In my first contribution to this blog, I would like to start with outlining what I’ll set out to do in the coming months. The readers of this blog will be quite familiar with the ‘orthodox’ account of the current crisis in the eurozone: profligate public spending by governments in the European periphery, which need to be brought under discipline from the outside, coupled with anaemic growth/recession largely caused by excessively high wages and excessive labour market regulation, calling for ‘structural reform’. Moreover, readers will also be well acquainted with some of the systemic aspects which have long been emphasised by the more politically-progressive accounts: the inability on the part of peripheral economies to adjust to asymmetric shocks after having forfeited most of their economic policy instruments; their dramatic loss of competitiveness due to an overvalued Euro and an overvalued implicit internal exchange rate; the ECB’s late, indirect and highly conditional assumption of its role as lender of last resort; not to mention the deleterious effects of austerity upon growth, employment, social cohesion… and even the budget deficit and the sustainability of public debt themselves.
I will not be rephrasing these arguments in detail. Rather, in addition to commenting on new developments as they occur, what I’ll try to do is to render all of the above a bit more vivid to you by showing how these rival accounts apply to the Portuguese case; how general factors and forces at the European level articulate with class interests in Portugal; what the effects of the prescribed medicine have been in this country; and what the balance of forces and the state of the public debate are at any given moment.
As an appetiser of sorts, here are some of the issues that I’ll be expanding on in my next few blog posts:
- Seen from the left, burgeoning public debt is largely a consequence of the crisis, not a cause (Portuguese public debt stood at 72% of GDP in 2008, compared to over 120% at present). However, there have been, and continue to be, serious issues concerning the quality of public spending (including public-private partnerships that commit the Portuguese Government to ensuring internal rates of return in excess of 10% to major conglomerates for decades to come).
- Seen from the left, rising labour costs in Portugal have not been the cause of deteriorating competitiveness (indeed, unit capital costs have increased more than unit labour costs over the last two decades). Rather, the overvalued (implicit and explicit) exchange rate, alongside the inability to upgrade the pattern of productive specialization (itself explained by structural factors), are what is to blame.
- Seen from the left, the medicine that has been prescribed in tandem by the ECB-EC-IMF “troika” and the right-wing Portuguese government places all the burden of an “adjustment” which will not work upon those who are most vulnerable and least responsible: workers and popular classes. This involves dismantling a Welfare State that is barely 40 years old, having been a product of the 1974 democratic revolution – a settling of scores long sought by the most conservative sectors of Portuguese society.
- Seen from the left, the way in which the crisis has been addressed so far by both the Portuguese and European authorities is not at all about bringing public debt under control or boosting competitiveness. Rather, it is about seizing a unique opportunity to re-engineer society in neoliberal fashion, by dismantling the Welfare State and sharply compressing direct and indirect wages.
These are critical, dangerous, but also very interesting times. I hope you’ll find my left-leaning views from Lisbon to be interesting and informative, too.
