The last thing the world needs at a time like this is democracy. That is what got us into this mess in the first place. People wanting stuff, and voting for people who said they’d give ‘em that stuff, without showing they’re working.
--Comedian Andy Zaltzman to John Oliver
The Bugle, Ep. 173a
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Harold Meyerson wrote about “The Growing Tension Between Capitalism and Democracy.” Meyerson pointed out that
Over the past year . . . capitalism has fairly rolled over democracy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Europe, where financial institutions and large investors have gone to war under the banner of austerity, and governments of nations with not-very-productive or overextended economies have found that they could not satisfy those demands and still cling to power. The elected governments of Greece and Italy have been deposed; financial technocrats are now at the helm of both nations. . . . It’s as though the markets throughout Europe have had enough with this democratic sovereignty nonsense. (emphasis added)
Essentially, Meyerson is arguing that the entwined financial system of the Eurozone now gives “financial technocrats” more power to dictate any particular Eurozone country’s fiscal policies than that country’s own citizens have.
But as much as Meyerson’s description should be enough already to give one pause, I think framing the situation in this way actually understates the significance of what we are witnessing: a European political and economic coup by the global 1%.
