Euro-skeptics are not the only ones who believe that Europe should
say goodbye to the euro – some social liberals do as well. And instead
of an anti-capitalist critique, there is a kind of economic
neo-nationalism with traces of cultural bigotry spreading on the left.
After the elections in Greece and France, many commentators in
Germany were agreed: Europe is swinging leftward. They claimed that
European austerity, which primarily bestows social impositions on people
in the southern part of the eurozone, unleashed a rebellion against
“practical economic constraints.” Its greatest hope, they reason, is
pinned on François Hollande.
What may sound like good news at first blush, however, has a catch.
That is because the “leftward swing” at the voting booth goes hand in
hand with a Renaissance in nationalist ideas. In light of the failure of
the shared currency, there is something else that could actually be
offered: European solidarity based on a shared struggle against the
insanity of crisis management, a genuinely anti-capitalist redefinition
of European thought. Whether or not that actually happens remains to be
seen, but in any case it is certain that, meanwhile, left
neo-nationalism is going through a period of much greater influence.
French intellectual Emanuel Todd, who was recently interviewed by der
Spiegel, is among its leading thinkers. Todd is an Hollande supporter
and his views document just the kind of crisis management ideology that
is currently being concocted.
Todd characterizes the euro as the “dominant insanity of the ruling
elites” and a “zombie” from which they do not want to be released. He
believes not only that Europe must free itself from the shared currency
but also that six decades of German-French rapprochement will prove to
be an illusion that must be relinquished. “An amicable separation of the
German-French twosome,” he says, is “essential.” It is the only way to
end the misery in Europe resulting from the “clash of two cultures.”
France and the southern European countries will then only have an
economic future if they distance themselves from the unspeakable,
authoritarian German economic culture “that contradicts the French
republican ideal, with its universalist image of human equality for
all.”
Todd did not invent the idea of ascribing the internal contradictions
of the global capitalist system to culture. In Europe alone there is a
long tradition of that, going far beyond the conservative camp. On the
left as well it is a popular substitute for a serious critique of
capitalism. Previously, the role of culturally defined evil that
purportedly gets in the way of the realization of a market economy with a
human face was always played by the United States or the Anglo-Saxon
culture of the total market. Germany, by contrast, was considered part
of the Axis of Market-Economic Good with its tradition of Rhenish
capitalism.
The fact that the hated Germans have replaced the US of late
strangely reflects the course that the crisis has taken in the past
three years. Ten years after euro coins and notes were first issued, the
eurozone is facing a crucial test. The internal contradictions of the
global capitalist system that Greece, Germany, France and other
countries fled with a single currency has destroyed their foundation in
the meantime. Worldwide, sovereign debt increased faster than ever
before in 2009. Refinancing became a problem for more and more countries
– including in Europe. This general development is hurting different
eurozone countries is vastly different ways. Greece and Spain had
profited considerably from the introduction of the single currency until
2007. Thanks to the euro, private businesses as well as public
authorities were able to secure monetary capital far more favorably in
those countries than had been possible with their own currencies, which
were threatened with devaluation. Things have changed since then. In the
face of skyrocketing rates of increased indebtedness, the international
financial markets are only granting states like Greece and Spain credit
at tolerable interest rates when their European partners lend them
credit standing and gradually de facto assume part of their sovereign
debt.
That is precisely the point of the various “rescue packages” that
have been passed since 2010. And even this transmission of
creditworthiness only works if the European Central Bank simultaneously
buys up maligned government securities from the financial markets on a
grand scale, thereby acting as a bad bank.
Germany has developed in a peculiar way since 2009. After the crash
in the fall of 2008 hit the German economy particularly hard due to its
extreme dependence on exports (its 2009 gross domestic product fell by
5%), Germany then began to profit like no other country from the
economic programs that were launched worldwide and the general appetite
for debt. Even China’s trade surplus has greatly diminished since 2009.
Germany has been able to expand its surplus and, for the time being,
make itself into a kind of Island of the Blessed in a sea of crisis.
That export economy based on the accelerating indebtedness of its
partner countries has even put Angela Merkel’s government in a position
to considerably reduce new debt in the short term and pose as the
guardian of stability. Moreover, the combination of a generalized crisis
and the special German economy has made Germany into the new darling of
the financial markets, which has spurred further growth.
This particular constellation will disappear again as the crisis
progresses. Upon closer examination, it is breaking up already, namely
from two sides. The first is the long term austerity policies imposed on
the European partner countries, which is cutting off Germany’s exports
to precisely its most important market. The German GDP grew at a record
5% in the first quarter of 2011; last quarter it was only 1.5%. And even
Germany’s previously comfortable position in the financial and capital
markets is in no way etched in stone. The de facto collectivization of
partner countries’ debt alone will impact on Germany’s creditworthiness
at least as soon as when a haircut becomes necessary not only for a
relatively small country like Greece but also for Italy and Spain.
Todd holds “the German culture of competition and pressure to
perform” responsible for the crisis while he labors under the delusion
that “the French culture of equality” is appointed to save the world.
Although this “explanation” only looks at a brief period of about two
years of the crisis, it brings a clash of cultures, a collision of
irreconcilable economic systems that are fundamentally anchored in their
populations, to a head.
But there is another aspect that is more important than this
discrepancy. The intra-European fractures are not the product of
nebulous economic cultures, even though conservative and left ideologues
continually rattle off various signs of them. The conflicts arise much
more from the division of tasks within an insane crisis management
system. That applies to the strange mixture of austerity politics on one
hand and “growth policies” based on accelerated debt on the other,
which forms the actual economic point of reference for today’s Germany
bashing in Europe.
Since the fall of 2008, international crisis management has been
faced with an extremely paradoxical task. Each state has to borrow more
because it is the only way to postpone the great devaluation of fictive
capital and keep the capitalist businesses functioning. At the same
time, the core capitalist countries are forced to simulate their
willingness to impose austerity to ensure their creditworthiness. These
incompatible handicaps that were set up through the total capitalist
system were provisionally used as collateral in recent years through a
naturally arising international division of labor. The United States
assumed an expansive distribution policy while Angela Merkel, buoyed by
Germany’s temporary special economy, was assigned the counterpart’s
role. But even a simulation policy needs real sacrifices. As an
incarnation of the willingness to impose austerity, Merkel’s Germany was
significantly involved in linking the collectivization of Southern
European indebtedness to those governments’ willingness to plunge their
countries into mass misery for the purpose of maintaining collective
creditworthiness.
The sheer foolishness of this policy calls for radical criticism and
any social resistance is justified in the face of the impoverishment of
the southern eurozone countries. That is precisely why playing down this
systemic madness as a kind of specifically German madness is so
atrocious. Germany’s fate as an economic center is not suffering from
the polemics against it. But for developing an anti-capitalist
perspective, that way of thinking is entirely counterproductive.
Emancipation can only be conceived transnationally or not at all.
25.06.2012
(Translated by Joe Keady)
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