America s Groucho Marxists

Eighteenth century physiocrats believed that only the farmer was productive, and that everyone else was somehow cheating the farmers out of their fair share. Twentieth century Marxists thought the same thing about factory workers.

The No campaign has been vigorous, comprising a motley crew of aging Marxists, anti globalization protestors, traditional euroskeptics, and obsessive sovereigntists. They have sought to capitalize on the vacuum of knowledge in Ireland regarding EU affairs and the Yes side s relative lateness to mobilize.

The new pessimism comes not from Marxists, who have always looked for telltale signs of capitalism s collapse, but from the heart of the policymaking establishment Larry Summers, former US President Bill Clinton s Secretary of the Treasury, and chief economist of almost everything at one time or another.

Such a discourse, if clearly articulated, would be understood and could be endorsed by many, if not by all. At the very least, it would bring a sense of coherence to the actions of politicians, and those opposed to this search for a new European equilibrium mostly Marxists and populists would need to compete with a new vision of their own.

More importantly, no one ignores that the old ways have to go if prosperity is to be maintained. Except for a fringe of die hard Marxists which can still collect up to 10 of the votes there is a keen sense that deep reforms are needed to come to grip with the high unemployment and poor growth of the last decade.

So long as the markets were rising, the paradox of vigorous capitalist development overseen by the world s largest and strongest Communist party confounded only academics and old school Marxists. As the Chinese Communist Party elite and their relatives, foreign financial institutions, and some Chinese small investors (enabled by margin lending) made money on stocks, no one bothered to comprehend the mutant creature they were milking.

On the No side a disparate coalition drawn from both the far right and the far left, including ultra Catholics and unreconstructed Marxists, has sought to whip up hysteria about supposed threats ranging from military conscription to euthanasia and abortion. But the No side has struggled to find a coherent point of reference and seems to have none of the dynamism and vigor that it projected last time.