Recent events in the Eurozone, the single-currency area, which for petit-bourgeois Europeism represents the most advanced stage on the path towards a “concordant and politically united Europe”, confirm the frailty of this fanciful vision, only too ready to convert to outright nationalism as soon as the contradictions in the capitalist mode of production aggravate imbalances and inequalities, fuelling conflicts between states, as well as the class struggle.
1- Stubborn illusions
Five years on from the “sovereign debts” crisis, the developments of the Greek debt negotiations have again highlighted the limits and imbalances of the Community’s equilibrium and the contrasts between its members. The illusory nature of the plan for a peaceful integration of nations on an equal footing seems increasingly evident, to the extent that today even the most determined supporters of Europeism are faltering, faced with a small nation being condemned to economic ruin and social catastrophe due to the imposition of policies imposed on it by the ruling power. The other myth that continues to drag on by inertia - though increasingly clouded by the social effects of the crisis, the spread of poverty and migratory pressure - would see a “Europe that is a model of well-being, welfare and respect for human rights”.
It is in the name of this model that the nation crushed by the claims of its creditors has expressed itself in an anti-austerity referendum and, at the same time in favour of Europe and keeping to the single currency. Obviously the mirage of a European federation (1) which, according to the vision of the founding fathers, was to have acted as a guarantee of stability and cooperation both on the continent and worldwide, continues to hold some rather faded but die-hard fascination.
Reality, however, is proceeding in a different direction. The world order emerging from the second imperialist conflict, already upset by the collapse of the Soviet block, is revealing new and more serious symptoms of instability. Today, Europe can be seen as the meeting point of complex international tensions dividing East from West along a line joining the Baltic and Black Seas, and North from South along the Mediterranean axis, with its magnetic pole the other side of the Atlantic (the USA) more active than ever in maintaining the continental area within its own orbit. The theatres of the European agreement belong to a time when the tensions involved far-off areas or the outskirts of the continent: but with the economic crisis and geopolitical tensions bringing into play the vital interests of national capitalisms, power relations are becoming brutally explicit and the ghosts of past, not-so-distant nationalisms, abuses of power and wars that were to have been banned from history forever are once again looming large. Who knows if the other ghost, constantly exorcized but always lurking somewhere in Europe, may appear again…
The most die-hard illusion is that this crisis, dating from as far back as 2008, will be overcome sooner or later: that, “when the night is over”, the whole, splendid mechanism for creating wealth will start up again, including salaried workers in its beneficial upward spiral. But the trend, particularly in Europe, is not following the pattern of a cyclical crisis: the extremely high level of development reached by the forces of production reduces average profits to too small a fraction of the total capital invested, so that the dynamics of accumulation are slowed down, investments are scarce and there is a swell in the plethora of fictitious capital in search of income outside the sphere of real production. This GDP that fails to grow, or fails to grow sufficiently, is the original reason for harsher political and diplomatic relations: the slice of the cake is getting smaller and smaller, so that between classes, as between nations, social and state-to-state conflict is flaring up. It is the need intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production that condemns the present European crisis to evolve, and certainly not towards renewed harmony between States, but towards growing instability, which does not exclude traumatic splits and radical changes in the area’s political balance.
2- Crisis of the Eurozone and crisis of world capital
Interviewed about the prospects for growth in Europe, an Italian industrialist who has relocated to China declared: “Someone should be investing”; however, his answer to the question of whether he would do so was, “I wouldn’t be able to compete any longer.” (2) In the rest of the interview the industrialist, backed by the authority of his experience in the field, stresses that there is no comparison between the cost of production in China and in Europe. Despite subsidies, tax relief and the Jobs Act, the cost of a worker in Italy is still too high compared to his or her counterpart in China. It is not possible to make comparisons between the other costs involved in the efficiency of the country’s system (legislation, bureaucracy, corruption, infrastructures, taxes). Nonetheless, an advanced capitalism such as Europe’s is marked by an advantage in the rate of hourly production when compared to younger capitalisms, however rapidly they may be growing. The higher ratio of the constant component of capital with respect to the variable component lowers the “cost of work by unit of production”, compared to types of production where there is a lower component of constant capital. This means that the unit price of production is generally lower and therefore more competitive than a product with a larger component of human capital. Why not invest in Europe then?
When our industrialist thinks of possible investments in Europe, he undoubtedly has in mind production with a high proportion of technology and constant capital. Any decision to rely on reduction of the so-called “cost of labour” will in no way make salaries comparable to Chinese or other emerging economies’ rates, at least in the medium term. No sort of Jobs Act could do that! In accordance with these considerations, however the industrialist’s reply is taken, the investment proves unprofitable in capitalist terms. The capitalist’s summing up confirms our theoretical picture of the problem: there is no investment in Europe because the high organic component means that profit margins are already too small. Better to invest in China where this ratio is lower and guarantees higher profit margins. Here in Europe attempts are made to contain labour costs but they are insufficient. It becomes necessary to dismantle indirect and deferred salary, or so-called welfare. Politicians all agree here, when they insist on the “need to do away with wastage” in schools, in healthcare, in pensions, wherever spending has become “unsustainable” for capital.
This is where the “problem of Europe” lies: in the increasing difficulties of accumulation. On a world scenario of economic growth at falling profit rates, European capital aggregate reveals the slowest recovery, with average increments in GDP only a little over 1%, as against the 2-3% of the USA, the 7% of China and an average of around 3% in the G20. The scarcity of investments in the whole of western Europe (in particular in Germany) is a symptom that the difficulties in accumulation affecting the whole of the world economy are strongest in the old continent of Europe. The lasting troubles of Europe’s banking systems, which are what, in the final analysis, lie behind the tribulations of the Eurozone, are a consequence of the failure to re-launch production after the 2008 crisis. At the time, with the burst of the world financial bubble seriously hitting European banks laden with toxic assets, huge public bailouts were necessary to transfer the losses to state balances and sovereign debts. The inflow of capital to banks was not, however, directed towards production – still engulfed by an excess of production capacity and low profits - as had been hoped by their saviours, but contributed further to fuelling speculation, so that by the end of 2011 the financial bubble of derivatives amounted to almost ten times world GDP! (3)
In turn, the sum of sovereign debts in OECD countries had almost reached the level of the whole world GDP. The situation was particularly critical in Europe, where it became necessary to place a growing amount of State bonds on the market, with increasing interest rates, especially for financially and economically frailer countries. At this stage, international speculation (i.e. banks) began to get rid of bonds they considered to be at risk, bringing down the price of them and allowing the interest rates to soar. Since these rates revealed the imbalances between strong and weak countries, the “virtuous” North and the “wasteful” South, there arose the risk of the explosion of the monetary Union. The risk weighed heaviest on German and French banks, highly exposed to the outlying countries in difficulty, because of credit that had been allowed in the phase of expansion and also the heavily devalued State bonds. To cope with a new banking crisis and to sustain the value of State bonds, the ECB intervened several times: first through new loans to banks in exchange for sovereign bonds, then through financing at extremely low interest rates (Ltro) and finally through Quantitative Easing (QE) in February 2015. All this without providing a solution to the crisis: from 2009 to 2014, losses by the big European banks came to a sum equal to a year of Greek GDP. To save the big credit leaders – excluding the sea of medium- and smaller-sized institutes, Landesbanken included – between spending on bailouts and lower fiscal income, in the same period the public coffers of the Eurozone countries lost a little under 240 billion, destined for “saving” Greece (4). The policy of budgetary rigour imposed by international capital – through the European institutions – on the whole continent is thus a consequence of the banks’ difficulties: it is the price that the European proletariat pays to bailout the creditors and not those in debt.
The Greek crisis is only the tip of the iceberg in a general debt crisis: it is the scapegoat and at the same time an opportunity for creditors to profit from interests on the new loans. Those in debt are “saved” by being stripped to the bone and obliged to renew credit that strengthens the chain of debts in a sort of continental system of usury. But we certainly cannot hope for Greece, or better the Greek proletariat, to save Europe’s banks. Instead, capital relies on the whole of Europe’s proletariat, which finds itself facing higher and higher bills to pay. The cost of bank bailouts is loaded onto the shoulders of the proletarians and the half classes on their way to proletarianization: taxes and tariffs increase and the so-called welfare services – the boast of a worn-out “European model” - decline.
3- The internationalization of capital and Europe
The struggle of European capitalisms, including Germany’s, is a consequence of the senility of their social systems and the supreme development of production forces. What is more, compared to competing capitalisms, Europe’s aggregate capital pays for the lack of a central political organism able to draw up the necessary measures for facing world competition that is more aggressive than ever before. It suffers from a low capacity for manoeuvring the levers of the economy, which other capitalisms organized in the form of central States can adjust in good time. Although these interventions (monetary manoeuvres, expansive manoeuvres and tax adjustments) cannot solve the ills of a capitalist economy as such, as an immediate effect, they serve to fill up the cracks and unload the difficulties onto other shoulders. The ECB has intervened actively to finance the banking systems but it still suffers the great limit of not being a real creditor able to finance States directly. Draghi’s “whatever it takes” is not enough to hold Europe together. Greater political integration would be needed but this prospect clashes with the continent’s historically ingrained national divisions and no amount of “pro-Europe” willpower can make it happen. Europe’s unsolved problem is national fragmentation and no supra-national form will be able to find a definitive solution to this. Nonetheless, for European capital it remains an unavoidable issue that conditions development in the area, aggravates its crisis and at the same time provides an impetus towards overcoming it.
The trend towards some higher form of integration amongst the member States of the Eurozone is driven forward by the process of the internationalization of capital and the actions of financial capital and the large multinational groups, which tend to impose their rules on a world scale: maximum freedom for capital, maximum of free trade, internationalization of economic law, the overcoming of national barriers to this expansion. The movement, which starts out from the USA and involves all the large, European, industrial-financial groups, implies a conflict between the international and national dimension of capitalism on various levels.
The annulment of the sovereign prerogatives of national States (5) and the consequent supra-national concentration of powers is guided by the strongest national capitalism, which urges the creation of free trade areas in which its own economic predominance can be brought into play. The United States plays this part full-scale, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In turn, Europe is forced towards greater integration by the dynamics of the world crisis. Yet here, too, it is the strongest capitalism that guides this aggregation, directs it and tends to subordinate it to its own interests. On a continental scale, Germany carries out the action that the USA carries out on a world scale: the attempt to impose a series of rules to facilitate the subordination of national economies to the ruling economy. There could be no better demonstration of the contradiction between the international vocation of capital and its unavoidable national rootedness, its identification with the national bourgeoisie. A supra-national entity of capitalist nations cannot be attained by ideal, fraternal impulses but only by acts of imperial dominion sustained by real coercive force. In the Eurozone, the weapon of internationalization is the economic blackmail of the debtor by the creditor, just as the control of capital flow is at a world level. It is real power, not in the form of armies but of effective acts of economic warfare (6).
The Eurozone is the ideal space for placing the strongest capital in a position to effectively exercise its drive towards the concentration of production and finance on the one hand, and, on the other, towards the expropriation of growing masses of people who are plunged into a condition where they no longer have any reserves. Free from sovereign limits that must, to some extent, take into consideration the “national interest”, this basic act of capitalism can play out its role in concentrating wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other: wealth for the bourgeoisie and poverty for the proletariat, wealth in central areas and poverty in outlying ones, whether urban or continental. The question of the debt has become the lever for accelerating this process.
4- Continental supremacy
The latest Greek debt crisis has made Germany’s position of supremacy more evident. What the military force of two world wars failed to achieve is gradually being brought about by the forces of industry and finance. The German vision is imposing itself with the unconditional support of a vast area of direct influence and the blessing, obtorto collo, of the continent’s medium-sized powers, including France. After the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, sparked off by the immediate recognition of independence in Slovenia and Croatia by the pro-Europe Chancellor Kohl, Germany’s European policy moved in the direction of greater affirmation of its leadership on the continent and freedom both from conditioning by its major European partners and (with far greater caution) dependence on its US ally-and-leader.
The euro, initially presented as the counterweight to unification with the abandoning of the Deutschmark, was a decisive factor in this process: it increased the differences between more or less developed areas in Europe and favoured the acquisition of continental markets thanks to the greater productivity of the German industrial system combined, at the beginning of the new century, with a competitive policy of wage restraints. At the same time, the German banks financed exports through generous loans, which were the origin of their present difficulties. The Community currency was valued low enough, compared to Germany’s economic force, to work to its advantage for exports outside Europe, but at the same time strong and stable enough to take its place alongside the dollar as an international currency and attract foreign investments. Starting from these bases the Eurozone became a platform for Germany’s global projection and, at the same time, the area of incubation for successive crises and probable dissolution.
The strength deriving from the euro’s relative weakness has been an important factor in directing the recent course of German capitalism. Since the introduction of the euro, German capitalism has invested very little in increasing productivity by means of new technologies saving on human labour, with the result of slowing down the trend towards a falling profit margin: it was able to do this because the particularly favourable economic and monetary context in the area still allowed it to maintain its competitive edge and accumulate enormous foreign surpluses over the years. On finding difficulty in valorizing itself in the production process,this overproduction of capital fuels the financial circuits and encourages relocation and the purchase of production capacity abroad. The weight of German capitalism in the continental and global context also increases through the process of centralizing capital and production in the hands of the large groups that form the industrial and financial fabric.
5- Centralizing and disaggregating action
The story of the action taken over the Greek debt demonstrates that Berlin is now strong enough to use the Eurozone’s supra-national dimension to consolidate its own leading position. After a show of (rather than actual) “resistance” to the Troika’s demands, the Greek government, which rose to power on the strength of a mandate to contain the stranglehold claims of its creditors, finally gave in to worse conditions than had been established before the theatrical referendum coup. The fact that the Greek parliament is now drafting and approving the reforms dictated by Brussels/Berlin shows that the force brought into play by Germany and vehicled by the Community institutions does have the power to condition events.
During the latest negotiations on the Greek debt, the German government brought its whole weight to bear to get Greece out of the monetary Union. Greece remains a member but the agreement reached in mid-July with representatives of its creditors makes the bailouts dependent on a radical series of reforms promising saving, lay-offs, privatization. Thus, the noose around the country’s (and therefore first and foremost the proletariat’s) neck is given a further twist and the agony is prolonged. The German policy line on austerity is confirmed and the possibility of Greece abandoning the euro is certainly not excluded. Even more so now that “Grexit” would be less of a risk, thanks to a series of moves that have contained the cost to Germany and its banking system, to the detriment of other member States (7). However, Germany’s position has upset the apple-cart: the United States considers it a serious threat to the stability of the Eurozone and fragile international balances, France and Italy have opposed the exit of a Mediterranean country in order to avoid further imbalance in the Eurozone in favour of Germany and the group of “creditors” (8). Added to all this is concern over the consequences of an implicit declaration of non-irreversibility of the euro. New speculation on the endurance of the Eurozone with a massive sale of sovereign bonds from its outlying areas would once again dramatically raise the question of the continent’s banking stability with inevitable repercussions on the world financial system. As though in a planetary contest of Snakes and Ladders, the game would start again from square one of the banking crisis, with far greater difficulties to limit it and with inevitable effects on world credit systems.
Nonetheless, after moving like a bull in a china shop, the German government has advanced proposals for reinforcing Community interaction (9), followed by the plan to create a “Finanzminister” with authority to control the financial and fiscal situation in each member State of the Eurozone (10). Germany’s wish to proceed towards integration is obviously stronger than that of the French government, which, as per tradition, is entrenched in its refusal to lose any sovereignty in the name of national prerogatives. The proposal for a centralized executive organism with powers of intervention and veto in the fiscal policies of individual countries, legitimized by a parliament of the Eurozone, is a specific, national manifestation of German-style Europeism and an expression of the desire to impose its own vision on the whole of the European context, which is the German response to the questions posed by the internationalization of capital and the challenges of global competition. However, the integration project under German guidance is encountering enormous obstacles, though destined to proceed in the long term, but not in time to keep up with the relentless pace of the world crisis. Even if the process leading to a supra-national centralization of powers were to proceed according to the German perspective, it would be unable to take concrete shape in a context that is still a mere aggregation of nations without causing a situation of chronic instability and conflict.
6- Nations and classes
This power battle in the European area results in the destabilization of the old relations and the start of a phase of greater instability. The attack on sovereign prerogatives re-ignites nationalism and threatens the balance of the Union, as it reveals its real prospects: the only way to integration is to take away national sovereignty and this cannot take place by means of a peaceful and concordant process. Europe is increasingly destined to become a place of political clashes between nations and within them, to contrast or support the tendency towards the supra-national dimension, which seems to be looking more and more like a “German Europe”.
European nationalism manifests its renewed vigour both in the exaltation of the German model and in anti-German resentment in Mediterranean Europe. New walls are raised to protect national borders from the contamination of migration (after Hungary, there follow Germany, Austria, Croatia, France, Switzerland, Denmark…), whilst the refugee emergency fuels xenophobia from Slovakia to the Baltic and from the United Kingdom to Germany. The impulses towards independence and separatism in small nations incorporated in larger national units (Scotland, the Basque country, Wallonia) re-emerge and those forces in favour of exiting the Euro or the European Union itself (United Kingdom) are gaining ground more or less everywhere. The return to nationalism is a sign of agitation amongst the half classes, who perceive the danger of instability and identify the defence of their own status with the defence of their country’s borders. In the ongoing absence of an internationalist class party, the proletariat feels the attraction of these deviations, sustained by the trade-union bosses who appeal to “industrial policies” to defend national employment.
This blossoming nationalism is the fruit of capitalist concentration proceeding on a continental scale, of the attraction that the German magnet exerts on capitals and the labour force, of the hard conditions that the strongest capitalism imposes on subordinate nations, so that they will meet the parameters compatible with capitalism imposed by worldwide competition. These parameters are basically linked to the capacity of the State machinery to provide capital with the most favourable conditions for the exploitation of salaried work. The demand for efficiency in smaller nations to be raised closer to the level of the strongest capitalism prepares the ground for economic colonization, for their resources to be divided up amongst the big multinational groups and the subordination of their territory to the interests of the dominant capitalism in terms of infrastructures, communication routes and power lines.
In the end, behind all the disorder and instability rages the eternal war of capital against the proletariat, raised to an international level. The objective is to make capital more profitable, ensuring the availability of growing masses of labour to be exploited without excessive limitations and at competitive prices. An iron hold over the proletariat, labour legislation more and more in the interests of the employers, limits on the field of action of the unions, closure towards any form of independent class organization, the repression of any hint of rebellion: these are the conditions necessary for a ruling capitalism – once the smaller nations and their proletariat have been subordinated – to be in a favourable position for competing with other powers, economically today and in the form of active warfare tomorrow. German capitalism first began this war against the proletariat at home, with labour legislation (the Artz law) on which the Italian “Jobs Act” and the various “reforms on the side of offer” are modelled (affecting production conditions in the interests of capital), systematically evoked and imposed as the universal condition for exiting the crisis.
What is really at stake can always be traced back to the clash between capital and labour:
by recognizing this the European proletariat can avoid being drawn into the net by the nationalist sirens and respond on the same terrain as that imposed by capital – international and class terrain.
7- Shifting imperialisms
The way in which events in Europe are proceeding confirms the delineation of a more homogeneous northern area of the continent (11) integrated around the hub of Germany on an industrial level and incorporating the old Mitteleuropa, the line running from the Baltic to Finland (the old Germany’s direction of expansion), the Rhine axis (France-Benelux) and northern Italy. This industrial integration corresponds with partial monetary integration (an important part of Mitteleuropa is missing) and political balances increasingly revolving around Germany. This process links France and Italy, intermediate powers, more and more closely to the fate of German capitalism and limits the potential for independent imperialist tendencies. Playing against the German proposal to become the sole, dominant hub of a more restricted and cohesive area, is the fact that France and Italy would thus be taking on the thorny issues of the turbulent Mediterranean, starting with intervention in Libya, management of migratory flows and the fight against Islamic terrorism.
France, no longer in any condition to reassert its own grandeur, sees itself obliged to bend to a subordinate role, perhaps masquerading as joint French-German, in ruling the continent, attenuated by its condition of “privileged nation”, dispensed from the stability pact.
Italian imperialism emerges even more downsized. Despite its industrial decline, Italy remains the second largest manufacturing power in Europe but has become more dependent on the value chain headed by Germany: and German capital is taking over the most attractive companies. Its independent guidelines on export are weakened by the instability of the Mediterranean area and the sanctions against Russia, supported up to now by Berlin. In these conditions and once again in line with historical precedents, Italy will be driven to align with the strongest power.
On the eastern front, relations between Germany and Russia are becoming ever closer. Germany’s approval of sanctions against the “invasion” of the Ukraine was more the result of obedience towards the US ruler than of real conviction (German industry itself loses out here); on the other hand, the essential dependence of the German production system on Russian power supplies (which already cover 40% of her demand) is destined to step up following the announcement of a double “North Stream”, the pipeline that crosses the Baltic Sea, runs round the Ukraine and other countries once under Soviet dominion, and directly into Germany. The dual line decrees the end of the South Stream project which was supposed to run through the Black Sea and cross Greece, linking up to the Balkans and Italy – a project which was to have involved and enriched Italian companies. This is another hard blow to Italic imperialism and one which confirms the northward shift of Europe’s barycentre, whilst Mediterranean Europe, grappling with growing instability, assumes the contours of a buffer zone, destined to absorb the tensions of the middle-eastern and north-African area, filtering and monitoring the huge migratory flows towards northern Europe and the German pole of attraction.
If the close links with Russia in terms of energy supply are seen in conjunction with the importance assumed by the Chinese market, the second most important after the EU for German exports, the expression “important Eurasian aggregate” may be a good definition of relations between German Europe, Russia and China (12).
Relations between Germany and China have even been defined “symbiotic”, because of the exchange of technology and investments. Grappling with overproduction of goods and capital, which force it to integrate with new markets, the Asian power is working on a project for new “Silk Roads” and a high-speed Berlin-Beijing rail connection, passing through Moscow (a journey that would take only two days!). The project would allow China to cut down on the use of sea routes and reach the Mediterranean and Europe overland, not forgetting a certain political-military value of an anti-American nature (13). The German-guided EU has supported China in the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, smoke in the eyes of the United States and Japan, since it is the financial basis of Chinese strategy. Just as significant here are the increasingly important Russian-Chinese relations in terms of the exchange of energy and industrial technology. If these relations strengthened, they would already trace the outline of a possible imperialist alliance to counter the Atlantic block, along the line of demarcation between the “Tellurocracy” (“Eastern” Land) on the one hand and the “Thallasocracy” (“Western” Sea) on the other, theorized by certain European neo-fascist currents, in particular Russian ones (14).
This tendency, which has material bases but has not yet taken shape as a definite strategy by German imperialism (whilst it has in China), is nonetheless destined to clash with stubborn resistance from the United States, starting with the NATO’s warlike activity on the Ukrainian front and in the Baltic, useful for involving its European allies, in particular Germany, in the growing tension with Russia. US pressure to reach a quick agreement on Atlantic trade (Ttip) is moving in the same direction, all to the advantage of the multinationals and western economic ties in a common legislative framework, with the effect of consolidating present military alliances (15).
As to the Greek crisis, first through the IMF and subsequently in a statement by the Secretary of the Treasury, the USA has openly distanced itself from Germany’s refusal to accept restructuring of Greece’s debt, pressing for a cut of at least 30%. America’s irritation with its ally is well founded: Greece’s exit from the single currency would undermine the southern flank of the NATO right in the midst of growing tension in that area and would weaken the European Union, founded to consolidate the pax americana on the continent in an anti-Soviet and now anti-Russian perspective. Most important of all, Germany appears reluctant to assume the role of privileged delegate for American interests in Europe, has a stubborn attitude to several issues (we might remember the refusal to intervene in Iraq and Libya) and devotes too much enthusiasm to relations with Russia and China. Whether the German government and the social and economic forces it represents is aware of this or not, the politics of austerity are undermining the very bases of stability in Europe and perhaps conceal a temptation to be truly free from the guardianship of Big Brother on the other side of the Atlantic. All this comes whilst diminishing US power, having moved the barycentre of its global strategy to the Asian scenario, is in dire need of reliable support from Europe to the west
China, too, needs European stability revolving around Germany, not to maintain the old order but to subvert it. Having already got its hands on the Piraeus, China is now making a similar attempt on the Greek railway network, to turn Greece into the hub for a commercial drive into the Balkans and East Europe. Right now, taking advantage of privatization and a steep reduction in prices, a large German public company (the mysteries of neoliberalism: privatization at home so as to sell to a foreign State!) is gobbling up the Greek regional airports. The two powers seem to have reserved for Greece the key role in an international network of infrastructures as part of the new Eurasian order. In the end German capital does not seem so indifferent to Greece’s destiny… Perhaps a return to the dracma would make it possible to buy up Greek property at even lower prices.
What is certain is that, driven by the tumultuous development of world capitalism and the crisis of overproduction, relations between imperialisms have entered a transition phase. The leading American imperialism, whilst still dominant from a political and military point of view, is encountering growing difficulty in exerting its global supremacy. Added to the rise of the young Asian capitalisms and chaotic instability in the Middle East, comes Europe now; and Europe is the basic pivot of the old, Atlantic-centred world order, always hinged on it. And the problem certainly does not arise in Athens but in Berlin, no longer physically divided into East and West but for this very reason a bone of contention between the Atlantic and Eurasia.
8- Our perspective
The crisis of the Eurozone provides the umpteenth confirmation that there is no enduring peace or harmony between States and nations that can withstand the impact of the contradictory and declining historical course of capitalism. The upset of balance in Europe is a prelude to political upheavals destined to affect worldwide balances of power and alliances. The economic crisis has not found a solution by re-launching accumulation, so that hiding behind every turn is the risk of fresh outbreaks, caused by one of the many threats looming on the horizon: a financial bubble bursting, a sudden slowdown in the emerging economies, speculation on sovereign credits, a country exiting the Eurozone, a rise in FED rates and whatever else may come to mind. On a scenario of constant and growing instability like this, the silence of the proletariat is sooner or later destined to transform itself into a planetary howl of rage.
Nothing could be further from our minds than to point the finger at one nation or another as being responsible for the sufferings of the proletarians in presumed “oppressed nations”! Though it has no rivals on the continent, the power of German capitalism actually conceals some seriously weak elements, starting from its huge dependence on exports, which exposes it more than others to the risk of a dip in world trade, to protectionism and to the effects of currency wars (16). Although it has drawn and continues to draw great advantages from monetary union, Germany cannot escape the crisis and the trend towards a falling profit rate, so that sooner or later it will have to confront its own proletariat.
As previously mentioned, the new and fierce attack on the condition of the Greek proletariat pre-announces an attack on the whole of Europe’s proletariat. If the response of Greek proletariats takes on a class nature, this will be the signal for Europe’s proletarians, first and foremost Germany’s, the first to shake the world order in the second post-war period with the great anti-capitalist movement of 1953. Today, as yesterday, the German proletariat has a central role to play in a general recovery of the class movement. When the new internationalist rallying cry of the class rebellion is raised from Berlin, it will signal the death toll for all nationalism, whether triumphant or second-rate. The only “exit” worth undertaking will once again take centre stage: the exit from capitalism and with it the prospect of real European unity will become a reality (see here our article “Il mito dell’Europa unita” [“The Myth of United Europe”] in il programma comunista, nos. 11-12/1962). And though on a profoundly different scenario, the words of our comrades in far-off 1953 are still relevant:
“If a solution to the problem of Europe’s organization comes from the rise of the – both quantitatively and qualitatively - powerful proletariat of great Berlin, this will only happen by means of a – theoretical, organizational, political, military – programme to build a Berlin commune, in a civil war against the armies coming from the East and from the West. A commune of the whole of Berlin. This would mean a workers’ dictatorship in Germany, the world revolution in Europe.” (“La Comune di Berlino. Dura e lunga la strada, meta grande e lontana” [“The Berlin Commune. A long and hard road, a great and far-off objective”], in il programma comunista, no.14/1953).
Whatever direction German imperialism takes (whether directed to the East or the West), in all cases and in all places the task of the proletariat remains unchanged: defeatism against its own bourgeoisie and against all bourgeois coalitions, whether enemies or allies. We are aware that the prospect is still a long way off but it is the only non-illusory alternative we can trust to halt the catastrophic spiral in which the world of capital is enmeshed.
NOTES
1- Cfr. Our article entitled “United States of Europa”, which appeared in what was then our theoretical journal, Prometeo (no.14/1950).
2- F. Fubini, “L’Europa anemica” [”Anaemic Europe”], in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, 15/8/2015.
3- In 2009, the European banks used around half of ECB credit (440 billion Euros) to purchase Greek and Spanish State bonds (http://www.sinistrainrete.info/crisi-mondiale/1830-guglielmo-carchedi-dalla-crisi-di-plusvalore-alla-crisi-delleuro.html)
4- V. Da Rold, “R&S Mediobanca: la crisi delle banche costa alla Ue più del Pil greco” [“R&S Mediobanca: the bank crisis costs the EU more than Greek GDP”], in the Italian financial daily Il Sole-24Ore, 28 July 2015. Unlike Athens’ bailout, the journalist comments, these other bailouts did not meet with any opposition, either from the North or from the South of Europe.
5- Last February’s Quantitative Easing is itself a move towards the transfer of powers to a supra-national level. According to Paolo Savona, former Minister for Industry in the Italian Ciampi government, “QE works as a further barrier to stop the country from making alternative choices to staying inside Europe, obeying Berlin-Brussels, with the risk of it turning into a political colony” (Min .V. Lo Prete, “Quel trucchetto di Draghi per incatenare l’Italia all’Euro” [“Draghi’s little trick to chain Italy to the Euro”}, in the Italian daily Il Foglio, 12/2/2015.)
6- In connection with this, it is worth reading “La grande strategia cinese” [“China’s great strategy”], in the Italian geo-strategic journal Limes (July 2015), where a general of the Beijing people’s army argues that “finance counts more than aircraft carriers”.
7- “In 5 years the Troika has off-loaded the risks of two-thirds of Greek’s national debt onto the Eurozone, moving over 140 billion to the EFSF (ex Fund for bailing out member States), over 50 onto the GLF (the account for bilateral loans between the Eurozone countries and Greece) and almost 30 to the ECB […]. It was necessary to allow French and German banks to off-load their risks onto the governments of the Eurozone and thus ‘avoid’ losses on their investments. The first, 2010, intervention transferred de facto a good proportion of the risks from the banks to their respective governments and central banks (through the ECB): the second, 2012, intervention saved governments’ and central banks’ credit and halved the amount of the public debt held by Greek banks and investors. As well as useless austerity, the Greek people thus suffered losses of over 70 billion and the disintegration of their banking system.” (M. Di Menna, “L’Europa alla tedesca: rischi condivisi, ma vantaggi a senso unico” [“German-style Europe: shared risks but one-way benefits”], in the Italian weekly economic supplement Corriere economia, 16/2/2015). What should be added – and is reported by the German IWH Institute – is that 100 billion in interest was saved thanks to the flow of capital to Germany’s sovereign debt, as against the 60 for aid to Greece. Some saviours!
8- “If Greece exited the Euro, the balance of financial power between creditor and debtor countries would be even clearer. The risk of abandoning the single currency would raise the risk premium making the costs of sovereign debts more unequal. How long will it be before the French debt rises to 100% of GDP, whilst the German debt drops to below 60%? But as this crisis has shown, the financial balance of power is also a political balance. Behind the solution to the Greek question, relations between the two countries heading the European Union thus come into play. The two countries whose peaceful coexistence was the reason for starting all this.” (C. Bastasin, “Se si spezza l’asse Berlino-Parigi” [“If the Berlin-Paris axis splits”], in the Italian financial daily Il Sole-24Ore, 13/7/2015).
9- Shauble suggested a mutual fund for guaranteeing bank deposits or, alternatively, a mutual insurance fund against unemployment. “In the first case, the structure of banking unity would be completed, stabilizing credit in the area of the Euro. In the second case, the first shared anti-cyclic tool would be created for managing economic policy, in a position to attenuate the differences between economies. It would not have been the move towards fiscal union or eurobonds. But it would nonetheless have meant a considerable offer of support and the sharing of risks linked to economic and financial instability.” (C. Bastasin, “Berlino e le due velocità” [”Berlin and the two tracks”], Il Sole-24ore, 14/7/2015).
10- “The Schauble-Lamers plan is based on two ideas: ‘Why not set up a European budget commission with the power to disapprove national budgets unless they correspond to the rules jointly agreed?’ Schauble and Lamers ask themselves. “Moreover, we look favourably on the creation of a “Eurozone parliament” with members of parliament from the Eurozone, in order to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of decisions regarding the single currency.” […] According to Schauble’s calculations, Grexit represents a crucial passage for initiating Dr. Schauble’s plans. Controlled escalation of the Greeks’ suffering, intensified by the closure of banks and attenuated by a little humanitarian aid is considered a stage pre-announcing the new Euro zone. On the one hand the destiny of the ‘wasteful’ Greeks would serve as a warning to those governments that are playing with the idea of challenging the existing rules (for example, Italy) or that still oppose the transfer of national sovereignty to the budgets of the Eurogroup (for example, France). On the other hand, the prospect of (limited) fiscal transfers (for example closer banking union and a mutual aid fund for unemployment) would represent the ‘carrot’ for winning over the smaller nations” (Y. Varoufakis, “Il dottor Schauble” [“Doktor Schauble”], in the German weekly Die Zeit, 15/7/2015).
11- C Bastasin, “Berlino e le due velocità” [“Berlin and the two tracks”], cit.
12- G. Rossi, “Il coraggio che serve per salvare l’Europa” [“The courage needed to save Europe”], Il Sole-24Ore, 31/5/2015.
13- M. Spence, “Pechino ha fame di mercati: la domanda interna non basta” [“Beijing is hungry for markets: internal demand is not enough”], Il Sole-24Ore, 12/7/2015. As regards the project “Via della seta” (“Silk Road”), contacts have already been made between China and the EU: Hungary has already signed a memorandum in relation to this (cfr. www.cinaforum.net). On the political and military significance of the “Silk Roads”, see also note 6.
14- Fully coherent with this outline is the re-emergence of the old contrast between the Countries of the Earth and the Countries of the Sea, upheld by C. Schmitt (cfr. P. Bricco, “La strategia dei due forni di Berlino” [“Berlin’s two-ovens strategy”], Il Sole-24Ore, 16/7/2015).
15- Parallel to this project, the Americans are working on an Asian trade agreement excluding China, who retorts with a strategy of control over land routes towards the West.
16- The recent devaluation of the renmimbi deals a severe blow to the export market of German automobiles to China.