Jack Rasmus

Despite Abenomics 1.0’s abysmal record for the majority of Japanese households, Japan voters elected Abe for another four years. Moreover, his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) captured 290 of 475 seats this past week in the lower house of Japan’s Parliament as well. With its coalition partners’ additional 35 seats, Abe’s LDP controls more than two-thirds majority in Japan’s national legislature, which enables it to pass legislation without recourse to the upper house of the Parliament, according to Japan’s political system. In short, Abe can now get whatever policies he wants passed, including his ‘3rd arrow’ however he defines it, and that means more austerity measures.

So why would Japan voters re-elect Abe again, and give his party a safe majority in the legislature? The answer to this question reveals important broader political trends at work in the global capitalist economy—trends that not only ensure continuation of austerity policies but the likely intensification of such policies.

Abe’s re-election was hardly an endorsement of his failed policies by Japan voters. Barely half the eligible voters turned out to vote last week, down from a 70% turnout in 2009. What Abe’s re-election represents is a collapse of centrist parties now underway everywhere in the advanced economies and a rejection of their policies by the voting public—i.e. policies which have largely failed to generate economic recovery for all but investors, bankers, and big corporations since the 2008-09 global crash. That collapse is making possible a return of even more aggressive, pro-capitalist parties and policies.

Japan voters saw nothing to vote for in the now discredited Democratic Party (DP) of Japan, a mostly center-right party that was in power between 2009-2012 and that failed miserably to achieve any real economic recovery for any but wealthy investors, bankers and multinational companies. So Japan voters stayed home or else voted against the DP by voting for the LDP as a protest.

The dissolution of Japan’s DP as a political force began in 2012 and accelerated this past election, with the DP winning only 73 seats out of 475, well below its projected 100 seats. Today it remains in disarray, divided, without effective leadership or any new ideas as to how to pull Japan out of its current, latest recession.

A similar dissolution is now beginning with the Democratic Party of Obama in the USA in the wake of its recent November election debacle. It too is in disarray, increasingly divided internally, lacking in effective leadership and bereft of new ideas as to how to bring recovery to the rest of the populace .

Like the 20 percentage point collapse in Japan voter turnout last week, in the recent USA midterm November 2014 elections a similar record low turnout resulted in deep losses for Barack Obama and Democrats. Obama and Democrats lost by landslides in both the US House and US Senate in November 2014, largely because key working class constituencies refused to turn out and vote for them after Obama and Democrats failed to deliver in a so-called economic recovery after 2009 that largely left them, and continues to leave them, behind.

Constituencies like immigrant workers, union workers, and youth everywhere in the USA—potential tens of millions of voters—abandoned the Democrats and Obama in USA midterm elections last month. They simply did not turn out to vote. Their major, historic losses in the US House and US Senate in November 2014 have left the USA Democratic Party today fissuring, if not yet fracturing, along several lines; floundering and dividing into a continuing and still dominant pro-corporate wing, on the one hand, and a small, growing vociferous ‘populist’ wing on the other.

In other words, both Japan and USA recent elections reveal the same basic trend: Centrist parties and their policies are now perceived as having failed by most voters, especially those of working class backgrounds. In response, those voters are now refusing to vote and/or voting against those failed centrist parties and policies as a protest.

The political dynamic that accompanies the continuing global economic crisis is thus similar in Japan and the USA, though not exactly. Both reflect a system dominated by two political parties—the one unapologetically pro-business (i.e. Abe’s party and the USA Republican Party) and the other dominated by business interests but harboring wishful thinking but misguided populist elements (i.e the Democratic Parties in both Japan and USA).

The now deeply entrenched political party dynamic in the key capitalist sectors of the USA and Japan goes something like this:
The former conservative parties—LDP and Republican—ensure their investor-capitalist constituencies get rich even though they wreck the economy in the process; the latter centrist Democrat Parties then win elections and ensure those same constituencies get further rich while failing to generate general recovery for all. When the center-right parties fail to bail out the broad populace from the economic crisis, that populace itself in turn ‘bails out’ of the political system and does not vote. That allows the unabashedly pro-business conservative (Japan) and republican (USA) parties to take advantage of low turnout and return again to office. The cycle then repeats itself: the conservative-republicans proceed once again to wreck the economy further while making their wealthy friends still wealthier, and so on.

In Europe the political dynamic is a variation on this trend of growing dissolution of center-right political parties. Due to its more open Parliamentary systems and histories, as social-democratic centrist parties in Europe decline and give way to dominant pro-Business parties after they fail to generate economic recovery, the dissolution of centrist parties stimulate the growth of smaller 3rd parties on both the left and the right. The case of France today and the collapse of the Socialist Party and rise of the National Front is perhaps the most notable case. But similar developments are also underway in Greece with the rise of the Syriza party, with Podemos in Spain, with UKIP in the UK, and perhaps even ‘Die Linke’ in Germany. Other less developed trends are also occurring in Italy, Netherlands and elsewhere.

What’s similar in Europe is that center-right parties are in decline there as well as in Japan and the USA. What’s different in Europe is that the collapse of the center does not necessarily result in the return of the unapologetic pro-business conservative party—i.e. Abe’s LDP in Japan and Republican-Teaparty in the USA. The ability of pro-business parties in Europe to impose structural and labor market reforms—i.e. new labor market forms of austerity—is therefore more unstable and less assured.

How the current efforts to push ‘structural’ and labor market reforms in Europe plays out remains to be seen in 2015. Political maneuvering by pro-business parties and elements in Europe to impose Abenomic 2.0-like and USA Republican Congress-like further labor market forms of austerity has begun. But unlike the USA and Japan, the outcome is less clear.
Meanwhile, as the global economy slows, the push for still more and newer forms of austerity continues worldwide—with Abenomics 2.0 in Japan, with the new pro-corporate/anti-worker initiatives of the USA’s newly elected Republican Congress, with France’s Socialist government’s new labor market reform proposals for 2015, with similar efforts by Italy’s Renzi government, and with Germany’s Merkel conservatives proposing to restrict bargaining and strikes of workers there. Austerity is far from dead; it is simply morphing into new forms with a new global capitalist offensive to expand it about to occur.

Dr. Jack Rasmus
copyright 2014