Robert Hunziker — Revolutions Start in the Streets!

Suddenly, the “Syriza Virus” is circulating throughout Europe. The “people” have had enough austerity crammed down their throats. They’re in the streets! 

Headlines depict bitterness: “Austerity Anger Sweeps from Greece to Spain as Hundreds of Thousands March Through Madrid in Support of Fledgling Radical Leftist Party,” Daily Mail, January 31, 2015. The “March for Change” converged around Madrid’s Cibeles fountain. People are fed up, tossing their support to a pony-tailed jean-wearing charismatic leader named Pablo Iglesias, the Podemos Party candidate, a 36-year-old political science professor.…

The target of this continent-wide discontent is neoliberalism’s self-serving paternalistic policies of privatization, reduced government, and dependence upon the “free market” as the arbiter of socio-economic justice but it’s turning sour because so few attain millions at the direst expense of way too many. Given enough time, people catch on. 

Along those lines, neoliberalism has become an “occupying force” throughout the world, to wit: Neoliberalism’s motif consists of (1) assault on the state, in favor of the market, (2) on politics, in favor of economics, and (3) on political parties, in favor of corporations. Singularly, neoliberalism brings in its wake a hard-hearted “corporate state” sans nation/state allegiance, no grounding with the people. 

As follows, people take to the streets. They flock to the streets by the hundreds of thousands. It is the French Revolution redux but without the pitchforks, stones, and sticks.…

As it happens, free market neoliberalism is all about control, controlling the people, exporting wages to the lowest overseas bidders, moving facilities offshore to avoid governmental regulations, diminishing unions, privatizing state assets, cutting social programs, austerity, austerity, and more austerity whilst privatizing everything in sight. The upshot is lame economic performance as sector after sector of workers are cutback, reduced to rubble.…

Counterpunch
Revolutions Start in the Streets!
Robert Hunziker