On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, john gulick wrote:
> What do pen-l'ers make of the argument propounded by pro-EMU social democrats
> that w/o EMU global financial markets will discipline expansionary/welfare
> initiatives, and at the very least w/EMU some weak version of EC-wide
> expansionary/welfare initiatives can be achieved, as long as the EC central
> bank does not resemble the Bundesbank ?
Well, after a twenty-five year cross-border investment binge, the question
is pretty academic at this point. European capital really is European, so
if the Left is going to take the reigns in Europe, they're going to need
a transnational strategy. More to the point, the Continent has never, not
even in 1998, really given up on Keynesianism (hey, even we Americans have
a kind of privatized, rentier Keynesianism: total consumer and private
sector debt makes up 80% of the total financial structure of the
US, while Big Government weighs in with a measly 20%, and of course the
Wall Street bubble has further spread liquidity around). Germany has been
spending a cool $100 billion a year to restructure the ex-GDR; European
capital has granted big subsidies to Eastern Europe and the CIS in terms
of loan write-offs, debt restructurings, etc. (around $50 billion in
write-offs, significant in an economic region with only $200 billion in
annual output). The poor in France still have health care and social
services which 40 million Americans can only dream about, while even
Hungary and Slovakia have kept significant parts of their welfare state
intact.
In Wall Street's twisted version of reality, all these things should've
led to an unparalleled economic disaster. Not so: EU per capita growth
rates are better than America's, ordinary workers are richer, Second World
countries like Slovenia have lower infant mortality rates than
the US (per capita GDP in Slovenia: $5000, versus $27,000 for the US), the
environmental laws are tightening up quickly, as opposed to US-style
eco-wilding, and the EU is a net global creditor in the world economy
(we owe them a cool $250 billion, incidentally, on our international
net investment account). One way this matters to ordinary people: you will
note that Eastern Europe has been immune from the worst ravages of the
currency implosion of the Asian semi-periphery. That's because German and
Swiss banks are investing in the East for the social-democratic long
haul, not to make money to some sleazoid mutual funds pimp with payments
to make on his/her Atlantic yacht.
This doesn't mean, of course, that you couldn't adopt transnational
techniques in specific countries: this is what Switzerland and most of
the German Federal states, like Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria, have done
for years, i.e. soaking the rich to finance education, scientific research
establishments and the like (local Green Party folks have been doing some
wonderful things on the urban and local level, too). But the Left has to
be clear on the concept: the enemy is not this or that national group but
an emergent transnational elite.
> Another question: how do proponents of the 35-hour week in Italy,
> France, and the Netherlands realistically think it will be possible
> to pay workers who work only 35 hours for 40 hours' work ? Unless there
> is a massive increase in productivity (so that the rate of surplus value
> extraction remains more or less the same) won't there be a capital
> strike, or diversion of capital into the financial sector, or some such
> thing ?
I can't speak for the Eurocomrades themselves, of course, but
the 35-hour week is quite doable. European unions have been
pushing for productivity increases for years, and in many ways IG Metall's
codetermination policies on the assembly line were and are the functional
equivalent of Japanese kaizen and quality-circle techniques: they
democratized management (smarter workers produce better goods, and
line engineers run the show, not marketing whizzes) and forced German
industry to invest, plan and produce high-quality products for the long
haul, instead of engaging in irresponsible speculation or stock market
bubbling. Since wages have been languishing in Europe recently, the
35-hour week will be a long overdue Keynesian boost to workers' incomes.
The 37 and 1/2 hour week already exists in much of Central Europe, in the
form of half-work-Fridays and the like, but the track record of Daimler
Benz, BMW, Novartis, Siemens and Ericsson speaks for itself.
In a real sense, the EU is not just about extending the autocracy of
capital, but about democratically extending the best part of the Swedish/Swiss
models to all of Europe. To me, it's amazing to think that even countries
like Poland and the Czech Republic have proportional representation systems and
flourishing varieties of local social democracy, while the United States
of Decay vegetates in a hideous post-Imperial stew of money-politics,
bubble-mad finance, continuing Pentagon boondoggles and neoliberal
fundamentalism. The EU, or so I'd argue, offers the closest thing we have
to the sort of transnational community we so badly need to fight global
capitalism on its own global turf.
-- Dennis
