Oblivious of Its Beliefs and Powers ...

Image credit.

In an intriguing blog post, Edward Harrison appears to argue that social democratic policies are of necessity national policies. If you give up sovereignity, in the way all member states of the EU have, you can no longer implement social democratic policies. Neither in your own country. Nor in the EU at large, as the latter does not provide for fiscal and other mechanisms equal to a nation's social democratic policy regime.

While I recommend you read the entire article, may it suffice for me to highlight two quotes in it from Wynne Goodly:

As the late Wynne Godley put it when the euro agreed in 1992, when you lose monetary sovereignty

“all that can legitimately be done… is to control the money supply and balance the budget….the power to issue its own money, to make drafts on its own central bank, is the main thing which defines national independence. If a country gives up or loses this power, it acquires the status of a local authority or colony. Local authorities and regions obviously cannot devalue. But they also lose the power to finance deficits through money creation while other methods of raising finance are subject to central regulation. Nor can they change interest rates. As local authorities possess none of the instruments of macro-economic policy, their political choice is confined to relatively minor matters of emphasis – a bit more education here, a bit less infrastructure there…”

And:

“such a view – that economies are self-righting organisms which never under any circumstances need management at all – did indeed determine the way in which the Maastricht Treaty was framed. It is a crude and extreme version of the view which for some time now has constituted Europe’s conventional wisdom… that governments are unable, and therefore should not try, to achieve any of the traditional goals of economic policy, such as growth and full employment. All that can legitimately be done, according to this view, is to control the money supply and balance the budget. It took a group largely composed of bankers… to reach the conclusion that an independent central bank was the only supra-national institution necessary to run an integrated, supra-national Europe.”

The source. 

It never ceases to amaze me that in supporting the EU, a construct wholly in the vein of monetarist neo-liberalism, the left has come to endorse the philosophy of its enemies with a vengeance, thereby having voluntarily abandonned the most important economic tools in their hands.

[Ich staune darüber, dass die Linke ihre wichtigsten Prinzipien und Instrumente aus der Hand gegeben hat, um die europäische Währungsunion zu unterstützen. Man muss sich fragen, was es heute überhaupt noch bedeutet, "ein Linker" zu sein, nachdem ein Bekenntnis zur EU nichts anderes ist als ein Bekenntnis zum montaristischen Neoliberalismus.

Man steuere den Leitzins, halte die wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Möglichkeiten des Staats durch eine restriktive Haushaltspolitik in engen Schranken und verlasse sich ansonsten weitgehend auf das freie Spiel der Markt-Kräfte. 

(Wie kann es sein, dass  sich das ideelle Rückgrat der Sozialdemokratie so leicht hat brechen lassen? Dass sich eine Galionsfigur der EU als Erneurer der deutschen Sozialdemokratie in den Bundestagswahlkampf stürzt, scheint mir nur ein weiteres Indiz für die ans Schizophrene grenzende Desorientierung der Linken zu sein.)]