The EU-Crisis and the Battle of Interpretation*

The great crisis that we are experiencing is the result of nearly forty years of neo-liberal offensives. The crisis is particularly severe in Europe – which is not unconnected with the very manner in which Europe is being built, on the precepts of “pure neo-liberalism” and the interests of “core Europe”. All the ingredients are there for the crisis to get still worse. Indeed, disintegration can be imagined as something explosive, chaotic, with ruins the impact of which we cannot yet know.

The attempts undertaken by the European leaders to set up a new “European governance” take the form of “authoritarian capitalism”, radicalized neoliberalism. Today we can dare advance the hypothesis that the construction of Europe can only have a future with a logic opposed to that of neo-liberalism.

The crisis of the public debt crystallises the consequences of the neo-liberal logic but does not alone cover the full reality of the crisis. The present public debt, in many European countries, results from a series of causes: the growing inequalities and the drop in taxation on capital incomes; the drop in labour’s share of the wealth produced and society’s loss of earnings; the banks’ policies and their rescue in 2008 without any compensation; the pressure and blackmail from the financial markets as well as the lack of any political will to change the course of events. While indebtedness demands, today, some emergency treatment, the real causes require a new approach to development, to labour, to the real economy, social security, and growth. The solution can be found in increasing revenues rather than in reducing public expenditure.

The interpretation of the debt crisis as a gigantic social and political confrontation, as a class confrontation, can help to counter the divisions between the victims of austerity, and can favorize wider mobilizations.

The Need for a Social Front – at both National and European Levels

We see the collapsing neoliberal ideas, but that does not mean the emergence of an alternative hegemony. The worsening of the crisis has strengthened both the anger and the feeling of powerlessness. The lack of the power to interpret, the lack of the power to act and the difficulties of creating unity tend to generate resentments that can easily be taken up and manipulated by radical right-wing populist forces claiming to be defenders of certain social gains for a disadvantaged part of the population.

Faced with the crisis the question arises everywhere of how to form a new social block that could bring about a change of policy, an alternative logic. Bearing in mind the social fragmentation that characterises this neo-liberal regime, such a perspective seems to be very complex. Under present-day conditions, the class struggle, the search for new alliances between subordinate classes requires strategic innovation. It is not only a matter of finding what kind of political project would be capable of overcoming the social fragmentation but also what kind of position would encourage bringing groups together. Faced with the process of the disintegration of societies and the crumbling of neo-liberal hegemony, we must work for the emergence of a new social and political dynamic.

* This text was presented by Elisabeth Gauthier at the closing plenary of the Conference “Europe against Austerity – No Cuts” in London on 1 October 2011. The full version including references will appear in issue # 9 of the transform! magazine.