The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 3 From the series European News In a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the Constitutional Tribunal, which is composed of judges chosen by the government, ruled that fundamental parts of the EU Treaty are incompatible with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This ruling thus denies the primacy of European law over national law, undermining both the political assumption of continental integration and the supranational character of the EU . Vectors of Polish history We can shed light on this event if we consider the four field vectors that cross Poland: its traditional ethnic-religious nationalism, its marked Atlantic tropism, the objective attraction exerted by the European force field, and the looming threat of Russia. The general picture is global collisions: China’s irruption and the crisis in the world order have put pressure on Warsaw to define its st...

On August 15 th , 1971 (50 years ago) US President Richard Nixon declared that the ‘gold window’ was closed. The era of the convertibility of the dollar to gold was over, and the system that had been agreed upon by the victors of the war at Bretton Woods in 1944 collapsed: the regime of fixed but subject to periodical reviews exchange rates had lasted a quarter of a century. Jeffrey Garten, Bill Clinton’s former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade and managing director of the Blackstone Group and Lehman Brothers, is now a historian who has written about Nixon’s decision. He recalls that the turnaround came at a time when the amount of dollars in circulation in the world was four times the amount of gold held in reserve, inflation was rising, Washington was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, and Nixon, the month before, had announced his visit to Beijing, a historic event. In 1959, the economist Robert Triffin had explained to Congress that there were absurdities assoc...

Recovery from the pandemic crisis — writes the IMF in April’s World Economic Outlook — is increasingly visible due to three factors: first, hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated; second, companies and employees have somewhat adapted to the healthcare disaster; and finally governments especially the American have pledged massive government — extra fiscal support. Governmental fiscal interventions have reached $16,000 billion worldwide, have averted collapse of the economy that would have been three times worse, blocking the 2020 recession at a 3.3% drop, and have pushed the recovery rate to 6% in 2021. The overall recovery will be the outcome of a series of divergent recoveries . Only the United States, with a 6.4% growth rate, will exceed the GDP level predicted before the pandemic. The disparity regards healthcare first of all. High-income countries, representing 16% of global population, have already bought up half of the vaccine doses. The real estate, financial and ...

The inauguration of the Draghi government has revived top trade union leaders anxious to be involved by the government of all , all the more so in the era of the Recovery Fund. The word consultation has been the most used in some recent trade union comments. Annamaria Furlan, of the CIS [Italian Confederation of Trade Unions] is explicit in calling for a great consultative pact [ Il Messaggero , 8 th February]. Pierpaolo Bombardier, secretary of the UIL [Italian Labour Union], adds that the consultation must become a method to help the country restart . Maurizio Landini, of the CGIL [Italian General Confederation of Labor] sees the novelty in the fact that social partners have been involved in the establishment of the new government [ Conquiste del lavoro , 11 th February]. The two phases of European imperialist politics In this sense there are many comparisons to the Ciampi govemment of 1993, omitting that consultation was functional to limiting the costs of labour. There ...

The pandemic of the century is putting all political leaders to the test, while a colossal state intervention has taken shape commensurate only to those of the 1930s and the Second World War. Donald Trump is suffering the consequences of the cheap demagogy with which he faced Covid-19 in the beginning, and perhaps of the excessive propaganda with which he precipitated the clash with Xi Jinping's China. Vladimir Putin is coming to terms with historic Russian weaknesses, magnified by the recent collapse in oil prices. Narendra Modi is seeing the spectre of famine descending over India. In Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump imitator, is hounded by the disillusionment of his electors. In France Emmanuel Macron faces, as he did with the yellow vests, the unknowns of a political tradition that was once monarchical and regicidal. Pedro Sánchez, in Spain, is walking the tightrope of balancing the various sections of his shaky coalition, the complicated mosaic of local autonomies and the relat...