Globalism

This has been a bad year for parties in power faced with elections. Maybe the problem is not the programs being put forth by the parties but simply the fact that parties in power are being blamed for bad economic situations.

Janet Biehl, author of a newly published book about Vermont social ecologist Murray Bookchin, will be speaking in Burlington, VT on November 19thabout her recent visit to Rojava, Kurdistan where Kurdish men and women have organized themselves into a democratic autonomous region based in part on principles advanced by Bookchin.

To almost everyone’s surprise, Justin Trudeau, leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, won the Canadian elections. The bottom line is a reasonably meaningful geopolitical disjunction of Canada from the United States. It is a further blow to the declining ability of the United States to impose its views on the global situation.

It is clear that, in a world that is living amidst great economic uncertainty and worsening conditions for large segments of the world’s populations, parties in power tend to be blamed and lose electoral strength. So, after the rightward swing of the last decade or so, the pendulum is going the other way.

In his just-released book, Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe,  Antony Loewenstein offers us a superb description of the diminishing power of national governments and international organisations to exercise power in the modern world as multinational corporations consolidate their control over the political and economic life of the planet.

Does not the Trump/Sanders phenomenon reflect significant anxiety on the part of the electorate? Yes, indeed it does. But the anxiety is a worldwide phenomenon, in no way an exclusively U.S. affair. And, once again, as we look around the world, there is almost everywhere a rise of support for parties and/or individuals who speak the language of anxiety and discontent.