Boris van der Ham – Tekening Joseph Sassoon Semah

Twaalf Nederlandse voormalige moslims die zich hebben losgemaakt van de religie van hun ouders, de islam, worden geïnterviewd door de voorzitter van het Humanistisch Verbond Boris van der Ham en cultureel ondernemer en freelancejournalist Rachid Benhammou. De twaalf vertellen persoonlijke verhalen over hun keuzes, maar voor allen is het een moeizaam en vaak verwarrend proces geweest, met name in relatie tot de familie en de gemeenschap. Het afstand nemen van je religie betekent vooral een sociaal offer. De strijd binnen de gemeenschap, waar de groep belangrijker wordt gevonden dan het individu, is zwaar. Om de familie niet te kwetsen blijft dan ook meer dan de helft van de geportretteerden anoniem. Vaak geldt “Zolang anderen het niet weten, deert het ook niemand”, aldus Said El Haji, een van de geïnterviewden.

De invloed van internationale ontwikkelingen op hun leven in Nederland, met name de Palestijnse kwestie, is groot. Ook de invloed van social media speelt een belangrijke rol, in positieve zin doordat voormalige moslims actief kunnen zijn met gelijkgestemden bij o.a. online discussiegroepen, maar het heeft ook negatieve effecten. Vanaf de 80er jaren is vanuit Saudi-Arabië via satelliet-tv veel invloed uitgeoefend en werd een zeer conservatieve islam gepredikt. Door de komst van satelliet-tv en Arabische zenders uit het Midden-Oosten ging men de islam strikter beoefenen en ging met zeer negatief over het Westen en over Nederland denken.

‘Karim’, een anonieme Marokkaanse Nederlander, beschrijft de eerste generatie gastarbeiders, meestal ongeschoold, die Nederland als het beloofde land zag. “In de jaren negentig kwam er opeens een golf van nieuwe informatie op hen af. Met de komst van satelliet-tv en internet kwam er een ander soort islam de huiskamer in geslingerd. Die van het wahabisme en salafisme uit het Midden-Oosten.”

Rachid Benhammou Tekening Joseph Sassoon Semah

De eerste generatie was wel enigszins beïnvloedbaar maar bleef over het algemeen trouw aan de Marokkaanse islam. Maar een deel van de tweede generatie omarmde die nieuwe stromingen wel en vindt dat de eerste generatie zich te westers begon te gedragen of gewoon te weinig deed om ‘de juiste’ islam te verspreiden. Toen ‘Karim’ jong was werd de islam in Nederland ook gepromoot: “Breng je kinderen naar de Koranschool. Leer ze Arabisch.” Dat neemt hij de Nederlandse overheid kwalijk. Zij gingen blind mee in de lobby van Arabische landen. En de beïnvloeding vanuit het Midden-Oosten ging verder: op tv keek je naar het nieuws uit Israël, over hun vijandschap met de Palestijnen. “Dat gebruikte de propagandamachine van de radicale islam weer om daarmee ‘onze onderdrukking’ aan te tonen. De voortdurende boodschap was dat moslims anders zijn dan andere gelovigen.” In de eigen gemeenschap kwam het vaak neer op slachtoffertje spelen in een land waar je juist ultiem vrij bent te denken en zeggen wat je wilt, aldus ‘Karim’. Maar ook hij doet zich in het publieke domein anders voor dan hij in werkelijkheid is, en noemt zichzelf ‘de bewuste hypocriet’.

Farid El Mourabit en Halima Boutahar, beiden geboren in Marokko, staan met foto op de voorkant van het boek. Fatima El Mourabit is trots dat ze afstand heeft kunnen nemen van een religie waar ze zich niet mee kon identificeren. Ook Farid El Mourabit maakt er geen geheim van dat ze atheïst is en expliciet geen moslima: ”Er is niet zoiets als een moslimras”.  Er zijn grote verschillen in de etnische achtergronden en culturen als het gaat om uitingen van de islam. “De mix van lokale cultuur en islam levert elke keer iets anders op”. Beiden hebben grote persoonlijke offers gebracht.

Ook Celal Altuntas, schrijver van Koerdisch-Turkse afkomst, schuwt de openbaarheid niet. Hij schrijft kritische stukken over de islam, waardoor hij regelmatig wordt bedreigd. Een verlegen dorpskind dat voorbestemd was imam te worden, een tijdelijke PKK-strijder, vervolgens vlucht hij via Turkije naar Europa en komt uiteindelijk in Nederland terecht. In zijn eerste vijf jaar in Nederland neemt hij stap voor stap afstand van Allah. Met name was Socrates’ ‘Durf te denken’ hierbij van invloed. Nu geeft filosofie houvast in zijn leven. Hij wil expliciet niet zijn zoals veel atheïsten, die vanwege de sociale druk voor de vorm meedoen met de ramadan. En om maar geen discussie te krijgen noemen ze zich toch maar moslim. “Ik wil daar niet aan meedoen en domweg meelopen met de kudde. Om precies die reden voel ik trouwens ook niets bij de term ‘ex-moslim’. Mensen die zich ex-moslim noemen, hebben zich nog niet helemaal verlost van de islam. Ze leven nog in een bepaalde angst. Angst dat Allah misschien toch wel bestaat.”
Hij is ook openlijk kritisch over de politieke situatie in Nederland. Hij schetst het gevaar dat sommige politieke partijen de hele islam in een bepaalde hoek drukken, omdat de kritiek op de islam hierdoor wordt vermengd met buitenlanderhaat. “De andere kant van Nederland trapt in het slachtofferschap en knuffelt nog steeds. Niet omdat men pro-islam is, maar als middel om de rechtse partijen te bestrijden. En daar profiteren juist de radicalen van.”
Uit veel verhalen komt naar voren dat de ouders die uit landen kwamen met een milde vorm van islam, pas in Nederland onder invloed kwamen van een meer radicale islam.

Hamid Sekalle, wiens vader uit het Rifgebergte in Noord-Marokko kwam, komt op zijn zeventiende in de Utrechtse wijk Kanaleneiland terecht, waar hij zich al snel thuis voelt. Hij leert pas op latere leeftijd bidden, op zijn school droeg geen enkele meid een hoofddoek, hij is een liberalere vorm van islam gewend, zonder haat naar de anderen of radicale denkbeelden. Maar in Nederland wordt dat anders. In Nederland komen imans aan het woord die in Marokko nooit getolereerd zouden zijn. Maar in Nederland leert hij ook kritisch denken en gaat hij zijn religie scheiden van zijn cultuur. Zijn eindconclusie is dat angst de brandstof van religie is, waardoor God voor hem ineens heel klein wordt. Inspiratie haalt hij nu uit de wetenschap en hij gelooft niet meer.

Ook ‘Shirin’, geboren in Afghanistan, opgegroeid in Pakistan, en later met het gezin in Nederland terecht gekomen, was gewend aan een milieu dat vroeger behoorlijk religievrij was. De cultuur van het Afghaan-zijn was veel prominenter aanwezig, en een van die elementen van cultuur was beleefdheid. Beleefdheid ging voor alles, ook voor religie. Maar op een bepaald moment werd ook in deze gemeenschap de islamitische identiteit voor sommigen belangrijker dan de Afghaanse. Na een intensief denkproces besloot ze geen moslim meer te willen zijn.

Auteur Said El Haji, geboren in de Rif in Marokko, groeide op vlakbij Rotterdam.
“Als ik mezelf een labeltje wil geen, dan noem ik mij agnost. Tegenover de hardheid van mijn vader die geen twijfel kende over de absolute waarheid, wil ik geen alternatieve hardheid zetten. Ik weet niet of God wel of niet bestaat. In de Koran staat veelvuldig “Allaho alaam”, oftewel: “Alleen God weet het.”

Nieuwe vrijdenkers -Uitgeverij Prometheus – Amsterdam 2018 – Paperback ISBN 9789044636840 – E-book ISBN 9789044636857

Linda Bouws – St. Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten

C.J. Polychroniou

A clear pattern has emerged in European societies since the outbreak of the euro crisis in 2010. Voters across the socioeconomic spectrum are casting their votes in support of populist, anti-establishment movements and parties whose leaders offer an inward vision of the future combined with a strong dislike for the political culture of liberal democracy and the values professed by the European Union, including overt skepticism over the single currency, the euro.

However, as yet, it is only in Italy that the political pendulum moved so far to the right that an all-populist government was eventually allowed, after Italian president Mattarella blocked the nomination of Eurosceptic economist Savano for the position of the Ministry of Finance, to be formed under the leadership of a nonelected prime minister, an unknown law professor, Giuseppe Conte, whose academic credentials, as stated in his professional CV, appear to lack truthfulness.

But this is a hardly a consolation to Brussels for there is probably no more problematic country in all of western Europe today, save Greece, for undergoing such epigenetic political changes.
Sure enough, the fact that the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo and the ingenious blogger Gianroberto Casaleggio, and the reactionary Northern League (il Carroccio), founded in 1991 with the principal aim of advancing a system of fiscal federalism in order to halt the flow of resources from the northern to the southern regions of Italy, managed to pull jointly a majority of the votes in the March elections and thereby sweep away the mainstream but otherwise dysfunctional political establishment of the postwar era bodes well neither for Italy nor for the EU.

Given Italy’s fiscal and overall economic state of affairs, it is actually through sheer luck that a full-blown financial crisis has not actually erupted in the eurozone’s third largest economy, and eighth largest in the world by nominal GDP. The country’s public debt to GDP ratio stands currently at 131.80%, which is the highest level since unification in 1861, and the fifth largest worldwide. Such high levels of public debt to GDP ratio are simply prohibited under the Frankstein-like creation of the European Monetary Union, where a single currency zone exists among scores of highly diverse economies and political cultures but without a fiscal union or fiscal transfer mechanisms to address competitiveness imbalances, which are quite severe between North and South.

Lest we forget, the Greek debt crisis exploded in early 2010, with the private international credit markets sending borrowing costs to stratospheric levels, when the country’s public debt to GDP ratio was believed to have been around 128%. The fact that about 60% of Italian debt is held by residents has provided indeed something of a safety cushion against a yield market backlash, but this is unlikely to continue indefinitely given the shaky standing of the country’s banks, which hold more than 75% of the debt owned by residents — a concern which will be magnified now that a quacky populist government will be in charge of Italy’s public finances.

Indeed, markers have already shown increased nervousness to the formation of an all-populist government cabinet. The gap between Italian and German government 10-year bond yields has grown significantly lately (by more than 75 basis points between April to May), and the gap will surely grow if the economic policies advocated by the leaders of the Five Star Movement and the Northern League, respectively, are adopted by prime minister Giuseppe Conte.
Both the Five Star Movement and the Northern League advocate a potpourri economic agenda which appears attractive to rich and poor alike, such as sharp tax cuts (both parties favor a flat 25% tax rate) and welfare handouts while promising at the same time to get rid of illegal immigrants and curb further immigration.

If implemented, the tax cuts will worsen significantly the country’s fiscal condition as less revenues will pout into public coffers and lead to further inequality and popular discontent not simply with regards to the condition of the national economy but also over the euro and the draconian fiscal adjustment measures that the all-populist government will be forced to implement under pressure from Brussels, Berlin, and the bond markets.
The political situation inside Italy is also quite precarious, leaving little room for dramatic policy decisions, such as an exit from the eurozone.

While a significant portion of the Italian population is quite skeptical if not outright against the single currency, the majority of citizens continue to support the euro and would oppose withdrawal from the eurozone. It is precisely because of this reality that the anti-euro rhetoric was significantly toned down by both the First Star Movement and the Northern League during the campaign prior to the March elections. And the original selection of Savano for the position of the Ministry of Finance was clearly not part of some planned strategy aiming to release Italy from the straightjacket of the single currency regime but, rather, a move designed to counter the weight of Germany with regards to eurozone fiscal and economic policies, with the threat of a withdrawal from the euro to be used as a potential negotiation tool, a diplomatic leverage.

In this context, it is clear that the all-populist government of Giuseppe Conte is caught between a rock and a hard place: whatever policies will seek to implement will face challenges and resistance both inside Italy and on the international front, mainly from Brussels and Berlin, but with the international credit markets also acting as a deterrent to extreme and unfriendly policies to the economic universe in which Italy finds itself at the present historical juncture.

However, it is almost a given that the all-populist government in Rome will soon find out that it’s incoherent economic agenda (and we should not forget that while the Five Star Movement draws its support primarily from the poor and working segments of Italian society, the Northern League enjoys support primarily among the rich in the Northern regions) will be extremely difficult to implement. And, if it does manage, somehow, to turn it into actual policy, it is also certain that it will generate mass discontent inside the country by virtue of increasing the gap between haves and have-nots, while leaving intact the deep and structural problems facing Italian economy, with unemployment being the most serious one for the well-being of the nation, while creating at the same time bigger deficits and heavier public debt levels. In either case, (“business as usual” or the enforcement of an incoherent economic agenda), Eurocrats will surely begin to lose a lot of sleep from now on over the disturbing political and economic developments in Italy that will surely follow under the Giuseppe Conte government.

Having said that, it should be stated in no uncertain terms that the coming of extreme populism in Italy to age is a natural and expected outcome, whose root cause lies with the EU itself. Indeed, given the inability or unwillingness of the EU to proceed with the kind of meaningful and necessary reforms that would allow the largest economic block in the world to function in a way whereby monetary stability does not hinder economic growth and the interests of the European corporate and financial world do not override the interests of the general population, the surge of extreme political movements that tap into popular discontent should be seen as neither a surprising or irrational development

Indeed, as long as the EU continues with its long-standing state of impasse over architectural reforms in the European Monetary regime, extreme populism in western Europe will find fertile ground for spreading nationistic, xenophobic and even racist ideas. And extreme populist movements and leaders also know that the only way to make inroads into mainstream society is by combining their nationist, xenophobic and racist rhetoric with a catch-all economic agenda. And they do so in full recognition of the fact that if they implement their economic agenda in the event they come to power, they will actually make things far worse than they already are, especially for already heavily indebted countries such as those in southern Europe whose economies are in dire need
of sustainable development, job creation programs, progressive (instead of regressive) tax systems, and higher wages.

Suffice to say, these goals for countries inside the eurozone can be attained only under the economic vision of a Social, rather than a Neoliberal Europe. Yet, the real power brokers in the EU, with Germany as the head of the fiscally reactionary club of northern euro member states, have opposed all along an alternative path to European economic and political integration, a development which has been instrumental in itself in contributing to the rise and spread of extreme populism and anti-EU sentiments throughout the continent.

But who knows? Perhaps the coming storm in the Euroland, which will surely come when the all-populist government in Rome will discover that having the cake and eating it at the same time is a recipe for economic and political disaster, and which will undoubtedly make the Eurocrisis of 2010-2011 look like a garden party, will finally force Berlin and Brussels to join the right side of history. If not, the vision of European integration will turn in due time into a political nightmare that will bring back memories of pre-World War II conditions.

Previously published: www.globalpolicyjournal.com

C J Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist who has has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. He is the author of the recently published book Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky on Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (Haymarket Books, USA; Penguin Books, UK).

In September 2017 the African Studies Centre Leiden published a Thematic Map about Africa’s international migration in 2015. At the backside the 2015 data published by UN-DESA were used to show the total international immigration data per country, linked to the position of these countries on the Human Development Index for the same year. Also the data for intercontinental immigration per country were given.

These were clearly showing that immigration was much higher for the African countries with a relatively high HDI score than for the African countries with a low HDI score. Intercontinental immigration was much lower than international immigration, because most international migrants stay within Africa. The thematic map showed that out of 20.4 million people who were stated to be ‘immigrants’ (= born in another country) only 2.5 million came from outside Africa. A map was shown with all major intra-African migration flows as measured in 2015. And two maps were included showing how many people had immigrated to the 54 African countries, and what the numbers and relative importance was of inter-continental (non-African) immigrants per country, linked to the 2015 HDI scores. So far so good. But there is much more to show.

For this preparatory note for the ‘Destination Africa’ conference we added a dynamic picture: looking at the changes between 1990 and 2015. And we also looked at the dynamics of the patterns of migration: where did the people come from who have been counted as ‘immigrants in Africa’ in 1990, 2000, and 2015. An interesting question can also be answered: what is the colonial hangover? And is it true that Europe is losing ground?

This is volume 141 of the series ASCL Working Papers.

Read the Working Paper.

Prof.dr. Robert Pollin

Poverty is deepening and the standard of living is declining in the US, even as the national unemployment rate has hit historically low levels. Meanwhile, wages remain stagnant and inequality is worsening with every passing year. What explains this anomalous state of the US economy, and what can be done about it? In this exclusive interview with Truthout, economist Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, analyzes the perverse and extreme nature of the neoliberal economic landscape in the US.

C.J. Polychroniou: Bob, the official US unemployment rate was at 3.8 percent in May 2018, which is the lowest rate since 2000. Is this an indication of the underlying strength of the economy under the policies of the Trump administration, as some pundits seem to be suggesting?

Robert Pollin: After the bursting of the Wall Street speculative bubble at the end of 2007, the US and global economy collapsed into the Great Recession, with national income (GDP) falling by 4 percent by the end of 2009. The US economy has been in a “recovery” since the end of 2009 — meaning that national income has been rising steadily for nine years. But the recovery has been extremely weak by historical standards. The US economy has grown at an average of 2.1 percent between 2009 and the present. This compares with a 3.4 percent average growth rate from the end of World War II until just before the Wall Street collapse. There is no evidence that the overall growth of the US economy has improved since Trump took office in January 2017.

The official unemployment rate peaked amid the Great Recession at nearly 10 percent. It has been falling fairly steadily ever since, through most of the Obama years as well as the 18 months that Trump has held office. So again, there is no evidence that anything Trump has done per se has brought the official unemployment rate to its current low level.

We also need to be clear, though, as to what employment conditions really look like even when the official rate is historically low, at 3.8 percent. The US Labor Department itself has more than one measure of conditions in the labor market. The rate we are quoting — 3.8 percent — refers to everyone who had any kind of job as “employed,” including people who wanted to work 40 hours a week but could only find a job at, say, 10 hours a week. We call the people who aren’t getting as many hours as they would like as “underemployed,” but they are still counted as employed in the official measure of unemployment.

The Labor Department also has categories of people that it calls “marginally attached” and “discouraged.” These are people who are not counted as part of the unemployed in the official measure, because they haven’t looked for a job within the last month, but have looked within the past year. But if we count the underemployed, marginally attached and discouraged workers as among the unemployed, the US Labor Department’s own figure for this measure of unemployment rises to 7.6 percent for last month. That is 12.3 million people overall — roughly equal to the entire population of New York City and Los Angeles.

But even that isn’t the end of the story by any means. Since the 2007 financial collapse, the percentage of the adult population that has been either working or looking for work has fallen significantly. If the same percentage of people were in the labor force today as were in it as of 2007, that would add up to another 5.3 million people. If we include these people as among the unemployed, underemployed or marginally attached, the unemployment rate by this measure would reach 10.9 percent, a total of 17.6 million people — so we can now add in the entire populations of Chicago and Houston in our pool of unemployed or underemployed. Let’s also just note that even this figure doesn’t account for the 2.2 million people in the US who are incarcerated, with our incarceration rate roughly triple that of other advanced economies. This is all within what is touted as the strongest labor market in nearly 20 years.

There seems to be yet another anomaly in the current US economic landscape, which is that growing employment should be driving up wages, but that is not happening. Why is that?

Starting with Karl Marx himself, economists have long argued that low unemployment rates will drive up wages. This is because, at low unemployment rates, workers should have more bargaining power relative to business owners. At low unemployment, workers should be able to demand higher pay, and if their bosses refuse, the workers should be able to get another job easily. Correspondingly, when unemployment is high — i.e. when what Marx called the “reserve army of labor” is large, workers lose bargaining power. Businesses tell workers that they can easily be replaced. Workers have little to no leverage in bargaining with their bosses. That is at least the first cut at a theory.

On top of this has been the impact of globalization — which has effectively expanded the “reserve army of labor” into a global pool available to be hired by businesses. Because of globalization, workers face this kind of situation: With low unemployment, they may go to their bosses asking for a raise. But the boss can just say: “You want a raise? Fine. I will just move the plant to Mexico, where wages are 1/5 of what I pay you. Or will import from China, when I can pay workers 1/20 of what I pay you.”Yet, if this theory is correct, then why aren’t US workers getting wage increases now, when the official unemployment rate is historically low? One factor is, as mentioned above, even with the low unemployment rate, a broader measure of unemployment still leaves something like 11-12 percent of all adults among the “reserve army of unemployed.” But there is also another critical factor at play. That is, under neoliberalism, workers have lost bargaining power relative to their bosses even when unemployment is relatively low. It has been a fundamental tenet of neoliberalism to attack the laws, norms and institutions that have been built to support workers’ well-being. These include, first and foremost, unions. It also includes measures such as the minimum wage. If unions, for example, are weak, then workers don’t have the institutional strength to bargain up their wages.

This dynamic is very real and has been going on now for over 40 years in the US. Indeed, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan himself acknowledged that this was the major explanation as to why workers weren’t getting pay increases even at low unemployment. Greenspan himself described the situation as workers becoming “traumatized” by the effects of neoliberalism and globalization.

The bottom line is that the average non-supervisory worker in the US today is earning (after controlling for inflation) a wage that is about 4 percent less than in 1972 — 46 years ago. This is while average worker productivity — the amount the average worker produces in a day — has more than doubled since 1972. We have here also the single most important explanation for the rise of inequality. If productivity doubles over time, while workers’ wages remain stagnant, that means that there is a huge pile of increased income resulting from the productivity rise that has to go somewhere. That increased income goes to the top — to the supervisory workers, to business owners and to Wall Street.

Neoliberal economists contend that the cure for economies with relatively high unemployment rates is increased labor market flexibility. What’s the relationship, if any, between labor market flexibility and unemployment rates?

Let’s first of all be clear on what we mean by “labor market flexibility.” It is a pleasant-sounding euphemism. We like things that seem flexible, as opposed to rigid. But another way to describe “rigid” labor markets are ones that have built-in protections for workers. These would include effective union representation, a decent “living wage” minimum pay level, reasonable compensation for workers who have lost their jobs, and active policies to get unemployed people back into good job situations. By contrast, a “flexible” labor market is one that doesn’t bother with these forms of support for working people. Thus, under “labor market flexibility,” business owners are free to do with their workers as they wish.

The theory is that, when labor markets are free of protections for workers (i.e. “flexible”), then businesses will be more willing to hire workers and the unemployment rate will go down. There is some validity to this position. If you make people desperate enough, they will take any job or go out into the street and do anything to bring in some income. They will also then be counted as employed, since, for example, they are out there, say, selling cigarettes or lottery tickets. Businesses can then hire workers for a pittance. But this obviously does not correspond to anything like what we may consider as a decent society.

At the same time, even capitalist economies are capable of delivering low unemployment rates with strong social protections — i.e., relatively low unemployment rates, along with strong union support, and decent wage levels. The best example of this is the Nordic economies, such as Sweden. The Nordic economies have operated at unemployment rates at roughly the same level or lower than countries with far fewer social protections for workers. These economies have also benefitted from workers having decent incomes, because when workers have money in their pockets, they then will spend more to support businesses.

Finally, when we are talking about huge rates of official mass unemployment — such as Greece at 21 percent or Spain at 16.5 percent today — the fundamental problem is not that businesses are tied into knots by rigid labor markets. The problem is overall lack of spending in the economy, and the solution is for the government to advance large-scale public investment programs that will increase overall demand in the economy and improve life for people at the same time. The most important example of this for the present are Green New Deal programs. My co-workers and I have developed programs that combine expanding job opportunities and advancing climate stabilization for many countries, including Spain, Puerto Rico and India, as well as the US overall and various states within the US. The Green New Deal is an effective way to expand job opportunities and lower unemployment, and it is also the only way to seriously fight climate change.

As yet another indication of the highly perverse nature of US capitalism, a study released just a couple of weeks ago by the United Way ALICE Project reveals that almost half of US families cannot afford basics like rent, food and health care. What sort of progressive economic policies can be implemented that would unleash the potential for creating an equitable economy and a decent society in the sense that there is broader prosperity and that the poor are not left to the whims of a Darwinian socioeconomic order?

Where to start? Let’s begin with the Green New Deal — investing heavily in renewable energy and energy efficiency to supplant our existing fossil-fuel dominant energy system. That will produce jobs. By itself, investing in green energy will not generate enough good jobs to maintain the economy at something like true full employment, and we need a serious commitment to maintain true full employment. So, we also need to expand public investments in education, research, infrastructure and social services like home care. These will need to be financed by increasing taxes on the affluent. To make sure the newly created jobs are good jobs, we then need to restore some semblance of decent labor market protections, like a $15 minimum wage and strong rights for workers to organize themselves into effective unions. We also certainly need universal decent health care — Medicare for All. Then we also need to heavily regulate Wall Street, so that the economy’s financial resources are channeled into productive activities, including small business investments that produce lots of jobs. Effective financial regulations are also our only safeguard against a replay of the 2007-09 financial collapse. Finally, we need a truly generous safety net, including food security.

These are all things that are eminently workable and affordable. All of these things are under attack now under Trump. But let’s face it: they have also been under attack throughout the neoliberal era, starting roughly in 1980 under Reagan, and continuing through to the present, including under Democratic Party administrations, Clinton in particular. I think it is fair to say that the program advanced in Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign provides us with a fairly decent blueprint for moving forward in creating some semblance of a decent US society.

C J Polychroniou

There is a clear pattern among entertainment and public figures in general in the United States, which is to make racist statements (ala Roseanne Barr) or employ vulgar and filthy language (ala Samantha Bee) and then apologize the day after when they feel the heat, professionally, and sense that their contemptible behavior may lead to a loss of job opportunities, income, and professional marginalization in general. Another very common pattern among people from all walks of life who have committed horrible acts is to try to excuse their behavior by attributing it to factors beyond their own control (drugs, alcohol, sexual disappointments (unfuckability), “the devil made me do it”, and so on).

Depraved is the only word to describe the behavior of people who do not think twice before insulting other human beings with the use of vulgar language. However, the reaction of these people to either real or perceived “corrections” that their depraved behavior may elicit by their employers also indicates that they lack a backbone. In other words, their depraved behavior is also accompanied by political cowardice.

Depraved cowardice among entertainment and public figures in the US (and a similar case can be made about many of the women in Hollywood who are coming out years later, when all is safe and secure, to declare their victimhood and demand justice for having experienced sexual assaults by men who had the power to promote or kill their acting careers) is a symptom of a capitalist culture in which the only things that really matter are money and professional advancement. But the sharp decline of civic culture in the US is also symptomatic of a society that lacks institutions and political leaders that seek to advance a vision of a common good based on the principles of reason, human dignity, justice, equality, and democratic ethos.

The entertainment industry has played of course a significant role all of its own in the deterioration of civic values and civilized behavior in U.S. society through its constant glorification of violence, with its pathological tendency to delink the individual from the social whole, and the use of incessant cursing and bad language in movie dialogues and music lyrics. Rap music, in particular, seems to thrive on the use of profane and vulgar language, and thereby leading the way towards blurring, if not wiping out, the lines between human decency and depravity.

Under this type of cultural environment, it is of little surprise that a racist, misogynist, and megalomaniac leader can emerge and capture the hearts and minds of a significant segment of the citizenry in “the land of the free and the brave.” In fact, such a culture is probably ripe for the emergence of an authentic authoritarian leader from the extreme Right. Apolitical citizens immune to depravity will follow like sheep such political figures because of their socially cultivated incapacity to distinguish good from evil on the political stage. In other words, they are prone to fall prey to extremist political rhetoric due to the paralysis of their intellectual, moral and political nerves brought about by the exerted and systematic pressure of a cultural setting where possessive individualism, crude materialism, and ignorance have become central aspects of the dominant culture and dictate the very meaning of human existence.

In this context, the problems and challenges facing progressive people and movements in the US are multidimensional and thus quite daunting. Challenging capitalism requires not merely sharp critique of U.S. economy and grassroot political activism, but also total rejection of most aspects of U.S. mainstream culture. The ‘60s experience, where all kinds of weird and in the end counterproductive ways of life surfaced, should be a good starting point for the Left of today to draw lessons about what needs to be done in the struggle of remaking the US political, socioeconomic, and cultural setting. Anti-capitalism is not a sufficient sentiment or standpoint of view on its own for guiding us towards an alternative future. What is needed is a new political discourse and the articulation of a vision as to how different life will be under a new, non-capitalist system. The modalities of multicultural politics and postmodernist discourses, for example, are quite congruent with the logic and the needs of globalized capitalism and should, therefore, be subjected to severe scrutiny by those forces of the Left that continue to find socialism an attractive and even necessary alternative for the actual survival of our species, which is being directly threatened by the logic of capitalist power relations and the process of unlimited accumulation. Socialism may be the only way of rescuing the natural world and thus avoiding an ecological catastrophe of unprecedented and irreversible levels.

By extension, the issues of growth, job creation, and immigration, which are now dominated by the Right and populists of the like of Donald Trump in the US, the all-populist government of the Five Star Movement and the Northern League in Italy, must become essential foci of discussion and analyses in the politico-ideological repertoire of an anti-capitalist Left that still believes in the ideas of the Enlightenment and in the constancy of the principles of universal values, so frivolously discarded by the multicultural and postmodernist crowd.

The idea that a halt to growth should be part of a socialist Left vision of the future requires serious reassessment as it smacks of the sort of utopianism that defined socialism in the late 18^th and early 19^th century and made Marx feel obliged to set to scrutiny and critique. The world is not a static entity and technological and scientific advances will continue to take place in modern societies. The only question is over the use of the new tools of technology and forms of knowledge that will continue to develop and emerge. That is, whether they will be used to improve the human condition or to produce further accumulation of wealth for the corporations and the rich.

Likewise, the issue of immigration can no longer be left unchallenged and thus continue to belong exclusively to the political terrain of the extreme Right. The rise of populist leaders and movements in Europe and the U.S. alike cannot be rejected as being simply an irrational and inexplicable phenomenon. Immigration, economic insecurity, and loss of societal cohesion are directly related issues in the age of globalized capitalism and, as such, it does not help the cause of the anti-capitalist Left to ignore the very connections that are clearly behind the resurgence of the extreme Right in the western world.

Finally, an anti-capitalist Left must indeed come to terms with the cultural setting of “late capitalism” as it cannot hope to have its cake and eat it at the same time. Certain types of cultural reproduction, such as a specific type of rap music by black artists, cannot be left unchallenged because they represent a mode of expression by a historically oppressed group in US society. The anti-capitalist Left must rediscover the forms of cultural expression that elevate the human spirit and celebrate universal values. In other words, it must not accept everything under the sun in the name of cultural relativism. If anything, an argument can be made that it is precisely the widespread emergence of such settings that have led to the collapse of civic culture in the U.S. and to the acceptance of depraved behavior and political cowardice as actual symbols of resistance.

About the author
C J Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist who has has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. He is the author of the recently published book Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky on Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (Haymarket Books, USA; Penguin Books, UK).

Aan de vooravond van een nieuwe economische en financiële crisis is het goed om te weten hoe dat nu allemaal zit. Waardoor belanden we iedere keer weer in de penarie? 

Dit boek probeert de basisprincipes uit te leggen van hoe economie werkt.
Aan de hand van de geschiedenis van het bankieren – de ontwikkeling van simpele bewaarplaats tot moderne bad banker – komen we bij de eenvoudige wetten die samen de wetenschap Economie vormen.

Inhoudsopgave
E.W.J. de Rijk Bakker – De piramide van geluk
Inleiding

Ills. Jean Cameron

Deel I – De totstandkoming van het bankwezen
Geld
Van geld naar bank
Van bewaarplaats naar instituut
Instituut en samenleving
De rol van de samenleving in de economie 
De rol van de samenleving in de economie II

Deel II – Basisbegrippen van de economie
Arbeid, tijd en kapitaal

Deel III – De rol van alles
De rol van alles. Taal, cijfers en psychologie

Deel IV – De economie en de toekomst
De toekomst en de economie

Bibliografie

Jarich Schaap – De piramide van geluk. De financiële crisis in breder perspectief.
Trottel Verlag, Berlijn 2009. ISBN 978 90 361 0127 1
Derde druk. De eerste en tweede druk zijn niet verschenen
Oorspronkelijke titel: Die Glückspyramide – Die Finanzkrise aus erweiterte Sicht.
Trottel Verlag, 2009, Berlin
Uit het Duits vertaald door drs. Helga Schmidt
Omslag: IB Producties, Amsterdam
Beren: Jean Cameron, Amsterdam

Naar het: voorwoord