Counter Hegemony

On May 28th, Turkish voters will head back to the polls for a runoff election between incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Erdogan is in a good position to win in the second round. He is supported by a party alliance of ultranationalist, fascist and Islamist parties. Kılıçdaroğlu, chair of the Republican People's Party or CHP, heads a secular-nationalist bloc and promises to reverse all forms of democratic backsliding in the country. The runoff election is held in the context of a severe economic crisis. The Turkish lira is at a record low, and the country is struggling with an inflation rate of more than 70 percent. In addition to high unemployment, the skyrocketing costs of food and rent deprive the majority of the working population of their livelihoods. Erdoğan's third candidacy is also overshadowed by the potential ban of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party or HDP. Since 2015, the Turkish government has been weakening the HDP's party organization through systematic repression. More than 15,000 leaders and members of the party have been arrested. The runoff vote is also relevant in international terms. As the southern anchor for NATO, Turkey plays a pivotal international role, due to its geopolitical location between Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia and its mediating position between Ukraine and Russia. As early as March and May of last year, Turkey initiated peace talks between the two countries.

In late April, regional elections were held in the Austrian state of Salzburg. The big surprise was the historic success of the Communist Party. There are several factors that explain these developments. First, the party addressed the right issues. Its campaign was focused on municipal social policies, primarily on the issue of affordable housing. Second, the top candidate Kay-Michael Dankl convinced many to cast their vote. During the campaign, Dankl managed to communicate radical positions, such as that housing should not be a commodity and that the basic needs of the working majority should prevail over the interests of investors, in such a convincing way that hardly anyone could contradict him. Third, without significant financial resources, the Communist Party has built an increasingly powerful regional organization. Through its consistent work in defense of the interests of the working majority it has gained credibility among voters. Fourth, in light of inflation, growing poverty and rising social inequality, many people are disappointed by politics. This disenchantment has either led to a declining voter turnout, as many believe that politics no longer changes anything, or to electoral successes of “anti-establishment” parties, both on the left and the right. Fifth, the support for the Communist Party in Salzburg was also a response to the crisis of capitalism. Dankl and his comrades have gone against the interests of capital and the logic of profit-making. They have put the common good and the basic needs of the working class in housing, education, health care and public transport above the interests of capital.

Contemporary capitalism is in many ways shaped by social democracy. Just think of the notions of socially just wages, a regulated market, the right of workers to organize, wealth distribution, social welfare, the ethos of solidarity or the understanding of companies as organizations with social responsibilities. These modifications of capitalism can be traced back to the historical struggles of social democratic parties. Today, social democracy is in its deepest crisis since World War II.The video analyzes two interrelated factors that help understand the decline of social democracy. A first factor that explains the current crisis of social democracy is the transformation of capitalism over the past decades. At the root of that transformation is a deep crisis of capitalism; more concretely, the demise of the Fordist-Keynesian growth model of the postwar decades. The transition to neoliberalism not only weakened the labor movement and trade unions. It also demolished the economic foundations of social democracy and deprived policies of redistribution their material basis. Under neoliberal globalization, it has become increasingly difficult to pursue a demand-oriented economic policy and to expand the welfare state.A second factor that explains the current crisis of social democracy are changes of the social structure. The shrinking of the industrial working class, which has always been the core constituency of social democratic parties, has contributed to their decline. This process has gone hand in hand with the weakening of trade unions. With the transformation of an industrial society into a postindustrial society, social democracy has lost its traditional clientele. To prevent a permanent drop in voter favorability, social democratic parties have increasingly shifted their programmatic orientation toward the middle class. This strategy has made many workers politically homeless. Large sectors of the working class have turned away from social democracy and towards right-wing populist parties.

Im Februar 2023 stiegen die Verbraucherpreise in Österreich im Jahresvergleich um 10,9 Prozent. Im Monat davor hatte die Inflation sogar den höchsten Wert seit 70 Jahren erreicht. Die vorherrschenden Erklärungsversuche sehen die Ursachen für die Teuerung vor allem in überhöhten Staatsausgaben, einer zu lockeren Geldmengenpolitik und hohen Lohnabschlüssen. Die Erklärungsversuche greifen jedoch bei näherer Betrachtung allesamt zu kurz und blenden entscheidende Faktoren aus. Die Vorstellung, dass die Notenbank direkt über die Geldmengenpolitik den Geldwert und somit die Inflationsrate „steuern“ kann, ist weder theoretisch schlüssig noch empirisch zutreffend. Es gibt auch keine klare Korrelation zwischen höheren Löhnen und Inflation, weder theoretisch noch empirisch. Die zweite Folge von Counter-Hegemony wirft einen kritischen Blick auf diese Erklärungen und beleuchtet die wahren Ursachen für die Inflation. Erstens haben die durch die Covid-19-Pandemie verursachten Störungen der globalen Lieferketten zur Teuerung beigetragen. Zweitens sind die im Zusammenhang mit dem Ukraine-Krieg gestiegenen Energiekosten ein enormer Preistreiber. Die Corona-Lockdowns und der Ukraine-Krieg sind jedoch nicht die einzigen Ursachen für die Inflation. Ansonsten wären die aktuellen Teuerungen lediglich ein vorübergehendes Phänomen. Es spricht jedoch einiges dafür, dass dem nicht so ist.

In November 2016, the Colombian government and FARC-EP guerrillas signed a historic peace agreement that aimed to put an end to decades of civil war. More than six years later, violence continues todominate large parts of the country. Under Colombia's first leftist president, Gustavo Petro, however,the chances have increased to bring the armed conflict to a close. To achieve "total peace," the Petrogovernment must implement the FARC-EP peace agreement, resume peace talks with ELN guerrillas,and target right-wing neo-paramilitary groups and drug cartels.