Bill Mitchell — European Left face a Dystopia of their own making

There is also a crucial difference between globalisation (by which I mean the growth of Transnational Corporations and international supply chains) and the neo-liberal ideology (by which I mean the dominance of free market economics, the demonisation of government intervention, the demands to eliminate the welfare state and the widespread deregulation of financial and labour markets).

Those two developments are separable and distinct although the latter certainly reinforces the threats imposed on nation states by the former.

My view is that the ‘left’ has conflated the two developments and consider globalisation equals the demise of the nation state. It hasn’t. The neo-liberal ideology is serving that function and that is a matter of choice.

Democracies can choose whether to undermine the nation state – by, for example, signing up to these so-called ‘free trade agreements’ and creating tax havens for TNCs and deregulating labour markets to allow the TNCs to increase their profit rates at the expense of the local population.

There is nothing inevitable about that at all.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
European Left face a Dystopia of their own making
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia