[PEN-L:6222] Why Nato needs to destroy Serbia

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>In general I find the whole piece being more in the tone of an after dinner
>talk for foundation liberals than a serious institutional analysis.
>
>Wojtek

You have to read between the lines and you also have to read the entire
article. It makes these basic points, which are interconnected:

1) Agreeing with Robert Brenner and Harry Shutt, the authors, who are
military-economic strategic thinkers on the Pentagon payroll, state that
the European economy is in decline:

"In the past, Western Europe used economic growth to finance expansions and
extensions of a variety of social protection programs. Economic growth is,
by far, the most effective antidote to most economic problems. But economic
growth is no longer what it used to be. During the 1960s, Western Europe's
real gross domestic product grew at rates approaching 5 percent annually.
In the 1970s, rates were closer to 3 percent per year. During the 1980s,
real growth fell below 3 percent. Since 1990, economic growth has been
around 1 percent."

2) If this economic decline is not reversed, there will be challenges to
the system since European citizens of industrialised nations have a sense
of "entitlements":

"So long as the new sociopolitical framework of Europe guaranteed unlimited
prosperity, the end of ideology seemed a blessing. Unlike the 1930s, the
crisis of the last decades has been a slow, incremental process. The rub
was that once the system began to sputter, there was no real policy
alternative presented by mainstream parties. The resulting crisis of
political systems was a slow one, and this slowness and the tenacity of
existing political institutions are as noteworthy as the existence of the
crisis. Popular discontent with governments in a democratic regime usually
leads to alternation of power, but alternation of power will not produce
relief if the new government follows policies similar to those of the old.
When that happens, citizens increasingly tend to abstain from the political
process, look to extremist parties or support new or nonestablishment
political parties and movements, and may even go to the street. Ideology,
which appeared to depart from politics through the front door, returns
through the back door. In the last analysis, established parties can
founder and the system can even collapse."

and

"A truly apocalyptic scenario for Europe could unfold as a result of
failure to arrest the processes described so far in this study. The
implications of each of these crises would be sufficiently adverse to
warrant action, but taken together, they could produce a negative synergy
with overwhelming consequences. At some point, cumulative quantitative
change could become qualitative and visible. The pressure to cut welfare
state programs at a time of increasing unemployment would certainly
undermine social stability, intensifying the impact of joblessness. A
conflict of "haves" and "have-nots" could result, either along new, perhaps
unpredictable, dividing lines or taking the old forms of class conflict.
Massive labor unrest not witnessed for decades could reappear; the
resulting economic and social friction might spread to several of Europe's
regions, especially those burdened by persistent, long-term unemployment
and continuous flows of political and economic refugees. The failure of
mainstream political parties to manage problems of such magnitude could
eventually lead to elections of extremist leaders as heads of government
with unpredictable consequences for Europe, both internally and externally."

When you consider that this analysis is coming from the intellectual
servants of the ruling class, it is remarkable that there has been so
little effort among Marxists or "progressive economists" to understand
things in the same sort of systematic fashion. As I have stated, Sean
Gervasi and Michel Chussodovsky have put forward excellent analyses that
tie together economics, politics and history. That should be our point of
departure.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)