Even the Neo-Conservative Washington Post gives a more nuanced view of the current, and planned, 37 day rolling walkouts in France! Although that isn’t saying much, but when compared to the sketchy report at this newspaper, it is speaks loudly!
And should the regular reader of this newspaper compare the 44% support for these rolling strikes, to the near 37% of spoiled, incomplete and otherwise uncountable ballots in the general election? As indicative that Macronism, in sum, the Neo-Liberaliztion of the French State, appears to have hit a massive roadblock called Public Sector Unionism?
What of the posited Political Jupertarianism, rule by decree, that so far has been the Macron Strategy? Will Macron and his political front men, and his allies in the press give those Unions the ‘Corbyn Treatment’? i.e. cobbling together elaborate fables of perfidy of these political romantics, who want to cling to a ‘Socialist Past’ while the West is still enmeshed in the unfulfilled myth of The Self-Correcting Market?
The supposed quite of the French electorate, and the French Left is now at an end, at least in the English language press. Or was the slow evolution of the opposition to Macron not quite important a ‘news story’ for wasting space that wasn’t awash in capitalist apologetics?
Almost Marx
https://www.ft.com/content/cd023d78-2db8-11e8-9b4b-bc4b9f08f381
P.S. Should the regular reader of @FT look forward to a more fleshed out re-write of this story on March 23, 2018?
Thank you for your comment. What has the cult of Neo-Liberalism wrought ? From its inception with the twin political hacks Thatcher and Reagan, and their successors the New Democrat Clinton and New Labour Blair? Their ‘reforms’ brought the ‘Western Economies’ to catastrophe in 2008 ! Where is that article of that faith, The Self -Correcting Market , that has yet to manifest itself, after more than a decade of political time ? The Free Market Triumvirate of Mises/Hayek/Friedman was built on an unshakable faith in the mirage of an historical exceptionalism about the utterly vacuous, indeed bankrupt ‘Market Theology’ !
The French electorate isn’t so politically gullible and or naive: the near 37% of uncountable ballots in the general election, and 44% support of the rolling walkouts demonstrate with arresting clarity that the Jupertarian Politics , rule by decree, of Macron is in for a formidable challenge.
No one can yet see the outcome of this rebellion of a coddled populous, who can’t let go of the the unearned benefits of the Social Democratic State, as you and your fellow travelers might argue the case. Except that it will be more shrilly articulated as the political/moral evil of Socialism! Yet the rise of Corbyn in Britain, against a barrage of spurious charges of Antisemitism manufactured by the New Labour stalwarts. And the rise of Sanders in America, who also has faced an equally virulent smear campaign, from the utterly corrupt Clinton coterie, Bernie Bros.,demonstrates the stark failure of the ‘Free Market Mythology’.
Look also to the rise of Right Wing Populism as another manifestation of the ‘Rebellion against the Elites’, as it was once framed in the pages of this newspaper. Catch phrases lose their propaganda effectiveness over time. The Technocrats of ‘The West’ committed a crime in their unstinting advocacy for a ‘Free Market’ that has yet to manifest the mirage of ‘The Self-Correcting Market’.
Does this political constellation, described by me, in some way provide an outline for the rise of Trump and Trumpism? Given your comment and its impressive number of recommendations, probably not!
StephenKMackSD
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