After stringent austerity, the great panacea for solving what used to be called the sovereign debt crisis, is structural reform! Okay. And yes. There are a lot of structural problems that need addressing like the bureaucratic system and how the courts of justice work and… But no, no, no! Stop right there! When we say structural reform we mean things like abolishing all the last vestiges of the welfare state!
We mean abolishing all labour rights. In short, we mean turning the world back to those Dickensian values of raw capitalist exploitation where there is no such thing as a restricted number of working hours in a week. Heavens no! What nonsense. Where you work for as long as is needed and get paid no more, however long you may have toiled! Where there’s no such thing as pensions, or severance pay or anything at all that does not enhance maximization of profit!
That is what we mean by structural reforms! A bit like competition and competitiveness. The ONLY cost of production that needs to be slashed to achieve competitiveness is the cost of labour. So there you are. All this IMF/EU pontificating about the need for structural reform is only another euphemism for “stick it to the people!”, “screw the workers!”
However, there is a very great need for structural reform. But not so much within individual economies as with the International bodies. Like the very IMF itself! The World Bank, not to mention such zombie anachronisms as NATO. And also the whole of the Illogical (and somewhat despotic and unworkable) set up of the European Union. Now if anything cries out for structural reform it is that.
Things have changed.Things the vested elites running all these cumbersome and often anachronistic international institutions, would rather ignore so as not to lose their enormous privileges and power. We shall not go into how Keynes’ original plan for recycling surpluses in the world was summarily discarded in favour of an America centrist model (for an excellent exposition of this see Yani Varoufakis The Global Minotaur) but rather take a look at conditions prevailing today.
Nobody, but nobody disagrees that the great implosion of the world economy of 2008 (and continuing) was caused when the horrendous financial bubble burst. And I also don’t believe that anyone disagrees that this bubble which spiraled out of all control was precisely the result of the total deregulation of the financial and banking sector. So I would contend this would be a prime candidate for structural reform. Have you heard anyone from the IMF or elsewhere strongly advocate this? Didn’t think so.
In 1945 the western powers, that is the US primarily but also Europe, were the strong rich countries of the world so they were the ones to set the terms. Terms which despite discarding Keynes’ basic surplus recycling tenet worked very well till the beginning of the 1970’s. (When the vicious Chicago School virus began poisoning the world!)
Today, however, things have changed enormously. The western world is in multiple decline. Economic decline, moral decline, democratic decline, cultural decline. You name it. It’s declining. On the other hand, formerly under developed and poorer nations such as the well known BRICs, Brazil, Russia, India China (and others) have grown in wealth, in influence, in importance.
So another candidate for structural reform is the weighted membership importance of the International Institutions, such as the Security Council of the UN. Is the permanent presence of multiple European countries to the exclusion of far more important countries warranted?
And what about our good friend and saviour, the IMF? When the French Director Dominque Strauss Khan left in disgrace over a tawdry affair (which at worse was rape, but at best pathetic sleaze), he was replaced by another French person. The disgraceful Christine Lagarde, disgraceful for flaunting her Hermes scarves and enjoying all the extravagant privileges of her office, while decreeing that people she knows little of and cares less about, should go hungry and be deprived of all medical care. Because, in a nutshell, that is the current IMF formula.
We are in dire need of structural reform. But not in the way the monetarist neocon jargon would have it, but real structural reforms. Reforms of all international institutions and the European Union itself could undergo with a major overhaul. So what about starting with a proper up grading of the European Parliament, so that it will act like a democratically elected Parliament and appoint the governors of Europe who will then be directly answerable to it.?
Dictatorship by an appointed European Commission answerable to no one, and somewhat too prone to finger wagging at those in pain would do well to be abolished. It would be a very good start. And who knows? It might just lead to sensible planning of economic affairs, for one, For the people, By the people, Of the people.
Haven’t we heard that somewhere before? It does sound good. Like, Allons Enfants de la Patrie, perhaps? Remember that one? Eh?