Former Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky was quoted as saying during the 1979 Austrian election campaign that: “I am less worried about the budget deficits than by the need for the state to create jobs where private industry fails”. That is the statement of a social democrat. That is a progressive Left view. In June 1982, with French unemployment at 7.2 per cent (having risen from 2.4 per cent in 1974 after a near decade of austerity under the right-wing Prime Minister Raymond Barre), the French Minister of Economy and Finance cut 30 billion francs from government spending so that the fiscal deficit would remain below 3 per cent. In March 1983, the same Minister pressured his colleagues including President François Mitterrand, into imposing a further bout of austerity, cutting another 24 billion francs and increasing taxes by 40 billion francs. These were very deep cuts. The austerity under the so-called ‘Barre Plan’ had failed to reduce inflation. When the turn to austerity was repeated under Mitterand’s so-called Socialist government, France was already in a deep recession. Under the Socialist austerity period unemployment rose sharply to further to 9.3 per cent by 1987. By then the architect of that austerity, one Jacques Delors, was European Commission President and starting work on his next exercise in neoliberal carnage – the Eurozone. None of his behaviour during that period remotely signals a position we could call progressive or Left. Like his austerity turn (“tournant de la rigeur”), Delors had turned into just another neoliberal obsessed with fiscal surpluses, free markets (he oversaw the 1987 Single European Act), and privatisation (which he claimed was necessary to attract foreign direct investment) (Source). This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the abdication of the Left, which some still choose to deny....Bill goes heavy on fact today. He has a firm grip on the history of the period. If you are looking for the blow by blow, here it is.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The abdication of the Left – redux – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
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Reagan, Thatcher, and François Mitterrand all took power at roughly the same time. (Thatcher 1979, Reagan 1980, and Mitterrand 1981). Reagan lasted eight years, Thatcher eleven, and Mitterrand fourteen. These three demons embarked on a neoliberal path of endless war, gratuitous austerity, and mass privatization. Their goal (which today has been achieved) was to create extreme inequality, extreme debt slavery, and a growing sea of homeless people caused by wage stagnation and runaway housing prices.
Today, because of the euro scam, combined with a foreign trade deficit, the French government must impose ever-increasing austerity on the masses whether it wants to or not.
(By contrast, U.K. austerity is 100% gratuitous and unnecessary, since the U.K. government can create infinite pounds sterling out of thin air.)
François Mitterrand himself pushed the euro-scam by sponsoring of the Maastricht Treaty, which was signed when Mitterrand was still in office. France joined the euro-scam on 1 Jan 1999.
Mitterrand (like Obama) realized that while the masses are being herded to the slaughterhouse, the masses like to be distracted by fairy tales. Therefore Mitterrand (like Obama) called himself a “leftist,” when in fact Mitterrand (like Obama) was extremely right-wing.
Mitterrand (like Obama) had been a progressive when younger, but (like Obama) he did an about-face in office.
Mitterrand (like Obama) praised “free markets” while working to destroy free markets by supporting the growth of monopolies and banker fraud.
Mitterrand’s successor, Jacques Chirac, tried to reverse some of the neoliberal damage, but by then it was too late. Chirac did, however, resist the bankers and warmongers, thereby enraging them.
Next came Nicolas Sarkozy, then François Hollande, and then Emmanuel Macron, each more neoliberal and pro-banker than the previous one.
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