Francois Hollande and finance capital

11May12

Interesting on the partial and populist anti-capitalism of Francois Hollande, from Andrew Coates:

Socialism, Hollande, has written, means putting capitalism in the service of social objectives. The Parti Socialiste dropped references to class struggle and a ‘break’ (rupture) with the market in the 1990s. But it did not become, as some on the left alleges, ‘social liberal’ on the model of New Labour. Nor do the categories of First and Second Left fit a world transformed, it is said, by ‘globalisation’. Neither state-run nor grass-roots initiatives alone could confront the altered world. It is this context which led the Socialists (influenced by the intellectual revival of the left in the late 1990s) to attack ‘finance’ and uncontrolled globalisation (Declaration of Principles. 2008). How the proposed to tackle it was through the European Union – an idea increasingly problematic as the EU itself began, critics asserted, to operate as a funnel for the interests of finance and global capital.

Speaking at Bourget in January this year Hollande identified finance capital as his principal foe, “Il n’a pas de nom, pas de visage, pas de parti, il ne prèsentera jamais sa candidature, il ne sera donc jamais élu. Cet adversaire, c’est le monde de la finance.” (It has no name, no face, no party, it will never stand for election, and hence it will never be elected. My main adversary is the world of financial world). In this vein the Presidential Candidate attacked the “excesses” of bankers’ pay, bonuses, and the profits that financial markets make. The framework which encourages profiteering, instability, restrains the wages of the ordinary people while putting pressure on states to cuts public spending, is a “construction politique” (le Monde. 5.5.12). The task is to change this structure. The problem is that financial markets do indeed have a face, including prominent former Labour party politicians, like Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson (now both well-paid rewarded  of this world), whose actions have helped create the problems the French socialists face. **

Hollande offers only moderate measures to begin to fulfill the mission. Taxation of the wealthy, proposals to employ more, not fewer, teachers and front-line civil servants, appear modest enough. It is the challenge to European Union-led austerity is far more significant. Today we hear signs that this may be watered down, that a compromise may be reached with Germany, that the time is not ripe for confrontation. Yet it is what Marx called the debt’s position as a “collective possession” that is going to cause the main problems. A strategy for growth will not make this go away.

** Les marchés financiers ont un visage.Geoffery Geuens. Le Monde Diplomatique. Mai 2012.( Here.)

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