Austerity Measures

Austerity and popular resistance are essential to a political diagnosis for contemporary Europe. Political developments in Greece will show whether the future of Europe is one of neoliberal restructuring or one of a democratic socialist alternative.

In 2013, the world is entering the sixth year of the global crisis. In those six years, sparked by the unfolding events, there has developed a burgeoning literature regarding the origins, conjunctures and regional manifestations of the crisis. In many ways, this debate evolved from long-term disputes regarding the nature of the current phase of capitalism and its periodization (monopoly-finance capitalism, post-Fordism, finance driven accumulation regime, financial-market capitalism, neoliberalism, high-tech capitalism etc.) and has brought to light the epistemological and political differences between the various approaches. However, as Magnus Ryner (2012) has pointed out, with a few notable exceptions, the debate has shed insufficient light on the political articulation of the crisis and the interrelations between the political and the economic sphere. With regard to not only the origins of the crisis but also and particularly the viability of exit strategies from it, the struggles over hegemony occurring during the crisis are essential. Hence, complementing the Marxist and Marxian crisis debate, it is the goal of this paper to shed some light on the political articulations of the global crisis and assess the interrelations between global leadership efforts seeking exit strategies from the crisis and the hegemonic struggles underlying their agencies. While in looking at the struggle between left and right projects of leadership references will be made to numerous core and non-core capitalist countries, the main focus will be on the two dominant actors in NAFTA and the EU, the United States and Germany, which have shaped the politics of exit strategies from the crisis in North America and the Eurozone.

This paper analyzes the future of the global left and world socialism in the context of the current global financial and economic crisis, which marks the fourth organic crisis of global(-izing) capitalism. It does so through the lens of several lead questions (...). First, has capitalism in its neoliberal form reached its limits of capital accumulation and social reproduction? And if so, what are the dominant political projects with regard to exit strategies from the crisis? To what kind of fundamental re-organization of the regime of accumulation and mode of regulation of capitalism as well as world order is capitalism’s fourth organic crisis going to lead? It is clear that the particular answer(s) to this set of questions are not only going to structure the political framework in which left and socialist political agency is going to occur across the globe but they can and will lead to quite different socialist strategies in their particular spatial-temporal configurations. It is therefore of paramount importance to come to an agreement about the nature of the global crisis in order to discuss and coordinate socialist strategies properly. Second, if it is true that the Green New Deal was the most coherent hegemonic project and exit strategy from the crisis, what explains its failure and the ensuing shift to the global age of austerity? In my view, this needs to be seen in light of (1) the tremendously increased structural power of capital, (2) the overall weakness, social and political fragmentation and – especially in the European Union – spatially unequal development of social and political opposition, which could be coopted and hegemonically absorbed in order to renew capitalism (in ways similar to the labor movement militancy and the fear of Soviet-style revolutions enabling Roosevelt to pursue the New Deal even against opposition of large segments of the U.S. capitalist class during the 1930s or the role that the strong [new] social movements during the late 1960s and 1970s unintentionally played in generalizing neoliberalism hegemonically), and, as a consequence, (3) the strong right-wing populist, political articulation of the crisis in the “West”, which reinforced the shift to the politics of austerity. From this follows the third set of questions: What are the (more narrowly defined) economic consequences of the failure of the Green New Deal in the “West” and the new beggar-thy-neighbor policies of "competitive austerity" (Albo 1993), which, from the perspective of the “national competition-state" (Hirsch 1996), seek to secure for themselves a larger piece of the same (shrinking) cake? If it is true that “decades of austerity” (as predicted by the British Prime Minister David Cameron) and a “global slump” (McNally 2011) with years or even decades of slow economic growth in the West are to be expected, how is that going to affect the historical and political conjuncture for the political left in Europe and North America? What impact will it have on the historical and specific making, un-making and re-making of class, its economic, social and political fragmentation and the distributional room for maneuver needed by the ruling classes' in the various regional contexts? And based on this analysis, what kind of coalitions between non-antagonistic social forces – envisaged in the North-Atlantic Left Dialogue’s and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s debates about the “mosaic left” (Hans-Jürgen Urban), the “connective party” (Mimmo Porcaro), “radical” resp. “revolutionary realpolitik” (Michael Brie/Rosa Luxemburg) and the “Four-in-One-Perspective” (Frigga Haug) – can be built around a concrete and viable transition program addressing the multiple levels of the fourth organic crisis of capitalism which stretches across the levels of accumulation, ecological reproduction and social reproduction? What are the most important specific challenges for such a perspective? And how can they be linked across national borders not only within the European Union, where the dangerous unequal development of the crisis is the biggest obstacle to progressive change, but also between the European Union, North America and the rest of the globe?

In Marxist as well as non-Marxist scholarly literature, the concept of legitimacy used to be a central category for the theorization and analysis of the state in capitalist society. However, during the 1980s retrenching of the welfare state and the TINA globalization decade of the 1990s it increasingly disappeared from critical research on the particular form the internationalization of the state has taken as part of the European regional integration project. While the mainstream literature has continued to analyze the EU through the lens of the concept of legitimacy, it has widely restricted itself to the institutional decision-making processes (the “input” dimension of legitimacy) and excluded the essential dimension of material welfare benefits for the legitimacy of the EU (the “output” dimension). The combination of an increasing authoritarianism with regard to the implementation of the EU Fiscal Compact (input dimension) and the emerging human rights crisis across the European periphery in particular (output dimension) necessitates a revisiting of the concept of legitimacy for critical analyses of the “Euro crisis”. The article therefore develops operationalizable indicators of legitimacy crises for a future empirical research project on the “Euro crisis” which encompasses both the input as well as output dimensions of legitimacy; and it concludes with early empirical research findings with regard to the three (sub-)indicators ruling party illegitimization, voter participation, and emergence of anti-austerity and/or anti-EU political forces from the left and the right.

In Nordamerika hat sich eine Debatte über Vernunft und Unvernunft im US-Schuldenstreit entwickelt, die auch weitergehende und grundsätzliche Fragen über das Verhältnis zwischen ökonomischer Krise und politischer Krise heute und allgemein aufwirft. Einigkeit besteht darin, daß die Austeritätspolitik - aus der bürgerlichen Perspektive - durchaus rational und interessengeleitet ist, wobei Leo Panitch und Sam Gindin die These behaupten, daß sie ferner im Kontext einer privatkapitalistischen Organisation des Finanzwesens auch notwendig ist, weshalb sich heute umso mehr die Eigentumsfrage als Grundlage jedweder noch so schnöden sozialdemokratischen Reform stelle. Einigkeit besteht ferner, daß die Auseinandersetzungen im Kongreß zur Schuldenobergrenze, die 2011 und 2013 durch die Blockade der Tea-Party-Republikaner zum Regierungs-Shutdown führten, insofern irrational sind, als sie die US-Finanzhegemonie untergraben, da sie die internationale Glaubwürdigkeit der Zahlungsfähigkeit der USA gefährden. Die Frage ist jedoch, woher diese Irrationalität letztlich rührt: Während Panitch die oft lamentierte "Dysfunktionalität" des US-politischen Systems letztlich mit dem Widerspruch zwischen imperialen und nationalstaatlichen Erfordernissen, d.h. zwischen kosmopolitischen Empire-Eliten und nationalstaatlicher Grundierung des Kongresses, erklärt, wird sie von David Harvey und Doug Henwood letztlich auf Dekadenz zurückgeführt. Der neoliberale Kapitalismus habe das langfristige Gesellschafts- und Planungsdenken in den bürgerlichen Eliten zerstört. Harvey spricht vom "feral capitalism"; Henwood vom "pervasive rot" des "neoliberal self". Als Beitrag zu und Kritik dieser Debatte geht dieser Text zwar ebenfalls von der Irrationalität der Tea-Party-Akteure ausgeht, aber behauptet die These, daß die Tatsache, daß es Republikaner- und Kapitaleliten (US-Handelskammer, etc.) nicht gelang, die Tea-Party-"Rebellen" zur Räson zu bringen, nicht auf einen Mangel an langfristigem Gesellschaftsdenken und politischer Führungskapazität im herrschenden Block zurückzuführen ist, sondern auf die Tatsache, daß die Tea Party eine sich im Widerspruch zu diesem Block entwickelnde politische Kraft ist, zu deren spezifischer Eigenschaft als Rechtspopulismus es gehört, daß sie sich im Kontext der verschärften gesellschaftlichen Verteilungskämpfe in der Krise zur eigenständigen Kraft entwickeln mußte, worauf ihr Mangel an "nationaler Verantwortung", an politischer Führungskapazität zurückzuführen ist. "Feral capitalism", "neoliberal self" und "pervasive rot" sind also weder klassenübergreifend allgemein noch Ursache, sondern ein klassenspezifisches Phänomen der politischen Artikulation der Krise und Folge einer ökonomischen Krise, die zur politischen Krise ("Dysfunktionalität") führt, die wiederum das "rationale" Management der ökonomischen Krise stark erschwert, kurzum, sie zur organischen Krise macht.

Am 7.und 8. November hat in Beijing eine internationale Konferenz unter dem Thema “New Developments of the Global Left under the International Financial Crisis and the Prospect of World Socialism” stattgefunden, die gemeinsam vom China Center for Contemporary World Studies bei der Internationalen Abteilung des Zentralkomitees der Kommunistischen Partei Chinas (IDCPC) und des Pekinger Regionalbüros der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung veranstaltet wurde. http://www.rosalux.de/news/40105/internationale-konferenz-in-peking-die-globale-linke-und-perspektiven-des-sozialismus-in-der-welt.html

On 2 April 2013 Cyprus reached an agreement with the Troika on an Economic Adjustment Program aimed at addressing the country’s financial, fiscal and structural imbalances. A general assessment of the overall impact of the austerity program  illustrates that the specified targets have been met both in terms of objective and the scheduled timeframe of implementation thus far. An analysis of different sectors of the economy illustrates that the »bubble« sectors of construction and financial services largely account for the economic contraction. Conversely, tourism and company registration services have remained resilient with little downward change.The extent of the impact of the banking crisis remains undetermined and could pose further future risks, while unanticipated problems in the banking sector may resurface. The recession continues unabated, confirming predictions that the trend is not expected to reverse prior to 2015.