The EU, Italy, and the Left's Turncoat Syndrome

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Addressing this post, I commented:

You write: "In order to reverse these damaging trends, a shift in bargaining power back towards labour is surely necessary." 

I agree with you on this and practically every point you make in this post featuring a very important issue. 

We may disagree on your suggestion of an earlier and more pronounced ascent of neoliberalism in the UK compared to Europe; but the matter is many faceted and you may be right in a number of aspects of the issue while your point may appear less convincing in others. But this question is naturally controversial and not that important for my present purposes. 

However, I'd like to point out that continental Europe witnessed a dramatic neoliberal turn in the early 1980s, with Mitterrand making an astounding about-face, transforming a man campaigning on the promise of pursuing staunch socialist policies into a neoliberal champion of austerity. 

More generally, what I find particularly pertinent to the issue that you are writing about in the present post is that the left as the champion of the working population has disappeared. 

Those considering themselves to be on the left are more into protecting the environment than human beings. While the problems with the environment are fictitious, the hardships suffered by millions of people in the EU are real. 

The Italian government has to beg the EU for charity in order to pursue a socially responsible economic policy. 

But the EU figureheads and their bureaucrats do not relent, insisting that their totem be worshiped — the procyclical and antisocial Maastricht criteria whose observance boils down to fetishising meaningless numbers at the expense of the welfare of millions of Europeans. 

It is the high priests against the masses, while the better off Europeans sneer at their disadvantaged brethren. 

Where are the calls for socially acceptable policies? 

Where is the left? Well, the left left long ago.  

The EU is a monument to the death of social democracy, the victory of neoliberalism and the defection of the left to its former opponents and its acceptance of the world view of capital. 

There is an urgent need of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to grips with the past after a period of utter political failure) on the part of the left, who ought to look carefully into the matter of their turncoat-syndrome.