Neoliberalism cannot create industrial policy

What we can learn from China
By Ian Welsh
[This article posted on July 16, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://makroskop.eu/25-2024/neoliberalismus-kann-keine-industriepolitik/.]

Washington spent $7.5 billion on electric vehicle charging stations. The result? Seven stations were built. What this says about our economic system.

When China subsidizes electric vehicle charging stations, they get built. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but one source puts the total at around $10 billion. How many charging stations are there in China? Over seven million, of which 2.2 million are public. By comparison, there are just 186,200 stations in the US.

Chinese electric vehicles are sold from the factory for about eleven to twelve thousand dollars, but in the West, dealers charge many times that amount and pocket the profit. So if you want a cheap electric vehicle, you have to figure out how to buy it in China and import it yourself, which is very difficult in most Western countries.

It is amusing that the USA is planning to impose import duties of 100 percent on Chinese electric vehicles – but even then they would still be cheaper and would be sold at a profit by Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers. Even if it remains very difficult in practice to get Chinese electric vehicles in America.

A Western journalist specializing in electric cars recently traveled to China and tested the Chinese models. The article is long and worth reading. The bottom line: Chinese electric cars are – contrary to expectations – better and cheaper than comparable Western cars.
But back to the original topic: As the title suggests, you can't pursue industrial policy in neoliberalism, let alone a war economy. Russia has massively increased its weapons and ammunition production during the Ukraine war without any problems. The West? Hardly at all.
Washington is spending 7.5 billion US dollars on 7 charging stations, reports the Washington Post. That is not only incompetent, it is corruption. Yes, there is corruption in China and Russia too, a lot of it. But that is nothing compared to American and European corruption – it is not even in the same order of magnitude. This may sound absurd. But in China in particular, most corruption is "honest corruption" – in other words, you cut yourself a slice of the cake, but you actually deliver. If a certain number of houses or charging stations are specified, they will be produced.

The corruption described in the example of the American charging stations, on the other hand, is a product of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is about unearned profits. This is most evident in the stock market and the real estate sector. In the post-war period, the stock market moved sideways. The indices basically did not rise at all. With the era of neoliberalism since the 1980s, they then rose inexorably. The strange thing is that GDP growth was higher in the post-war period; so stock prices have not risen since 1980 because of better economic performance, but because of government policy, which was mainly driven by the Federal Reserve.
The thing about unearned profits applies not only to real estate and stock prices, but to almost everything. During the neoliberal era, profit margins have skyrocketed. Our corporations no longer compete on price or quality, but instead try to create oligopolies or monopolies so that they can charge more money without having to provide any significant added value. The way Covid was exploited to raise prices much faster than costs increased is instructive.

In other words, neoliberalism is about unearned money: capital gains; high-frequency trading with AI, where you buy a company with debt, burden it with debt and then dump it; monopolies and oligopolies and getting the government to inflate asset prices or pay far more than certain goods are worth (see military-industrial complex).

Read also:
Light-speed transactions
Tiago Cardão-Pito | April 23, 2024
Of course, there are exceptions, but even these are rather partial. Apple has developed some truly new products, but at the same time they are trying to get monopoly prices for them. Almost the entire internet, which was built as a common good, has been turned into a fenced-in garden; small producers have been marginalized while their products have been stolen. AI is little more than a machine for stealing intellectual property, aimed at small producers – writers and artists.
But let's get back to the impossibility of industrial policy: neoliberal ideology explicitly rejected tariffs and called for free capital flows. Money flowed to the places with the highest returns, regardless of which country. Capital goods and know-how were exported. Until recently, China was a low-cost producer, so the West got involved in exploiting wage cost advantages and moved production facilities there. Apple, for example, developed the iPhones and iPads with the support and know-how of the US government, but produced them almost entirely in China because it was cheaper there.

The problem is that engineers learn best in the factory. So when the West moved most of its production to China, the Chinese learned. After all, they were the ones actually making the goods. And now Huawei's phones are competing with those of Apple and Samsung. They have developed their own operating system. Their chips are not quite as good yet, but they are on the way.

As I have said many times, innovation inevitably moves to the world's manufacturing centers, but with a time lag. It took about forty years for America to overtake the UK. In the case of China/USA, it seems to be about twenty years. That means it has already happened.

But it is no longer just about the production sites themselves. Manufacturing costs in the West are still much higher than in China, now that China is no longer a low-wage country. This is a consequence of neoliberalism: high housing and rental costs were deliberately brought about. The same applies to the high healthcare costs in the USA, which are also the result of deliberate government policy. High living and real estate costs mean that American companies, even if they wanted to and still had the opportunity, could not compete with the Chinese – not even with the help of subsidies, of which there are many more than is generally assumed.

For about six years now, I have been hearing complaints from the Chinese that it is no longer possible to buy a house. Their housing market, like ours, has been bought up by investors, pushing out young people. What was the Chinese response? They allowed their housing market to collapse and the government stepped in: millions of social housing units are planned, and by 2030 they are to dominate the entire housing supply. The state is becoming the largest builder of residential buildings.

We cannot compete with that. It is impossible. Not because it is theoretically impossible – but because our politicians do not want such things. For such a policy, you would have to be willing to hurt the rich. However, they have Congress, the presidency and the politicians in the US and allied countries in their hands.

China has repeatedly proven that it can implement policies that are good for the majority, even if they harm the rich. In our case, the opposite has been repeatedly proven.

A successful industrial policy is not feasible if it is based solely on the pursuit of fictitious profits and the production of really good new goods at low prices. If an entire society is based on the principle of "give me money for the least possible effort", you are in trouble.
China's government is by no means free of serious shortcomings, but it works – and ours does not. This is because in China the government has been prevented from being taken over by private interests. Yes, China is undoubtedly a capitalist country. But the capitalism practiced there is the kind that prevailed in the US in the 1950s and 1960s: you can get rich, but you do it by producing real goods, not by speculating on the financial markets. And you are expected to see incomes rise faster than prices. The central promise is that ordinary people's lives will improve.

The West is finished. Finito. We can't compete. It's as simple as that. To be competitive, Western economies have to reinvent themselves. The introduction of tariffs, although not a bad idea in itself, is not enough on its own. Unless we change our government and economic policies, as well as our ideology – namely, that in order to get rich and stay rich, you actually have to make good, cheap new products that improve the lives of the majority – we will never be able to compete.

Ian Welsh has been a blogger since 2003. He was managing editor of FireDogLake and The Agonist and has written for a number of other websites. Ian is an editor and writer based in Toronto, Canada.

____________________________________________________________________________________

A new era in American style

Letter from Brussels

By Eric Bonse
[This article posted on July 16, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://makroskop.eu/25-2024/zeitenwende-auf-amerikanisch/.]

The EU blindly trusted US President Biden, made itself dependent on the US and ignored the risk of a change of power in Washington. This is now taking its toll – Brussels is not prepared for Trump 2.0. German politicians are also to blame.

For Brussels, Donald Trump is the man who wants to destroy NATO, betray Ukraine and make a pact with Viktor Orban against the European Union. In other words, he is the personification of evil. The bogeyman. The father of all populists and nationalists, who under no circumstances should be allowed to become president of the United States again.

But now his victory in the fateful election in November has become even more likely. The embarrassing slip of the tongue by President-elect Joe Biden at the NATO summit and the failed assassination attempt on Trump have tipped the mood in the US. Europeans are unpleasantly surprised – they are hardly prepared for Trump 2.0.

Of course, the prospect of Trump beating "Sleepy Joe" Biden has already caused some changes. NATO, for example, has started to make itself not only fit for war, but also "Trump-proof". And the EU wants to massively rearm itself in order to supply Ukraine with weapons in the event of an emergency, even if it has to do so alone.

But so far, EU politicians have not really wanted to face up to what is coming. They have not only ignored the risk of a change of power in Washington, but also the deep crisis in which the USA finds itself. At the same time, they have blindly trusted Biden and become all too dependent on America in recent years.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brussels has coordinated every important step with Washington. From the Russia sanctions to the import of American liquefied natural gas to China policy – the Europeans have become followers. They even allowed themselves to be shown up by Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

German politicians are mainly to blame for this. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hangs on Biden's every word. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not take a step without first checking with Biden. German Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck has swallowed the IRA without a murmur, even though it is damaging to Germany and is attracting companies away from the country.

Germany wants a "servant leadership role" – and follows Biden's every word. France, on the other hand, is calling for a "sovereign Europe". But Paris cannot assert itself. The French attempts to counter the IRA or create a "Buy European" clause have come to nothing. This is another reason why the EU has become dependent.

This was not so noticeable under Biden, because at least they were still talking to each other. Under Trump, however, it could get brutal. If the Republican – as he has threatened – passes on the costs of the Ukraine war to the allies, forces the "decoupling" of China and seals off the US market, Germany and the EU will really suffer.

The Europeans are facing nothing less than a new "turning point" – this time not because of Russia, but because of the USA. It brings with it new dangers, new burdens and costs, but possibly also new opportunities – for example, to end the war in Ukraine. It is also conceivable that the EU will finally emancipate itself from the USA.

But above all, German EU politicians have become so fixated on Biden and cultivated the image of Trump as the enemy that they do not seem able to change their minds. After the presidential election in the USA, they want to pursue a Biden policy without Biden – if necessary, even against Trump. That is why the old course is simply being continued.

But it is not enough to freeze arms and financial aid to Ukraine at the current level. It is not enough to boycott all possible and impossible contacts with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the EU is trying to do after the controversial Orban trips to Kiev, Moscow, Beijing and Washington.

This is an expression of helplessness, but not a sensible European policy. It would be sensible to put the current course in US, Ukraine and Russia policy to the test and to take initiatives ourselves before Trump does. It would also be sensible to define European interests – independently of the USA.

But Germany is not the only country struggling with this. Poland, the Baltic states and even the northern Europeans seem unable and unwilling to formulate their policies without or even against the USA. For many Europeans, the bond with America is a fateful necessity for historical reasons; emancipation is a foreign concept for them.

Will Trump bring about a change in thinking? The first signals from Brussels are not very hopeful. There has been a lot of talk recently about making the EU and NATO "Trump-proof". But the Europeans have not even managed to build the much-vaunted "European pillar" in NATO. The US continues to set the tone.

EU policy is also anything but "Trump-proof". If the new president follows through on his promise to take an ultra-nationalist and protectionist course, the German and European economies will suffer even more. If he also chooses confrontation with China and imposes unilateral sanctions, things will get serious.

Then we will see what a new era in American terms means. The German new era due to the Ukraine war, on the other hand, will have been just a mild breeze.
Eric Bonse is a political scientist and journalist. From 1994 to 2001, he worked for the "Tagesspiegel" and the "Handelsblatt" in Paris. Since 2004, he has been reporting from Brussels as an EU correspondent for various German media.

____________________________________________________________________________

Déjà vu of the Cold War

US medium-range missiles

By Ulrike Simon

[This article posted on July 16, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://makroskop.eu/25-2024/deja-vu-an-den-kalten-krieg/,]

Demonstration against the NATO double-track decision in 1986

The deployment of US medium-range missiles is reminiscent of the NATO double-track decision of the 1980s. Is the decision a necessary response to the Russian threat – or will it further escalate the New Cold War?

"Kiesewetter criticizes NATO," reports the Welt. Is a convinced transatlanticist standing up against what is probably the most important military strategic institution in the West? Far from it: Roderich Kiesewetter is not criticizing the fact that the deployment of conventional medium-range missiles on German soil is associated with an increasing potential for escalation. The missile deployment, which was decided at the NATO summit last week, is only coming much too late.

In principle, the member of the Foreign Affairs Committee welcomes the decision as the right response to the Russian escalation. In the context of the conversion to a war economy, it is even intended to be only a transitional measure until Germany receives long-range precision weapons as part of its own military strategy. The German government also welcomes the decision.

However, contrary to the report in the newspaper Die Welt, the German government has stated that this is not a NATO decision, but an agreement between Germany and the USA. From 2026, the USA will station missiles aimed at Russia in Germany, including Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of well over 2,000 kilometers, SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles and supersonic weapons that are still in development. The British and American armies have long used Tomahawks equipped with conventional warheads as first-strike weapons. However, they are also designed to carry nuclear warheads. The stated aim of the deployment is to protect Germany and its European allies.
History always repeats itself twice...

Déjà vu: 45 years ago, NATO's dual-track decision also provided for the deployment of American medium-range missiles, not only Tomahawk cruise missiles but also Pershing II ballistic missiles. At the time, it was also said that there was no intention of escalating the situation, but that the response was to the threat from the East.

In contrast to today, however, there were mass protests. In Europe, millions of people took to the streets. The demonstration in the Hofgarten in Bonn alone counted around 350,000 participants. The plan resulted in an agitated debate about NATO's deterrence strategy. Opponents of the decision argued that it would lead to a new escalation of nuclear armament and make Western Europe a target for a nuclear attack. The missiles would not contribute to protection, but on the contrary would increase the nuclear threat.

Despite all the protests, the dual-track decision was implemented from 1983. However, the dual character of the decision proved to be its strongest argument: the deployment of missiles was linked to the task of entering into disarmament negotiations. These initially failed. But supporters of the decision argued that the deployment of medium-range missiles would ultimately have forced the Soviet Union to give in.

Ultimately, this was decisive in Gorbachev's agreement to one of the most important disarmament agreements of the post-war period, the INF Treaty of 1987. In it, the USA and the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw, destroy and ban the production of all their land-based missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons with ranges of 500 to 5500 km and their carrier systems. In May 1991, the superpowers scrapped their last missiles. Important control mechanisms came into force.
These were effective for almost thirty years – until Donald Trump unilaterally terminated the treaty in 2019. Russia had violated the terms of the treaty, Trump said. Although it would have been possible to verify the accusation within the framework of the agreements, this did not happen. Russia, for its part, accused the US of violating the INF Treaty by deploying Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Romania and Poland. This is because the systems use Mk-41 vertical launchers that can be equipped with Tomahawk missiles.

Trump's successor, Joe Biden, left it at the termination. In the aftermath, Moscow took several initiatives to reactivate the treaty. In September 2019, Putin proposed a moratorium on medium-range missiles, an offer that he tried to expand in October 2020 without success.
Read also:
The future of US foreign policy: strength with or without values?

Ulrike Simon | July 10, 2024
Then, in December 2021, Russia announced that it would be forced to deploy medium-range missiles itself if the US continued to refuse to negotiate a moratorium. NATO denied plans to deploy missiles at the time, but was also not willing to negotiate and again accused Russia of violating the agreement itself. In June 2024, Putin announced that the previously banned missile systems would now actually be produced. Germany and the USA are now selling their plans to deploy missiles on German soil in response to Putin's alleged lack of willingness to compromise, without taking into account the long history of missed opportunities.

The INF Treaty was not the first disarmament treaty to be unilaterally terminated by the USA. President Bush had already terminated the ABM Treaty in 2001. This treaty was signed by Washington and Moscow in 1972 to slow down the nuclear arms race. It prohibited both superpowers from building national defense systems against long-range ballistic missiles and from creating the basis for such a defense.

The treaty was based on the assumption that one superpower would respond to the other superpower's deployment of defensive systems by increasing its offensive nuclear weapons in order to restore the balance of power. The superpowers would therefore quickly move towards an endless offensive-defensive arms race in which each would try to counter the other's actions.

As late as the 1990s, all parties involved were aware that a nuclear first strike by the United States or Russia against the other side would result in an unstoppable reaction that would devastate both countries and confront the world with a possible nuclear winter. In other words: a balance of terror.

However, while Russia systematically developed and built antiballistic defense systems, the US – contrary to George W. Bush's original intention – focused on the war on terror after 9/11. A new study sponsored by the American Physical Society concludes that the US systems for intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles cannot even defend against a limited nuclear strike. Consequently, it is unlikely that they will function reliably within the next 15 years.
This changes the fundamental strategic situation: it is quite possible that Russia could – albeit at great sacrifice – repel an American nuclear first strike. Russia is also ahead in the field of supersonic weapons, as former CIA employee Larry Johnson reports. A large part of this may be Russian propaganda, but Johnson is not the only one to claim that Russia is a stronger opponent in terms of armaments than it was in Gorbachev's time.
Read also:
The USA must break new ground
Ulrike Simon | July 5, 2024

No sign of de-escalation
Kiesewetter and other supporters of the current missile deployment not only "forget" the long history that led to the Russian medium-range missile decision, but also seem to underestimate the real nuclear threat and the opponent. And – unlike in the 1980s – there was no mention of negotiations with Russia at the latest NATO meeting. On the contrary: NATO continues to rule out talks with Putin, Orbán is being sharply criticized for his peace initiative, and the EU is boycotting his presidency.
Showing strength may be a political instrument; if it ultimately succeeds in forcing the opponent to the negotiating table and thus avoiding a hot war, it is based on rational considerations that could make the world more peaceful.

A policy of escalation, on the other hand, which in a dispute with a nuclear power is uncompromising and aims for victory without a realistic basis, is irresponsible. Not only do the plans to admit Japan to NATO represent a further provocation. It also remains uncertain when the hoped-for German "precision weapons" will be available, with which Kiesewetter believes he can force Russia to its knees independently of the USA. Visit Europe (while it still stands).[1]
------------------------
[1]This song by the band Geiersturzflug was popularized by the peace movement and became one of the most successful songs of the "Neue Deutsche Welle".
Ulrike Simon taught English, politics and economics in various school types and levels for almost 40 years. Since her retirement, she has been working as a freelance author and translator. She is a member of the MAKROSKOP editorial team.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Majority principle
Majority voting: a fundamental defect of democracy
By Werner Polster
[This article posted on July 16, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://makroskop.eu/25-2024/mehrheitswahlrecht-grunddefekt-der-demokratie/.]

It flared up briefly during the recent elections in the UK and France, and then disappeared again into the political abyss: the highly problematic majority principle in the form of the corresponding electoral law.

The majority voting system has created something in the political system that is impossible in mathematics, as far as we know: minorities become majorities. A problem that is recognized on the surface, but at best discussed in a technocratic manner, then dismissed and filed away. The MWR, but more generally the political principle of generating majorities, is not fundamentally problematized, although it – together with the resulting structures of state building (federalism) and the system of government (presidential system) – is one of the fundamental defects of modern democracy.

France: the logic of the lesser evil
Let us begin with France in the second round of the election. In the presidential election, only the two top-placed candidates from the first round of voting go through to the second round. It is different in the parliamentary election, where all candidates from the first round of voting, in which no absolute majority was achieved, can run again. At this point, the left-wing parties resorted to the tricks of the MWR to prevent the Rassemblement National (RN) from winning the constituency: all the significant differences in content were brushed aside, and the Nouveau Front populaire "agreed" on a "common" candidate. The results of the two rounds of voting for the Assemblée Nationale show that the RN, which received well over a third of the votes, only came third in the distribution of seats. This means that the political proportions in the electorate are not turned upside down, but they are also not reflected.

The MWR has an even more bizarre effect in the French presidential elections. In the 2022 presidential election, Emmanuel Macron received around 25 percent of the vote. In the second round, the logic of the lesser evil took hold, as it did in the recent parliamentary elections. In the second round against Marine Le Pen, he achieved an absolute majority. The lesser evil as a democratic elite selection?

And then people in Europe wonder why Macron is so unpopular. The question is wrongly posed, he has never been popular. Even in the first round of the 2017 election, Macron did not get more than 25 percent of the vote. Strictly speaking, if Macron ends his presidency in 2027, he will have been the president of only a quarter of the French population, and even less if you take into account the turnout. However, he, who had only received the approval of a quarter of the population out of conviction, was able to implement a pension reform affecting the entire population and other socio-political restructuring measures in the meantime.
Great Britain: straight into a minority government

The majority voting system in the UK has some absurd effects. The Labour Party won about a third of the votes nationwide, but has a two-thirds majority of seats in the House of Commons. This is the mathematical miracle mentioned at the beginning. The electoral system, which is supposed to ensure quick and clear majorities, leads directly to a minority government.

The representation of smaller parties is also strange: the right-wing extremist Reform UK received 14 percent of the votes nationwide, but only has five seats in the House of Commons, while the Liberal Democrats received 12 percent of the votes nationwide and have 72 seats in parliament. The British population will rub their eyes after the election, and it can be assumed that they will hardly recognize their parliament.

Argentina: the logic of despair
Presidential systems, such as the one in Argentina, are inherently tied to the majority voting system. The example of Javier Mileis shows what presidential systems and the MWR can lead to. According to civilized political criteria, a politician who wants to abolish the welfare state and the central bank, including the national currency, in his statements and program – and if you take his professed libertarianism at face value, he wants to destroy and abolish the state – is outside the realm of democracy. He is not seeking a political dictatorship in the conventional sense, but a kind of market dictatorship.

It is hardly conceivable that such a political dark lord could prevail in parliamentary systems with proportional representation. In the first round of voting, Milei did not even receive a third of the votes, but in the second round, the opposite of the logic of the lesser evil, the logic of despair, took hold. Milei received well over 50 percent. The bankrupt Peronism drove the population to a desperate decision, actively supported by a right-wing extremist "alliance".

USA: political perversion

The area of political perversion is entered with the majority voting system in the USA. In the upcoming presidential elections in November 2024, a nationwide election can actually be dispensed with, since in the final analysis it is not the entire population of the USA that decides on the new president, but rather the outcome of the election in five or six individual states (currently probably of particular importance: Wisconsin), the so-called swing states, is decisive. This is where another anti-democratic principle, federalism, comes into play: it is not the individual votes of the electorate that decide, but rather who has won the electors in the individual states, with the votes for the losing candidate being "lost".

This sometimes leads – as was the case in the 2016 election – to the result that the losing candidate may have more (individual) votes, but fewer electoral votes. The result was that Donald Trump was elected and Hillary Clinton withdrew from the field as the loser. The same thing happened in the 2000 presidential election, when Al Gore received more votes than his opponent George W. Bush.

Another peculiarity of the majority voting system can be seen at the level of the elections to the House of Representatives. The parties that govern the individual states, i.e. the Republicans and Democrats, carve up the electoral districts (increasingly digitally "calculated") in such a way that they are guaranteed a majority in each case. The political process is called gerrymandering, after its inventor Elbridge Gerry in Massachusetts (1812) and the emergence of salamander-like shapes in the electoral districts. It means that there are hardly any "open" constituencies left. The manipulation of electoral districts – explicitly allowed by the highest courts – is unique to the majority voting system.

In all these forms of majority voting (in presidential elections, in federal states and in electoral districts), whether in France, the UK or the USA, it must always be borne in mind that it is not social or popular majorities that are expressed in the elections, but – since only a part of the population usually goes to the polls – often enough minorities. It can happen, for example in the glorious leader of the West, that with an election turnout of just over 50 percent (or even less, as in the Clinton election in 1996) and a presidential candidate winning by just over 50 percent, a candidate comes into office who is supported by only a quarter of the population or less. This happened, for example, in 2000, when George W. Bush became president. Incidentally, voter turnout in the model democracy has been below 60 percent for fifty years.
The presidential system – like an elective monarchy
If we turn to the system of government, we encounter another fundamental defect of Western democracies, the presidential system. The pure presidential system with a strong president, as implemented in the USA and France, but also the weakened version, as in Poland and Austria, has little to do with democracy. On the scale of government systems, it is in the immediate vicinity of the elective monarchy and is hardly compatible with a democracy that is only conceivable as a parliamentary one. Power should not be vested in an individual, but only in the people's representatives, the parliament.

Presidential systems are closely linked to the majority voting system, either through the direct election of the president by the people (France) or indirectly via a federal intermediate step (USA). The presidential system as it is practiced in the USA is absurd from the outset, as it cuts away the equality of the voters at the federal level. The presidential system à la française – absolute majority in the first round (which has never occurred in the Fifth Republic) or absolute majority in the second round, in which only the two candidates with the highest number of votes in the first round compete – only becomes apparent in its questionable nature later on. If no absolute majority is achieved in the first round of voting, the electorate is either driven into the logic of the lesser evil (France) or into the logic of despair (Argentina) – both of which are unconvincing political constellations.

Majority voting – whether in its parliamentary or presidential form – can, but does not necessarily, lead to a two-party system. It opens the door to extreme decisions, primarily of an economic nature, such as the Thatcherite economic policy after 1979 or the ongoing restructuring process in Argentina. They are also not immune to keeping antidemocratic forces out of power, namely when the logic of the lesser evil or the logic of despair no longer works in the hoped-for sense (Argentina). Trump would be king, if he were re-elected, not only since the recent decision of the Supreme Court. US presidents have always been kings, which is particularly piquant in view of the historical founding process of the USA.

In this context, the events in Italy at the moment are also interesting, where Giorgia Meloni's party is seeking a constitutional amendment that would result in a mixture of a presidential and parliamentary system, a primato. All this under the guise of democracy. The future head of government, according to the Fratelli, should be elected in a direct vote, which would enormously raise his or her position in the system of government, and one who had come to office by plebiscite , a head of government who would wield power equivalent to that of a president in a purely presidential system, and perhaps even more than that, because the parliament would be marginalized even more by the power of the prime minister. It is vaguely recalled that a similar project was already in existence in the German Reich from 1934.
The sympathies of the right-wing radicals for presidential systems are well known. The underlying calculation is that parliamentary majorities are less likely than majorities via majority voting. But here too, one should not be deceived: the right tends to align with the radical right rather than with the left, as there are plenty of examples of this in history and in the present. One can look up to the north, where one encounters liaisons between the right and the radical right, but one can also look to the west and south.

Nowhere do you encounter a firewall, which is a specifically German architectural construction. For well-known, but not readily mentioned reasons, reminiscent of the year 1933. And: the hijacking of the right by the right-wing radicals (USA) is also a danger known from the present. This also includes the long-running process of decline of moderate right-wing parties in Europe.

Only France allows itself a presidential system in its strongest form. France of all countries, the first European country to abolish the monarchy. It is time to abolish this anachronism, this fossil from the Gaullist era, and to return to France's once-renowned parliamentary tradition. This would require a debate within France. However, it should also be debated within the framework of a new European domestic policy, just as it would be obvious to bury the silly remains of the monarchy in six EU member states.

Lost core elements of democracy
In the course of its history, democracy has lost its two core elements at the grassroots level: 1) the idea of the equality of voters and 2) the idea of representation, which necessarily follows from the idea of popular sovereignty.

On point 1): In the bourgeois societies of the West – which have been called liberal democracies for some time now (mind you: not social democracies) – equality is aimed for in the political sphere as a counterbalance to inequality in the economic and social spheres, but only half-heartedly. In the process of political decision-making, however, it is lost, with the majority of the population being lost through the majority voting system in electoral districts (Great Britain), the political leadership being determined by a minority (USA) or a minority president like Macron being able to make far-reaching political decisions against an overwhelming social majority.