P olitical analysis in the “serious” spaces outside of the sometimes very crude social media frenzy tend to assume that the threat to the economy only comes from predatory forms of authoritarian nationalism, but the threats to the economy also come from the liberal right. There has been little discussion of the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) far-right economic policy proposals. Its latest economic policy document, titled The DA’s Plan to Unleash Enterprise, Grow the Economy and Create Jobs , offers often tried and globally failed “solutions” to our economic crisis that are a direct attack on the working class.
These proposals show that the DA is not a middle-of-road centrist project and that it takes a hard-right position on economics. The party’s economic policy proposals offer no real innovation and read as a cut-and-paste job from the free market fundamentalists. The DA’s plan is full of the buzzwords and trite phrases such as “launching a start-up nation” that one expects from organisations like the Free Market Foundation.
There is no engagement with the work of organisations such as the Institute for Economic Justice, or with progressive economists like Duma Gqubule, Busi Sibeko and many others, let alone studying the work done in countries such as Brazil and Bolivia where millions of people have been brought out of poverty by progressive governments. The basic aim of the DA’s economic policy proposals is to remove subsidies to big industries such as .
