Paris -- The apparent self-destruction of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a New York hotel is emblematic of a European left that has ceased to be much of a progressive alternative, either in terms of lifestyle or policy alternatives. Strauss-Kahn, who until yesterday headed the International Monetary Fund, was the Socialist front-runner to challenge French President Nicolas Sarkozy next year. Polls showed that Strauss-Kahn well ahead of both Sarkozy and far right populist Marine Le Pen.
But even before this latest scandal broke, Strauss-Kahn didn't seem like much of a socialist. Last week, the press caught DSK, as the local press calls him, and his wife tooling around in a borrowed $150,000 Porsche, which reinforced his image as wealthy playboy. In 2008, Strauss-Kahn barely survived a widely publicized affair with one of his IMF employees, and in the wake of the New York incident, another woman has stepped forward claiming a rape in 2002.
Cynics here have argued that the wily Sarkozy promoted his likely rival for the IMF post to increase the chances that the imperious Strauss-Kahn would commit some highly visible and politically fatal act. For demolishing the Socialists' claim to speak for the common Frenchman and woman, it's hard to beat an accusation of the entitled Socialist standard bearer orally raping a chambermaid in a $3,000 luxury hotel room and then trying to skip town.
The last successful French socialist president, the dignified Francois Mitterrand, was known as la force tranquille (the quiet strength.) After the Porsche photos surfaced, Strauss-Kahn was instantly dubbed la Porsche tranquille. Mitterrand did not have a lavish lifestyle. He did discretely keep a mistress. They had a daughter together, whom Mitterrand acknowledged and faithfully visited. Among French leaders, this passes for personal probity.
French voters are increasingly sick of Sarkozy, whose cheesy behavior and deep cuts in French social benefits have led to a search for alternatives. But even before this episode, Strauss-Kahn looked like nothing so much as a faux-left version of Sarkozy. The latest outrage leaves voters to feel that elites, regardless of professed party identity, serve mainly themselves, their own megalomania, tawdry materialism and sense of invulnerability.
The larger casualties of this mess include the French Socialist Party, a more progressive IMF, and the credibility of public officials and institutions in general.
For all his personal flaws, Strauss-Kahn, in his current job as head of the International Monetary Fund, has been less of an austerity-monger than most of his predecessors. That's a pretty low bar, but under Strauss-Kahn and his chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, the IMF has uncharacteristically weighed in on the side of not punishing nations with large deficits, but helping them to grow their way out of recession.
With Strauss-Kahn sidelined and probably finished, the IMF has appointed an American, John Lipsky, a career official, as acting managing director. Strauss-Kahn, as a French Socialist, had been leaning against the IMF austerity culture, and Lipsky is considered more orthodox.
The impact on the Socialist Party is also considered grim, but perhaps that's premature. Two of Strauss-Kahn's rivals for the nomination are themselves a former couple, ex party leader Francois Hollande and former presidential nominee Segolene Royal, who lost the election to Sarkozy in 2007. A third is Martine Aubry, the current party leader, who had dropped out of the race in favor of Strauss-Kahn but may now re-enter. Some of the French socialists whom I interviewed said that the erratic and arrogant Strauss-Kahn was a political time bomb, and that Hollande or Aubry had a better shot at beating Sarkozy. But this was hardly a good day for the French Socialist Party.
The pity is that the French electorate remains left of center. France has dozens of effective socialist mayors. When political preferences are de-linked from the flawed personalities of national leaders, the French electorate is more likely to support the left. But the combination of weak and squabbling Socialist party chiefs, the fragmentation of the French left into Socialists, Greens, and the further left Front de Gauche, and the quirks in the French electoral system which requires a runoff if no candidate gains a majority, the final two candidates next year could well be the far-right Marine Le Pen versus Sarkozy as the moderate.
Strauss-Kahn's reckless and grandiose personal behavior is symptomatic of a deeper sickness afflicting the European left. It isn't just that people like Strauss Kahn flaunt their wealth, but that they share the financial outlook of the wealthy.
The world suffered a financial collapse in 2008 because deregulation had allowed the banking system to crash the economy. So-called "center-left" parties were complicit in this deregulation, whether under Bill Clinton in the United States, Gerhardt Schroeder in Germany, or Tony Blair in the UK. In France, Mitterrand began as a left-socialist and ended as more of a neo-liberal.
It's small wonder that confused voters, looking for alternatives to the party of collapse and austerity, are skeptical of social democrats. In a world where national leaders have all the dignity and character of a Sarkozy or a Berlusconi, it would be splendid of the left stood for something better. But politics in general seems a mix of high life and lowlife, regardless of party, while daily existence for regular people becomes more of a trial.
In much of Europe, the left doesn't offer a persuasive opposition strategy or program.
(An exception is Denmark, where the social democrats are favored to win the year's election, which would make the dynamic Helle Thorning-Schmidt Denmark's first woman prime minister.)
But for the most part, an ideological failure to stand clearly for something different tends to produce unconvincing leaders.
You still see Obama bumper stickers in Paris, where the U.S. president remains highly popular. Barack Obama not only still stands for hope, but he represents a striking contrast to both Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn in his irreproachable personal behavior. But with the world still in financial crisis, that's also a low bar. By itself, personal rectitude does little to rally public support of to solve deep national ills.
I suppose we Americans can take pride that our president has never been accused of assaulting a chamber maid in a luxury hotel. Now, if he would just assault the financial barons.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Why Powerful Men Can't Keep Their Pants On
Jayne Lyn Stahl: Extradite Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Today I was part of a contingent that were to [not] greet with warmth the arrival of Netanayhu to the Capitol, in Washington D.C.
We were pushed, by uniformed police [uniforms not local] to the farthest they could to make sure that the Emperor Netanyahu wouldn't SEE US. He didn't see us, because they made the whole of Pennsylvania Avenue from Blair House (where he stayed) to the Capitol, a place deserted of people not wearing uniforms.
In olden days, when foreign dignataries, including Presidents and Prime Ministers, visited Washington, room was made for the local populations to gather round and cheer.
It speaks volumes that this scenario is now reversed. The powers that be SHELTER the so-called dignified visitor from SEEING the "not welcoming" people.
"The latest outrage leaves voters to feel that elites, regardless of professed party identity, serve mainly themselves, their own megalomania, tawdry materialism and sense of invulnerability."
That says it all really. The problem is that these days in developed nations no matter who you vote for you end up voting for the interests of the wealthy, the elites, the powerful.
The point this article completely misses is the logical outcome of that widespread and inevitable problem: a system of governance that places power in the hands of the few will always become corrupted, and is therefore a flawed system. The only real solution to this problem is to have the people vote not for people but for he laws and budgets and whatnot themselves. Democracy is and always has been the solution to the problems of Oligarchy. Give the power to the people, all the people. We're not ignorant children anymore, we can make our own laws and decisions about money and governance, we don't need to delegate the responsibility to 'professionals,' especially when it's clear they don't know what the hell they're doing anyhow.
So you're getting out of "the market", right?
Claims like this always make me laugh, as it implies that subprime dollars and bad loans exist naturally. The Fed got the ball rolling in this country. Booms brought on by expanded credit ALWAYS end in a bubble burst. After the IMF and the EU get done destroying Europe, people like Kuttner will be screaming for more central planning.
Anyway, the absence of a credible Left is a big problem in many European countries. I couldn't name a single leftist leader in Europe who would be on the same level as Obama, Kerry or Clinton.
Hunger, homelessness, foreclosures, loss of health-care, bankruptcies, unemployment, contraction of production are still expanding, threatening the population as all out war. This national security crisis demands the implementation of Glass-Steagall immediately.
The Inter Alpha Group of Banks irrationally demand that derivative loses be bailed out, forcing budget cuts and austerity on the population. The US and Europe irrationally obey, even as the economy continues its descent. The Fed continues to entangle the nation's financial resources in the international derivative trade.
The only imperative is to stabilize the United States now: terminate the monetary financial debt based system: Reenact Glass-Steagall in US banking, cancelling all obligations to the Inter Alpha Group of Banks, and the Wall St. cabal. The Fed must be put into bankruptcy protection, recover the bailout trillions, create the US National Bank that funds the 50 states, then fund the necessary facilities that enhance the population's standard of living. Stop Perpetual War. No other option exists.
I supose you may agree with me;
I have no problem with a wealthy elite is the US to function as captains of industry, this benefits us all. While I may poke fun at their lavish indulgence the hot tub gluttony is not their biggest sin. When those who command capital loose sight of the difference between productive investment in the development of real life sustaining wealth, and the creation of debt bubbles that kill as fictitious value commandeers food out of baby's mouths, then I get my hackles up.
If you fail to recognize this distinction yourself, you may find I make you a target of my disdain. You see I don't simply pick on bankers.
on the other hand if you would investigate just how bad a situation we are in I provide you with;
http://metaphorman.tripod.com/002/P2.html
best regards
Oh geeze............Progressivism (socialism) simply does not work....don't try to wrap it into one guy's personal predelications. Admit it....socialism - regarless of what form it takes - is ultimately unsustainable.
Ms. Thatcher said it best: "Socialsim works great...until you run out of other people's money".
Socialistic values are the only means of counterbalancing human greed and limitless corporate corruption. There are certain things that only conservatism can guarantee, and there are other things that only socialism can.
In other words, conservativism and socialism are both necessary and good. Free market is good -- as long as we don't forget about those people who are defenseless, and as long as we don't let the richest grow and grow and grow at the peril of other people and the environment.
Socialism...by its own defintition...to each accordning to his abiltities to each according to his need - is taking from those who earned it and giving to those who did not.
What is demigogic about that??????...it is simply an observation by the very originators of socialism/communism.
not to waste our time on the rest of the article.
so yea...let's bring on some more women so that we can complete our utter destruction.
Denmark is smaller and less prosperous than Virginia, and we already have Virginia. Why would we pay any mind to what Denmark is doing?
"on the side of not punishing nations with large deficits, but helping them to grow their way out of recession"
You continue to miss the point entirely, and eventually that will have an adverse effect on how seriously people take your analysis. Two factors conspire to drive down the standard of living, and expectations, for 99.9% of all mankind.
The first is industrial automation, which quite simply eliminates well paying jobs for skilled humans. Certain sectors of work remain prosperous, but those sectors by definition cannot employ the 95% or so of the population employed in good jobs that is required for prosperity. Automation de-contents jobs until those jobs are only worth $3/hr. If wages in those jobs try to rise above $3/hr, it makes more economic sense to capitalize additional automation and nearly eliminate the human workforce.
The second is overpopulation, which is killing the Earth. If we had todays technology, with the population of just 100 years ago, none of this would matter, and nobody would be talking about it. But due to population growth in underdeveloped cultures and nations, all progress made by Western technology is instantly consumed by the growing population. The problem is not really that we (almost) all will live less prosperous lives. The real problem lies in the future catastrophic failure.
B) Automation is only a problem if we have wage labor as the center of our social system. Generalized wage labor has only been around for about a hundred years or so and will probably fade away soon enough. Automation of production and agriculture makes it easier and quicker to make all the things we need to sustain human life.
A real socialist alternative is to make productivity gains equal concurrent with higher profits (and, at best, higher wages), but instead to abolish wage labor and profit completely. This way, the better we get at making things the LESS we have to work and the more time we can enjoy with our friends and families.
Before you call this 'utopian', just look at US agriculture. At the time of the American Revolution it took 95% of the population to feed the country. Now it takes between 1 and 2%.
All common sense people should be asking, why are the bosses working us to death when we humans can make everything we need with relatively so little effort??
b) You are correct, what we now lack is a new paradigm that can provide solutions.
The problem with your proposed solution, of course, is that it can only succeed with ever increasing government control. Because, as every nation that has tried that solution has found, there will always be enough people who strive for more, circumventing and thereby undermining central control, until economic failure and corruption bring the whole system down.
It isn't a question of us being worked to death versus producing what we need with ease. That is already settled. Most stationary (factory) production jobs, many service jobs, and some transportation jobs don't need human workers at all. Many of the jobs that remain are in a John Henry contest with the cost of capitalizing complete automation of the function.
The difference from the Industrial Revolution is that those were muscle-multiplying machines. Today, they are mind-multiplying machines. The former produced wealth, while creating a new class of skilled and semi-skilled jobs. The latter does not (except for the tiny cadre of intelligent machine builders).
We have a surplus of workers who are not needed for production, with oversupply comes falling prices (wages). We need a new paradigm, and rehashing the past isn't going to cut it.
WRONG...automation is what has enabled each worker to raise production and output....thus being able to achieve a higher wage. An employer cannot pay a worker more than they can produce without going out of business. Displaced workers are freed up to do other useful things - that is if governemnt does so restrict options to create new businesses by taxation and regualtion.
Also, what about the skilled workers that design, develop and manufacture such automated devices?
This is what frustrates me about liberals.....their whole world view is predicated on ignorance about basic economics and incorrect information and facts as is demonstrated by this post.
What frustrates me is people stuck in the past, not seeing what's happening TODAY, much less next year, and offering solutions from a past that no longer exists.
1 - Immigration is becomming one of the biggest issues in Europe.
2 - The Euro and bailouts for Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugual are very unpopular.
3 - Due to plunging birthrates, many of the social saftey nets can not be supports. Birthrates are at 1.4 children per woman in the Euro zone. That will mean 1 worker will be supporting 1 retiree in many countries.
4 - Third parties on the left and right are exploding in membership as the center left / right parties seem too much joined at the hip.
I think the Socialist have been slow to address these issues. So they have a lot of other issues going on.
www.economicstruth.com
DSK and Kuttner are both Jews.
That's where the problem lies...........nothing gets by you Luis Soto!