Imperial Symphysis: Greece and German Ordoliberalism

Abstract

This chapter shows how and why Greece has become the testing ground for the EU’s and Germany’s ordoliberal austerity policy in the management of the Eurozone crisis, and what are the social and political consequences for such type of austerity. In this respect, it provides a political analysis of the way in which the managers of the Eurozone crisis engineered and implemented ordoliberal austerity in Greece. Having shed light on the country’s modern history as a dependent and subaltern social formation, this chapter moves on to show how key political and business elites of the Greek state have been recruited to the cause of a German-dominated Euroland in an apparent fusion between the structural interests of the Eurozone elites and the subaltern interests of key departments of the Greek state, what we call imperial symphysis. This analysis will also help us identify the conflict between the EU and Germany, on the one hand, and the IMF and USA, on the other, a conflict in which the former prevailed when Greece was negotiating with them all during the first half of 2015, a culmination of a six-year negotiation battle. This is another indication of the terminal economic decline of the USA and the existing disintegrative tendencies within the intra-imperialist assemblage of the West. In addition, to become fully aware of the implications of the ordoliberal bondage imposed on Greece, we shall deal in some detail with the social impact of austerity, which has in effect pulverised the country’s civic tissue and dislocated social mores, further fragmenting key institutions of social solidarity, such as working-class and lower-middle-class families and communities.