Belgian crisis

[...]In a good materialist logic, we should start from economic developments.. From this viewpoint, things are simple enough: the Flemish employers have an ambitious project of development so that Flanders remains one of the most prosperous regions in Europe. Its great asset is the port of Antwerp, the third biggest in the world (the second after New York if we do not take into account the oil tonnages passing through Rotterdam). But Antwerp is landlocked at thirty kilometres from the mouth of the Scheldt. It can only keep its place through a vast investment programmes in the port area itself, in the arc between Antwerp and Zeebrugge as well as in the whole of the periphery, towards Lille, Holland, Germany. The maintenance of the economic dynamism of the Flemish enterprises and the attractiveness of the area for the multinationals depends on this. On the social level, that assumes a sharpening everywhere of neoliberal policies: reform of social security, flexibility of labour, mobility and training of the workforce, immigration, asylum, incomes policy, not to mention the repercussions on land development, the environment and so on.[...]This is the key point : this project is that of the “new” Flemish employers. The rise in power of this faction of the dominant class began after the Second World War. Its relative weight has sharply increased since the dismemberment of the Societe Generale (the holding founded by William of Orange even before the country became independent), which dominated the economy of the country and had a determinant weight on the parties as well as on the state up to the highest level (the monarchy). The inequality of development between the North and the South of the country has constituted a characteristic trait of the “Belgian provinces” since the 13th century. with its industrial investment in Flanders and Wallonia, the Generale in a way counterbalanced it for some decades in the 20th century. But is did so in a very specific manner. After the war, instead of relying on the industrial jewels to occupy some niches in the international arena, the Generale confined itself increasingly to financially exploiting them. Belgium has then neither the equivalent of Philips in Holland, nor Volvo in Sweden.Subjected to this rentier capitalism, and in the absence of an adequate investment policy, the enterprises of the group were hit head on by the reversal of the long expansionary wave in the 1970s. In the south of the country, already hit by the coal crisis, their restructuring only left a field of ruins. In Flanders, it cleared the field for the expansion of a regional capitalism based on its dynamic small and medium businesses, on its banks (Kredietbank) and on investment by multinationals. The coup de grace was delivered by the Italian businessman Carlo De Benedetti. who described the Societe Generale as the incarnation of a “capitalism in a nightcap”. It was not only comical but also very true. Although repelled with the help of Suez — called to the rescue by the Belgian state — the takeover bid launched by the boss of Olivetti was going to sound the knell of the “old lady”. Since then, there is no longer a “Belgian capitalism”.. We cannot understand the current crisis without taking account of this reality.The institutional superstructure is no longer in synch with the reality of capital. Closely linked historically to the Societe Generale, the monarchy has no real base among the new Flemish employing class The reform of the state in the 1980a and 1990s was accompanied by a certain number of aberrations in the division of competences, in such a way that the federated entities, like the central state, are sometimes handicapped in the implementation of coherent policies. The situation of the region of Brussels, the capital, is particularly untenable: insufficiency of resources, division into 19 communes, cramped territory. Finally and above all, the maintenance of the national social security system, created in 1944, implies that a certain number of levers cannot be fully at the service of the Flemish employers’ project, in its specificity.[...]That this nationalism is no longer the envelope of exploitation and oppression is obvious. But it is completely erroneous to see in the unanimity of the Flemish parties around autonomist demands the demonstration of an atavistic “fascistisation” of the North of the country under the aegis of the Vlaams Belang. Let it be understood: The Vlaams Belang (25% of the votes in Flanders) is a far right party, the nucleus of its historic leadership is fascist and a fraction of the employers supports this party. The danger that it represents cannot be underestimated. But the Flemish employers lead the dance, and they have not chosen to play the far right card, which would imply a confrontation with the powerful Christian workers’ movement. Why would it do so? All the “democratic” parties carry out their activities in the framework that it has laid down. Flemish social democracy, completely thrown by the slippage of its popular electorate to the Vlaams Belang, has no other perspective than to go along with the neoliberal project for Flanders. As to the Greens, they have warm anti-nationalist souls, but present no social alternative.In truth, it is the hegemonisation of the Flemish political class by neoliberalism, not by fascism, which expresses itself in the Flemish front. Hence the nationalist outbidding between parties. With the shift of the economic centre of gravity to the North of the country, Flemish nationalism has become the ideological form of the neoliberal project in the specific context of Flanders. It is this specific alchemy which explains how the split of the last bilingual electoral arrondissement, Bruxelles-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), has become a fetishist question of political life. “ We are the rich ones now and we will lay down our law to you”: that is the symbolic meaning of the vote of the only Flemish parliamentarians on the split of BHV, in the internal commission of the Chamber. The outraged Francophones talk of a “slap in the face”. Arrogance, indeed, has changed sides… Note nonetheless that the Flemish have for their part a certain logic: why maintain this unitary arrondissement when the whole country is split on a linguistic basis, including the Province of Brabant which the Francophone parties refused to make a bilingual area in 1962? That said, this vote is not the expression of a separatist threat. Outside of a minority fringe, the Flemish employers do not desire the break up of Belgium but the autonomy of Flanders in the framework of a state which poses no hindrance to its project.[...]Daniel Tanurohttp://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1426