Finkeldey, J. (2015) “Why Marxism fails in the Eurozone“, The European Magazine, 27 February.
Yanis Varoufakis dubbed himself an “erratic Marxist” and presented his interpretation of Marx in detail. But his dialectical spirit is unlikely to succeed.
Karl Marx’s dream has come true: Europe is suffering in a long recession and some European capitals are under siege by indignant citizens. But are we really on the brink of disintegration of the capitalist system due to its own contradictions as Marx hoped for? Nothing seems more utopian at the moment. After all, Marx’s contemporaries often shared a laugh about his excitement for financial crises. Today, even the Greek Marxists from Syriza do not believe in the end of capitalism. In fact, the Troika reigns over the Eurozone with the latest bailout conditions strangling Syriza’s proposed social reforms.
After numerous negotiation all-nighters in Brussels, the smoke clears – but the Eurozone battlefield appears to look much like it did before. On the one side of the entrenchment, we find the vicarious Wolfgang Schäuble, who stood his ground in the face of the anti-austerity heretics Alexis Tsipras and his Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis. The Greeks on the other side are flooded with debts that threaten to drown Athens’s efforts to redeem the “humanitarian crisis” in their country. The crisis does not seem to have worked in favour of Marxist politics.
Contrary to their vows before negotiations, last Friday the Syriza-government opened its doors to the much-hated Troika once again. The Eurozone round has presented Syriza with a take-it-or-leave-it proposal that was then signed last minute. “Expend and pretend” – the extending of human suffering through downsizing of public spending, and pretending that the debt will be repaid one day – might become Athen’s companion in misfortune for decades. Does this not amount to a final submission to “fiscal waterboarding”?
Relevant posts:
- Dullien, S. (2015) “Note from Berlin: The Greek compromise“, European Council on Foreign Relations, 26 February.
- Cook, C. (2015) “Greece – a Varoufakis Conversion“, Pieria Online, 06 February.