C. J. Polychroniou — Is the Eurozone Crisis Really Over?

Changing course is a highly unlikely option, given the eurozone’s architecture and the interests being served, as it would mean a complete rejection of neoliberalism as policy paradigm and an ideological project. Since at least the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, neoliberalism has become firmly institutionalized inside the monetary union and expanded at every available opportunity, including the current crisis.

The driving principles for the neoliberal approach to economy and society revolve around the privatization of public goods and services, the deregulation of markets, and the restructuring of the state into an agency that facilitates and protects unfettered capital accumulation while it shifts an increasing amount of resources from the public realm to the private sector; especially in the direction of the dominant fraction of capital in today’s advanced capitalist societies, that is, “financial” capital. The bailouts of bankrupt banking and financial institutions in the United States over the course of the latest global financial crisis, as well as of peripheral countries in the euro area by the EU authorities, need to be understood within the context of the changes that have taken place in capitalist political economy since the early 1980s, which marks the reemergence of predatory capitalism and the establishment of neoliberalism as the new institutional and ideological framework for capital accumulation on a global scale.

Multiplier Effect
Is the Eurozone Crisis Really Over?
C. J. Polychroniou

Is capitalism inherently predatory and does it tend toward neoliberalism as a political model based on economic liberalism and ontological individualism? My answer is that the answer is contained in the term "capitalism," which means that capital ownership, real and financial, is to dominate the other factors owing to the scarcity of capital and its necessity for the growth that brings greater prosperity as measured in GDP per capital. That is, capitalism puts money and machines above people and the environment. This cannot be rectified within capitalism as the ideology of ownership dominance, which simply replaced a feudal landed aristocracy with a capitalist class structure that is as riddled with privilege as the feudal system was.

The political stance of capitalism was expressed by the first chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, John Jay: "Those who own the country should govern the country." This stand is direct opposition to the fundamental principle of liberal democracy enunciated by Abraham Lincoln: "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." The people need to take their country back and that means changing the political theory based on economic liberalism and replacing with a political theory based on social and political liberalism.

In this context, the crisis in the eurozone periphery not only continues, but it could also intensify in the near future, especially once the citizenry in those countries realizes that the game is rigged in favor of finance capital and big business.