published monthly: $39/yr PO Box 11, Enumclaw, WA 98022 Mr Bryan is an associate of Committee to Restore the Constitution -> Send "subscribe snetnews " to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -> Posted by: Committee to Restore the Constitution <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
