Cartoon of the day

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

  

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

  

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

  

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

  

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

How to turn a recession into a depression

Greece is a perfect example of how to turn a bad economic situation into something even worse. As Reuters reports,

Rescue funds from the European Union and International Monetary Fund saved Greece from bankruptcy, but the austerity and reform policies the lenders attached as conditions have helped to turn recession into a depression.

As a result, the poverty rate in Greece almost doubled (between 2008 and 2015), rising from 11.2 percent to 22.2 percent.

And average (per adult) GDP has fallen below what it was three decades ago.

Meanwhile, IMF and European institutions are demanding further austerity measures (equivalent to 2 percent of gross domestic product) before agreeing on a new deal to aid Greece.

Dismal science?

Apparently, mainstream economists are trying to shrug off the label of the “dismal science.”

On this side of the Atlantic, we have the spectacle of Martin Feldstein asserting that GDP statistics are deceptive and the economic situation in the United States really is better than it appears.

And then, across the pond, there’s Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s vice president for the euro, arguing things in Greece are just fine. In his view, the Germany-sponsored rescue program “itself is on track. The Greek economy is recovering.”

source

It just so happens Dombrovskis was the Prime Minister of Latvia, from 2009 to 2014, who led the imposition of the Draconian austerity program in his home country.

Meanwhile, unemployment in Greece remains at 23 percent, well above the Eurozone average. And the IMF and European institutions are demanding further austerity measures (equivalent to 2 percent of gross domestic product) before agreeing on a new deal to aid Greece.

It’s as if nothing has been learned in the past eight years—which means the outlook for Greek workers, like those in the United States and Latvia, can only be described as dismal.

“Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice”

Jamie Galbraith’s ties to Greece go back some seven decades, most recently as an adviser in the Ministry of Finance (working with Yanis Varoufakis) for the Syriza government.

In a recent comment (itself a summary of his new book, Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe), Galbraith [ht: cb] has presented a clear, trenchant critique of Europe through its treatment of Greece.

Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetrary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany: It strips assets to satisfy debts. Germany lost its merchant marine, its rolling stock, its colonies, and its coal; Greece has lost its seaports, its airports — the profitable ones — and is set to sell off its beaches, the public asset that is a uniquely Greek glory. Private businesses are being forced into bankruptcy to make way for European chains; private citizens are being forced into foreclosure on their homes. It’s a land grab.

And for what? To satisfy old public debts, incurred for tanks, submarines, the Olympics, big construction projects outsourced to German firms, and to hide deficits in health care, with creditor connivance — a quagmire of graft to support an illusion, that Greece could “compete” as part of the euro. Already in 2010 the IMF knew it was breaking its own rules by pretending that Greece could recover quickly, sustain a huge primary surplus, and repay its debts. Why? To help save French and German banks, which the IMF’s sainted managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to do, because he wanted to be president of France.

Europe crushed the Greek resistance in 2015. Not because Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, thought his economic plan would work; he candidly told the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that “as a patriot” he would not sign it himself. But Germany wants to impose its order on Italy and on France, where civil society continues to fight back. And Chancellor Angela Merkel could not admit to her voters, or to fellow Europeans from Slovakia to Portugal, that back in 2010 she’d saved Germany’s banks by saddling them with Greek debts that could never be paid.

Greece was given collective punishment as a lesson. It was done to show that “there is no alternative.” It was done to stop any other attempt to develop, articulate, and defend a more rational policy. It was done to protect the power of the European Central Bank, the German government in Europe, and the policy-making authority, in face of a long record of failure, of the IMF.

If there is an alternative for Europe, where would it come from? According to Galbraith, the process begins with the Democracy in Europe Movement (or DiEM25), launched in 2015 by Varoufakis. But it doesn’t stop there.

Ultimately there would have to be big changes, as revolutionary as the 2015 Athens Spring. The old oligarchies, the Brussels cabals, the self-serving technocrats, and the economic ideologues who now dominate European economic policy would have to yield.

Communist horizon

 

Back in May, in an interview with Grèce Hebdo, French philosopher Alain Badiou was asked about the source of his optimism concerning contemporary social movements, from Nuit Debout to Bernie Sanders, even when they face strategic setbacks:

So you’re continuing to look to communism as a horizon?

Yes, not only do I keep this horizon open but I think it is very important to do so. For if there is no strategic idea then movements undergoing setbacks or recuperation risk having devastating subjective effects. There you risk demobilisation, the thought that ‘well I was young then, I threw myself into this adventure and it didn’t work’. Our thinking has to be that while there are strategic setbacks we will maintain our course despite the sinuosities of History. History does not march in a straight line but in a very tortuous way, and we should not imagine any royal road leading to emancipation. There are reverses, negatives, and that is why we need to have a compass come what may. If we have no compass we end up old and disheartened.

I was thinking about the idea of communism as a horizon as I read (only because a reader [ht: ja] sent me the link) the latest from New York Times columnist David Brooks. He begins by noting that, in the eighteenth century, American Indians rejected colonial society (which “was richer and more advanced”) but many whites were moving the other way, choosing to live within Indian society (which was “more communal”).

Brooks then moves up to the present and notes that there seems to be a new desire for community, at least among Millenials.

Maybe we’re on the cusp of some great cracking. Instead of just paying lip service to community while living for autonomy, I get the sense a lot of people are actually about to make the break and immerse themselves in demanding local community movements. It wouldn’t surprise me if the big change in the coming decades were this: an end to the apotheosis of freedom; more people making the modern equivalent of the Native American leap.

While readers wrap their heads around the idea that Brooks might be a modern-day communist (or at least a communist sympathizer), consider what that means. In many Native American societies, the surplus was created by the direct producers and then managed not privately (as in capitalism), but by the commune (either directly or by a representative of the commune, such as an elder or religious figure). So, in historical communism (which some, especially in the Marxian tradition, refer to as “primitive communism”), there was no exploitation, no “ripping-off” of the producers by “autonomous” individuals who did not participate in creating the surplus.*

And, as it turns out, communism is more than just a horizon: it’s actually being practiced in a wide variety of economic and social settings. One such example are the refugee “squats” [ht: ja] in Greece, an alternative to the government-run camps. Best I can tell, all the work is being conducted collectively, as part of the commune:

There are cleaning teams, cooking teams, security teams, language lessons, art classes, children’s activities, beach outings, translators, Arabic lessons for volunteers and more.

Squats are run without government or major nongovernmental-organization influence and rely on donations and manpower from independent volunteers. Responsibility is divided among the residents. At Dakdouk’s original squat, a “local technical group” is the go-to for all maintenance and IT issues. There are plans to establish a bakery to produce bread en masse for residents and rooftop gardens to provide “for the soul and for the body,” says one group member.

I doubt anyone thought that was how communism would come to be established—among refugees, the most marginalized people in the world today. However, that may be exactly the communist horizon both Badiou and Brooks have in mind: noncapitalist communal activities that provide for both the soul and the body.

 

*Interested readers should consult the pioneering work of Jack Amariglio (e.g., “Subjectivity, Class, and Marx’s “Forms of the Commune’,” Rethinking Marxism, 22:3, 329-344) and Dean Saitta (e.g., “Marxism, Prehistory, and Primitive Communism,” Rethinking Marxism 1:1, 145-168).