We are all Ordo-liberals now

[Exotica]

2. I have seen multiple posts wishing we had a Macron-style POTUS

My mind reels at this on a liberal board.

He is centre-right, he is anti-labour, pro-privatisation, his policies are for the absolute top of the economic food chain, he slashes the welfare state, is a self-described libertarian, etc etc.

His social positions are to the left, but in Western Europe, that is like saying water is wet.

Of course he is better than the nazi-lite Le Pen, but that is like saying a Big Mac is better than deep-fried rhino dung.


Why Macron Is Not The New Left

https://www.socialeurope.eu/why-macron-is-not-the-new-left

Since his election in May 2017, international observers have fairly unanimously welcomed Emmanuel Macron as today’s modernizing figure in French politics and depicted him as a pro-European Social Democrat with an assertive reformist touch. Yet, it took no longer than one year for the French to qualify him as a “right wing” president. Looking at his political agenda and governing style, there are indeed no grounds for thinking that l Macron contributes to the renewal of social democracy in any sense or way. The French President has attracted enormous sympathy due to his bold voluntarism on the international stage, currently populated mainly by various kinds of autocrats, an outrageous Donald Trump and a declining Angela Merkel. But behind the seductive style of a young and charismatic leader, a careful examination of his domestic action unveils a blend of socio-economic neoliberalism, authoritarian conservatism and monarchical governing philosophy.

The Embodiment Of The “Bloc Bourgeois”

Over the past ten years, political scientists have analysed how national party systems are slowly but powerfully being reshaped by a structural sociological change in traditional constituencies. The left-right divide has been increasingly disrupted and overtaken by a new opposition between those citizens who see the economic and cultural opening to Europe and the world as a positive development and those who feel threatened by such integrative trends and call for closure of the national space behind strictly demarcated borders. The new cleavage clearly rests on a sociological divide insofar as the first group embraces mainly urban well-educated, well-earning people, while the second is mainly constituted by blue collars, the unemployed and people leaving in desolated rural and semi-rural areas. The fact that the mechanisms of representative democracy only work within the framework of the nation-state (when they are still effective) whereas important decisions regarding especially socio-economic policies are made at the EU or global level has slowly brought about the dissolution of a strong sense of popular sovereignty and its replacement by a widespread feeling of powerlessness and anger.

Against this backdrop, Macron has unambiguously profiled himself as the representative of the wealthy part of society so much so that he is now dubbed as “the president of the rich”. He embodies the attitude, the values and the desired trajectory of the upper classes, on the one hand, and he conducts policies that serve their interests, on the other. This is confirmed by opinion polls conducted recently for the first anniversary of the presidency. Those who support both the personality and the action of the president are rather old (37% of the 65+) and educated, 42% of them are managers and 48% earn more than €6000 a month. In contrast, those who reject both the president himself and his agenda are rather young (42% of the 18-24 age group), less educated (workers or blue collars) and tend to live in rural regions. 51% of them earn less than €1250 a month. The fact that 42% of those who voted for the very conservative candidate François Fillon in the last presidential election are now part of the most enthusiastic supporters of President Macron is furthermore very telling of the social forces on which his presidency relies.

Old Neoliberal Recipes


The fiscal policy measures enforced rapidly in the first year of his presidency have all pointed in one direction: alleviating the fiscal pressure on owners of all sorts of capital, be it companies or the richest households. It was quite telling that Macron and his government awkwardly referred to the fallacious, elitist and outdated concept of “trickle-down economics”, a theory which has been meanwhile abandoned by all serious economists.

The main socio-economic reform has been a further deregulation of the French labour market and labour law which will make it easier to lay off workers and accentuates the trend towards the decentralisation of collective bargaining. In contrast, the extension of unemployment benefits to freelance workers (and those who voluntarily leave their jobs under certain circumstances) will only come at the price of a lower level of welfare benefits and the enforcement of new disciplinary measures (such as sanctions and the cutting of benefits if claimants reject more than two job offers). Moreover, current projections suggest that the measures will only benefit a handful out of millions of potentially concerned workers.


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