Bill Mitchell – billy blog When the mainstream Left gets lost down its Europhile hole

This is a longish post but well worth the read since it goes into the objections of the progressive left to MMT's emphasis on national institutions that are relevant to policy, and especially economic policy, both fiscal and monetary.

[Andrew Watt] thinks our position is “indistinguishable from the extreme right” and thus demands a response.

Inasmuch as the ‘extreme right’ has grasped the reality that globalisation does not mean the nation state should surrender its legislative remit and currency sovereignty to advance the interests of capital over those of the rest of us, it is not surprising that we share that understanding.

But this is where the Left gets itself in a funk. Its kneejerk response to anyone who advocates an empowerment of the nation state and a dis-empowerment of surpranational organisations is that it is a descent into nationalism – and then – a few breaths later – xenophobia – isolationism – Fascism.

This is a confusion of ethnic nationalism, which is a sociological and anthropological issue, with national sovereignty as an institutional paradigm. Both ethnic nationalism and national sovereignty have political implications, but very differently.

This is ploy of the liberal internationalists and liberal interventionists to tar all that oppose the excesses of neoliberal globalization and open borders as "nationalists" in the pejorative sense of right-wing extremists.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
When the mainstream Left gets lost down its Europhile hole
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE)