Abstract
Costas Lapavitsas has become one of the principal proponents of the ‘Lexit’ perspective, not only in the United Kingdom where he has been a prominent figure in the ‘Labour Leave’ campaign but also throughout continental Europe. This polemical account is the latest in a series of contributions (see also Lapavitsas, 2017, 2018) in which he has articulated the intellectual case for departing the European institutions from a left viewpoint, focusing here on the ascendance of German hegemony articulated via the European financial system and the Euro, as well as the case study of Greece’s confrontation with the so-called ‘Troika’ (European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) which reached its climax in the latter stages of the crisis in 2015. Lapavitsas’ close proximity to those events as a member of the SYRIZA government for a brief period (January–August 2015), provides a first-hand perspective on the EU’s internal dynamics, and he trenchantly argues that Greece’s treatment at the hands of the European institutions is strategically instructive for the Left moving forward.
The scene is set through a discussion of the historic tensions within the Left over European integration. Returning to the initiatives of Jacques Delors, and the development of the so-called European Social Chapter focused on workers’ rights and other social provisions in the 1980s, the ‘remain and reform’ orthodoxy which still prevails among many left-liberals and social democrats is challenged. Lapavitsas contends that the final vestiges of ‘Social Europe’, weakened substantially by the introduction of the Single Market and the Maastricht Treaty, disappeared in the aftermath of the Eurocrisis, with neoliberalism becoming further entrenched through a series of new institutional mechanisms designed to sure-up the Euro and enforce fiscal consolidation across the constituent nations. Furthermore, these reforms are said to have exacerbated the process of ‘hollowing out democracy’ within the European institutions, an aspect which has been previously been subject to extensive scholarly discussion (see especially Mair, 2013).
Counter to the theories of integration literature which have tended to identify the EU as either an ‘intergovernmentalist’ or ‘neo-functionalist’ organization (summarized in Hooghe and Marks, 2008), Lapavitsas emphasizes the imbalances of power between individual nation states within the union, and situates this debate within the wider context of capitalist social relations and class struggle, highlighting the way in which conflict and resolution manifest differently and impact upon the composition of member states. The key dynamic in this context is the gradual ascendancy of German power mediated via the European institutions and driven predominantly by Germany’s role in the European Monetary System (EMS). Although Germany assumed the ‘anchor country’ role in initial phases of the EMS (the Exchange Rate Mechanism in particular; see Bonefeld, 2001), Lapavitsas argues that the Bundesbank did not alter its position to stabilize exchange rates across the system in these earlier stages. Rather, currency depreciations in other European countries resulted in respective deteriorations in competitiveness, and the EMS was ‘increasingly reshaped to suit Germany and its domestic monetary policy concerns’ (p. 30). The entrenchment of German ‘neo-mercantilism’ in this context is traced through widening disparities between the European core and the southern periphery through wage suppression, in Germany in particular, and the overall impact of such measures on national competitiveness. This discussion provides a detailed contextualization of the subsequent tribulations of the eurocrisis and the fallout from it.
Two dimensions of the discussion on the Eurozone crisis offer notes of novelty. First, the identification of internal struggles within the Troika, particularly between the IMF and the two European institutions, provides a refreshing counter-narrative to a monolithic view of the tripartite alliance. Lapavitsas suggests that the IMF struck a more balanced tone, advocating some debt relief and restructuring without imposing conditionality measures aimed at reshaping Greek domestic policy. This pins the blame for the punitive terms under which loans were released more directly at the door of the European institutions, who were primarily concerned with protecting the Euro and bringing supposedly ‘delinquent’ countries into line (p. 84). Second, the account of SYRIZA’s internal conflicts during the course of the crisis highlights the factionalism of the party, with a more Europhile current coalescing around the leadership and a Left current which argued for unilateral default and an exit from EMU. As a member of the latter, Lapavitsas’ contempt for the former is clear, as the capitulation of the government to the Troika’s demands is characterized as a betrayal of the Greek people, evident not least in the result of the ‘Oxi’ referendum in July 2015. Perhaps the more interesting analytical point is the level of agency attributed to the party dispute, as it is proposed that with sufficient preparation, the party had a serious opportunity in 2015 to engineer a more secure and sustainable exit from the EU and a return to the drachma (p. 107).
In tracing the levels of public support for a Greek exit from a Left perspective in this period, the book is perhaps a little insouciant about the threat posed by the concurrent rise of Euroscepticism from the radical right, particularly the growing strength of Golden Dawn as one of the more virulent strains of neo-fascism continuing to gain traction across the continent (Halikiopoulou and Vasilopoulou, 2018). However, the book provides a concise and trenchant update to many of the intellectual critiques which have been leveled at the EU from a Left viewpoint in the aftermath of the crisis. The manner in which the European project has moved to accelerate its technocratic and undemocratic aspects in this context, and to remove potential sites of challenge from the integration process, make for a compelling case against membership (see also Macartney, 2013). In returning to the essential elements of Leftist analysis, focusing on the implications of class struggle and the power of capital within particular nation states, Lapavitsas demystifies much of liberal debate about EU integration and suggests an alternative direction for progressive politics.