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Bernd Lucke and the shifting sands of liberalism, nationalism euroscepticism and populism

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(Sie können eine deutsche Version dieses Textes bei Makronom, der Online-Zeitung für Wirtschaftspolitik, lesen: hier)

Just over a week ago Bernd Lucke came to Düsseldorf to give a lecture drumming up support for a new party. Bernd who? Well, the former member of the CDU – for 33 years no less – was very much in the German and indeed European news from 2013 to 2015, as the face of the euro-critical, liberal-conservative Alternative für Deutschland. After a power struggle with right-wing nationalists and racists who increasingly came to dominate the party, he and other members of the liberal wing left to form ALFA, the Alliance for Progress and Renewal. Declining to contest the recent German federal election – perhaps the acronym was just too dreadful – it mutated into the LKR, which stands for liberal-conservative reformer. This is the same name as the group in the European Parliament for which Lucke sits, having gained his seat as an AfD candidate in 2014.

I relate this party-political musical chairs, because Lucke’s background and recent political biography, and also his lecture and the subsequent discussion with 75 or so citizens who attended are telling about current trends in German, and beyond that European, liberalism, nationalism, euroscepticism and populism.

I’ll begin by accentuating the positive. Bernd Lucke, a former professor of economics, is certainly knowledgeable about EU and German affairs, especially economic issues. He is personable and, while conservative in outlook, I genuinely believe he personally has no truck with racists. This begs the question of why he has found himself in their company: I will attempt an answer. His analysis of the Euro is not far from the dominant strain of thinking within German (but not international) economics. He deploys arguments expressed in scientific language; however he does so in a very one-sided way. Again, I think I have an explanation.

Let me give you a flavor of Luckerian discourse, focusing on the Euro. [Read more…]

The left-sovereigntist fantasy: A response to William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi

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William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (WM/TF) have written a piece that – under the presumptuous title of Everything you know about neoliberalism is wrong – offers a critique of the idea that nation states need to pool sovereignty in order to enact progressive policies and makes a plea for a “progressive emancipatory vision of national sovereignty”.  It has attracted some favourable attention, not least from colleagues at Eurointelligence. I consider that unfortunate, for the analysis fails, in my view, in both goals. It does not convincingly discredit the view that pooling sovereignty is a sensible response to the constraints imposed by globalisation. Nor does it make the case for a specifically left-wing strategy of enhanced national sovereignty, traditionally the mantra of the hard right, that might endear it to progressive politicians and academics.

The article alone would not necessitate a response: I am well aware that textual analyses do not make racy reading. But given the increasing hold of such ideas on parts of the European Left – some elements of which are taking positions indistinguishable from the extreme right – while social democracy is visibly searching for new ideas, the arguments made are important and a critical analysis is in order.

The piece starts with a statement of what the authors see as the “conventional wisdom” (to be debunked), namely that globalisation undermines national sovereignty and therefore “our only hope of achieving any meaningful change is for countries to ‘pool’ their sovereignty together and transfer it to supranational institutions (such as the European Union) that are large and powerful enough to have their voices heard, thus regaining at the supranational level the sovereignty that has been lost at the national level”. That is a clear and accurate statement. What, according to WM/TF, is wrong with it? [Read more…]