While I don’t much care for the headline, or for the way that Madrigal constantly juxtaposes the library with media companies (it’s not a good comparison), this article is a fantastic exploration of what a non-profit organization is capable of.
To put it in another way, we are in the middle of an all-out financial emergency, and emergencies have a way of really testing people. In normal times, under normal circumstances, if you tune in to me, you know me as somebody who would tell the federal government exactly where to take their bailout plan and shove it right up their you know what.
But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.
Not that it will make much difference to fans of his, but it’s worth noting.
Even in Capitalists’ Bad Times, Europe’s Socialists Suffer
A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.
Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.
This is just patently ridiculous. It wholly ignores the fact that socialist parties still dominate in Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Norway, and the German Left Party had its best year in ages. The reason why the center-right parties have made modest gains recently is because the policies of previously-in-power socialist parties have greatly lessened the effects of the financial crisis on Europe as a whole. Without those safety nets, the right would be rightly blamed. The article seems to even contradict itself later on:
Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.
So social-democratic policy is alive and well when taken on by the center-right parties, but socialism itself is slowly collapsing? The article’s bold claims at the beginning remain unsupported by the rest of the article, which is largely a discussion of petty power squabbles within social democratic parties. Even worse, however, are the “editor’s picks” in the comments section, including this little gem:
“people can only have a piece of the pie
if there is a pie
capitalism provides the pie
socialism wants to distribute it
to people who did not help to make it”
The bias against socialism by the Times’ staff is pretty blatant. But I suppose I shouldn’t be expecting any different from the paper that ran an editorial that flat-out called socialism “evil” and ran a feature article about an Objectivist after the financial crisis that was caused by unfettered capitalism.
There is one glimmer of hope, however. The most-voted-for comment in the “recommended by readers” section has this to say:
This is just total nonsense. The reason parties like the SPD suffer is because they aren’t socialist any longer. In those countries where the further left have gotten their act together - Germany, Portugal, France - parties to the left of the old reformist social democratic ones have begun to flourish. It is amazing that Erlanger completely ignores the string of outstanding results for the new Die Linke (The Left) party in Germany (which gained 12 percent of the vote in Sunday’s general elections, and is the second strongest party in a number of states), as well as the very strong results for the Left Bloc in Portugal (they doubled their number of parliamentary seats in Sunday’s elections), the popularity of radical left figures in France, the election of a Trotskyist to the European parliament in Ireland.
All these show that actual socialist politics, if aggressively pursued by a well-organized left willing to overcome its sectarian impulses, is popular and can work.
I know it’s old hat for a socialist like myself to claim the SPD lost because it wasn’t left enough, but in the case of Germany’s most recent election, it’s true.
This blog has been retired.
