James Meadway - After europe
Channel: Inštitut za delavske študije
Date: 2013-02-15

James Meadway - After europe: the death of social democracy,  the end of growth  & the new alternatives

After three torrid years, it was possible, by the end of 2012, for the massed ranks of Europe's political and economic elite to pretend the worse was over. Buoyed up  round after round of -- wholly unconstitutional -- variants of money-printing exercises by the European Central Bank (and with the promise of more to come), they could kid themselves that outright disintegration of the single currency had been staved off. If Greece presented an intractable problem -- unemployment pushing 50%, its society on the verge of its own collapse -- and the rest of the so-called "periphery" fared scarcely better -- the core European economies, and their banks, gave every appearance of being more secure.

 

Appearances can, as ever, be deceptive; not least when the outward façade of prosperity, now seemingly returning to core European banks, was supported by the flimsiest possible foundations of cheap ECB credit. The fervent wish of the EU's policymakers that the possibility of real collapse can be staved off until at least after critical German elections due later this year cannot be guaranteed by their creaking institutions and nervous financiers. Economics, as ever, can trump politics: and the deep structural failures the euro crisis has revealed remain in place: a neoliberal single currency; a dysfunctional political management; financial systems mired in bad debt; deep economic imbalances across the continent. Austerity and money-printing can cope with none of this, while a new hierarchy of core and periphery economies is being constructed inside the single currency itself.

 

The crisis can, and almost certainly will, return with a vengeance. In the midst of this, what are the plausible alternatives for labour and civil society movements across the continent? Can a euro-Keynesianism ever function, or are we steadily being forced to look beyond this horizon? This paper examines the crisis, identifying its key features, offers some likely prospects for the year, and proposes ways in which the anti-austerity and anti-capitalist movements across Europe can respond.

James Meadway is senior economist at the New Economics Foundation. His research focuses on just and sustainable economic models. 
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