File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 3


Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 13:04:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re: The potential of the Eurostate


On Tue, 30 Sep 1997, Louis R Godena wrote:
> The
> Eurostate is capital's answer to the vexing problems of nation-states and
> majority voting; both will become irrelevant.  Once the "boom" in eastern
> Europe has run its course, that is; when the last state-owned firm has been
> privatized, and national governments have been "starved" out of existence,
> people there will be pretty much on their own.  The Eurostate, at least for
> the foreseeable future, with its phenomenal unemployment and its sputtering
> economy, will be ill-suited to "finance" anything outside of its own
> shrinking circle.

I'm not so sure about this. Our business press likes to sing the hosannas
of Wall Street and American high-tech, but the numbers tell a different
story: per capita growth in the EU has actually been higher from 1989-96
than in the US. European firms are individually more competitive in cars,
machine-tools, electronics and telecoms (Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson) than
the US, have a number of powerful software concerns (e.g. SAP Inc., a
German intranet firm), and in general have weathered the Long Depression
far better than the Americans. Central Europe is a global creditor;
America is a global debtor. Central Europe has mongo trade surpluses;
America has mongo deficits. In short, Europe has the dough to finance
whatever it wants -- it's just a question of mobilizing that capital for
human needs rather than speculation. Yes, European unemployment is high at
around 11%, but remember, these are social democracies which actually
count their unemployed (as opposed to Thatcherite Britain or the US, who
tend to undercount the jobless). And nowhere have Continental regimes 
actually turned into hardline monetarists: the Europeriphery 
devalued its currencies in 1992-93 rather than see the
industrial base collapse; the Central European core has been throwing
$100 billion a year at Eastern Germany; and the glorious French strikes of
1995 stopped Juppe's austerity plan dead in its track. Any way you slice
it, whether in terms of union membership, socialist parties, or popular
mood, the resistance to neoliberalism is considerably stronger on the
Continent than in hapless, hopeless, deindustrializing, Wall Street-crazed
America.

That doesn't mean Europe won't go down the American road of social
cannibalism, of course. It's just that the EU -- very much like Japan
-- has no reason to slash its own wrists, and plenty of good ones to
finance a global recovery. The euro ought to be a genuinely multinational,
i.e. pro-growth, inflationary currency; the EU ought to earmark zillions
of euros for social and ecological reconstruction, welfare state services,
etc. This will require, of course, a revolution. But what's a
revolution without some concrete goals? Imagine the impossible: today the
bailout of the East, tomorrow the socialist reconstruction of all of
Africa!

-- Dennis



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